Ce n'est pas une revolte, c'est une revolution!“Your Majesty! They stormed the Bastille!” exclaimed King Louis XVI's aide. “Is this a riot?” asked the king. "No, sire, it is a revolution." On July 14, 1789, a huge, angry crowd marched into the Bastille, a maximum security prison that symbolized royal tyranny, in search of gunpowder and prisoners who had been taken by the unpopular and detested king, Louis XVI (Time Life 1999). Rumors of government attacks and the stark truth about starvation were simply too much for the enraged crowds. The Bastille had been prepared for more than a week, anticipating a hundred angry subjects. But nothing could have prepared the defenders for what they encountered that now famous day. Along the thick rock walls of the gigantic fortress and between the towers were twelve more cannons capable of launching 24-ounce rounds at anyone who dared attack. However, the enraged middle-class population of Paris was too rebellious and too furious to submit to the starvation and apparent injustice of their government (Time Life, 1999). It was the first time in European history that a group of commoners had overwhelmed the nobility. The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 inspired other people to fight tyranny and gain independence from their oppressors. Given that the masses in other countries and other times shared many of the problems faced by the French revolutionaries, it explains the widespread influence and symbolism of the fall of the Bastille. The main cause of the French Revolution involved the differences between the three different social classes in France (Soboul, 1977). This class structure, inherited from the ancien regime, the Middle Ages, was made up of three orders called classes. The First Estate, the clergy, made up less than 1% of the population but owned about 20% of the land. In the Second Estate, nobles occupied about 4% of the population and also owned 20% of the lands. The Third Estate, the working middle class, made up 95% of the population and paid all the taxes necessary to pay off the debts that Louis XIV had left behind because he had spent his country's money to help the American Revolution and to put in embarrassment to the English. . It's about... middle of paper... the overthrow of Shah Reza Pahlavi of Iran and President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines. In all these cases, the common people of those countries accused their leaders of being completely out of touch with the needs of their people, of living in great luxury while the people suffered from a lack of basic necessities. The French Revolution could also be compared to the Russian Revolution of 1917. The people took power and the royal family was executed. The economic problems of both countries were similar. The kings of both countries intended to do good for their countries, but were diverted from doing so by their naivety. The fall of the Bastille did not start the French Revolution. After all, the revolution had underlying causes that were at work and evident long before July 14, 1789. Social discontent, inequality, fiscal crisis, Enlightenment thinkers, all contributed to the making of the French Revolution (Hunt, 1992). However, in all events such as the revolution, we retrospectively point to a single event that can represent all the different meanings of the French Revolution, and therefore we choose the storming of the Bastille..