July 17th, 1789

It seems that my worst fears are coming true. The Bastille has fallen to the revolutionaries. It seems that a crowd gathered to protest the direction of one of the guard cannons. The cannon was aimed at Antoine Street, as a sort of warning to the people of Paris. When the guards refused to move the cannon, some of the crowd took a more violent action. Two men armed with axes attacked the guardhouse and tried to lower the first drawbridge by breaking the chains. The soldiers in the fortress threatened to open fire if they did not stop. The men refused and managed to lower the first drawbridge. They then set to work on the second drawbridge when the soldiers opened fire. For four hours the crowd tried to lower the second bridge and storm the fortress and for four hours their assaults were met with musket fire.
Then the French Guard showed up with cannons, and urged the soldiers to surrender, on the condition that no harm would come to them. Seeing that their defenses could now be breached, they raised a white flag and surrendered. However, the Guard could not hold back the crowd, which stormed the fortress. The leader of the defenders, and I shudder to write this, had his throat slit on the steps of the Bastille, and his head carried around Paris.
Two days after the Bastille fell, it was ordered to be demolished. The joyous men and women who had attacked it two days before stormed it again, and ripped apart the bricks with their bare hands.