Chalier, Marie Joseph

Born 1747; died July 17, 1793. Figure in the French Revolution; left Jacobin.

On the eve of the revolution, Chalier was a partner in a commercial firm in Lyon. He became a municipal officer of Lyon in 1790 and chairman of the Lyon district tribunal in 1792. Defending the interests of the urban lower classes, Chalier advocated a price ceiling for produce and extra taxes on the rich. He demanded that a revolutionary tribunal and a revolutionary army be created in the department to suppress the resistance of the propertied classes. After a counterrevolutionary coup took place in Lyon on May 29, 1793, Chalier was guillotined.