What is the name of the prison stormed during the French Revolution in A Tale of Two Cities? The answer is the Bastille. The fortress-prison in Paris was stormed on 14 July 1789, an event widely treated as a defining opening moment of the French Revolution.
In Dickens’s 1859 historical novel, Dr. Alexandre Manette has been imprisoned in the Bastille for eighteen years after crossing the powerful Evrémonde family. His release begins the novel’s “Recalled to Life” storyline and allows him to reunite with his daughter, Lucie. The trauma of confinement continues to shape his behavior, including his compulsive shoemaking.
When revolutionary crowds capture the Bastille, Ernest Defarge enters Manette’s former cell and searches it. He discovers the manuscript that records the Evrémondes’ crimes, and that document later contributes to Charles Darnay’s condemnation. The prison therefore matters both as a real symbol of royal authority and as a central mechanism in the plot.
The Bastille was largely demolished after its capture. It held only seven prisoners at the time, but its political symbolism made the assault far more significant than the number of inmates suggests.