This is the 20th instalment of #deanehistory.

We’ve all - until these recent, housebound times - enjoyed the occasional “night on the tiles.”

But the Day of the Tiles was quite different & (depending on how you spend your nights, I suppose) rather more painful.

The ancient city of Grenoble was the capital of the old, proud French region of Dauphiny in the southeast. (Possession of the region by French royalty came with the condition that the heir to the throne be called “Dauphin” after it. Obvious parallel with “Prince of Wales.”)

Louis XVI did not have a good run of things, what with being the only French monarch to be executed, presiding over the end of a thousand years of royal rule and so on. But he could hardly have appreciated things would kick off in the southeastern corner of the realm at Grenoble.

The townsfolk were impoverished by France’s ongoing financial crisis. Harvests bad, bread expensive. The 1st (clerical) & 2nd (aristocratic) Estates indicated no willingness to give up privileges. So the 3rd (peasant & bourgeois) sought to take things into their own hands.

As so often with new movements, they sought to ground their demands in the heritage of an older tradition, so as to lend them credibility & authority. Thus the old Estates of the Province of Dauphiny would serve as the pretext for their gathering of proto-republican sentiment.

Locked in a headlong death spiral of absolutism & shortsighted self-interest, both the Crown & the nobles & clergymen in orbit around it refused to yield an inch on anything (nowadays they’d have been spinning “listening mode” & a judge led inquiry, & might have survived).

So it was that the Crown sent troops to quell this movement.

There are good reasons not to put troops on the streets at times of concern about law and order.

Not only is there a distinction between civilian populace policing itself & the army imposing law on it- between civil & martial law- but also that once the army is deployed, it does what it does. Armies are for fighting.

Thus it was that as the elite Regiment of the Royal Navy sought to suppress protesters, the sight of one of them bayonetting an old man spurred the crowds to fury. Small groups of troops, outnumbered the mass of revolting citizens of Grenoble, opened fire into the crowds.

Many rioters therefore took to the roofs of the buildings on the streets down which the soldiers were seeking to quell dissent. A rain of rooftiles from all sides soon assailed the forces of the Crown- hence “Day of the Tiles.”

Such circumstances are all but impossible for law enforcement. The mob, out of control, cannot be reasoned with. But it is made up of their fellow Frenchmen, whose demands they might share on another day.

The troops gradually yielded control of much of the town (but not the arsenal. Never the arsenal.) The Judges who were due to attend the meeting of the Estates were pressed back to the Palace by a crowd carrying flowers & singing the praises of Parliament.

The army, realising it was onto a loser, gave permission for the Estates to meet as long as it took place outside the City. The compromise was canny & astute, albeit the authority possessed to offer it might be rather elusive.

These events constituted both the first violent outbreak in what became the French Revolution, & its first public meetings which saw demands for both a national Parliament & an end to absolute monarchy, a movement which changed Europe. So: worth knowing “Day of the Tiles.”

3 postscripts. First: it's amazing how much people preferred not to blame the monarchy, instead holding bad servants of the crown responsible. They even sang praises to the king during their protests. Even at this point Louis could have rescued things with a different approach.

Secondly: in a coup, seize the airport & the radio station. In a French anti-monarchic protest, seize the cathedral. The crowd rang the bells of the cathedral in a signal for the peasantry around Grenoble to come to their aid & join in the riot. I thought the symbolism potent.

Finally: my interest in this tale was spurred by Sabatini’s historical novel “Scaramouche,” which to the disappointment of some is not the novelisation of “Bohemian Rhapsody”.