"The Storming of the Bastille"

Dr. E. F. Henderson '83 delivered the first of a series of eight lectures on "The French Revolution" in the Fogg Museum yesterday afternoon on "The Storming of the Bastille." The lecture was illustrated by numerous interesting stereopticon slides, giving the portraits of prominent men of the time, engravings of important events and places, and caricatures of the political aspect of the period.

In opening, Dr. Henderson denied the assertion of many modern historians that the French Revolution is not an epoch-making event, and while acknowledging its retarding effects upon the progress of civilization, he emphasized the far-reaching result of such an important and hitherto unknown political experiment. The French Revolution in history is what the "Republic" of Plato is in the world of thought.

In connection with the slides, he told of the value of the great quantity of portraits, pictures and private correspondence which has come down to us, and of the special importance of the mass of allegories and caricatures, which formed the political education of an ignorant people, who had just acquired the suffrage. He then spoke of the unbounded popularity of Rousseau and of his writings, and the popularity, second only to that of Rousseau, of Benjamin Franklin, the idol of the French people. The misery of the lower classes, while undoubtedly great, has been grossly exaggerated by Carlyle and others; and far from being a cause was only a condition of the Revolution, which was in reality started by the rich people and thinkers of the nation, and then taken up by the peasants.

Dr. Henderson then recounted much of the history of the convention of the States General of 1789, and told the story of the burning of the toll-gates, the closing of the Opera, the sack of the Hotel des Invalides, and finally the storming of the Bastille. The murder of Delaunay, the governor of the fortress, caused the latent bloodthirstiness of the Paris mob, whose excesses have become so famous, to break forth in all its fury.