Grenoble is the scene of popular unrest due to financial hardship from the economic crises.

The causes of the French Revolution affect all of France, but matters come to a head first in Grenoble.

Unrest in the town is sparked by the attempts of Cardinal Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne, the Archbishop of Toulouse and Controller-General of Louis XVI, to abolish the Parlements in order to enact a new tax to deal with France's unmanageable public debt.

Tensions in urban populations have been rising already due to poor harvests and the high cost of bread in France.

These tensions are exacerbated by the refusal of the privileged classes, the Church and the aristocracy, to relinquish any of their fiscal privileges.

They insist on retaining the right to collect feudal and seignorial royalties from their peasants and landholders.

This acts to block reforms attempted by the king's minister Charles Alexandre de Calonne and the Assembly of Notables that he had convoked in January 1787.

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

Shortly prior to the 7th of June in 1788, in a large meeting at Grenoble, those who attend the meeting decided to call together the old Estates of the province of Dauphiné.

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

Merchants in Grenoble close down their shops at roughly ten in the morning of Saturday, June 7, as groups of three hundred to four hundred men and women form, armed with stones, sticks, axes, and bars.

They rush to the city gates to prevent the departure of judges who had taken part in the Grenoble meeting.

Some rioters attempt to cross the Isère but face a picket of fifty soldiers at the St. Lawrence bridge, while others head to the Rue Neuve.

The cathedral’s bells are seized by French peasants at noon.

The crowd swiftly grows, as the bells provoke the influx of neighboring peasants to creep in the city, climbing the walls, using boats on the Isere and for some, pushing open the city gates.

Other insurgents board the ramparts and rush to the hotel (L'hôtel de la Première présidence) the Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre is staying in at this time.

The Duke has two elite regiments in Grenoble, the Regiment of the Royal Navy (Régiment Royal-La-Marine) whose colonel is Marquis d'Ambert, and the regiment of Australasia (Régiment d'Austrasie) which is commanded by Colonel Count Chabord.

The Royal Navy is the first to respond to the growing crowds, and are given the order to quell the rioting without the use of arms.

However, as the mob storms the hotel entrance, the situation escalates.

Soldiers sent to quell the disturbances force the townspeople off the streets.

Some sources say that the soldiers were sent to disperse parliamentarians who were attempting to assemble a parlement.

During an attack, Royal Navy soldiers injure a seventy-five year old man with a bayonet.

At the sight of blood, the people become angry and start to tear up the streets.

Townspeople climb 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.

Many soldiers take refuge in a building to shoot through the windows, while the crowd continues to rush inside and ravage everything.

A non-commissioned officer of the Royal Navy, commanding a patrol of four soldiers, gives the order to open fire into the mob.

One civilian is killed and a boy of twelve wounded.

To the east of the city, the Royal Navy soldiers are forced to open fire in order to protect the city's arsenal, fearing that the rioters will seize the weapons and ammunition.

Meanwhile, Colonel Count Chabord begins deploying the regiment of Australasia to aid and relieve the Royal Navy soldiers.

Three of the four city councilors gather at the City Hall and attempt to reason with the crowd.

However, their words are silenced amid the clamor of the mob.

Through great difficulty, the councilors make their way through the crowds and eventually take refuge with the officers of the local garrison.

Later this evening, the Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre withdraws his troops from the streets and hotel to prevent further violence from escalating the situation.

The Duke manages to narrowly escape the hotel before the crowd completely loots the inside.

With control of the hotel lost, the Royal Navy troops are ordered to return to their quarters.

At six, a crowd estimated at ten thousand people shouting "Long live the parliament" forces the judges to return to the Palace of the Parliament of Dauphiné (Palais du Parlement du Dauphiné) by flooding them with flowers.

Throughout the night, carillons sound triumphantly and a large bonfire crackles on Saint-André square surrounded by a crowd that dances and sings "Long live forever our parliament! May God preserve the King and the devil take Brienne and Lamoignon."

An officer attempts on June 10th to appease the spirits of the crowd, with no success.

The parliamentarians, under the orders of exile pronounced against them by the King, are forced to flee from Grenoble in the morning of the 12th of June.

Order is fully restored in the city on the 14th of July by Marshal Vaux, who replaces the Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre.

The commander of the troops finds the situation so alarming that he agrees to allow the meeting of the Estates to proceed, but not in the capital.

A meeting is therefore arranged for the July 21, 1788 at the nearby village of Vizille.

This meeting will become known as the Assembly of Vizille.

In all, six outbreaks of rioting have been identified in the city during the 7th of June.

Claude Perier, inspired by all of the liberal ideas around him, assembles a meeting in the room of the Jeu de Paume in his Chateau de Vizille in July, and hosts the meeting that was previously prohibited in Grenoble.

Almost five hundred men gather at the banquet hosted by Perier.

In attendance there are many "notables" including churchmen, businessmen, doctors, notaries, municipal officials, lawyers, and landed nobility.

Demanded at this meeting is the Convocation in Paris of an Estates-General (a form of national parliament).

This meeting marks the first portion of the French Revolution.

Opposition to absolutist monarchy finally comes out into the open, with increasing support for its demands, and will culminate in the meeting of the Estates General.

The meeting of the three Estates that had been agreed to takes place at Vizille on July 21.

Several hundred people assemble, representing the three Estates, the nobility, the clergy and the middle class (the bourgeoisie), who are granted double representation.

The meeting is led by a moderate reformist lawyer, Jean Joseph Mounier, and passes resolutions convoking the States-General of France; pledging the province to refuse to pay all taxes not voted by the Estates-General; and calling for the abolition of arbitrary imprisonment on the King's order by the warrant known as the lettre de cachet.

These demands will be accepted by the King.

Brienne leaves office during August 1788, but before doing so had issued a decree convoking the Estates-General for May 1, 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 July 7, 1788 after the Day of the Tiles, but two weeks before the Assembly of Vizille.