This post is authored by Nicolas Boring, a foreign law specialist covering French-speaking jurisdictions at the Law Library of Congress. Nicolas has previously blogged about a Report on Right of Huguenots to French Citizenship and The Library of the French National Assembly – Pic of the Week, among others.
July 14 is France’s national holiday. Often referred to as “Bastille Day” by English speakers, the holiday is generally called Fête nationale (“National Celebration”) or simply Fête du 14 juillet (“July 14 Celebration”) in French.
This date has been France’s official national holiday since 1880, when the Law of 6 July 1880 was adopted declaring that July 14 would be the day of an “annual national celebration.” This date not only commemorates the famous storming of the Bastille fortress by Parisian revolutionaries on July 14, 1789, but also the Fête de la Fédération (Federation Celebration) that took place exactly a year later, on July 14, 1790. The Fête de la Fédération was organized in part by the Marquis de Lafayette, who was then the commander of the Parisian National Guard, as a celebration of French national unity. It was a huge event