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 CHAPTER IT THE ECONOMIC PRELUDE IN THE PROVINCES

TEN years of bad harvests, aggravated by an effete in- dustrial, fiscal, and political system, culminated with the summer of 1788. A great drought was succeeded by a violent hailstorm, which dealt destruction all round. The harvest was worse than ever before. All kinds of agricultural crops failed miserably all over France, not alone wheat and grain generally, but vines, chestnuts, olives; in short, all the natural products of consumption and exportation. Even what was gathered in was so spoiled as to be almost unfit for use. From every pro- vince of France came the monotonous tale of ruin, famine, starvation. Even the comparatively well-to-do peasant farmer could obtain nothing but barley bread of a bad quality, and water, while the less well-off had to put up with bread made from dried hay or moistened chaff, which we are told “caused the death of many children.” The Englishman, Arthur Young, who was traveling through France this year, wherever he went heard noth- ing but the story of the distress of the people and the dearness of bread. “Such bread as is to be obtained tastes of mould, and often produces dysentery and other diseases. The larger towns present the same condition, as though they had undergone the extremities of a long siege, In some places the whole store of corn and barley has the stench of putrefaction, and is full of maggots.” To add to the horrors of the situation, upon the hot and dry summer followed a winter of unparalleled severity. The new year of 1789 opened with the Seine frozen over from Paris to Havre. No such weather had heen ex-