DeSotoSky
Gold Member
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- Mar 21, 2011
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Hello and welcome to the Sunday Picture Show. Share your Buck knives with others by posting pictures of them here. New or old, plain or custom, user or safe queen, one or a collection, we love to see them all. This weekly tradition was started in 2010 by ItsTooEarly (Armand Hernandez) and Oregon (Steve Dunn). Help keep the tradition alive. Feel free to click that 'LIKE' but lets not let it replace discussing and complimenting each others knives. DeSotoSky (Roger Yost)
The French Revolution began with the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. This Aurum gold etch commemorates the 200th anniversary in 1989 with an issue of 250. The inscription on the blade is in French so I assume the knife was for an export project. I remember making a paper mache model of the Bastille for a school project when I was a kid. I'm not French and cannot remember what the project was for.
Interesting Bastille Facts
* Originally constructed as a fortified gate (1370-1383) to protect Paris from the English during the 100 years war (1337-1453)
* Later turned into a fortress. Eight 100' towers linked by walls and surrounded by a 80' wide moat. Additional constructions were added in later centuries.
* Hugues Aubriot, builder of the Bastille, was the first person to be imprisoned there on trumped up charges of heresy, sodomy, and extortion for arresting citizens who had harassed the city's Jews. He fled after being released by a mob protesting excessive taxation.
*A side note about Aubriot. He was Provost (Mayor) of Paris under Charles V. He was a good administrator and in addition to the Bastille, he built the city's first sewers and strengthened the city's fortifications. He was on very poor terms with the Church and lost support after the death of Charles V in 1380 leading to his incarceration.
* At the time of the storming there were only 7 prisoners, 4 forgers, a lunatic, a man who had attempted an assassination 30 years prior, and a "deviant" young aristocrat imprisoned at the request of his family (I gotta wonder what he did). The Marquis de Sade was famously imprisoned in the Bastille but had been transferred to an asylum 12 days prior.
* The Towers of the Bastille.... each tower had a name. The Chapel Tower and the Treasury Tower were built first. Soon after, the Liberty Tower and the Bertaudière Tower were built. Then added were the Corner Tower and the Well Tower, and lastly the County Tower and the Basinière Tower.
Although they were the same height, the towers of the Bastille did not have the same number of floors. Treasury and Chapel had only two floors and no dungeons, whereas Liberty and Bertaudière had three floors and dungeons. The four corner towers, Corner, Well, County, and Basinière, had five floors of jail cells.
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