ABSTRACT
The French Revolution was born and died in a state of bankruptcy: on 16 August 1788, the royal government suspended interest payments to its creditors, revealing, in effect, that it was bankrupt; on 9 vendémiaire Year VI/30 September 1797, a republican government arbitrarily wiped out two-thirds of the debt it owed its creditors. There is a strong case for arguing that the Directorial regime, like its royal predecessor, never recovered from the ensuing loss of public confidence. In recent years, a few historians have condemned the Revolution, from start to finish, as ‘a national catastrophe’, whilst others, chanting monetarist and freemarket themes, have joined in the denunciatory chorus.1 Certainly the conflict between those who advocated free-trade approaches to the economy and those who favoured a more traditonal system of regulations and controls lies at the heart of the economic history of the Revolution; but it is also central to an understanding of the economic history of the ancien régime, particularly during its final decades when royal policies oscillated between the two extremes. Pressure from consumers, especially for bread, forced governments to modify or abandon free-trade policies before and during the Revolution. Unlike royal ministers before 1789, however, the leaders of the Revolution were confronted, after 1792, with a state of total war. Once again, we are reminded of the importance of war in determining the course of the Revolution. As François Hincker remarks: There can be no doubt that it was the war, to be more precise, the formation of the Grand Coalition against the French in February 1793, which represents the crucial date so far as the economic history of the Revolution is concerned.’2
