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Taine, Hippolyte, 1828-1893

"The French Revolution - Volume 3"

" - "Complete desperation! There are already "many
suicides."[123] At other times, rage predominates and there are riots.
At Evreux,[124] Germinal 21, a riot breaks out, owing to the delivery
of only two pounds of flour per head and per week, and because three
days before, only a pound and a half was delivered. There is a riot
at Dieppe,[125] Prairial 14 and 15, because "the people are reduced
here to three or four ounces of bread." There is another at Vervins,
Prairial 9, because the municipality which obtains bread at a cost of
seven and eight francs a pound, raises the price from twenty-five to
fifty sous. At Lille, an insurrection breaks out Messidor 4, because
the municipality, paying nine francs for bread, can give it to the
poor only for about twenty and thirty sous. - Lyons, during the month
of Niv?se, remains without bread "for five full days."[126] At
Chartres, Thermidor 15,[127] the distribution of bread for a month is
only eight ounces a day, and there is not enough to keep this up until
the 20th of Thermidor. On the fifteenth of Fructidor, La Rochelle
writes that "its public distributions, reduced to seven or eight
ounces of bread, are on the point of failing entirely.


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