It's July 1789 in Paris.

Bread is scarce, rumours are spreading, and fear hangs thick in the summer air.

A city waits tense and angry, unsure of what the future holds.

Looming over the eastern streets stands the Bastie. An ancient fortress, a symbol of seemingly indestructible royal power.

But, by nightfall, it will be a ruin.

What begins as a search for gunpowder will become an act that shakes a kingdom and echoes across the world.

This is the story of how a movement spiraled into a full-blown revolution

and how a single building came to define freedom, violence and the power of the people.

From the crowded streets of 18th century Paris, this is after dark.

Music Hello, my name is Anthony.

And I'm Maddie.

Now, the storming of the infamous Bastille prison has

become an iconic turning point in French history, an emblematic moment in the history of

the tumultuous French Revolution. The prison fell in a single afternoon, but its shadow stretches

across centuries. Today, we'll be delving into the

build-up to this dramatic scene, how it played out, and the consequences that rippled throughout

Europe and the world. On today's episode, we are very happy to welcome Dr. Michael Rappore

onto the show. Michael is a reader in modern European history at the University of Glasgow and is

author of works including the Napoleonic Wars, a very short introduction, 1848 Year of Revolution,

and most recently the very excellent, might I say, City of Light, City of Shadows, Paris in the

bell epoch. And before I properly welcome, Michael, I have to say he also inadvertently helped me an awful lot through my undergrad French Revolution because I was reading an awful lot of his work at that time. So it's a real pleasure to have you on. Michael, welcome to After Dark. Thank you, Anthony. Thank you, Manny. Thanks for having me. We're so excited to do these episodes with you because they're often requested from

our listeners and we've really wanted to delve into this for such a long time. So I don't know

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