The Festival of the Federation, 1790

On 14 July 1790, the first anniversary of the Bastille, hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the Champ de Mars in Paris for the Festival of the Federation. Delegations of National Guards from across France had formed 'federations' pledging unity, and Parisians of all classes had volunteered to dig and shape the vast arena. Talleyrand celebrated Mass at an altar of the fatherland, Lafayette led an oath of loyalty to the nation, the law and the king, and Louis XVI swore to uphold the constitution.

The festival expressed a hope that the Revolution was complete and that king and nation were reconciled. Historians often describe it as the high point of revolutionary unity. Yet beneath the celebration, conflicts over the Church, the king's real intentions and the role of the poor were already growing, and within a year that unity had broken.