The Revolt of Lyon

Lyon was a rich city before the Revolution drawing it’s wealth from silk manufacturing.  Unemployment soared as emigres left the country and extravagant fashions became more unpopular and the town fell on hard times.  The city had a history of unrest there were riots over tax in both 1789 and 1790.

By September 1790 thirty two revolutionary societies had sprung up in the town amongst whom Joseph Chalier rose to prominence.  Tensions rose in the city when the girondin Nivière-Chol was elected mayor of Lyon.  Seeing the problems he agreed an interest free loan of three million francs.  This money would be distributed amongst the populace based on their wealth.  This understandably was not popular amongst the less well off.  The city became more polarised as followers of Chalier would seize control of the city’s government.  Soon a Lyon Committee of Public Safety was set up by April 1793. Soon the guillotine would be set up within the city as would a new Revolutionary army.  Soon unrest grew amongst the city at the radical route the administration was taking.

The National Convention feared the route that Lyon was taking and sent Representatives on a mission.  Moderates in Lyon fearing the Jacobin government in Paris and the Chaliers at home arrested both radicals and representatives. Soon the moderates would be in the ascendancy and called on Bordeaux and Marseilles to join them in a rival convention to that of Paris.  Chalier would not last under this regime and was put on trial and executed.

The National Convention realised they had a full scale Federalist Revolt on their hands and called on the Army of the Alps under General Kellermann to fall on Lyon. By late August 1793 the city was being bombarded by the loyalist forces.  The siege last several month.  On the 12th October the National Convention declared that Lyon would cease to be known as Lyon and would be called “Freed Town” and all but the poorest abodes destroyed.  This would see first Couthon and then more infamously Fouché and Collot d’Herbois.  Houses of the bourgeois were torn down, churches desecrated and thousands executed some by canon.

Lyon would be pacified but the populace would not forget and would take their vengeance after Thermidor when the White Terror ruled and many perceived Jacobins were murdered.