The Long History of Storming Parliament Buildings

In his last days in office as President of the United States of America, on 6 January 2021 Donald Trump called on his supporters to march to the Capitol to protest the Electoral College vote count taking place there. The ensuing scenes, which culminated in a mob storming and vandalising the halls of Congress in Washington D.C., remain fresh in our minds. Some commentators spoke of the downfall of democracy, a desecration of that most iconic of democratic landmarks, and drew parallels with the thwarted storming of the Capitol in Rome in 390 BCE by the Senones, a Celtic tribe under a military leader named Brennus.