BASTILLE DAY is the French national holiday. In France, it is called “Fête Nationale” (“National Holiday”), in official parlance, or more commonly “quatorze juillet” (“14 July”). It commemorates the 1790 Fête de la Federation, held on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789; the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille was seen as a symbol of the uprising of the modern French nation, and of the reconciliation of all the French inside the constitutional monarchy which preceded the First Republic, during the French Revolution.

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