Bread price protest grievances
Demonstrators protested bread and grain prices within the territory that Bertier de Sauvigny administered, highlighting the political significance of subsistence.
Role range: 1789-1792
Historical biography archive · Updated 2026-11-03
Louis-Bénigne-François Sauvigny Biography and Timeline
Follow Louis-Bénigne-François Sauvigny through 60 dated historical records for France.
Louis-Bénigne-François Sauvigny, historical timeline
A chronological timeline drawn from matching World History Database records.
60Distinct records
1 of 2Page
1775–1789Years on this page
1775
Flour War administration context
Bertier de Sauvigny governed the Paris generality during the Flour War, when protests over bread and grain prices challenged royal authority.
Role range: 1789-1792
Grain market unrest
The 1775 grain disturbances exposed tensions between the royal administration represented by Bertier de Sauvigny and communities dependent on affordable bread.
Role range: 1789-1792
Repression of subsistence riots
As intendant Bertier de Sauvigny was implicated in the forceful repression of disturbances over grain supplies in 1775.
Role range: 1789-1792
Royal enforcement of grain policy
The intendant's office helped enforce royal policy amid food-market unrest, leaving Bertier de Sauvigny associated with the coercive side of the Old Regime.
Role range: 1789-1792
1789
Accusations of deliberate starvation
Crowds accused Bertier de Sauvigny of plotting to starve ordinary people, although these allegations should not be treated as established facts.
Role range: 1789-1792
Anxiety about grain hoarding
The suspicion that Bertier de Sauvigny had withheld food reflected widespread fear of hoarding, even though an allegation is not proof of misconduct.
Role range: 1789-1792
Arrest at Compiègne
Bertier de Sauvigny was arrested at Compiègne during the July revolutionary crisis and placed in the custody of his captors.
Role range: 1789-1792
Arrival at Saint-Martin Gate
An image of Bertier de Sauvigny's return to Paris depicts his arrival through the Saint-Martin Gate on 22 July.
Role range: 1789-1792
Bastille uprising context
The storming of the Bastille transformed the political environment in which Bertier de Sauvigny had administered the Paris generality.
Role range: 1789-1792
Bertier seeks safety outside Paris
Bertier de Sauvigny was away from Paris when revolutionary hostility brought efforts to seize him at Compiègne.
Role range: 1789-1792
Bread as a political grievance
The accusations leveled against Bertier de Sauvigny show how disputes about subsistence could become accusations of political betrayal.
Role range: 1789-1792
Bread supply responsibility
Bertier de Sauvigny's administration was associated with securing subsistence supplies for Paris during acute shortages and public anxiety.
Role range: 1789-1792
Breakdown of protective custody
The authorities proved unable to protect Bertier de Sauvigny from the crowd that had seized control of his fate.
Role range: 1789-1792
Breakdown of royal authority
After 14 July the monarchy's capacity to protect its officials weakened, exposing Bertier de Sauvigny to revolutionary crowds.
Role range: 1789-1792
Conflict between supply and security
Providing for royal soldiers could appear threatening to hungry Paris residents, helping explain why Bertier de Sauvigny became a target.
Role range: 1789-1792
Connection by marriage to Foulon
Bertier de Sauvigny was the son-in-law of Joseph-François Foulon, another former royal official widely hated by revolutionary crowds.
Role range: 1789-1792
Custody amid popular pressure
Those escorting Bertier de Sauvigny faced an atmosphere of extreme public anger over alleged royal plots and food shortages.
Role range: 1789-1792
Death at Place de Grève
Bertier de Sauvigny died at the Place de Grève, now the site of Paris's Hôtel de Ville square.
Role range: 1789-1792
Death of royal intendant
The killing of Bertier de Sauvigny ended the career of an administrator identified with the monarchy's local authority over the Paris region.
Role range: 1789-1792
Distinction between allegation and evidence
Contemporary crowds blamed Bertier de Sauvigny for starvation plots, but modern descriptions must distinguish their accusations from demonstrated actions.
Role range: 1789-1792
Fall of administrative immunity
The violent fate of Bertier de Sauvigny demonstrated that high office no longer guaranteed personal security during the Revolution.
Role range: 1789-1792
Fears of aristocratic plots
Rumors of a royal or aristocratic conspiracy aggravated suspicions surrounding Bertier de Sauvigny and other senior administrators.
Role range: 1789-1792
Food conspiracy rumors
Stories about hoarded grain or contrived scarcity circulated among Parisians and helped turn anger against Bertier de Sauvigny into personal danger.
Role range: 1789-1792
Food shortages before Bastille
Bread scarcity helped generate the revolutionary atmosphere in which officials such as Bertier de Sauvigny became targets of popular anger.
Role range: 1789-1792
Foulon denounced by crowd
The hostility toward Bertier de Sauvigny's father-in-law Foulon reveals how accusations about royal repression and hunger became personal in July 1789.
Role range: 1789-1792
Foulon killed earlier that day
On 22 July crowds killed Joseph-François Foulon before the death of his son-in-law Bertier de Sauvigny later the same day.
Role range: 1789-1792
Foulon's financial appointment
Foulon's association with the reshuffled royal administration intensified public suspicion of the family network to which Bertier de Sauvigny belonged.
Role range: 1789-1792
Foulon's head displayed
Contemporary revolutionary imagery shows the captive Bertier de Sauvigny confronted with the severed head of his father-in-law Foulon.
Role range: 1789-1792
Hôtel de Ville historical location
The place where Bertier de Sauvigny was killed corresponds to the present-day Hôtel de Ville square in Paris.
Role range: 1789-1792
Iconography of Place de Grève
Representations of Bertier de Sauvigny's lynching situate the violence in a public square associated with municipal authority.
Role range: 1789-1792
Iconography of Saint-Martin arrival
Depictions of Bertier de Sauvigny's arrival at the Saint-Martin Gate preserve the humiliation imposed on him before his death.
Role range: 1789-1792
Intendants viewed as royal agents
Bertier de Sauvigny symbolized the centralized royal administration that many revolutionaries associated with privilege and arbitrary power.
Role range: 1789-1792
Journey to Hôtel de Ville area
Bertier de Sauvigny was brought to the center of municipal Paris amid demands that alleged enemies of the people be punished.
Role range: 1789-1792
July subsistence panic culmination
The killing of Bertier de Sauvigny marked a violent culmination of fears about bread, royal troops and supposed conspiracies in the capital.
Role range: 1789-1792
Last days of intendant authority
Bertier de Sauvigny's arrest and murder signaled the vulnerability of the monarchy's regional administrative system after the July uprising.
Role range: 1789-1792
Legacy of the Flour War
The memory of Bertier de Sauvigny's repression of grain protests in 1775 formed part of the background to hostility against him in 1789.
Role range: 1789-1792
Lynching on 22 July
Bertier de Sauvigny was lynched by a Paris crowd on 22 July 1789 in the revolutionary upheaval after the Bastille's fall.
Role range: 1789-1792
Necker dismissal reverberations
The dismissal of Jacques Necker heightened mistrust of royal policy and added to the hostility directed at Old Regime administrators including Bertier de Sauvigny.
Role range: 1789-1792
Office of intendant of Paris
Bertier de Sauvigny served as intendant of the généralité of Paris, an administrative district surrounding the capital under the monarchy.
Role range: 1789-1792
Records, sources and methodology
These dates and descriptions come from the historical_events database. Exact duplicate records have been collapsed. Names are grouped by the country, Name 2 and Name 1 fields; records with missing Name 2 cannot be reliably assigned to an individual biography. Check the underlying sources before formal citation.