July 12, 1789:Paris learns of Necker's dismissal. The people, exasperated by the high cost of living, the presence of large troops at the gates of the capital, and attracted by the orators of the Palais-Royal*—hence the rumor of an Orléanist plot—decided to go to the arsenals to arm themselves against "brigands" and "enemies of the nation". Two days later, a thousand Parisians converge on the Bastille*, with the intention of obtaining arms. After a violent siege, the old prison fell into the hands of the insurgents. Seven prisoners are freed. Governor Launay and the soldiers of the Bastille are massacred, as well as Flesselles.
The event, however grandiose it may be, acquires the force of a symbol, that of the sovereign people, victorious over royal absolutism. In addition, the storming of the Bastille brought the French Revolution into a new era, that of the role of Paris, of its people, of its municipality (headed by Bailly), of its National Guard (with its commander, the popular Marquis de La Fayette).
On July 17, Necker having been recalled, Louis XVI went to the Hôtel de Ville in Paris; he was acclaimed by a large crowd under the eyes of which he received from the hands of Bailly the blue and red cockade of the capital:the three colors were born.
Throughout the kingdom the municipal movement s amplified, but new perils hovered over France. During the summer of 1789, a veritable collective psychosis seized the countryside, propagated by vagrancy due to scarcity and an anguish maintained, it will be said, by foreigners. The populations arm themselves and commit exactions against the nobles, often massacre them and destroy feudal titles. This insurgent outbreak is known as the Great Fear. It had a direct impact on the National Constituent Assembly:the abolition of privileges, offered on the night of August 4* at the instigation of the Viscount of Noailles on the "altar of the fatherland", while Louis XVI was proclaimed “Restorer of French freedom”. A new step has just been taken in the process of equalization, even if the methods of application of the measures taken in the enthusiasm of August 4 remain to be defined and then made viable. On the 26th of the same month, in the same spirit of generous franking, the Declaration* of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was adopted.