The Storming Of The Bastille

This is John Bailey in Paris. I'm standing outside the sentry boat in the square in front of the Bastille on this sweltering hot day of July 14, 1789. More than 50,000 citizens have been kept waiting here since 10am Paris time, 5am New York time, by the Marquis de L'Oneil, governor of the Royal French Prison Portrait.

The crowd is demanding that the governor surrender the Bastille so that the people may have the arms inside, It depends themselves against the king's mercenary troops who are at this very moment surrounding the city.

It's Gellonei refuses to turn the fortress and its arms over to the citizens of Paris July 14, 1789. CBS is there. The citizens of Paris before the Bastille. Columbia asked you to imagine that our microphone is at this famous event.

All things are as they were then, except for one thing. CBS is there. This broadcast, the second in a special summer series produced in direct is for Columbia by Robert Dues Chaeon, is based on authentic historical fact and quotation.

And now, Paris, July 14, 1789 and John Daly sought the minutes of people of Paris for angry and rested. After years of indignities, hardships and a struggle for a voice in their own government, King Louis XVI called the National Assembly a best-eyed to write a new constitution.

The hopes of the people for recognition of their were raised high, only to be rudely shattered a few days ago, when the King suddenly, without warning, threw 30,000 troops around Paris, mostly foreign mercenaries, and threatened to suspend the National Assembly by force.

The people are boiling with anger at this betrayal of their hopes, and they are also desperately afraid that the King's troops may invade the city, or at the very least attempt to foster them into submission by starvation.