During the night of July 14-15, 1789, the Duc de la Rochefoucauld-
Liancourt caused Louis XVI to be aroused to inform him of the taking
of the Bastille. "It is a revolt, then?" exclaimed the King.
"Sire!" replied the Duke; "it is a revolution!" The event was even
more serious. Not only had power slipped from the hands of the
King, but also it had not fallen into those of the Assembly. It now
lay on the ground, ready to the hands of the unchained populace, the
violent and over-excited crowd, the mobs, which picked it up like
some weapon that had been thrown away in the street. In fact, there
was no longer any government; the artificial structure of human
society was giving way entirely; things were returning to a state of
nature. This was not a revolution, but a dissolution.

Two causes excite and maintain the universal upheaval. The first
one is food shortages and dearth, which being constant, lasting for
ten years, and aggravated by the very disturbances which it excites,
bids fair to inflame the popular passions to madness, and change the
whole course of the Revolution into a series of spasmodic stumbles.

When a stream is brimful, a slight rise suffices to cause an
overflow. So was it with the extreme distress of the eighteenth
century. A poor man, who finds it difficult to live when bread is
cheap, sees death staring him in the face when it is dear. In this
state of suffering the animal instinct revolts, and the universal
obedience which constitutes public peace depends on a degree more or
less of dryness or damp, heat or cold. In 1788, a year of severe
drought, the crops had been poor. In addition to this, on the eve
of the harvest,[1] a terrible hail-storm burst over the region
around Paris, from Normandy to Champagne, devastating sixty leagues
of the most fertile territory, and causing damage to the amount of