The October Days are presented as a possible consequence and retrospective meaning of the taking of the Bastille, not as a settled historical verdict. The passage asks whether the Bastille’s fall was merely a revolt against a partly dismantled fortress or the first display of popular strength that enabled the populace to gain confidence and march on Versailles. Its significance lies in that unresolved choice: later projects continually recast what the past means.

The Bastille as a Historical Turning Point

The taking of the Bastille in 1789 is treated as an immutable fact, but the fact alone does not determine its historical meaning. One reading reduces it to a popular outburst against a fortress already partly dismantled, later elevated into a celebrated deed by the Convention as it fashioned a distinguished past for itself. In that account, the event’s apparent importance is partly the result of subsequent political remembrance.

A contrasting interpretation sees the uprising as the first manifestation of popular strength. On this reading, the populace asserted itself, acquired confidence, and placed itself in a position to undertake the march on Versailles during the Last Days of October. The October Days therefore stand in the passage as a possible continuation of the Bastille uprising: an event whose significance depends on whether the earlier revolt is understood as an isolated outburst or as the beginning of popular action.

Meaning in Suspense

The passage refuses to choose between these accounts as though the answer could be established from the present alone. Someone who decides the Bastille’s meaning today, it argues, risks forgetting that historians are themselves historical: they interpret history in the light of their own projects and those of their society. The Convention’s commemorative use of the event is one example of how political purposes can shape a public past, while the proposed link to the march on Versailles offers another framework for understanding it.

The event’s meaning consequently remains in suspense rather than becoming final. The passage extends this claim from collective history to personal memory: just as societies continually reinterpret their past, a person’s past remains subject to renewed questioning. Such ongoing historicization is described as an affirmation of freedom, because the past’s significance is not fixed once and for all but reconsidered from changing projects in the present.