In considering, across the long run, the increasing success eighteenth-century society enjoyed in escaping or attenuating the effects of the deadly old-style subsistence crises—an incomplete triumph which we must be careful not to exaggerate—the role played by government in husbanding resources, containing disease, and organizing social services is often overlooked. If Paris was spared a serious “crisis of mortality” and violent sociopolitical disruptions in the late sixties, it was partly due to the efforts the government made—without enthusiasm, it must be noted—to keep the city adequately supplied in the midst of a grave and prolonged dearth. To be sure, it can be, and in fact was, argued that the methods used by authorities were prodigal and inefficient. The king was said to have spent as much as 10,000,000 livres in purchasing grain and flour, the bulk of which served the capital.1 But it remains extremely doubtful, given the harvest failures, the disorganization of the grain trade, the primitive state of communications, and the mood of consumers, that the city could have fared so relatively well without massive governmental assistance. In any case, no one, with the exception of a handful of ideologues and optimists, not even the ministers who fathered the radical program of liberalization, was prepared to court the risks that non-intervention implied.

This chapter examines certain aspects of the king's grain operation in the late sixties. Like the previous interventions of the government on the supply side, it must be seen first of all as an extraordinary measure devised to deal with a critical subsistence problem. Throughout this discussion, it is imperative to keep in mind that the provisioning situation of the capital was grave and that the grain provided by the government, though it could offer nothing more than stop-gap relief, was desperately needed if the bakers were to continue to offer bread for sale in sufficient quantity. Unlike earlier royal victualing enterprises, which did not come into being until after a crisis declared itself, the king's grain operation of the late sixties was prepared well in advance. This point, too, should not be overlooked. On the eve of liberalization, for the first time ever, the central government established an emergency reserve fund for the capital. Theoretically, the government was better equipped than it ever had been to deal with potential subsistence difficulties.