How Broken Bread Made the Bastille Crumble

On July 14th, 1789 at 1:30 in the afternoon, an angry Parisian crowd began their attack on the Bastille. This was an attack on a royal prison and by therefore by extension, the king himself. The attack was orchestrated by members of the National Assembly after a series of escalating events. The National Assembly had been formed out of the members of the Third Estate and represented France's commoners. Commoners bore the sole burden of taxation and were underrepresented in the country's parliament . A series of droughts had drained the food supply while a succession of wars had done the same to the treasury . Finally, the king himself seemed to care little for his subjects. His absolutism came before their welfare and no matter what they did, Louis XVI ignore them and carried on. The assault on the Bastille was carried out because of its symbolic nature and to demonstrate the resolve of the people to an unpopular king.

A large majority of the crowd that participated in the attack on the Bastille were self-employed . These were men and women who relied on a steady flow of supply and demand for their daily bread. They belonged to professions such as blacksmithing and sculpting, professions that required prosperity for business to flourish. During the 1780's and especially in 1789, there was a large increase in the price of wheat . Wheat was crucial to the French diet as bread was what France lived on.

The spike in wheat cost was caused by two things in particular: a series of droughts and a misguided French foreign policy . Over the course of the 17th century, France had become bankrupt fighting a succession of wars against the other European powers, Britain in particular. France had provided the fledgling United States of America with over two billion livres in aid in their struggle against Britain . Bankrupt, the French government was unable to provide any form of relief to stop the rising cost of bread. This surge in prices resulted in cut-backs on non-essential items by the majority of commoners. Clothing for example, became too expensive to buy, leaving tailors sitting in the dust with no income. This happened to many other professions as well as the flow of money slowed to a trickle and incomes shrinking along with it. The dwindling incomes coupled with inflated bread prices resulted in inflation of approximately 160% in the price of bread. These soaring costs caused certain labourers to spend up to 97% of their incomes on bread .

Food shortages had caused riots in rural France, but it took more than just a bread shortage to turn Paris violent. Aside from having to deal with soaring bread prices, Parisians were also dealt with a system of unfair taxation. Commoners, unlike the nobility and clergy were subject to a sweeping poll tax . In 1789, when the government faced certain bankruptcy and required reform, this was the one of the primary issues for which a meeting of the Estates General was called.

This meeting however did not alleviate the concerns of the Third Estate. It instead highlighted how small the voice was of the French people. Despite comprising the majority of the French populace, the Third Estate did not have much power at the meeting. It could in fact be outvoted by the First and Second Estates should they choose to combine their votes. This they did as both the clergy and nobility were loath to any reforms to the political and taxation system. They did their best to prevent any changes and were the reason for the formation of the National Assembly. On June 20th, 1789, the National Assembly called for a constitutional monarchy in the Tennis Court oath .

The formation of the National Assembly was a great cause of worry to Louis XVI. A spineless absolutist, he had wavered between courses of actions until the Tennis Court oath. After its utterance, Louis XVI decided on the course of absolutism and stormed right ahead regardless of the consequences. First, he ordered the mobilization of thirty five thousand troops into the regions around Paris and Versailles with order for another twenty thousand troops to follow suit on June 22nd, 1789 . Then on June 26th, when the Estates General was debating his role in the future government, he left to go riding ! He showed little tact in his dealings with the Estates General and his disdain for the proceedings was clear. Things came to a head on July 12th when he sacked his popular minister of Finance, Jacques Necker. Necker was a liberal whose policies had slowed down inflation as much as possible . The sacking of Necker pushed things over the edge as it became clearer that the government and members of the First and Second Estates did not have reform in their mind.

While things had been simmering, Louis had done very little to help his own cause. Because he believed that being royal meant being sacrosanct, all property belonging to the royal family was inviolable by the police . This