YEAR of SORROWS
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W. GREGORY MONAHAN YEAR of SORROWS The Great Famine of 1709 in Lyon Year of Sorrows draws upon an extensive array of archival sources to chronicle the famine crisis of 1709 in Lyon and its surrounding provinces. Combining a traditional narrative of huma n struggle and desperate improvisa tion with contemporary analysis, Mon ahan takes his readers from the court of Versailles through the city of Lyon into the hovels of French peasants wh o re sisted the city's demand for their grain. Monahan goes on to analyze the politi cal, social, economic, and demographic impact of the famine on an early mod ern city and explores the many conflicts created by the crisis between city and monarchy, city and countryside, and among various groups within Lyon. According to Monahan, the famine of 1709 serves as a prism to refract the in teractions between royal finances and food shortages, between elites and the powerless, and between competing fac tions and power centers, and redefines the nature of the "absolute" monarchy of the Sun King. This dynamic study of huma n struggle and its political and social dimensions sheds new light on a host of issues and problems in France before the Revolu tion and on the role that such crises have played in huma n history. W . Gregory Monahan is associate professor of history at Eastern Oregon State College and has published articles on the struggles in Lyon during the crisis of 1709. Jacket design:James F. Brisson Jacket illustration: Lithograph of the Pont de Saone over the Saone River in the eighteenth century YEAR of SORROWS YEAR of SORROWS The Great Famine of 1709 in Lyon W. GREGORY MONAHAN Ohio State University Press COLUMBUS Copyright © 1993 by the Ohio State University Press. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Monahan, W Gregory, 1953 Year of sorrows : the great famine of 1709 in Lyon / W . Gregory Monahan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN O-8142-O6O8-5 (alk. paper) 1. Famines—France—Lyon—History—18th century. 2. Food supply— France—Lyon—History—18th century. I. Title. HC28O.F3M66 1993 363.8'O944'5823'O9O33-dc2O 92-45193 CIP Text and jacket design by James F. Brisson. Type set in Dutch Janson by Connell-Zeko Type & Graphics, Kansas City, MO . Printed by McNaughton & Gunn, Saline, MI. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. @ 987654321 FOR RITA SHORT MONAHAN, R.N.,M.s.N.,Ed.D.,c.t.p. CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IX PROLOGUE I PART i Setting: Lyon before the Crisis 1 The Structures of Order n 2 A n Ungrateful Province 23 3 Time of Troubles 37 4 1708: The Rehearsal 56 p A R r 11 1709: Year of Trial 5 The Day of Kings 71 6 Crisis of Collision 87 7 Crisis of Delay 109 p A R 1 111 Victims and Victors 8 The Dying Time 125 9 The Accounting 154 10 In Perspective 166 EPILOGUE 179 Contents LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS l8l NOTES 183 BIBLIOGRAPHY 223 INDEX 24I ACKNOWLEDGMENTS t must be said that no book is an island, and that no author ever I truly writes one all by himself. M y debts to those wh o have aided and encouraged me in completing this project are man y and varied. The Institute for International Education and the Franco-American Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange provided a Ful bright Research Grant, which supported a year of research in France. While there, I enjoyed the advice, counsel, and friendship of Jacqueline Hecht of the Institut National d'Etudes Demographiques, which institution also graciously made available work space and its own considerable library. Jacques Dupaquier, Jean-Noel Biraben, and Jean- Pierre Bardet of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris mad e valuable suggestions and helped acquaint m e with the techniques of historical demography. Bernard Barbiche of the Ecole des Chartes guided m e through the mazes of institutional history and helped m e to decipher some particularly recalcitrant documents. In Lyon, I benefitted from the resources of the Centre Pierre Leon of the Universite de Lyon II, and particularly from the suggestions of Maurice Garden, Dominique Dessertines, and Alain Bideau. In the archives, Henri Hours, Marie Charne, and Jacqueline Roubert all listened patiently, joined m e in searching out the materials I re quired, and often located records I knew nothing about, but ended up needing very much. I ow e great personal debts of gratitude to those in France wh o made my stay not only professionally successful, but personally pleasant. Gordon Golding and Corinne Poujol were always there, always willing, and often needed. Madame Paul Ehrmann in Paris and Pierre and Madeleine Vialettes in Lyon endured the presence in their homes of an American abroad and made him love France all the more. x Acknowledgments O n this side of the Atlantic, John Super, Thomas Knight, and Robert Blobaum read the manuscript in various stages of develop ment. Their many comments and suggestions helped me to become a better historian and, I hope, a better writer. A special debt is owed to Dennis O'Brien, as advisor and friend, who cleared many hurdles from the path of a young graduate student and offered endless en couragement when the task seemed beyond reach. Gary McCollim lent his unparalleled knowledge of the intricacies of Old Regime finance and helped clear away many webs in that area. The anony mous readers for the Ohio State University Press offered a host of suggestions for final revisions that helped to enrich the scope and context of the book. I a m grateful to the editors of French Historical Studies for permission to reprint portions of m y article "Lyon in the Crisis of 1709: Royal Absolutism, Administrative Innovation and Re gional Politics," which appeared in the Fall 1990 issue of that journal. Dawna Flanagan helped with last-minute word processing glitches, and I am grateful to Alex Holzman of the OS U Press and copyeditor Robert Marcum for their perseverance in seeing the book through. Finally, m y parents, William and Jane Monahan , lent not only paren tal support, but also monetary support in the publication of the work, as did my wife, Rita. To her goes the last and most significant of thanks. She has suffered through the famine of 1709 far longer than any Lyonnais silk worker ever did. Her endurance, her sup port, and the challenge of her intellect are a continuing inspiration to me , and the book is therefore dedicated to her, with great and last ing affection. PROLOGUE rovidence did not abandon the people of Saint-Germain-au- PMont d'Or in 1709.l Thoug h the great winter of that year de stroyed their vines and froze their crops, and peasants from the sur rounding countryside refused to sell them even the most meager grains of wheat, though hunger stalked their village day and night, all was not irretrievably lost. On the thirteenth of April in that ter rible year, a lone grain boat was making its way slowly down the Saone, when it was suddenly struck by a strong wind and beached upon the river's bank. The news brought the inhabitants of Saint-Germain rushing to the boatman in hopes of buying his grain. Their inspection of the boat found it half full of oats bound for the stables of the royal in tendant in Lyon. Underneath the oats, however, the boatman had stashed a supply of wheat and peas, purest gold in the food-starved hills of the Beaujolais. After confirming that the oats were indeed bound for the intendant, the villagers shifted them carefully to another boat and sent them on their way. The abbot of nearby Masso then agreed to journey to Lyon to inquire after the going price for wheat and peas so that the village could buy them. Until his return, Antoine Prost, Philibert Archer, and his brother Jean-Baptiste joined other villagers in guarding the boat. Arming themselves with an assortment of weapons, they watched day and night lest an effort be made to steal this gift of life that Go d himself had deigned to provide. New s of the boat and its contents spread quickly through the coun tryside and soon reached the town of Neufville only a few kilometers southward. There, in the dark of night on 17 April, unknown to the villagers of Saint-Germain, thirty hungry townsmen gathered and armed themselves with guns, sabers, and bayonets. They boarded small river boats and mad e their wa y upstream toward the coveted 2 Prologue prize. At eleven minutes before midnight, Antoine Prost bolted to his feet. H e had heard a noise, perhaps a mutter of voices or a swish ing of paddles. H e sent the Archer brothers and two others to inves tigate. Bricitte, one of the band from Neufville, spotted the four scouts from Saint-Germain descending toward his group along the bank and ordered his followers to open fire. As bullets sailed about them, the Archer brothers turned and beat a hasty retreat toward the boat, but their attackers had taken the land and were on them in an instant. Prost and his friends joined the battle and managed gradu ally to push the attackers back. Prost himself was so badly beaten that he had to be carried back to his house afterward, but the defense was successful. The Neufville raiders failed to seize the grain and had to content themselves with taking as their prisoners the hapless Archer brothers.