Reveillon Riot

Overview

The Réveillon riot was the 28 April 1789 attack on wallpaper manufacturer Jean-Baptiste Réveillon’s Paris house and factory after a false wage rumor fused with unemployment, food anxiety, and political tension.

Current Profile

The source treats the riot as evidence that real deprivation did not require an accurate immediate accusation to become explosive. Réveillon was presented as a comparatively well-paying and paternalistic employer who had supported workers during the winter, but a claim that he wanted wages reduced to fifteen sous drew a crowd that destroyed his property. Guard fire then caused a large but uncertain death toll and the city became more visibly militarized before the Estates-General opened.

Key Characteristics

• Triggered by a false or distorted statement about subsistence wages.
• Occurred amid high bread prices, severe unemployment, and winter hardship.
• Targeted an employer whom the source describes as comparatively paternalistic.
• Ended in lethal confrontation with guards.
• Encouraged troop patrols and fear of foreign soldiers in Paris.
• Foreshadowed the interaction of rumor, deprivation, repression, and street politics.

Evidence

Rumor acting on real distress

• 478. The French Revolution: Showdown in Versailles (Part 4) contrasts the reported fifteen-sous claim with Réveillon’s employment and relief record while locating the attack inside wider scarcity.

Repression and militarization

• 478. The French Revolution: Showdown in Versailles (Part 4) links destruction, guard fire, uncertain mass casualties, and later troop patrols in Paris.

Qualifications

• The reported death toll of around 300 is presented as an estimate and remains source-scoped.
• Correcting the rumor does not make the crowd’s material distress unreal or settle individual motives and responsibility.

What Changed

• Created the profile as the pre-Estates-General example of scarcity and false attribution producing lethal political mobilization.

Relationships

• Revolutionary Hunger and Street Mobilization - mechanism joining subsistence pressure to crowd action.
• Revolutionary Crisis Convergence - wider crisis in which economic, political, and policing pressures reinforced one another.
• Estates-General of 1789 - assembly that opened shortly after the riot and militarization of Paris.
• Storming of the Bastille - later Paris uprising preceded by the same mixture of scarcity, rumor, troops, and distrust.