revolution_fr | Comité de Salut Public drinks bill...?

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Comité de Salut Public drinks bill...?

I heard a reference to the Committee of Public Safety's drinks bill on a radio programme a couple of years ago, but I've never come across a written reference to it. Does such a thing exist, or was it a post-Thermidor 'hey, don't blame us, we were drunk all the time' excuse? I've also heard similar about the Tribunal, but again haven't found a reliable, non-anecdotal, non-hostile source.
I'm also aware that the average alcohol intake was universally far higher from the dawn of time until the 19thc - it was safer than water!
On a related issue, does anyone know if the opiate laudanum was used/abused in France as much as it was in Britain at the time? I don't know how greatly the trade links would have made a difference here. I can't remember ever having come across a reference in anything on the Revolution - the Romantic poets in Britain in the 1790's were living on the stuff - but I did wonder if that, rather than the usually assumed bisexuality, may have been Camille Desmoulins' 'vice'?

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I've never seen a written reference to that either, but it would make sense--assuming it also ; after all, the Convention had it's own restaurant where the Conventionnels could eat, and when there is food there is usually drink--and in this period, often of the alcoholic variety (though I have read a lot of references to lemonade stands during the Revolution). I don't really see why the CSP couldn't have ordered both food and drink from the restaurant to be brought to them; after all, many of them were sleeping there and they would have to eat and drink sometime. (Moreover, It seems likely to me that, assuming such a practice existed, hostile sources, as you term it, would have seized upon the occasion to talk about a "drinks bill," and conveniently leave out related information--such as a food bill or at the very least a note about alcohol consumption in the 18th century.)

That's an interesting theory about he laudanum. It sounds at least as plausible as any other explanation I've heard. On a somewhat related note, there's a hilariously out of character scene in "Saint-Just et la force des choses" where Robespierre has an argument with Saint-Just, waits for him to leave, throws his glasses accross the room, makes sure no one's coming, and then has some laudanum. Somehow, I think if Robespierre had had a laudanum addiction we would know about it. -__-;

I think the radio programme was suggesting they may have been drunk in charge! Surely that would be impossible - they just couldn't have functioned if they were out of it, though I wouldn't be surprised if they were on more than the usual - ditto coffee. Their work hours and stresses seem superhuman. (A lot of 20thc British governments seemed to have functioned on a surprising amount of alcohol, including Thatcher, who got by on whisky and 5 hours sleep a night, and allegedly became an alcoholic). We're probably living in the most sober times in world history. There's a theory that Victorian sobriety was fall-out from the French Revolution - 18thc London was full of drunk aristos screwing around - the moral climate of the 19thc was a backlash designed to send them back to their country estates and so create the impression that the (Westminter) ruling classes were sensible people quietly doing a good job!

I'm still waiting for my techie friend to download me those programmes! They look hilarious (very camp!) - maybe the writer was into Sherlock Holmes (strange, cerebral bachelor fond of shooting up cocaine)? Robespierre may well have taken laudanum as medicine - many people did, and they wouldn't have felt the need to be secretive about it. I don't think the notion of drug addiction really entered western public consciousness until a decade or so later, but if Desmoulins was over-using opiate 'medicine', it would have been apparent to friends, as it was with Coleridge: it might explain references to his deteriorating health, but his erratic and outspoken behaviour seems to be constant throughout his career (weren't enemies saying he was mad right from the start?) so that's probably just him being him! But it's a theory, anyway - would Robespierre and Danton think of it as a 'vice', though?

I very highly doubt they were drunk; it's illogical and there's no evidence to support it. No reputable source would even posit it. That doesn't mean they didn't drink, but there's a difference between drinking and getting drunk. That's an interesting theory about the British aristocracy, by the way, but it looks to me like one of those trends that people notice in hindsight, rather than a conscious decision on the British aristos' part.

It was a terrible series, from the point of view of historical accuracy--and yet so much better than some! I posted a detailed commentary on it a couple of days ago. You would really have had to see the context in which Robespierre was taking the laudanum... It really didn't look like it was for medecinal purposes.
I can see how a laudanum addiction might be thought of as a vice, even in the 18th century, just from the standpoint of overindulging in general's having long been viewed as a vice.

I wouldn't be surprized if some of revolutionary politicians did use laudanum at least occasionally. By the nineteenth century (so I am assuming by the last decade of the eighteenth century as well), it was used rather widely as treatment for, among other things, anxiety and insomnia, conditions with which a revolutionary politician would likely be familiar.

Laudanum was used for digestion problems, aches, insomnia, anxiety etc. but then, the whole 18th Century medication system was so horrible, that many people tried to avoid doctors alltogether. Bloodletting to cure fever killed a lot of people. (They also used mummy powder, for any health problem, which sounds really weird.)

Drug addiction became topic of public discussion somewhere during 19th Century and was considered to be a problem amongst neurotic, lonely, middle aged women. People also gave laudanum to babies to keep them quiet, which caused loss of appetite and made some people to be addicted most of their lives.

18th Century is famous for tea, coffee and hot chocolat, which were really trendy. Of course I'm biased here (I'm teetotaller) but I'd think, that they drank less alcohol than earlier generations. (17th Century diet would kill us all in few weeks)Compared to earlier centuries the prefered behaviour was calm and rational, and you cannot really stay that way if you drink only beer or wine the whole day.

Most of the people of course drank water more than anything else. In cities it was considered unclean (with good reason) but most of the people lived on countryside.

So the "safer than water" means city life and medical opinions of those days that banned also all vegetables as dangerous. If you lived in a hut near the woods, like 99% of people in any nation those days, there were clean streams and wells. People also washed themselves with water in countryside, but not in cities...

I was debating the washing thing with a friend a few days ago: he maintained they wore clean linen, rather than washing the body, because of a fear of water-borne disease - I live in a house with no central heating or - as of 2 weeks ago - hot running water, and I think it's because, unless you were happy to sit in a tub in front of a ground floor fireplace while some unfortunate person filled and heated dozens of kettles from a pump or well, it's a lot easier to just put on a clean shirt!

The bourgeoisie were actually bathing on a regular basis (about every week or two) by the end of the 18th century in France--though it took the aristocracy longer to catch on, and the poorer members of the Third Estate most often didn't have the luxury of taking baths.

Robespierre wasn't known to drink heavily (I think Scurr mentioned in Fatal Purity that he generally drank rather watered down wine), but he did of course consume a fair amount of coffee. I think I remember reading, however, that some of his colleagues were heavier drinkers.

I presume the 'watered down wine' was commented on at the time because it was unusual to dilute it!

I can't think of a reference to him drinking beer/lager, though - he was a brewer's daughter's son from a lager region, but maybe wine was a more middle-class drink, even there? There's a menu for a dinner party given for him and Lindet, and surprisingly, unless it's an editorial mistake, there's no mention of wine, though there is milk and cider, which the historian suggests was presumably for Lindet, being from Normandy.

Ah - there's this! Next time I go on a duty-free alcohol jaunt to Calais I'll have to bring back a couple of crates! http://www.bottledbeer.co.uk/index.html?beerid=1178

I know the reference you're talking about; it's actually a shopping list, not a menu, which might explain the lack of wine. Likely they had a few bottles around already.

Yes, it was a shopping list, only without much on quantities (in the book I have it in) and no indication of what they may have 'had in', though it sounded pretty healthy from the point of view of veg and salad. Looking up pickling a while ago, I came across a reference to a pioneer of canned veg with a shop in Paris during the revolution - sadly, with no reference to prices so I've no idea if they were regarded as weird luxury novelties or everyday food. (I'm very interested in pre-19thc food - I got out of writing an essay at school once by turning up with some early 18thc recipe cakes: there's just been a tv series on here, too, but with menus and a bit on the politics of it rather than the nuts and bolts of storage, trade and preparation (and hygene!), and concentrating on the food of the rich.

The way it's cited originally, in a footnote to Journal d'une bourgeoise, which is really just a collection of letters by the wife of the Conventionnel Jullien, it doesn't list quantities, but it does list prices.

The footnote reads (translated by myself):
"On this date, the following bill is found in the account book:
Milk and cream.................. 14 s[ous].
Two loaves of bread............. 24 s.
Vegetables...................... 6
Salad........................... 10
Oil............................. 2
Vinegar......................... 12
Pepper.......................... 5
Cheese.......................... 1
Cider........................... 18
One fatted chicken (poularde)... 8 10
And the note:
Robespierre and Robert Lindet dined."

Considering the wages of a worker in this period, it's easy to see where the problem would lie, but I believe that for the bourgeoisie this would be a standard, even modest meal.

And I can't imagine one 18thc size chicken would go far at a dinner party - looks like they're filling up with bread!

The TV food programme I mentioned earlier had a good bit when they cooked a meal out of a 1660' Restoration era Royalist 'joke' cookbook called something like 'Mrs. Cromwell's cookbook': the aristocrat meals the presenters ate for the rest of the programme were all meat and stodge - the Puritan meal actually had vegetables and was the only meal the presenters enjoyed! Everything else - especially the 'Prince Regent's breakfast' in one episode (more meat than most people would see in a month)- looked lethal.

It depends on how many guests they have, I would think. And bread was, of course, the staple food, so it's unsurprising that they should have a lot of it.

That doesn't surprise me either. The amount of meat the aristocracy ate is really just plain disgusting.

I remember reading in "An Elegant Madness" that William Pitt consumed around 6 bottles of port per day. Bottles were smaller, but not THAT much smaller. I wouldn't overestimate the influence of alcoholism and drunkenness in preventing someone to run a government. ;-)

I've got a friend who is only about 7 and a half stone in weight but manages to put away a bottle of wine a night after work, and a lot more at weekends, and rarely even gets hungover! I suppose he's immune.

Politicians here had to cut down when they introduced TV cameras into the House of Commons, but Thatcher drank a surprising amount of spirits, and Churchill and co got through a lot, too. I think it killed Pitt, in the end (rumour had it he'd drink to unconsciousness). New Labour banned it from their HQ - Mandelson (one of the triumvirate) supposedly doesn't even drink caffeine. I presume Bush Jnr. is still an alcoholic - or maybe just naturally stupid?

Well; I don't find anything scandalous in regular drinking.Of course I do not like alcohic people. In Europe, even today, people uses to drink, and heavily, but most of them are not alcoholized. I mean that they are so used to drink that they uses not to be intoxicated by alcoholic beverages. Maybe that was the case about some French Revolution leaders. Of course, our perfect, dear Maxime wouldn't drink so much. Only a glass or two of wine with a lot of water in them. My Hanriot , even if he was not - it seems - the alcoholic of the legend depicts, liked to drink a little, along with friends...It was quite natural at the time. But his favorite drink was not wine; he loved champagne *cough* *cough*...What an aristocratic taste! :D

Yes; laudanum was not seen as a drug back then: you would take it just to cure some physicall illness or at least, to calm them. I don't think they considered it a vice...At the start of XX Century even cocaine was not seen as a bad drug. I have magazines from that time in which there is publicity of medicines made with cocaine.

HanriotFran (Vanesa)

My mother's generation had amphetamine as 'diet pills' and cocaine at the dentist! They still use opium medically a lot - a friend of mine is prescribed opium tablets after operations.
In Britain the drink-driving limits are now very strict - much more strict than in France - and I think that has changed habits so that people now 'binge drink' on a friday or saturday night and pack a week's drinking into a few hours! Then they get a taxi home and spend sunday being sick.

Of course, if you get sick after a drinking time, you didn't know how to drink and you are near of being an alcoholist. If you have been drinking and caught a headache, it's better that you stop it.

Yes; I remember the "amphetamine" and diet pills. My aunt wanted to follow a diet and her doctor gave her some pills...She bordered suicide and was so crazy that anyone could speak to her without her becoming extremely angry.

HanriotFran (Vanesa)

"Alcohic"??? LOL ...I just mean "alcoholic", but my new keyboard is too sensitive!

HanriotFran (Vanesa)

I know we were talking awhile back about if "Salut" would be better translated as Safety or Salvation. But it can also mean "Cheers!"...as in a drinking toast ;)

In seriousness though...I'm sure many of them would at the very least have had a couple of glasses of wine after an intense day!

I came across a website recently that spoke of the 'Committee of Public Hello', which sounded very cute, and Lindet as the Member for Apple-Brandy. I'm guessing some sort of google-auto-translator had been at work...

We could also call it the 'Committee of Public Greeting'...which would mean that we completely misunderstood its purpose!

But at least there's finally a deputy to represent Apple-Brandy.

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