On the evening of 14 July 1789 the crowd who had stormed the Bastille, wounded but triumphant, arrived in front of the Hôtel de Ville, bearing trophies seized from the fortress.

[1][2] Shortly after the accession of Louis-Philippe I, Delaroche, Cogniet, Schnetz and Drolling were commissioned to paint four large canvases for the Throne Room in the Hôtel de Ville to celebrate the heroes of the revolutions of July 1789 and July 1830.

He began work in it in 1834, and Charles Séchan assisted him with drawing the architectural elements of the background.

It was placed in external storerooms, and thus escaped the fire that destroyed the Hôtel de Ville in the semaine sanglante of 1871.

[1] While the original canvas is in the collection of the Petit Palais, the Musée d'Orsay also holds an 1858 albumen print photograph of the work by Robert Jefferson Bingham[4] and the Louvre holds a sketch for the work by Delaroche.