Historical1789
Fall of the Bastille
Parisians stormed the Bastille fortress-prison, igniting the French Revolution. Thomas Jefferson, then U.S. Minister to France, witnessed the early revolution, and Americans debated fiercely whether to support their wartime ally as the revolution grew violent.
Why It Matters
The French Revolution forced Americans to define the limits of their own revolutionary principles and deepened the partisan divide between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans that shaped early American politics.