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In a 28 October 1792 speech before the National Convention, artist Jacques-Louis David called for the creation of a series of medals to be modeled on ancient Greek and Roman coins which would commemorate the “glorious or happy events” and the “great men” who made those events happen.1  Indeed, the importance of using medals to propagate revolutionary ideals is evident even in the first years of the French Revolution.2 These medals were designed and struck by a host of médailleurs, ranging from unknown engravers seeking to establish their reputations to former royal engravers, such as Augustin Dupré, Bertrand Andrieu, and Benjamin Duvivier who now turned their talents to the glorification of the French Revolution.3 Medals and jetons commemorated the great figures and events of the period and were available to a surprisingly broad audience.  Prior to his flight to Varennes, for example, medals depicted Louis XVI as the restorer of the French constitution and as a great supporter of reform; still other medals honored Jean Sylvain Bailly, the comte de Mirabeau the Marquis de Lafayette, and other great Revolutionary political figures.4 Medals also commemorated key events such as the opening of the Estates-General, various Revolutionary fêtes, and the great journées during which the crowd helped to shape the course of the Revolution.

Of the many crowd actions of the Revolution, perhaps none captured the popular imagination as much as did the events of 14 July 1789.5 As Rolf Reichardt has argued, the importance of the storming of the Bastille can also be seen in the proliferation of images associated with that event, several of which are part of this collection.6 And while engravings and prints are among the most familiar of these images, they were not the only means by which the revolutionaries commemorated the event or used the event to promote public awareness of the power of collective action. Early in the course of the Revolution, political leaders, like David, also encouraged the art of medal-making to commemorate the great journées, key figures, and important ideals of the French Revolution. Thus medals, like popular prints, became an important method of spreading the ideals and images of the Revolution.  This is particularly true of the fall of the Bastille.7

Image 39. Siège de la Bastille, Prise par les citoyens de la ville de Paris. Le 14 Julliet 1789. [Siege of the Bastille, Taken by the citizens of the city of Paris, July 14, 1789.]

Perhaps the most artistically impressive of these medals is Bertrand Andrieu's Siège de la Bastille [Image 39] , first advertised in the 6 January 1790 issue of the Journal de Paris to commemorate the event of the previous summer.8 In vivid detail, one sees a depiction of the besieged prison, of the “violence” described so well in Vivian Cameron's essay. Soldiers of the Paris National Guard arrive on the scene as others are firing on the Bastille.  At least one soldier (entering on the right) carries a pitchfork, reflecting not only the role actually played by the newly created National Guard, but also more broadly the people of Paris, an idea driven home by the exergue of the medal: “Prise par les citoyens de la ville de Paris le 14 Juillet 1789.”  Three cannon, aimed at impossibly high elevations, are in various stages of firing-the one on the left is being loaded, the one in the center, being aimed by a soldier, and the one on the right, firing. Rising smoke obscures part of the scene, conveying a sense of the intensity of the crowd action.  The two corpses—on the right and the center—are also reminders that the fall of the prison was not without casualties.  More casualties, of course, would occur following, conveying a sense of the urgency and intensityoduced in the  the fall of the prison was not without casualties. from the scene the fall of the Bastille, including most notably the killing of the governor of the prison, the marquis de Launay.

Notes  

1 Roger Marx, Les Médailleurs Français depuis 1789 (Paris: Société de Propagation des Livres d'Art, 1897), 1.