It’s July 14, 1789, and a monster is born. While the First U.S. Congress is meeting across the Atlantic, Frenchmen are storming the Bastille, a Parisian fortress used as a prison. It’s the first salvo in the French Revolution, an event that later would be portrayed (at least in U.S. government schools) as the American Revolution with a French twist. But it is nothing of the sort. It’s every bit as revolutionary, no doubt–but also largely de-volutionary.
