The canut revolts of Lyon

Lyon's silk weavers, the canuts, worked Jacquard looms in high-ceilinged workshops on the Croix-Rousse hill. In November 1831, when merchants refused an agreed minimum rate for their cloth, they rose under the motto 'live working or die fighting' and held the city for several days. A second rising in April 1834 was crushed by the army. Both rank among the first workers' uprisings of the industrial age.