The Insurrection of October, 1789 11 



itself was demoralized. Pillage grew so common that farmers 

 and merchants kept their grain at home through fear that the 

 convoys might be attacked. After some grain wagons had been 

 seized at Orleans the farmers refused to take their produce to 

 that city. 1 Even where the producers were willing to take their 

 grain to market they were sometimes prevented from doing so 

 by their neighbors, the inhabitants of their own province, who 

 feared scarcity for themselves. "Sometimes loads of grain were 

 stopped by municipalities and the grain not allowed to pass 

 through." 2 "All the towns," says Duquesnoy, "take upon them- 

 selves the rights of petty sovereignty and stop the passage of 

 grain through their territory." 3 



But if government restrictions disorganized the grain trade, 

 caused higher prices, and increased scarcity, speculation, and suf- 

 fering throughout France, the effect in Paris was even more 

 unfortunate. On the 19th of June the national assembly had 

 appointed a committee of thirty-two members to look into the 

 causes of the high prices and to find a means of relieving the 

 public distress. 4 It was through this committee that grain was 

 imported. But the details of providing food for the city of Paris 

 were left to the capital itself. 5 The chief burden fell on Bailly 

 and made his position one of tremendous difficulty and clanger. 

 On the 29th of August the assembly decreed the free circulation 

 of grain in the interior, 6 but the king's sanction was long in com- 

 ing. He announced on the 18th of September that he would 

 sanction the decree, but gave warning that "in the existing state 

 of things it would be a lack of wisdom to have it too rigorously 

 executed." 7 And he deferred the matter. It was only on the 

 most urgent demands of the assembly that the decree received 

 the royal sanction three days later. Such evident reluctance 



1 Gomel, Histoire financiire de Vassemblee constituante, I, 355. 

 3 Ibid., 1,262. 



3 Duquesnoy, Journal, I, 393. 



4 Prods verbal de Vassemblee nahonale, No. 2, 2; Duquesnoy, Journal, 

 I, 110. 



fi Bailly, Mimoires, III, 422. 



6 Proces-verlal de V assemblee nationale , No. 62, 3. 



"'Ibid., No. 78. 



277 



