Results tagged “bastilleday”

The gap week between the celebrations of America's Independence Day and upcoming France's Bastille Day, this is the perfect time to dabble in some French and American wine tasting history.

Today is Bastille Day, marking the day in 1789 when French people stormed a prison known for arbitrary imprisonment on the king's orders, to show their support for the creation of a constitutional, rather than absolute, monarchy. (Trading in one sort of monarchy for another seems like a half measure these days, but it was rather something at the time.) Shortly thereafter, in August, the new French government would proclaim the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which boldly stated that all men were born free and with a right to resist oppression, except, you know, Haitians and Africans.