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How Broken Bread Made The Bastille Crumble

On July 14th, 1789 at 1:30 in the afternoon, an angry Parisian crowd began their attack on the Bastille. This was an attack on a royal prison and by therefore by extension, the king himself. The attack was orchestrated by members of the National Assembly after a series of escalating events. The National Assembly had been formed out of the members of the Third Estate and represented France's commoners. Commoners bore the sole burden of taxation and were underrepresented in the country's parliament . A series of droughts had drained the food supply while a succession of wars had done the same to the treasury . Finally, the king himself seemed to care little for his subjects. His absolutism came before their welfare and no matter what they did, Louis XVI ignore them and carried on. The assault on the Bastille was carried out because of its symbolic nature and to demonstrate the resolve of the people to an unpopular king.
A large majority of the crowd that participated in the attack on the Bastille were self-employed . These were men and women who relied on a steady flow of supply and demand for their daily bread. They belonged to professions such as blacksmithing and sculpting, professions that required prosperity for business to flourish. During the 1780's and especially in 1789, there was a large increase in the price of wheat . Wheat was crucial to the French diet as bread was what France lived on.
The spike in wheat cost was caused by two things in particular: a series of droughts and a misguided French foreign policy . Over the course of the 17th century, France had become bankrupt fighting a succession of wars against the other European powers, Britain in particular. France had provided the fledgling United States of America with over two billion livres in aid in their struggle against Britain . Bankrupt, the French government was unable to provide any form of relief to stop the rising cost of bread. This surge in prices resulted in cut-backs on...

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