14/07/2026
🇫🇷 Today is Bastille Day – 14 July
On this day in 1789, the storming of the Bastille became one of the defining events of the French Revolution.
For France’s Protestants, the Revolution came after more than a century of persecution. Following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, thousands of Huguenots had fled France, while those who remained faced restrictions on their religious and civil freedoms.
One prominent Protestant voice during the Revolution was Jean-Paul Rabaut Saint-Étienne (1743–1793), the son of a Huguenot pastor. He campaigned for religious freedom and famously argued that Protestants should receive not merely toleration, but liberty and equality.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, adopted in 1789, marked a profound change in the status of religious minorities in France.
Today, as France celebrates le 14 juillet, we remember a history that is also part of the Huguenot story — one of persecution, exile, religious freedom and the long struggle for equal citizenship.
🇫🇷 Bonne fête nationale!
Image: Jean-Paul Rabaut Saint-Étienne (1743–1793) Wikimedia Commons
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