n 1725," says Saint-Simon, "with the profusion of Strasbourg and
Chantilly, the people, in Normandy, live on the grass of the fields. The
first king in Europe could not be a great king if it was not for all the
beggars and the poor-houses full of dying from whom all had been taken
even though it was peace-time.[5103]

In the most prosperous days of Fleury and in the finest region in
France, the peasant hides "his wine on account of the excise and his
bread on account of the taille," convinced "that he is a lost man if
any doubt exists of his dying of starvation."[5104] In 1739 d'Argenson
writes in his journal[5105]:

"The famine has just caused three insurrections in the provinces, at
Ruffec, at Caen, and at Chinon. Women carrying their bread with them
have been assassinated on the highways. . . M. le Duc d'Orleans brought
to the Council the other day a piece of bread, and placed it on the
table before the king 'Sire,' said he, 'there is the bread on which your
subjects now feed themselves.'" "In my own canton of Touraine men have
been eating herbage more than a year." Misery finds company on all
sides. "It is talked about at Versailles more than ever. The king
interrogated the bishop of Chartres on the condition of his people; he
replied that 'the famine and the morality were such that men ate grass
like sheep and died like so many flies.'"

In 1740,[5106] Massillon, bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, writes to Fleury:

"The people of the rural districts are living in frightful destitution,
without beds, without furniture; the majority, for half the year, even
lack barley and oat bread which is their sole food, and which they are
compelled to take out of their own and their children's mouths to
pay the taxes. It pains me to see this sad spectacle every year on my
visits. The Negroes of our colonies are, in this respect, infinitely
better off; for, while working, they are fed and clothed along with
their wives and children, while our peasantry, the most laborious in the
kingdom, cannot, with the hardest and most devoted labor, earn bread for
themselves and their families, and at the same time pay their charges."
In 1740[5107] at Lille, the people rebel against the export of grain.
"An intendant informs me that the misery increases from hour to hour,
the slightest danger to the crops resulting in this for three years
past. . . .Flanders, especially, is greatly embarrassed; there is
nothing to live on until the harvesting, wh