FIRST. SPONTANEOUS ANARCHY.

CHAPTER I. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANARCHY.

I.--Dearth the first cause.

Bad crops. The winter of 1788 and 1789.--High price and poor
quality of bread.--In the provinces.--At Paris.

During the night of July 14-15, 1789, the Duc de la
Rochefoucauld-Liancourt caused Louis XVI to be aroused to inform him of
the taking of the Bastille. "It is a revolt, then?" exclaimed the King.
"Sire!" replied the Duke; "it is a revolution!" The event was even more
serious. Not only had power slipped from the hands of the King, but also
it had not fallen into those of the Assembly. It now lay on the
ground, ready to the hands of the unchained populace, the violent and
over-excited crowd, the mobs, which picked it up like some weapon that
had been thrown away in the street. In fact, there was no longer any
government; the artificial structure of human society was giving way
entirely; things were returning to a state of nature. This was not a
revolution, but a dissolution.

Two causes excite and maintain the universal upheaval. The first one is
food shortages and dearth, which being constant, lasting for ten years,
and aggravated by the very disturbances which it excites, bids fair to
inflame the popular passions to madness, and change the whole course of
the Revolution into a series of spasmodic stumbles.

When a stream is brimful, a slight rise suffices to cause an overflow.
So was it with the extreme distress of the eighteenth century. A poor
man, who finds it difficult to live when bread is cheap, sees death
staring him in the face when it is dear. In this state of suffering the
animal instinct revolts, and the universal obedience which constitutes
public peace depends on a degree more or less of dryness or damp, heat
or cold. In 1788, a year of severe drought, the crops had been poor. In
addition to this, on the eve of the harvest,[1101] a terrible hail-storm
burst over the region around Paris, from Normandy to Champagne,
devastating sixty leagues of the most fertile territory, and causing
damage to the amount of one hundred millions of francs. Winter came on,
the severest that had been seen since 1709. At the close of December the
Seine was frozen over from Paris to Havre, while the thermometer stood
at 180 below zero. A third of the olive-trees died in Provence, and the
rest suffered to such an extent that they were considered incapable of
bearing fruit for two years to come. The s