The Bastille was notorious as the place where the king imprisoned without due process those who opposed his absolute rule. The released prisoners were of no political consequence, but the storming of the Bastille was indeed a symbolic victory. Though the governor of the Bastille eventually surrendered to the mob, there was fierce fighting in which ultimately ninety-eight attackers and eight defenders were killed. This event is often considered to be the start of the French Revolution, although only seven prisoners were released from the infamous prison in Paris when it was attacked by a mob anxious to seize the shot and gunpowder it held. Indeed, Wikipedia will tell you the current day and year using the system, although you'll want to read up on the exquisite problems related to leap years (also helpfully detailed on Wikipedia).ДЇor a bit more on decimal time (including several modern variants), check out our article Decimal Time: How the French Made a 10-Hour Day.Known officially as La FГЄte Nationale, the day English-speaking people call Bastille Day and the French commonly call Le quatorze juillet, celebrates the storming of the Bastille on the 14th of July, 1789. Of course, all this calendar-nerd stuff leads to the fact that you could still choose to use the French Republican Calendar. It took him more than a year to roll back the revolutionary calendar.) In any case, Janurolled around using the Gregorian calendar and the rest is history. (Incidentally, his coronation occurred on 11 Frimaire, Year XIII of the French Republican Calendar-also known as 2 December, 1804. This was due, of course, to the reign of NapolГ©on Bonaparte as Emperor. On December 31, 1805, the French government chucked the system-in the year XIV, by Republican reckoning. It began in late 1793 and ran all the way through the end of 1805 (again in the Gregorian reckoning). The French Republican Calendar lasted far longer. Decimal clocks and decimal/standard hybrid clocks continued to be used for years, but for practicality, France returned to the same system of time as its neighbors. By Ap(in the Gregorian calendar), the time system became optional. This was a bit inelegant (days and years being hard to divide cleanly by 10), but at least it was less confusing than trying to sort out what time 'noon' was (it was 5 o'clock).ДЇrench Revolutionary Time only lasted 17 months. The leftover days needed to add up to 365 or 366 for the year were tacked onto the end of the year as holidays.

Months were divided into three 10-day weeks, and there were 12 months. But it also brought huge headaches.ДЇrench Revolutionary Time came alongside the French Republican Calendar, a further attempt to rationalize time. The system was elegant, doing away with the complex math required for time calculations under a 24 hour/60 minute/60 second system. A day had 10 hours, 100 minutes per hour, and 100 seconds per minute. In 1793, the French switched to French Revolutionary Time, creating a decimal system of time.

French revolutionary calendar holidays