We need the Bastille spirit more than ever, by Brendan O’Neill.

Last night’s barbarism in Nice was the clearest, bloodiest expression yet of terror’s contempt for freedom and democracy. …

Bastille Day commemorates the moment on 14 July 1789 when a raging, revolutionary crowd stormed the Bastille prison in Paris. The fall of the Bastille was a turning point in France’s sweeping aside of monarchism in favour of modernity.

‘Another revolt?’, asked King Louis XVI. ‘No sire, it’s not a revolt, it’s a revolution’, his adviser famously replied. Bastille was significant because it was the moment when the masses asserted themselves in France, rudely intruding into the realm of politics and history.