Even as the drama unfolded, I couldn’t help recalling another moment when a crowd attacked an iconic public building: July 14, 1789, in Paris, France, when a crowd stormed the Bastille. That event marked the beginning of the French Revolution, a subject about which I have written and taught for more than four decades.
The storming of the Bastille set a precedent: For the first time in modern history, ordinary men and women, through their collective action in the streets, ensured the creation of a constitutional system of democratic government. Within a few years, however, the French Revolution would also show that crowds could be dangerous, even to governments that claimed to represent the will of the people.
For centuries, France, like almost all major countries of the world, had been governed by a hereditary monarchy. The church, schools, and other authorities assumed that society could function only if common people left government to those who were chosen —by God or tradition—to direct it. To those in power, the lower classes were “the rabble,” “the mob,” an irrational force to be kept in awe by the police, the courts, and, if all else failed, by military force. The peasant farmers, artisans, and laborers who made up more than four-fifths of the population in France in 1789 mostly accepted the status quo, which seemed unalterable. Most of them had enough to do just to make a living.
