When does a revolution end? How does a revolution end? Can a revolution end?

In November of 2020 Le Place de Bastille was set ablaze before my eyes. That month, during a time of serious civil unrest and a general disillusionment with authority, President Macron passed ‘Article 24’, making it illegal to disseminate images or videos showing the face of a member of the national police. In the weeks leading up to this, France had been subject to targeted terror attacks and Islamic fundamentalism was seen as a national crisis. Shortly after, accusations of police brutality began to emerge.

This coinciding with the news of a second lockdown, France was angry. In the height of the Pandemic, there was already pressure building in the streets of Paris; we were under a strict regime of complete lockdown: masks were obligatory even in the streets, we were allowed only an hour’s walk within a one-kilometer radius of our place of residence and were subject to a ‘couvre-feu’ [curfew] between the hours of 6PM – 6AM. Any breach of these rules and you would be paying fines north of fifty euros.

The volatile ‘Pays De Greve’, [The country of strike / protest] as France has been less than affectionately dubbed, has somewhat of a reputation of public protest and strike. I had seen Le Gilets Jaunes [the yellow vests] during their demonstrations in Paris before, yet the protests during my first six months of living in Paris were utterly sensational. Usually happy to just watch the drama unfold from behind a screen, I thought to myself – No, this time I want to be part of the action. And how wrong I was.

Around 9PM on this November evening, me and my three roommates arrive at the Place de Bastille. Nervous, excited and in way over our heads, we think we’re ready. A hot red glow is ascending from the center of the swarm and a thick grey smog is settling in above us. Above the sea of protestors, half torn posters and ravaged French flags fly low. Rows upon rows of the Gendarme are trying desperately to contain the anger to the Place but the protestors are doubling in size and in anger. Eventually something in the atmosphere starts to change, the cries for political change are becoming increasingly lost within the chaos and screams for help. The crowds begin to break up as if under siege, and I realize we are being shot at by rubber bullets. The acrid smell of tear gas becomes thicker, heavier and I see fellow protestors being beat by police batons.

In the fiery frenzy, I turn to make sure my friends are still close by me. One of my roommates is crying; I quickly realize he’s been tear gassed and is desperately trying to remove it from his eyes. I go to rally the others and realize that my best friend has been hit by a rubber bullet and deep purple bruises are beginning to set on her arms and back. We come quickly to the conclusion that is probably best to bow out now and frantically, we try to escape the mob.

233 years have passed since the French Revolution and the storming of the Bastille. Yet, standing on the Place this quiet July afternoon in 2023 I can’t help but recall my own version of events. I look for any evidence of the protests I witnessed, and of those just passed, the marks of the fire, a flag, a broken poster – but nothing.

It was something else that caught my eye – small bronze circles forming the shape of an obscure rectangle surrounds me – the remains of the Bastille. Far smaller than I had imagined, the perimeter of the Bastille encloses where we were stood. Straight away, I think to Dickens’ Madame Defarge: exasperated, furious, vengeful, and thirsty for blood. She would have stood right where I was, full of the desire to destroy. Looking back to the book, as her husband rallies the men to storm the Bastille, she tells him: ‘I go… with you… you shall see me at the head of the women.’ She is leading these women into the siege and exclaims: ‘We can kill as well as the men!’ And so, she proves as she stands firmly of the chest of the dying body of Sainte Antoine and gruesomely decapitates him. The storming of Bastille was a triumph for the revolutionaries – the seven prisoners were released, seven guards’ heads were placed on spikes and the governor, killed. From then on it was ‘Liberty, fraternity, egality or death.’

Had it not been for the hundreds of armed Gendarmes, huge police and military tanks, and the lack of a Bastille to siege that evening in 2020, I really wonder how the events would have unfurled. I can still feel the anger and passion that night, it was completely overwhelming, and I remember thinking that without the military confinement it could so easily have spiraled out of control.

There is still so much unhappiness harbored here in France, so much injustice unaccounted for, and so many people feeling let down by the government – there is a reason that France is the ‘Pays de Greve.’ Only a few weeks ago, Paris saw a very similar unrest. Nahel M, a 17-year-old boy in Nanterre was shot and killed by a police officer. In similar fashion to the US during the BLM protests, the French took to the streets in demonstration. Cars were set alight, the police were attacked, a moment of huge civil anger and fear manifested itself in violence all across the nation.

I remember reading Les Misérables earlier this summer only to look up from the book at a Sky News broadcast and see exactly what Hugo was describing superimposed on contemporary Paris. Fireballs were hurled through the streets and French flags were used as a symbol of the new revolt.

I called my friend who lives in the banlieues [the suburbs] – where the protests were especially potent - and I asked her to talk me through what was going on. She flipped her FaceTime camera around and showed me the streets below her apartment. The streets were pilled meters high with rubbish and the bins were literally on fire. Carcasses of burnt cars remained hauntingly on the streets and the remains of DIY weapons were sprawled across the pavements. People were either rushing to get safely home or running towards the heart of the movement. I could hear the rumble of chaotic chanting through the phone. Shops and cafes were boarded shut and public transportation was closed. My friend had been told by her university to not leave her apartment. A revolt was in full swing.

I then turned back to Les Mis and had to remind myself I was, in fact, not reading a news feed – no, Enjolras, Marius, Courfeyrac, they’re characters attacking the French aristocracy from behind a barricade in 1789. And yet, on the news the citizens are fighting the government, the police, the whole system. It was honestly chillingly uncanny to read Les Mis and watch the News in unison.

In the aftermath of all of these Protests, I find myself walking the streets of Paris today wondering to myself ‘did the revolution ever really end or are we just witnessing iterations of the past?’