We ourselves are often glad to be deceived, but we will try to dispel delusions and restore the truth.
Champagne in lilies is holy wine
Champagne lovers will be surprised (or maybe disappointed) to learn that his homeland is not France, that the Benedictine monk Dom Pérignon (the house is a monastic title) did not invent this amusing drink. Moreover, all his life he struggled with the very bubbles that distinguish champagne from other wines of grape origin. If the monk invented something in relation to champagne, it was only skillful mixing of grape varieties from different plots. All the rest of the work that the French attributed to Perignon was done by the British.
As follows from the documents of the British Royal Society, the British, starting from the 16th century, actively exported grape wine from the French province of Champagne and, already at home, in England, added sugar and molasses to it so that it fermented. Over time, to curb the fermentation process, English winemakers began to use oven-baked glass bottles and corks. In the middle of the 17th century, manipulating imported wine, they invented a technology they called champagne - they paid tribute to the Champagne province!
The only merit of the French is that 200 years later they brought this technology to perfection, making champagne brut. But in order to usurp the right to invent champagne, a legend was put into use that the cups, like wide cups, from which it is customary to drink this wine, were made according to the shape and size of the bust of the Queen of France Marie Antoinette, who finished her earthly journey on the guillotine in 1793. However, for the first time such cups appeared all in the same England back in 1663, 130 years before the death of the queen.
And finally, ignoring historical facts, the French, through bribery and blackmail, managed in 1891 to push into the Madrid Treaty on the Registration of Trademarks (Brands) their own wording, according to which only the "fizzy" produced in the Champagne province has the right to be called champagne. This provision was enshrined in the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919. But neither the USSR nor the United States signed this agreement, having reserved the right to call champagne all the “fizz” produced using the champagne technology in their territories.
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Not a prison - home
In France, Bastille Day is a national holiday. Soon after the storming of this fortress, and it happened on July 14, 1789, on the streets of Paris anyone could buy an engraving with a frightening plot - prisoners of the Bastille in chains in dark dungeons … next to skeletons! This blatant, to put it mildly, lie to this day forms public opinion about the conditions of keeping prisoners in the fortress. However, the evidence found in the archives of contemporaries of those events, in particular, a certain Jean-François Marmontel, who was sitting in the Bastille in 1759-1760, speaks of something else: “The wine was, of course, not the most excellent, but quite bearable. They didn’t give us dessert: they had to deprive us of something. In general, I realized that the food in this prison is very good.”
And that is not all!
During the reign of Louis XVI, the fortress usually held people arrested for crimes of state: a conspiracy against the king or an attempt to overthrow him. It is clear that these were not commoners, but nobles who held high positions at the court or posts in the government. Therefore, the prison did not look like a traditional prison. The situation was quite comfortable, more like a shelter for wealthy people: the cells were soundly furnished, the prisoners, according to personal schedules, could receive relatives and friends at any time, walk with them in an embrace in the courtyard of the fortress. Prisoners were given considerable pocket money from the prison treasury; they were not restricted in the consumption of alcoholic beverages and tobacco; if desired, they could keep their favorite pets with them.
Isn't that why the indignant Parisian plebs rushed to storm the prison, and having seized it, razed it to the ground? It is interesting that on the day of the famous assault in the fortress, contrary to the deep-rooted rumors about dozens of unfortunate sufferers, only seven prisoners were "languishing": Viscount de Solange, sentenced to imprisonment for "sexual misdemeanor" - a crime for which not criminal, but administrative punishment was imposed; two mental patients, one of whom, with a beard to the waist, named Major White, claimed to be Julius Caesar; four swindlers who were imprisoned for forging bills.
During the assault, one hundred people were killed: a prison garrison of a dozen invalids - soldiers demobilized from the army due to serious physical injuries, including the commandant of the fortress. His head impaled on a pike was carried across the whole of Paris by the outrageous crowd. The rest are mostly Parisian clochards (homeless people), who seem to have killed each other in a fight for the prison office.
The attack of the mob on the Tuileries. Marie Antoinette protects her children. Unknown artist.
It seems that the storming of the Bastille, if it happened today, would be branded as "an inadequate action disproportionate to the degree of public danger of the fortress-prison."
“They have no bread? So let them eat the cakes!"
This phrase is familiar to us from school. The year is 1789. The French Revolution is at its peak. The Parisian poor are rebelling, demanding bread for their children, and Queen Marie Antoinette, either trying to joke, or simply out of stupidity, did not think of anything better than advising the people to consume cakes instead of bread!
But the queen didn't really say anything like that.
Beginning in 1760, this phrase was actively loitering in the pages of French periodicals, illustrating the decay of the aristocracy drowning in luxury. Jean-Jacques Rousseau claimed to have heard it back in 1740. Some historians give the right to the famous phrase to another queen - Maria Theresa, wife of Louis XIV. However, anyone could say this, the 18th century was replete with nonsense of secular ladies who lived in Western Europe.
But it is possible that the cynical phrase was launched for propaganda purposes.