Fact or Fiction: Crowds stormed the Bastille in order to free political prisoners being held there.

This one’s also a myth. Beginning in the 17th century, the French monarchy put writers and other people they considered troublemakers behind bars at the former medieval fortress turned prison, and the practice continued throughout the 18th century as well. Perhaps the most famous writer imprisoned in the Bastille for sedition was the Voltaire, whose satirical attacks on French politics and religion earned him nearly a year behind bars in 1717. But by the time of the French Revolution, this wasn’t really happening anymore, and there were only seven prisoners in the Bastille on July 14, 1789: four counterfeiters, two mentally ill men and a count who had been delivered to the prison by his family for engaging in perverse sexual practices. (Incidentally, the Marquis de Sade was imprisoned in the Bastille from 1784 to just days before the crowds stormed the prison, when he was transferred to an insane asylum after shouting through his window “They are massacring the prisoners—you must come and free them!”)

The revolutionary crowds knew there was a cache of arms and gunpowder stored in the Bastille, and they wanted it. After firing on the mob and killing some 100 people, the men guarding the prison were forced to surrender after the rescue team called to secure the fortress joined the revolutionaries and aimed their cannons at the Bastille instead. Its military governor, Bernard-Jordan de Launay, flew the white flag of surrender; as a reward, the revolutionary mob killed him and paraded his head through the streets on a pike. After capturing the weapons and gunpowder, the crowd began dismantling the Bastille that same night.