[1][2] He became famous for his rebellion against the Ferme générale, the hated privatized tax collecting agency of the French ancien régime (royal government).

Mandrin managed to flee but Brissaud was caught and hanged in Breuil square (now Place Grenette) in Grenoble.

Mandrin joined a gang of smugglers operating in the Cantons of Switzerland, France, and Savoy, which was then a sovereign state.

Mandrin soon became head of this gang - a small army of some 300 men which he led and organised like a military regiment.

They had warehouses for weapons and stolen goods in Savoy, and Mandrin believed himself out of the reach from the French authorities.

Mandrin bought goods (cloth, hides, tobacco, canvas and spices) in Switzerland, which he then resold in French towns without paying the Ferme Générale any of the tax due.

Mandrin reacted to the ban by going to Rodez and forcing Ferme Générale employees to buy his goods at gunpoint.

However, the tax collectors were so eager to be rid of Mandrin that they had hurried through his trial and execution before the king's message reached them.

Mandrin's struggle against the injustice of the Ancien Régime was discussed across Europe and the cause taken up by Voltaire (who compared him with the king of Prussia)[3][4] and Turgot.

Extremely popular during his life, Mandrin remains famous to this day, in his native Dauphiné, in the Savoie and to a lesser degree, in the rest of France.

[citation needed] The music of this ballad, which dates to the year of Mandrin's execution, 1755, is excerpted from an opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau, composed in 1733 : Hippolyte et Aricie.