The Réveillon riots between 26 and 29 April 1789SafariX Textbooks Online – SafariX is now CourseSmart centered in the St. Antoine district of Paris where a factory which produced luxury wallpaper was owned by Jean-Baptiste Réveillon. The factory employed around 300 people.
Protests began after rumors spread that the owner had made a speech stating that workers, many of whom were highly skilled, were to be paid lower wages and, as a result, there would be lower prices. Workers were concerned with food shortages, high unemployment, and low wages after a difficult winter in 1788. However, Réveillon was known for his benevolence towards the poor.
While the protesters did not manage to destroy the factory, which was being guarded by a group of around fifty troops, a factory owned by the saltpetre manufacturer Henriot was destroyed after he made similar comments. However Réveillon's factory was destroyed a day later as was his home.Chronology of the French Revolution: 1789–1790 The riot killed 25 people.
The Marquis de Ferrières wrote an account of the Réveillon riots in which he described how five or six thousand workers attacking the home of Réveillon and another five or six hundred looting money and goods from passing carriages of the First and Second Estates.
See also List of food riots Estates General of 1789 Cahiers de doléances
References 'The Oxford History of the French Revolution' by William Doyle
Micah Alpaugh, "The Politics of Escalation in French Revolutionary Protest: Political Demonstrations, Nonviolence and Violence in the Grandes journées of 1789," French History 23, no. 3 (Fall 2009), 336–359.
External links An eyewitness account of the riot