PEASANTS, WORKERS, AND THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION IN THE AUDE

In the twilight of the ancien régime, before the great harvest failures that helped to bring down the monarchy, the intendant of Languedoc, Charles Ballainvilliers, wrote to the king, “There is no area in France which can be compared for the abundance of its harvests in grains to the fertile plain of Coursan, although … none produces more beautiful wheat than [the plain of] Narbonne.”¹ In the mixed economy of the Aude in the eighteenth century, fields of wheat stretched for miles on either side of the Route Royale from Carcassonne to Narbonne and on up to Béziers in the