The Outbreak of the Revolution

On 14 July 1789, an angry crowd in Paris attacked the Bastille in search of arms and ammunition. The fortress-prison symbolised the arbitrary authority of the ancien régime, so its fall became a major turning point in the French Revolution. Bernard-René de Launay, commonly identified in school texts as the governor of the Bastille, tried to defend the fortress but was captured by the crowd after its surrender. Thus option A, De Launay, is correct. Mirabeau and Sieyes were important revolutionary political figures, while Lafayette was associated with the National Guard; none of them was the governor seized at the Bastille.

Direct answer: Option A, to destroy documents of feudal dues. During rural revolts, peasants attacked manor houses and searched for documents because those records listed feudal rights, rents, services and other dues demanded from them. Step by step: nobles claimed obligations using written records; peasants saw these documents as proof of continuing feudal exploitation; destroying them could make old claims harder to enforce; this action expressed opposition to the feudal system. Option A is correct. Option B, reading poems, gives no reason for attacking noble archives. Option C, counting new coins, is unrelated to manorial records. Option D, making foreign maps, has no connection with the peasants’ immediate grievances. The action did not by itself end every burden instantly, but it targeted the written evidence of feudal dues. Memory cue: peasants searched records because “burning the proof challenged the dues.”