Comité de Salut Public drinks bill...?

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

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'?

Comments

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

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.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

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.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

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.