Jacques de Flesselles

Who was Jacques de Flesselles?

Jacques de Flesselles was a French public servant and one of the first victims of the French Revolution.

He served as Intendant of Lyon and in 1784 he was sponsor of a Montgolfier balloon, named the Flesselles in his honour.

On 21 April 1789, he became the last provost of the merchants of Paris, a post roughly equivalent to mayor. Accused of royal sympathies by an infuriated throng surrounding the Paris City Hall in the afternoon after the storming of the Bastille, he was assassinated, shot by an unknown hand on the steps of the City Hall while trying to justify his actions, one of several representatives of the ancien régime killed that day.