Introduction

Summary

In September 1774, former Minister Léonard-Jean-Baptiste Bertin (1719–1792) wrote to then Controller General Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727–1781), remarking how the attitude of Parisians toward food provisions had shifted. As he explained it, butcher's meat (that is, beef, veal, and mutton) represented “a commodity in some sort of first necessity, as is white bread.” In that same year, a burgeoning demand for red meat–a demand that defied Lenten rules of fasting and fueled an expansive black market–dictated a royal edict to end state-enforced fasting. In October of 1790, the popular consumption of red meat had become a major political issue for Parisian revolutionaries addressing the newly constituted National Assembly. At the height of the revolution, the Jacobins designated meat as one of the primary goods to fall under the 1793 Law of the General Maximum. A fixed price and rationing were instituted to ensure that every Parisian enjoyed a continuous supply of meat as a dietary staple.

The importance of red meat–the primary good of the butcher trade–grew for Parisians as the city itself expanded. Over 40,000 steer and over twice that number of sheep were needed to provision Paris in 1637 (pop. 412,000). As the city's population surpassed a half-million by the beginning of the eighteenth century, cattle traders and farmers supplied anywhere from 150,000 to 200,000 head of cattle (including cows and veal) and 300,000 to 400,000 sheep.