Day of the Tiles - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Day of the Tiles is an event that took place in the French town of Grenoble

Grenoble

Grenoble is a city in southeastern France, at the foot of the French Alps where the river Drac joins the Isère. Located in the Rhône-Alpes region, Grenoble is the capital of the department of Isère...

on 7 June 1788. It was among the first of the revolts which preceded the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, and is credited by some historians as being the start of it.

Background

Prior to the day, Grenoble was the scene of popular unrest due to financial hardship from the economic and financial crises. These causes of the French Revolution

Causes of the French Revolution

The Causes of the French Revolution were the significant historical factors that led to the revolution of 1789 in France.Although France in 1785 faced economic difficulties, mostly concerning the equitability of taxation, it was one of the richest and most powerful nations of Europe...

affected all of France, but matters came to a head first in Grenoble.

Unrest in the town was sparked by the attempts of Cardinal Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne

Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne

Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne was a French churchman, politician and finance minister of Louis XVI.-Life:...

, the Archbishop of Toulouse and Controller-General of Louis XVI, to abolish the Parlement

Parlement

Parlements were regional legislative bodies in Ancien Régime France.The political institutions of the Parlement in Ancien Régime France developed out of the previous council of the king, the Conseil du roi or curia regis, and consequently had ancient and customary rights of consultation and...

s in order to enact a new tax to deal with France's unmanageable public debt. Tensions in urban populations had been rising already due to poor harvests and the high cost of bread in France. These tensions were exacerbated by the refusal of the privileged classes, the Church and the aristocracy, to relinquish any of their fiscal privileges. They insisted on retaining the right to collect feudal and seignorial royalties from their peasants and landholders. This acted to block reforms attempted by the king's minister Charles Alexandre de Calonne

Charles Alexandre de Calonne

Charles Alexandre, vicomte de Calonne was a French statesman, best known for his involvement in the French Revolution.-Rise to prominence:...

and the Assembly of Notables

Assembly of Notables

The Assembly of Notables was a group of notables invited by the King of France to consult on matters of state.-History:Assemblies of Notables had met in 1583, 1596–97, 1617, 1626, 1787, and 1788. Like the Estates General, they served a consultative purpose only...

that he convoked in January 1787. Added to this, Brienne, appointed the king's Controller-General of Finance on 8 April 1787, was widely regarded as being a manager without experience or imagination.

Shortly prior to 7 June 1788, a large meeting at Grenoble decided to call together the old Estates of the province of Dauphiné

Dauphiné

The Dauphiné or Dauphiné Viennois is a former province in southeastern France, whose area roughly corresponded to that of the present departments of :Isère, :Drôme, and :Hautes-Alpes....

. The government responded by sending troops to the area to put down the movement.

Events on the day

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 parlement

Parlement

. However, the 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. This drove royal troops out of the city in the first outbreak of political violence that escalated into the revolution.

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

Vizille is a commune in the Isère department in south-eastern France.Vizille is home to the Musée de la Révolution Française de Vizille, a rich depository of archival and rare materials devoted to the French Revolution, housed since 1984 in the Château de Vizille, a Monument Historique. The library...

. This meeting became known as the Assembly of Vizille

Assembly of Vizille

The Assembly of Vizille was the result of a meeting of various representatives in Grenoble, which took place on 7 June 1788. Its purpose was to discuss the events of The Day Of The Tiles, one of the first revolts preceding the French Revolution....

The event was captured by Alexandre Debelle's The Day of the Tiles, 13 July 1788, painted in 1889. 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.

Subsequent 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 classes (Bourgeoisie

Bourgeoisie

In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...

), who were granted double representation. The meeting was led by a moderate reformist lawyer, Jean Joseph Mounier

Jean Joseph Mounier

Jean Joseph Mounier was a French politician and judge.He was born at Grenoble . He studied law, and in 1783 obtained a judgeship at Grenoble. He took part in the struggle between the parlements and the court in 1788, and promoted the meeting of the estates of Dauphiné at Vizille , on the eve of...

, and passed several resolutions:

the convocation of the States-General
French States-General
In France under the Old Regime, the States-General or Estates-General , was a legislative assembly of the different classes of French subjects. It had a separate assembly for each of the three estates, which were called and dismissed by the king...

of France
pledging the province to refuse to pay all taxes not voted by the States-General
calling for the abolition of arbitrary imprisonment on the King's order by the warrant known as the lettre de cachet
Lettre de cachet
Lettres de cachet were letters signed by the king of France, countersigned by one of his ministers, and closed with the royal seal, or cachet...

.

These demands were accepted by the King. Brienne left his office during August 1788, but before doing so issued a decree convoking the States-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.

Significance

Some historians, such as Jonathan Sperber, have used the Day of the Tiles to demonstrate the worsening situation in France in the build up to the French Revolution

French Revolution

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

Assembly of Vizille

and the start of the revolution proper.

Background

Events on the day

Subsequent events

Significance

Further reading