14 July: On this day in history

On 11 July 1791, an advert appeared in a Birmingham newspaper. The second anniversary of the storming of the Bastille was fast approaching and local radicals were keen to celebrate. So in three days’ time there would be a public banquet “to commemorate the auspicious day which witnessed the emancipation of 26 millions of people from the yoke of despotism, and restored the blessings of equal government to a truly great and enlightened nation”.

But when, on the afternoon of 14 July, local dissenters began arriving at the Royal Hotel for the dinner, they found an angry crowd waiting for them. Fears of unrest were running high, and among Birmingham’s artisan classes there were plenty of people who viewed support for the French Revolution as dangerously seditious.

By the evening, the atmosphere had taken a turn for the worse and the guests made their getaway. Protesters attacked the hotel and then, their passions raised, moved on to burn local nonconformist meeting houses. The evening’s entertain- ment ended with an attack on the home of the natural philosopher, chemist and free-thinker, Joseph Priestley.

Although Priestley and his wife managed to get away, they “distinctly heard all that passed at the house, every shout of the mob, and almost every stroke of the instruments they had provided for breaking the doors and the furniture”. Priestley’s library was destroyed, his manuscripts were burned and even his scientific equipment fell victim to the mob. What, he wrote afterwards, were “the horrors of the late demolished Bastille, compared to this?” | Written by Dominic Sandbrook

14 July 1789: Mobs storm the Bastille

A symbol of Parisian royal oppression is brought to its knees

Bernard-René de Launay was not a bad man. Born in 1740, he had spent much of his career in the French Guards, stationed in Paris, before becoming, like his father before him, the governor of the vast state prison in the centre of the capital. Contrary to what was claimed in political pamphlets of the day, the Bastille was not really such a terrible place. De Launay himself had a reputation as a reasonably considerate gaoler, and far from being stuffed with political dissidents, the Bastille was actually pretty empty. On the morning of 14 July 1789, in fact, de Launay was in charge of only seven prisoners – four forgers, two madmen and a dissolute aristocrat.

To the Paris mob, however, the Bastille was a time-honoured symbol of royal oppression. With France in the grip of a severe economic crisis, bread prices soaring, the political system deadlocked and the streets full of hysterical rumours, it was perhaps only a matter of time before the demonstrators attacked the prison. On the morning of the 14th they struck, demanding that de Launay surrender the keys and hand over all arms and artillery. At around lunchtime, they broke through into the outer courtyard. Shots were fired; the mood turned ever uglier. By 5.30 that afternoon, the fortress had fallen.

De Launay’s fate was a grim omen of the bloodshed that lay ahead. Dragged to the nearby town hall amid a hail of blows and abuse, he eventually kicked out at one of his attackers, an unemployed pastry cook. At that, the mob almost literally tore him to pieces, stabbing his helpless body again and again. A local butcher, one Mathieu Jouve, pulled out a knife and sawed the governor’s head off. | Written by Dominic Sandbrook

14 July 1862

Birth near Vienna of Gustav Klimt, Austrian symbolist painter and a prominent member of the Vienna Secession movement of artists.

14 July 1865

Led by the young artist Edward Whymper, a British mountaineering party to the Alps becomes the first team ever to scale the Matterhorn – although four of the party are killed on the way back down.

14 July 1930

The BBC transmitted its first television play, The Man with a Flower in his Mouth by the Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello. Among the audience was the prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, who watched it at 10 Downing Street.

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