Day of the Tiles

The town of Grenoble on the 7th June 1788 was rocked by the first stirrings of revolution.  The trouble began in Grenoble when Brienne Controller-General to Louis XVI, sought to abolish the Parlements to set up a new tax system to cope with the rapidly unravelling state of France’s public finances.  The Duc de Clermont-Tonnerre was ordered to take troops and remove the magistrates from town.

On reaching the town the soldiers were met with angry townspeople who were in no mood to see their local representative body abolished.  Shouts of abused soon escalated into a strike as the town market shut down. Some civilians wanting to drive the troops out of the town but lacking armaments took to the roofs and rained down tiles on the troops.  This caused some of the troops to shoot into the crowds hitting and killing a twelve year old child.  As more civilians entered the town enraged by the soldiers’ attacks on the soldiers Clermont-Tonnerre took the decision to evacuate the town.  

Soon a meeting of the three Estates at Vizille was called meeting on 21st July led by Jean Joseph Mounier and in direct contradiction to Clermont-Tonnerre’s orders.  At the meeting they called for the Estates General to be called across France and that all of the country should not pay any form of tax unless agreed by that body.  The incident of the Day of Tiles may have seemed like an isolated event however it foreshadowed many of the subsequent events of the main revolution.  It also may have placed pressure on central government as Brienne left office soon after but not before he had called an Estates General for the whole of France.