Journée des Tuiles (Alexandre Debelle), Musée de la Révolution française - Vizille

The Day of the Tiles (french: Journée des Tuiles) was an event that took place in the French town of

Grenoble lat, Gratianopolis , commune status = Prefecture and commune , image = Panorama grenoble.png , image size = , caption = From upper left: Panorama of the city, Grenoble’s cable cars, place Saint- ...

on 7 June in 1788. It was one of the first disturbances which preceded the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are conside ...

, and is credited by a few historians as its start.

Background

Grenoble was the scene of popular unrest due to financial hardship from the economic crises. The causes of the French Revolution affected all of France, but matters came to a head first in Grenoble. Affected by depressed demand for luxury

glove A glove is a garment covering the hand. Gloves usually have separate sheaths or openings for each finger and the thumb. If there is an opening but no (or a short) covering sheath for each finger they are called fingerless gloves. Fingerless g ...

s (at the time one of Grenoble's major industries), Grenoble was heavily dependent on its status as seat of the regional ''

parlement A ''parlement'' (), under the French Ancien Régime, was a provincial appellate court of the Kingdom of France. In 1789, France had 13 parlements, the oldest and most important of which was the Parlement of Paris. While both the modern Fr ...

'' for status and prosperity. However, Cardinal

Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne (9 October 172719 February 1794) was a French clergyman, bishop, cardinal, politician and finance minister of Louis XVI. Life Early career He was born in Paris, in the Loménie family from Flavignac ...

, the

Archbishop of Toulouse The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toulouse (–Saint Bertrand de Comminges–Rieux) ( la, Archidioecesis Tolosana (–Convenarum–Rivensis); French: ''Archidiocèse de Toulouse (–Saint-Bertrand de Comminges–Rieux-Volvestre)''; Occitan: ''A ...

and Controller-General of

Louis XVI Louis XVI (''Louis-Auguste''; ; 23 August 175421 January 1793) was the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as ''Citizen Louis Capet'' during the four months just before he was ...

, was attempting to abolish the

Parlement A ''parlement'' (), under the French Ancien Régime, was a provincial appellate court of the Kingdom of France. In 1789, France had 13 parlements, the oldest and most important of which was the Parlement of Paris. While both the modern Fr ...

s to work around their refusal to enact a new tax to deal with France's unmanageable public debt. Tensions that had been rising in urban populations, due to poor harvests and the high cost of bread, were exacerbated by the refusal of the privileged classes — the Church, and the aristocracy, who insisted on retaining the right to collect feudal and seignorial royalties from their peasants and landholders — to relinquish any of their fiscal privileges. This blocked the reforms of the king's minister

Charles Alexandre de Calonne Charles Alexandre de Calonne (20 January 173430 October 1802), titled Count of Hannonville in 1759, was a French statesman, best known for his involvement in the French Revolution. Realizing that the Parlement de Paris would never agree to reform ...

and the

Assembly of Notables An Assembly of Notables (French: ''Assemblée des notables'') was a group of high-ranking nobles, ecclesiastics, and state functionaries convened by the King of France on extraordinary occasions to consult on matters of state. Assemblymen were ...

of January 1787. Added to this, Brienne, appointed as the king's Controller-General of Finance on 8 April 1787, was widely regarded as being a manager without experience or imagination.La «Journée des tuiles» à GrenobleHerodote.net
Retrieved on 4 November 2006 Shortly before 7 June 1788, in a large meeting at Grenoble those who attended the meeting decided to call together the old Estates of the province of Dauphiné. The government responded by sending troops to the area to put down the movement.

Riots

At roughly 10 in the morning of Saturday, 7 June, merchants closed down their shops as groups of 300 to 400 men and women formed, armed with stones, sticks, axes, and bars. They rushed to the city gates to prevent the departure of judges who took part in the

meeting. Some rioters attempted to cross the

Isère Isère ( , ; frp, Isera; oc, Isèra, ) is a landlocked department in the southeastern French region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Named after the river Isère, it had a population of 1,271,166 in 2019. Grenoble 1788

The cathedral's bells were seized by French peasants at noon. The crowd swiftly grew, as the bells provoked the influx of neighbouring peasants to creep in the city, climbing the walls, using boats on the Isere and for some, pushing open the city gates. Other insurgents boarded the

rampart Rampart may refer to: * Rampart (fortification), a defensive wall or bank around a castle, fort or settlement Rampart may also refer to: * "O'er the Ramparts We Watched" is a key line from " The Star-Spangled Banner", the national anthem of the ...

s and rushed to the hotel (''L'hôtel de la Première présidence'') the Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre was staying in at the time. The Duke had two elite regiments in Grenoble, the Regiment of the Royal Navy ('' Régiment Royal-La-Marine)'' whose colonel was Marquis d'Ambert and the regiment of

Austrasia Austrasia was a territory which formed the north-eastern section of the Merovingian Kingdom of the Franks during the 6th to 8th centuries. It was centred on the Meuse, Middle Rhine and the Moselle rivers, and was the original territory of the ...

(''Régiment d'Austrasie'') which was commanded by Colonel Count Chabord. The Royal Navy was the first to respond to the growing crowds and was given the order to quell the rioting without the use of arms. However, as the mob stormed the hotel entrance, the situation escalated. Soldiers sent to quell the disturbances forced the townspeople off the streets. Some sources say that the soldiers were sent to disperse parliamentarians who were attempting to assemble a parliament. During an attack, Royal Navy soldiers injured a 75-year-old man with a bayonet. At the sight of blood, the people became angry and started to tear up the streets. Townspeople climbed onto the roofs of buildings around the Jesuit College to hurl down a rain of roof-tiles on the soldiers in the streets below, hence the episode's name. Many soldiers took refuge in a building to shoot through the windows, while the crowd continued to rush inside and ravage everything. A

noncommissioned officer A non-commissioned officer (NCO) is a military officer who has not pursued a commission. Non-commissioned officers usually earn their position of authority by promotion through the enlisted ranks. (Non-officers, which includes most or all enli ...

of the Royal Navy, commanding a patrol of four soldiers, gave the order to open fire into the mob. One civilian was killed and a boy of 12 wounded. To the east of the city, the Royal Navy soldiers were forced to open fire in order to protect the city's arsenal, fearing that the rioters would seize the weapons and ammunition. Meanwhile, Colonel Count Chabord began deploying the regiment of Austrasia to aid and relieve the Royal Navy soldiers. Three of the city's four consuls gathered at the City Hall and attempted to reason with the crowd. However, their words were silenced amidst the clamour of the mob. Through great difficulty, the consuls made their way through the crowds and eventually took refuge with the officers of the local garrison. Later that evening, the Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre withdrew his troops from the streets and hotel to prevent further violence from escalating the situation. The Duke managed to narrowly escape the hotel before the crowd completely looted the inside. With control of the hotel lost, the Royal Navy troops were ordered to return to their quarters. At six, a crowd estimated at ten thousand people shouting "Long live the parliament" forced the judges to return to the Palace of the Parliament of

Dauphiné The Dauphiné (, ) is a former province in Southeastern France, whose area roughly corresponded to that of the present departments of Isère, Drôme and Hautes-Alpes. The Dauphiné was originally the Dauphiné of Viennois. In the 12th centu ...

(''Palais du Parlement du Dauphiné)'' by flooding them with flowers. Throughout the night,

carillon A carillon ( , ) is a pitched percussion instrument that is played with a keyboard and consists of at least 23 cast-bronze bells. The bells are hung in fixed suspension and tuned in chromatic order so that they can be sounded harmoni ...

s sounded triumphantly, a large bonfire crackled on Saint-André square surrounded by a crowd that danced and sang "Long live forever our parliament! May God preserve the King and the devil take Brienne and Lamoignon." On 10 June, the local commander attempted to appease the spirits of the crowd, with no success. Under the orders of exile pronounced against them by the

King King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen regnant, queen, which title is also given to the queen consort, consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contempora ...

, the parliamentarians were forced to flee from Grenoble in the morning of 12 June. It wasn't until the 14th of July that order was fully restored in the city by Marshal Vaux, who replaced the Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre. The commander of the troops found the situation so alarming that he agreed to allow the meeting of the Estates to proceed, but not in the capital. A meeting was therefore arranged for the 21 July 1788 at the nearby village of

Vizille Vizille (; frp, Veselye) is a commune in the Isère department in southeastern France. Population Sights Vizille is the home of the Musée de la Révolution française, a rich depository of archival and rare materials devoted to the French R ...

. This meeting became known as the Assembly of Vizille. In all, six outbreaks of rioting have been identified in the city on 7 June. The event was commemorated by Alexandre Debelle's ''The Day of the Tiles, 13 July 1788'', painted in 1889.''The Day of the Tiles'', 13 July 1788
/ref> He painted it a century after the event and got the date wrong, but it undoubtedly attempts to depict the events described by the title.

Later events

The meeting of the three Estates which had been agreed to took place at Vizille on 21 July. Several hundred people assembled, representing the three Estates, the nobility, the clergy and the middle class (the

bourgeoisie The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. Th ...

), who were granted double representation. The meeting was led by a moderate reformist lawyer, Jean Joseph Mounier, and passed resolutions: *convoking the States-General of France; *pledging the province to refuse to pay all taxes not voted by the Estates-General; and *calling for the abolition of arbitrary imprisonment on the King's order by the warrant known as the '' lettre de cachet''. These demands were accepted by the King. Brienne left office during August 1788, but before doing so issued a decree convoking the Estates-General for 1 May 1789. It is not clear whether this decree was prompted by the demands from the Assembly of Vizille or the Day of the Tiles, because at least one source puts the date of the decree at 7 July 1788 after the Day of the Tiles, but two weeks before the Assembly of Vizille.From Failed Reforms to Revolutionary Crisis
''A Short History of the French Revolution'', Jeremy D. Popkin,

Prentice-Hall Prentice Hall was an American major educational publisher owned by Savvas Learning Company. Prentice Hall publishes print and digital content for the 6–12 and higher-education market, and distributes its technical titles through the Safari ...

, 14 July 2005, Retrieved on 3 November 2006 Since 1984, the

Château de Vizille The Château de Vizille is a castle in the French town of Vizille near Grenoble. It is one of the most prestigious and important castles of the Dauphiné Region. Traditionally, from the 14th century, the Dauphiné was the homeland of the inheri ...

houses the

Musée de la Révolution française The Musée de la Révolution française (Museum of the French Revolution) is a departmental museum in the French town of Vizille, south of Grenoble on the Route Napoléon. It is the only museum in the world dedicated to the French Revolution. I ...

Significance

Some historians, such as Jonathan Sperber, have used the Day of the Tiles to demonstrate the worsening situation in France in the buildup to the

of 1789. Others have even credited it with being the beginning of the revolution itself. The events as related by R. M. Johnston provide an apparently clear link between the Day of the Tiles, the Assembly of Vizille and the start of the revolution proper.

Background

Riots

Later events

Significance

Notes

Further reading