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According to Cuisine and Culture: A History of Food and People, by Linda Civitello, two of the most essential elements of French cuisine, bread and salt, were at the heart of the conflict;...
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- HISTORY Vault: Napoleon
When Parisians stormed the Bastille in 1789 they weren't only looking for arms, they were on the hunt for more grain—to make bread.
Voltaire once remarked that Parisians required only “the comic opera and white bread.” But bread has also played a dark role in French history and, namely, the French Revolution. The storming of the medieval fortress of Bastille on July 14, 1789 began as a hunt for arms—and grains to make bread.
The French Revolution was obviously caused by a multitude of grievances more complicated than the price of bread, but bread shortages played a role in stoking anger toward the monarchy. Marie Antoinette's supposed quote upon hearing that her subjects had no bread: "Let them eat cake!" is entirely apocryphal, but it epitomizes how bread could become a flashpoint in French history.
Origins of the French Revolution
Poor grain harvests led to riots as far back as 1529 in the French city of Lyon. During the so-called Grande Rebeyne (Great Rebellion), thousands looted and destroyed the houses of rich citizens, eventually spilling the grain from the municipal granary onto the streets.
Things only got worse in the 18th century. Since the 1760s, the king had been counseled by Physiocrats, a group of economists who believed that the wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of land development and that agricultural products should be highly priced. Under their counsel the crown had tried intermittently to deregulate the domestic grain trade and introduce a form of free trade.
Explore the extraordinary life and times of Napoleon Bonaparte, the great military genius who took France to unprecedented heights of power, and then brought it to its knees when his ego spun out of control.
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- Una Mcilvenna
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Jun 19, 2021 · During the desperate years of revolution and war, more people realized that the potato was a useful and tasty food. Peasants were able to subsist on a combination of potatoes and bread, and...
- George Dillard
May 1, 2021 · no fault of their own, and were forced to take action in order to survive. The French population at. the time of the Revolution totaled 28 million,150 and of that 28 million the poor French involved. anywhere from 1/5 to 1/10 of the total population.151 The peasant population was divided into.
Harvest failures and hunger all shaped the course of the French Revolution, particularly for the working classes. Extreme weather and natural disasters contributed to a string of poor harvests in the 1780s, causing grain shortages and driving up food prices in Paris and other locations.
May 17, 2024 · French Revolution, revolutionary movement that shook France between 1787 and 1799 and reached its first climax there in 1789—hence the conventional term ‘Revolution of 1789,’ denoting the end of the ancien regime in France and serving also to distinguish that event from the later French revolutions of 1830 and 1848.
Café Liberté: The Role of the Coffeehouse in the French Revolution. Eddy Kyle Gilpin. The Parisian café of the late eighteenth century played a vital role in the French Revolution. Numbering more than eight hundred during the early days of the Revolution, the cafés of Paris provided a network from which information was spread, an atmosphere ...
