It’s such a slow period in the civic engagement biz that even City Council is on vacation. Meanwhile, in a month when, historically, tempers fray and civic unrest tends to boil up, we celebrate violent revolutions at home and abroad. Having grown up around a lot of Francophiles and other Eurosnobs, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Fourth of July à la Française.
Bastille Day, 14 Juillet, commemorates the storming of the Bastille in 1789, in which a mob of 954 dissidents, including 21 wine merchants, attacked a largely empty prison to free seven random prisoners – four forgers, a “lunatic” Irish spy, and two ne’er-do-wells who’d been imprisoned at the request of their families. Ninety-eight of the attackers died in the effort, and only one defender. But as it was nearing dinner time, the defenders surrendered, whereupon the mob promptly massacred many of them on the spot. And thus began the decadelong French Revolution, followed by a couple of decades of continentwide war known as the Napoleonic Era, and then a period of general unrest culminating in the revolutions of 1848, a series of liberal rebellions across at least 50 countries that was crushed by reactionaries everywhere, yet still set a baseline across Europe for basic democratic ideals such as the rule of law, rights of the individual, freedom of expression and freedom of the press, and the like. (It also brought a wave of German “Forty-Eighters” to Texas, who founded freethinker communities in the Hill Country including Boerne and Comfort, and didn’t always see eye to eye with the patrician Noblemen’s Society who had founded New Braunfels and Fredericksburg. But I digress.)
So, I know we just got past the Fourth of July (commemorated, fittingly, with its own mass shooting). And it is probably true that 1776 was the big one, the bold act and bolder statement of values that enabled and inspired both 1789 and 1848 (and 1917, and 1968, and we’re about due for another one) – but spare a moment this coming Thursday to lift a glass (wine, of course) to that other historic July revolution. Here’s to armed rebellion!
The French Legation State Historic Site will celebrate Bastille Day on Saturday, July 16, with an afternoon of music, lawn games, face-painting, pétanque, and more. “Bring a blanket or lawn chair and claim your spot on the grounds of Austin’s oldest recorded residence and stop by the Café Legation for all of your picnic needs.” 10am-4pm at 802 San Marcos St.; more info at thc.texas.gov.
The seventh annual Austin Soccer Awards Gala is on Bastille Day itself, Thursday, July 14, at the South Congress Hotel – a celebration of the local soccer community, and a fundraiser for the Austin Soccer Foundation, a unique nonprofit that “supports underserved and economically disadvantaged residents in Austin and the surrounding five county area through the beautiful game.” Schmoozing starts at 6pm; program and dinner start at 7:30, with awards, scholarship grants, and remarks from former U.S. women’s national team player and current Southwestern University coach Linda Hamilton. Tickets are on sale now at austinsoccerfoundation.org.
Lastly, if the recent heat is getting to you, here’s some bad news from the French Revolutionary calendar: We’re still only in Messidor, the harvest month. The month of Thermidor (from the Greek thermon, “summer heat”) doesn’t start until what we call July 19. (Then, because it’s France, the two months after that are devoted to fruit and the wine harvest.)
This article appears in July 8 • 2022.