Grenoble

The last independent Dauphin, Humbert II, gave Grenoble a court of justice and a university in the 1330s, but he was deep in debt and without an heir, and in 1349 he sold the Dauphiné to France on condition that the heir to the French crown should bear the title of Dauphin. Only one of these royal Dauphins ever governed the province himself: the future Louis XI, who ruled it from 1447 to 1456 and raised its old council into a Parlement, the third in France after Paris and Toulouse, making Grenoble a city of judges and lawyers.

The Wars of Religion brought Huguenot pillage of the cathedral and a Catholic League garrison that held the city from 1590 until Lesdiguières took it back. As the king's lieutenant-general in the Dauphiné, he built new walls that enlarged the town and began the Bastille on the slope above it. In the 18th century Grenoble prospered on its gloves, its output rising more than tenfold to nearly two million pairs a year, and on 7 June 1788 its townspeople attacked royal troops in the Day of the Tiles, a rising that led to the Assembly of Vizille and the calling of the Estates General.