The summer of 1627 was a tense time in Dijon. The region's two main royal courts, the Parlement of Burgundy and the Chamber of Accounts, were locked in a bitter conflict that had spilled into the streets of the Burgundian capital. At issue was the Masters of Accounts' decision to purchase the offices of the newly created Cour des Aides et Finances, which conferred sovereign jurisdiction over several direct and indirect royal taxes, in spite of Parlement's pointed refusal to register the royal edicts creating the new tribunal. In early August, a president of the Accounts, whose arrest Parlement had recently ordered, accompanied by several other Masters of Accounts, drew a pistol on a parlementaire outside the Palais de Justice and threatened to kill him. Caught in the middle, the city's municipal government, the Mairie de Dijon, worked feverishly to calm the situation. Guards from the civic militia were posted in front of the Parlement building and at major public squares across the city. The mairie also prohibited all individuals, regardless of their status or social condition, from assembling, carrying weapons, or traveling through the city in groups without permission from the municipality's chief magistrate, the vicomte-mayeur.

Two months later, the royal council intervened in an attempt to defuse the tension between the two courts, ordering the Chamber of Accounts transferred to the town of Autun, roughly fifty miles southwest of Dijon. At the Hôtel de Ville, Dijon’s mayor and échevins (aldermen) debated the mairie’s response to the monarchy’s order.