Despite intentions, throughout the duration of the French Revolution, the people failed to uphold the newly established ideals of the Enlightenment. In France specifically, they were so haunted by their conditions, and inspired by the new ideas that they led a Revolution, believing they could positively change their nation. Many believed that they were being treated unfairly by those who ruled them, and these feelings were validated by the words of the philosophes. Due to the immense power of these peoples’ writings, discoveries and theories, commoners began to question their basic understandings of life, and evaluate their circumstances in terms of their role in government.
The foundation of such information emanated from the minds of ingenious scholars by the name philosophes. Despite a hearing which proved him innocent, the crowd dragged François to the Place de Grève, hanged and decapitated him and made his pregnant wife kiss his bloodied lips.Īs Turgot, an early economic adviser to Louis XVI, once advised the king, “Ne vous mêlez pas du pain”-Do not meddle with bread.The Enlightenment was a time of educational prosper in which new ideas and standards were developed through processes of logic and reason, allowing the expansion of influential knowledge across Europe. On October 21, 1789, a baker, Denis François, was accused of hiding loaves from sale as part of a plot to deprive the people of bread. The move raised fears about speculation, hoarding and exportation. On August 29, 1789, only two days after completing the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the Constituent Assembly completely deregulated domestic grain markets. READ MORE: How Did the American Revolution Influence the French Revolution?īread may have helped spur on the French Revolution, but the revolution did not end French anxiety over bread.
A plot drawn up at Passy in 1789 to foment rebellion against the crown, allegedly proposed several articles, the second of which was to “do everything in our power to ensure that the lack of bread is total, so that the bourgeoisie are forced to take up arms.” Shortly thereafter the Bastille was stormed. But such measures were not enough, and bread (or the lack of it) was exploited as a weapon by revolutionary minds.
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