Have just been meeting “Les Physiocrats”, who believed in a “government of nature” – i.e. laissez faire, leaving everything to the market and being very hostile to any state intervention. Their leader was Francois Quesnay (1694-1774), who wrote the article on grains in The Encyclopedia.
In the reigns of both Louis XV and XVI there were regular food crisis, and the traditional method of trying to control these was by preventing the movement of grain across international frontiers, and also between provinces. In 1763/4 Louis XV authorised the transport of wheat between provinces, but fear of riots and dissent meant nothing happened until 1768.
In Burgundy, the rural parts of the province produced far more food than it needed, but it was swallowed up by the Lyon market, and in the spring of 1770 food riots and unrest started in Dijon.
In 1774, at the start of Louis XVI reign, a new controller of finances, Turgot, imbued with the ideas of the Physiocrats, had proclaimed on September 13 completely free internal trade in cereals. This gave free reign to speculators, hoarders and traders. Prices rose brutally – in spring in Dijon the price of wheat doubled, maize followed.
Thus started what was known at the time as The War of the Flours. On April 12 there was little grain in the market and prices were extremely high. No one doubted famine would follow. A grain merchant, Fauvernay, was roughed up in the market.
On the 18th a crowd of mostly women gathered, and grew through the morning. One of them donned “un bel habit rouge, une canne [walking stick] a pomme d’or a la main” in the manner of Nicolas Carre, the miller of l’Ouche, who was much detested. With the support of the provincial administration, he had adopted a technique promoted by the Physiocrats to produce white flour, which could only be afforded by the rich. The crowd chased him fown the street, but he found a house of refuge with another miller, so the crowd’s anger was redirected towards a parliamentary councillor, Jean-
Charles Filsjean de Sainte-Colombe, who was thought to speculate with Carre. He hid in the cellar as the crowd surged through his house, and – so the story goes – was dug out of his hiding place, a pile of manure. He was to survive however, until the Revolution, when he met a nasty end.
Soldiers were called in from Auxonne to restore order, and the parliament at Dijon pronounced severe penalties for the rioters. Some of the “sediteuses” were taken before the parliament on July 29,1775.
In 1776 Turgot was dismissed by the king but the principle of “liberty of grains” was not abandoned. More hunger and more unrest in Burgundy, and in 1784 the Quartermaster of Burgundy, Amelot de Chaillou, tried to set up a municipal flour shop, to ensure sufficient grain, but the notables object and the project was abandoned.
By 1789 there was trouble over grain across Burgundy – at Charolles, Tournus, Saulieu, Auxois, Autun, Beune, Sens, Dijon, Auxerre — carts were stopped, stores raided.
From “Jours sans pain, jours de colere” by Jean Bart in Pays de Bourgogne, No 222, June 2009, pp. 3-10.
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