“What is the price of bread?” asked a stranger of a workingman’s wife. “Three francs twelve sous the quartern,” was the answer. “The price is fixed at twelve sous, but it is not to be had. My husband is obliged to pass a whole day at the door of the baker. He loses his wages of three francs; so that the bread comes to three francs twelve sous the quartern.”
But soon it rises to fourteen sous. “A brisk business is doing on the bridges, in the open places, where men passing with a loaf of bread under their arms re-sell it to the workmen for twenty sous.”
“We want powder for our wigs,” Jean Jacques Rousseau had said; “that is the reason of the poor wanting bread.”
“And the reproach touches the hearts of actresses and fashionable ladies; they discard powder, or use as little as possible: the starch-makers are ordered to employ barley instead of wheat; the pupils of the college Louis le Grand resolve to eat rice, and to offer twenty-eight sacks of wheat. The king forbids the playing of the fountains at the fêtes, in order to turn the water to the Versailles mills; but it is of no use: the associates of the grain monopoly, the makers of the vile Famine Pact, cause a fictitious scarcity by having the markets pillaged, the mills burned, the corn thrown into the river by a band of ruffians. Poor Louis is astonished, and begins to doubt whether he is really king of France.” But there were other causes back of the famine which led to the volcanic outburst of the French Revolution. For long years the terrible mine had been preparing beneath the French monarchy, and at length exploded with awful destruction and blood-curdling horrors.
The dazzling glory of the gorgeous Louis XVI., with all its power and grandeur, was reared over a sleeping volcano, destined to shock the continent of Europe, when at length its slow fires should unite their direful forces for the last mighty eruption.
The glorious success of the American Revolution inspired suffering people in all lands with a clearer hope of future freedom. Regarding its effect upon France a writer says:—
“It is difficult to suppose that so many thousand officers and soldiers had visited America, and fought in behalf of her rights, without being imbued with something of a kindred spirit. There they beheld a new and happy nation, among whom the pride of birth and the distinctions of rank were alike unknown; there they for the first time saw virtue and talents and courage rewarded; there they viewed with surprise a sovereign people fighting, not for a master, but themselves, and haranguing, deliberating, dispensing justice, and administering the laws, by representatives of their own free choice. On their return the contrast was odious and intolerable; they beheld family preferred to merit, influence to justice, wealth to worth; they began to examine into a constitution in which the monarch, whom they were now accustomed to consider as only the first magistrate, was everything, and the people, the fountain of all power, merely ciphers; and they may well be supposed to have wished, and even languished, for a change.
“In fine, the people being left entirely destitute of redress or protection, the royal authority paramount and unbounded; the laws venal, the peasantry oppressed; agriculture in a languishing state, commerce considered as degrading; the public revenues farmed out to greedy financiers; the public money consumed by a court wallowing in luxury; and every institution at variance with justice, policy, and reason,—a change became inevitable in the ordinary course of human events; and, like all sudden alterations in corrupt states, was accompanied with the temporary evils and crimes that made many good men look back on the ancient despotism with a sigh.
“But it was not, however, the influence of the officers and soldiers fresh from the field of American liberty which gave the most fatal blow to the dynasty of the Bourbons. The wanton and reckless extravagance of past courts, culminating in the splendid lustre of Le Grand Monarque, whose dazzling genius and rod of iron won shouts of enthusiastic admiration, even amid the groans of oppression, but whose gorgeous state could be maintained only at the expense of his people’s degradation and bondage, followed by the disreputable court of the despicable Louis XV., had brought the public finances to a condition of chaotic ruin. The annual deficit amounted to millions; and when poor, weak, good-natured Louis XVI. ascended the throne, it was even then tottering upon the edge of the awful abyss, which soon engulfed king and nation in its black and baleful horrors.... When the fearful gulf became visible to Louis XVI. and his cabinet, they looked around despairingly for some means of escape. Maurepas, Turgot, M. de Clugny, and Necker have each tried to stay the coming of the direful doom, but each and all have failed. And now M. de Calonne becomes comptroller-general. Now surely the royal inmates of the Œil-de-Bœuf may breathe more freely. Obstacles seem for a while to flee away before this incomparable comptroller-general.”
“I fear this is a matter of difficulty,” said her Majesty, Queen Marie Antoinette.—“Madame,” replied the comptroller, “if it is but difficult, it is done; if it is impossible, it shall be done.” Truly most admirable was such an all-conquering comptroller-general!