“The famine has just caused three insurrections in the provinces, at Ruffec, at Caen, and at Chinon.  Women carrying their bread with them have been assassinated on the highways. . .  M. le Duc d’Orléans brought to the Council the other day a piece of bread, and placed it on the table before the king ‘Sire,’ said he, ’there is the bread on which your subjects now feed themselves.’” “In my own canton of Touraine men have been eating herbage more than a year.”  Misery finds company on all sides.  “It is talked about at Versailles more than ever.  The king interrogated the bishop of Chartres on the condition of his people; he replied that ’the famine and the morality were such that men ate grass like sheep and died like so many flies.’”

In 1740,[6] Massillon, bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, writes to Fleury: 

“The people of the rural districts are living in frightful destitution, without beds, without furniture; the majority, for half the year, even lack barley and oat bread which is their sole food, and which they are compelled to take out of their own and their children’s mouths to pay the taxes.  It pains me to see this sad spectacle every year on my visits.  The Negroes of our colonies are, in this respect, infinitely better off; for, while working, they are fed and clothed along with their wives and children, while our peasantry, the most laborious in the kingdom, cannot, with the hardest and most devoted labor, earn bread for themselves and their families, and at the same time pay their charges.”  In 1740[7] at Lille, the people rebel against the export of grain.  “An intendant informs me that the misery increases from hour to hour, the slightest danger to the crops resulting in this for three years past. . . .Flanders, especially, is greatly embarrassed; there is nothing to live on until the harvesting, which will not take place for two months.  The provinces the best off are not able to help the others.  Each bourgeois in each town is obliged to feed one or two poor persons and provide them with fourteen pounds of bread per week.  In the little town of Chatellerault, (of 4,000 inhabitants), 1800 poor, this winter, are in that situation. . . . The poor outnumber those able to live without begging . . . while prosecutions for unpaid dues are carried on with unexampled rigor.  The clothes of the poor, their last measure of flour and the latches on their doors are seized, etc. .. .  The abbess of Jouarre told me yesterday that, in her canton, in Brie, most of the land had not been planted.”  It is not surprising that the famine spreads even to Paris.  “Fears are entertained of next Wednesday.  There is no more bread in Paris, except that of the damaged flour which is brought in and which burns (when baking).  The mills are working day and night at Belleville, regrinding old damaged flour.  The people are ready to rebel; bread goes up a sol a day; no merchant dares, or is disposed, to bring