The deregulation of the grain market implemented…

The deregulation of the grain market implemented by Turgot, Louis XVI's Controller-General of Finances, in 1774, was the main cause of the famine which led to the Flour War in 1775.

At the end of the Ancien Régime, the fear of famine has become an ever-present dread for the lower strata of the Third Estate, and rumors of the "Pacte de Famine" to starve the poor are still rampant and readily believed.

Mere rumors of food shortage led to the Réveillon riots in April 1789.

Rumors of a plot aiming to destroy wheat crops in order to starve the population provokes the Great Fear in the summer of 1789.