[citation needed] On 8 August 1786 Balmat completed the first ascent of Mont Blanc with physician Michel-Gabriel Paccard.

For this feat, King Victor Amadeus III gave him the honorary title du Mont Blanc.

After the successful ascent, Balmat collected the reward offered 25 years before by Horace-Bénédict de Saussure to the first man who could climb Mont Blanc.

[citation needed] During the Napoleonic Wars, Savoy fell under French control, and citizen Jacques Balmat became a member of the council of the commune.

[2] C. Douglas Milner wrote "The ascent itself was magnificent; an amazing feat of endurance and sustained courage, carried through by these two men only, unroped and without ice axes, heavily burdened with scientific equipment and with long iron-pointed batons.