Aware of the turn things were taking, Savary, Minister of Police, thought it advisable to inform the Emperor, now on his way back from Holland via the Rhine Provinces; but at first he only drew from him a somewhat contemptuous reply: C I have received your letter of October 30. You in Paris are like children; you lose your heads from fright. What will it be like when bread is at eighteen sous and the bakers have used up their stocks? You must take precautions but not lose your head. Never be frightened. Fear never does any good. All you have to do is to await my orders for five or six days.'
In spite of his apparent phlegm, Napoleon must have taken the subject seriously, for on his return to Saint-Cloud he hastened to authorize the increase in price that he had always forbidden up to then. Bread went up by one sou.
But to spare the poorer population the extra expense, he tried to put in practice an idea he had cherished for a long time, which was to persuade certain classes to accept a bread less white, but more nourishing, than usual, and costing less to make — the coarse black bread the little Corsican of yore had munched with so much relish.
An initial experiment attempted in 1801 had unfortunately produced very disappointing results. The Parisians of the year X had shown that they clung above all else to their white bread, appetizing and tender under its beautiful golden crust. The second attempt was even more negative, and Malivet summoned up courage to confess to the Sovereign that 'the loaves of inferior quality found no buyers, even at the price of eleven and twelve sols*.
With more circumlocution, Pasquier announced the same fiasco. 'This exclusive taste for fine bread shown by the people of Paris is unfortunate when times are difficult. A striking instance of this has occurred lately, for more than half the necessitous population give four sous to their baker to change the four-pound loaf given them by the charitable committees, which, although inferior, is really excellent/
When an engagement took a bad turn, the Emperor used to send the Guards into action. In the Battle of the Bread he thought the moment had come to throw in the Reserves.
These were the stocks of flour built up by the State and warehoused in various depots in Paris and the outskirts. To begin with, it was decided to sell 300 sacks a day to the bakers, at the rate of seventy-three francs the sack — a very moderate price, adopted in die hope of checking the rise in the wholesale price. But they were reckoning, alas, without the speculators.
Before ten days had gone by, market prices had, on the contrary, gone up to twenty-four francs, so that the retail dealers made an immediate profit by selling with one hand what they had bought with the other. Besides which, the wholesale flour merchants, forsaking the Paris market, where they were hindered by the competition of the Reserve, sent all their goods henceforth to Normandy, leaving nearly all the provisioning of the capital to the care of the State.
Soon it was no longer 300, but 600, 700 or 800 sacks that had to be drawn daily from the public warehouses. To refill them, ever larger sums would be required. The total advances deducted from the Sinking Fund was to reach ten millions by the spring of 1812.
If only these sacrifices had succeeded in saving the poor from having to pay more for their bread! But this was not so: the price of the four-pound loaf went up from fifteen to sixteen sous, and then to seventeen. And in spite of this, honest bakers were unable to cover their expenses. Some had already shut up shop; others were pawning their clothes at the Mont-cle-Piete.
After lavishing fine words on them, Pasquier himself realized that these unfortunates were at the end of their tether, and that fresh assistance was imperative. 'For one thing, their services are indispensable/ he wrote to Savary, 'besides which, they have an enormous influence on public opinion. They are of the people themselves. There are 640 of them. Add their wives, their journeymen, their relations, and you can see what a number of plaintiff mouths there are, vociferating, sowing bad news and alarm in every way/
Arguments such as these never fail to interest the public Powers. A maximum price of eighteen sous for bread was authorized, therefore, and supplies from the Reserve were increased to 1,300 sacks a day, representing pretty nearly the total intra muros consumption. What more could people demand?
Thanks to these measures the bakers ceased complaining for a few days, but the intervention of the State proved a two-edged sword. While it maintained prices in Paris by artificial means, those of the provinces, left to themselves, merely went up the more rapidly. Soon, in certain regions, panic broke out, causing regular riots. On March 2 people fought in Caen. A regiment of Guards had to be stationed there, and eight looters, among them two women, were shot without mercy after appearing at a court-martial.
Disturbances were less serious in the proximity o£ the capital, but every day large quantities of bread continued to pass the barrier. The operation had become so profitable that everybody had a hand in it now, from the market-gardeners who came back from the Halles with enormous stocks of loaves to the well-to-do bourgeois who filled their carriages in the same way.
And the infernal price race went on. The sack of flour, which had cost ninety-three francs at the beginning of February, was worth 115 on April 6, and in the first days of May the bakers of Rouen were selling their bread at thirty-six sous — four times dearer than in 1803!
This time it was too much. In the words of Pasquier, 'Anxiety was turning to terror/ Abandoning his optimism, Napoleon, who was preparing to go and rejoin the main army, and did not want to leave public opinion behind him at boiling point, decided that a strong hand was called for, and a few days later he issued two decrees that must have reminded many people of the Revolution.
The first made it obligatory for the producers of corn to declare their harvests, and subjected them to requisition if necessary. It also forbade all subjects of the State to buy grain or flour 'for the purpose of hoarding them, warehousing them or making them an object of speculation*. A double attack, some thought, on the right of property and the freedom of commerce.
The second decree, which fixed a maximum market price of thirty-three francs the hectolitre for all corn sold in the markets of the lie de France, had little to distinguish it from the Maximum of Robespierre.
'You'll be all right in a fortnight', said the Sovereign to his high officials on leaving for Dresden. He was sadly mistaken. The same causes always producing the same effects, what happened in 1794 happened again in 1812: as it could no longer be sold freely, corn went into hiding.
At the beginning of June Real reported to the Council of Foodstuffs *a considerable decrease in milling dues in the neighbourhood of Paris, and their almost complete cessation in a few places'. The Imperial decree permitted grain to be requisitioned at the farms, but the effect of such an operation was to be feared at a time when wholesale departures of conscripts had already had a powerfully disturbing effect on the countryside. Production remained free, therefore, and sales under the counter became the rule almost everywhere. A month later, the failure of the tax was universally recognized; it had had no result beyond that of still further depleting the Reserve, and bringing on to the market types of flour mixed with beans, horse-beans and haricots.
Panic began to spread among the public. Every morning there were unruly queues in front of the bakers* shops, and the rumour spread that "the people of Paris were to be reduced to half a pound of bread*. Such a measure would have been bearable (as we have discovered in our own day), but at that time it sounded terrible, and the Council of Foodstuffs did not dare contemplate it, any more than they had seriously attempted to requisition flour. Its members contented themselves with repeating that the end of July was approaching and a good harvest would put everything right.