Year of sorrows

Year of Sorrows draws upon an extensive array of archival sources to chronicle the famine crisis of 1709 in Lyon and its surrounding provinces. Combining a traditional narrative of human struggle and desperate improvisation with contemporary analysis, Monahan takes his readers from the court of Versailles through the cities of Lyon into the hovels of French peasants who resisted the city's demand for their grain. Monahan goes on to analyze the political, social, economic, and demographic impact of the famine on an early modern city and explores the many conflicts created by the crisis between city and monarchy, city and countryside, and among various groups within Lyon. According to Monahan, the famine of 1709 serves as a prism to refract the interactions between royal finances and food shortages, between elites and the powerless, and between competing factions and power centers, and redefines the nature of the "absolute" monarchy of the Sun King. This dynamic study of human struggle and its political and social dimensions sheds new light on a host of issues and problems in France before the Revolution and on the role that such crises have played in human history.