Chapter Four - Bread, Taxes, and Fire

CHAPTER FOUR

Bread, Taxes, and Fire

YOU CAN TALK about liberty all you want, but it’s bread that starts revolutions.

While the philosophers were planting ideas, hunger was doing the rest. And in 1788, France ran out of luck. The weather turned, crops failed, and the price of bread, which was already high, went through the roof.

Bread wasn’t a side dish in France. It was survival. For most working people, it made up 80% of their diet. So when the price doubled, then tripled, people didn’t cut back. They starved.

This wasn’t just some lean winter. This was panic. Grain shipments slowed. Hoarding began. Bakers were accused of price gouging. Rumors spread that nobles were hiding grain just to hurt the poor on purpose. “The famine plot,” they called it. Nobody had proof, but it felt true enough.

And the taxes didn’t stop. The crown was still bleeding money, and the only people left to squeeze were the ones already empty. Farmers paid land taxes. Urban workers paid consumption taxes. Everyone paid the salt tax, the gabelle, which was so hated, people risked prison just to smuggle seasoning.

So now the food is gone, the money’s gone, and the king is still asking for more. People are getting evicted. Kids are dying. There’s no social safety net, aid, or plan. And all the while, they can hear about life in Versailles. The gowns, the gardens, the powdered faces, and the gold trim on everything.

They start to snap.

In the cities, riots break out. In the countryside, nobles’ manors are attacked and feudal records are torched. Carts full of grain are intercepted by angry crowds. Protesters shout slogans lifted straight from Rousseau and Voltaire, but they’re holding pitchforks, not pamphlets.

Meanwhile, Louis XVI is cornered. The treasury’s dry. The people are furious. The old system isn’t working. And his last option is the one nobody wants to try.

He calls the Estates-General.

That was the national assembly, one rep group for each estate. It hadn’t met in 175 years. It wasn’t meant to fix things. It was meant to make it look like he was trying.

He figured they’d show up, give him some cover, vote on a few taxes, and go home.

He did not realize what he had just unleashed.