Bastille Day's Wet Pique-Nique
Soldiers from across Europe marched down the tree-lined Champs-Elysees in Paris alongside French troops in the annual Bastille Day parade Friday, while fighter jets trailing red, white and blue smoke screamed through the cloudy skies overhead.
France also celebrated the first Bastille Day of the millennium with a vast picnic billed as the biggest outdoor banquet in the world stretching from the English Channel to the Spanish border.
Bastille Day commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison on July 14, 1789, setting off the French Revolution that toppled King Louis XVI and put an end to the monarchy.
The Bastille Day picnic, which stretched across train tracks, air strips and Roman ruins, was the brainchild of Gad Weil, who said it would help break down barriers of class and social position still palpable in this nation of 60 million people.
Up to four million people were expected to attend the gastronomic extravaganza despite forecasts of widespread heavy rain and unseasonably cold weather.
Paris picnic sites included the Louvre Museum's 18th century courtyard, the famed Pont des Arts footbridge over the Seine and the Luxembourg Gardens.
The international flavor of the independence day celebrations was meant to mark Paris's newly assumed presidency of the European Union.
Representatives from eight other European countries -- Belgium, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Britain, Portugal and Spain -- were represented in the Bastille Day parade through Paris.
The Defense Ministry said France had originally planned to invite soldiers from all 15 European Union countries, but changed its plans because of diplomatic sanctions on Austria. The 14 other EU nations imposed sanctions on Austria after the country's chancellor included ministers from the far-right Freedom Party in his government
The "Incroyable Pique-Nique" followed the line of the French meridian, starting at Dunkirk in the north, bisecting Paris and ending at the southern town of Prats-de-Mollo.
A red and white check tablecloth ran through the 337 communes en route, and up to 13,000 trees have been planted over the last eight months along the length of the meridian line as part of France's Millennium festivities.
In a country famed for philosophizing, the picnic was devised as a simple event bringing the nation together on the day France fetes the 1789 revolution that led to the removal of the monarchy and the creation of a republic.
It cost just $7.21 million to organize, with people being asked to bring their own baguettes and wine, and, in keeping with the revolutionary traditions of fraternity, share them with everyone else.
The largest number of picnics were planned for Paris with parties in the red-light district Pigalle, the Palais Royal, the courtyard of the Louvre and the Luxembourg gardens, where picnickers have special permission to sit on the grass.
But the poor weather threatened to dampen te fun in many areas, with weather forecasters predicting rain and substantially lower temperatures across the whole country as France suffers its coldest July for 20 years.
Television showed picnic tables being set up in woodland in the far south of the France in torrential rain, while in countryside just outside Paris people were shown huddled under plastic sheeting eating their sandwiches.