The Sacred Loaf: More Than Just Food

To understand the Flour War, one must first understand the central, almost sacred, role of bread in 18th-century France. For the vast majority of the population—peasants, artisans, and urban laborers—bread was not a side dish; it was the meal. It could account for as much as 75% of a working-class family’s diet and up to 50% of their daily expenses. Consequently, the price of bread was the primary barometer of public well-being and social stability.

For centuries, a powerful social contract had existed around this essential commodity. The people believed in a “moral economy” where the king, as the “father” of his people, had a duty to ensure a steady supply of affordable grain. This was achieved through a complex web of regulations: price controls, restrictions on exports, and rules forcing producers to supply local markets before selling elsewhere. This system was inefficient, but it was predictable and provided a crucial sense of security.

An Enlightenment Gamble: Turgot’s Free Market Experiment

Upon ascending to the throne in 1774, the young Louis XVI appointed Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot as his Controller-General of Finances. Turgot was a brilliant economist and a leading proponent of the Physiocratic school of thought, the intellectual forerunner of modern free-market capitalism. The Physiocrats believed that a nation’s wealth derived from agriculture and that economic prosperity could only be achieved by liberating the market from the dead hand of government regulation. Their motto was simple: laissez-faire, laissez-passer (“let do, let pass”).

On September 13, 1774, Turgot put his ideas into practice, issuing an edict that deregulated the domestic grain trade. The goal was rational and modern: to create a single national market, encourage merchants to move grain from areas of surplus to areas of scarcity, and ultimately lower prices for everyone by fostering competition. On paper, it was a flawless plan to fix France’s sclerotic economy.

In reality, it was a catastrophic gamble.

The Perfect Storm of Scarcity and Panic

Turgot’s timing could not have been worse. The harvest of 1774 was mediocre at best, leading to tighter-than-usual supplies. With the old regulations gone, grain owners—be they large landowners or speculative merchants—were now free to do as they pleased. Instead of rushing to supply local markets, many began hoarding their stock, waiting for prices to climb higher. Others bypassed their local communities to ship grain to more distant, lucrative markets.

By the spring of 1775, as stores from the previous harvest ran dangerously low, prices began to skyrocket. Panic set in. The people didn’t see the invisible hand of the market at work; they saw greed, hoarding, and a betrayal of the king’s sacred duty. The age-old conspiracy theory of the pacte de famine—a secret “famine pact” among elites to starve the people for profit—roared back to life. To the common person, this wasn’t an economic policy; it was a deliberate attack on their right to exist.

“Taxation Populaire”: The People Impose the Just Price

The first riot erupted in Beaumont-sur-Oise on April 27, 1775. From there, the unrest spread like wildfire across the Paris Basin, the fertile region that fed the capital. But these were not simply hunger-crazed mobs engaged in mindless looting. The rioters operated with a clear, shared purpose rooted in the old “moral economy.”

Their primary tactic was a practice historians call taxation populaire, or “popular pricing.” Crowds, often led by women, would converge on a market, a bakery, or a merchant’s warehouse. They would seize the flour or grain, but they would not steal it outright. Instead, they would “sell” it to the community at what they deemed to be the traditional “just price” (le juste prix). The money collected was then often left for the owner.

For example, in one town, rioters seized a boatload of grain and forced its sale at a price two-thirds lower than the market rate. They were not destroying the market; they were forcibly re-imposing the rules that Turgot had abolished. The targets were not the government itself, but the individuals—merchants, millers, and wealthy farmers—seen as profiting from the people’s misery. The movement even reached the gates of the Palace of Versailles, where thousands of people gathered, forcing a shaken Louis XVI to appear on a balcony to promise action.

Repression and Retreat

The royal government, caught between its modernizing ideals and ancient obligations, was initially paralyzed. But as the riots threatened to engulf the capital, the response became one of firm repression. Turgot urged the king to stand firm. The government mobilized over 25,000 troops to restore order. Hundreds were arrested, and special courts handed down swift, harsh sentences. In a pointed display of authority, two men, a 28-year-old wigmaker and a 16-year-old journeyman, were publicly executed in Paris as examples.

By the end of May, the Flour War was over. Turgot’s policy had technically survived, but his political career was doomed. He was dismissed in May 1776, and his free-market reforms were abandoned. The French state reverted, for a time, to the familiar system of grain regulation.

A Dress Rehearsal for 1789

Though it ended in defeat for the rioters, the Flour War of 1775 was a profound historical moment. It was a massive, collective cry of protest that revealed the deep chasm between the government’s abstract economic theories and the people’s concrete, desperate reality. It proved that the king was either unwilling or unable to uphold his most fundamental duty: to keep his people fed. This failure severely damaged the legitimacy and mystique of the monarchy.

The events of 1775 served as a crucial lesson for the populace. They learned how to mobilize, how to articulate their grievances through action, and who their class enemies were. When the price of bread skyrocketed again in the fateful year of 1789, the response would be even more powerful and far more political. The cry for bread that echoed through the Flour War was a direct ancestor to the revolutionary cry for liberty, making it not just a riot, but a chilling dress rehearsal for the revolution that would soon change the world.