Opportunity

[Laurent Rizzotti]

Strange story. Not the place to discuss it but

"some drunk people": probably more than one thousand members of just created municipal milice, searching gunpowder supposed to be stored in the castle for the rifles they just took in Les Invalides (so much for "armed by the king cousin and a business man"). By the way most sources of the time describe the members of this militia rather as middle-class.

"non defended": 114 soldiers in garrison, who killed about one hundred attackers

"killed some people in": true, 7 of the 114 were killed, all after surrender. By the way, after killing 100 of an excited crowd, I was excepting a greater massacre.

"liberated 2 or 3 prisonners": 7 actually, names are known

The fall of the Bastille was a very strong symbol for people at the time. More worrying for the king were the events in the Invalides before, where both the Invalides guard and nearby troops at the Champ de Mars (where Eiffel Tower was later raised) refused to engage the crowd invading the place for getting weapons.

On 14 July, more important than the fall of the Bastille was the fact that all king troops retired from the town, and at the end of the day Paris was effectively controlled by its inhabitants. The king never controlled the town again after that.