Presumed Portrait of Jacques de Flesselles (1730-1789), Last Provost of the Merchants
His name has been forgotten, but in 1789, every Parisian knew who Jacques de Flesselles was: he was the Provost of the Merchants, i.e. the equivalent of the Mayor of Paris, and quite close to the king. On July 14th, he was accused of betraying insurgents by promising them arms without ever having the intention of helping them. He was killed in front of the Hôtel de Ville and then decapitated: his death provoked many debates on revolutionary violence, specifically in the National Assembly.
July 14, 1789 was not only the day when the Bastille was stormed. This was also the day on which insurgents decapitated two men: the Marquis de Launay, governor of the Bastille, and Jacques de Flesselles, Provost of the Merchants. Their decapitated heads immediately became proof of the blind savageness of the revolutionary mobs. For revolutionaries, this violence had political reasons: the killings targeted two powerful servants of the Ancien Régime, which was spilling the blood of insurgents. One had fired into the crowds, causing more than 100 victims, while the other had refused to deliver arms, leaving them to the mercy of the repression.
