Seven prisoners. That is all the Bastille held on the morning of July 14, 1789, yet the medieval fortress loomed over Paris as the living symbol of royal tyranny. By afternoon, a furious crowd of thousands stormed its walls, demanding the gunpowder and arms stockpiled inside. When the guards resisted, the people overwhelmed them, seized the prison, and dragged its governor, Bernard-René de Launay, into the street. The mob's victory lit a fuse that could not be unlit. Within weeks, the French Revolution swept away centuries of feudal privilege, abolished the nobility's legal immunities, and forced King Louis XVI to recognize a National Assembly. The ideas unleashed that afternoon, popular sovereignty, the rights of man, government accountable to citizens, traveled across Europe and into the Americas, toppling thrones and inspiring constitutions for generations to come. France still marks July 14 as its national day, a reminder that a single afternoon of collective rage can permanently alter the architecture of power.