196 Chapter Sixneed. His imperious demand was, of course, backed by an implicit
threat: whoever did not contribute was in danger of being recognized
as an enemy of the people and therefore liable to arrest and execution.
Yet to many, and probably to most, Frenchmen the cause seemed just
and the sacrifices, whether of personal possessions or of time and
effort, were deemed tolerable.
In some instances new techniques were invented or applied on an
industrial scale for the first time. For example, two chemists devised a
way of manufacturing saltpeter instead of depending for this critical
ingredient of gunpowder on scrapings from the walls of stables and
latrines.^26 This invention freed France from dependence on imports
—a matter of no small significance when the British navy controlled
the seas. Other technical novelties included a balloon corps, to permit
aerial observation of enemy troop dispositions, and a semaphore
telegraph, connecting Paris with the front.^27
The main problem for the new army, as for older and much smaller
armies, was to assure an adequate supply of food and fodder. Supply
ing the capital and other cities with enough grain to keep the poor
from starving was a second critical problem for a government that
depended in large degree on the support of the Paris populace. The
revolutionary regime met this problem by decreeing the Law of the
Maximum, which set fixed prices for grain and other articles of com
mon consumption. Since the legal maximum fell far below the price
market speculators defined, producers and dealers often held back
their goods, refusing to offer them for sale at the prescribed figure.
Then it was up to agents of the government, often accompanied by
detachments of armed men, to search out hoarders and appropriate
what they found for public use, paying, if at all, only the legal
maximum.
Local initiative in these matters was everything: no real control from
Paris or any other single center was possible. Statistical data were
lacking for anything resembling a planned mobilization of national
resources. Instead, what was accomplished rested on actions of in
numerable individuals and local groups, each interpreting the will of
the people and the welfare of the revolution in its own way. Never
theless, by a combination of exhortation, compulsion, and payment at
fixed prices, millions of men and women were induced to contribute
to the tasks of national defense. Measured by ordinary economic yard
- Grande Encyclopédie, s.v. LeBlanc, Carny.
- Lefebvre, French Revolution, pp. 101–3; Shepard B. Clough, France: A History of
National Economics (New York, 1939), p. 51.