In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

11 ch ap ter one The Riot and Its First Renditions There are details that one would not believe if I wrote them down, for I would be accused of letting my imagination invent them. We are after all in the nineteenth century, we are in the heart of France. —“Assassinat de M. Louis Chambert” O n Wednesday, 13 January 1847, in a working-class faubourg of Buzan- çais called Les Hervaux, a group of women encountered a convoy of grain halted at an inn.1 Determined to keep its cargo in Buzançais, they sought reinforcements among men working at the nearby charity workshop . Although the men hesitated, the women badgered them into action. Soon the mayor, Pierre-Charles Guesnyer, and several gendarmes arrived and calmed the crowd, the men returned to their work, and the carts continued on their way. However, the women soon recanted and again swooped down on the shipment. With the carts at bay, women returned to the workshop to rally the men once more. The latter, aware that they traditionally faced more severe post-riot punishment than women, seemed inclined to “listen to the mayor rather than give him a ‘coup de pic,’”2 as one of the women observed. Women assaulted the reluctant men verbally and physically, “calling [them] stupid animals and cowards.”3 One man said, “Women forced [me] to march with them. They even hit me in the kidneys with rocks.”4 When the investigating magistrate later interrogated participants, he heard repeatedly that, menaced by “fear of going without grain,” unemployment, and the pittance paid in charity workshops, desperate Buzancéens succumbed to the temptation posed by passing cargoes. For example, Jean Légeron, a twenty-seven-year-old with two young children, described himself as “in need.” When the magistrate declared that employment at the workshop shielded him from real need, Légeron retorted, “I only earned 15 sols a day and one cannot live on that.”5 Interpreting Social Violence in French Culture 12 Faced by this determined, concerted uprising, local authority faded away. The mayor and gendarmes retreated while men and women escorted carts and cargo uphill to the town hall courtyard and unloaded them. As the evening passed, several authorities—holed up in the town hall—debated ways to regain control. All efforts to rally the national guard having failed, the mayor dispatched a plea for help to the prefect, Ferdinand Leroy, twenty-three kilometers away in Châteauroux. However, word soon came that he had gone to quell a rumored disorder at Levroux and that his substitute refused to requisition troops without the prefect’s permission. Left to fend for themselves, the mayor and the justice of the peace hunkered down for the night in the town hall while three gendarmes and their brigadier, Desiré Caudrelier, monitored the grain and its interceptors. For a while the parish priest circulated among the people to try to calm them. As night fell, a crowd now swelled by curious neighbors, as well as workers returning from field and shop, spied another grain shipment, this one en route to Buzançais’s bolting mill. They detoured this cargo to the courtyard, where it joined the earlier spoils, and its escort swelled the growing throng. From the restive crowd emerged a few distinctive characters, some of them destined to live on in future accounts. Among them, a twenty-five-year-old unmarried, illiterate day laborer, Baptiste Bienvenu, joined the group escorting the second shipment. Although Bienvenu had no court record, he had a reputation as “excitable,” having previously insulted and threatened a local proprietor for selling “worthless grain.”6 He also had a felling ax, which he carried everywhere and brandished when his anger mounted. Witnesses claimed that because of this fierce, ever present weapon they could spot him easily and remembered him vividly. The courtyard congregants debated when and at what price to distribute the grain. Finally, they decided to guard it overnight and resolve the issue in the morning. As the January night grew colder, they lit a bonfire and fortified themselves with wine and eau-de-vie (brandy) supplied by François Moneron, a carpenter, window maker, and innkeeper. Thus fortified, the assembly mounted a campaign for support by dispatching small groups to roam the town, knock on doors, and rally locals. By midnight, several among those assembled in the Buzançais courtyard decided to sound the town’s tocsin. Repeated efforts to get the bell tower keys...

Share