Saving the Forests of Revolutionary France

At the end of May 1787 the English agronomist and travel writer Arthur Young was in France. Crossing vast woodlands on his way to Orléans, he mused that the proportion of the French territory covered by forest must be ‘prodigious’. Young could be forgiven for this comment, for he was unaware that for decades the ministerial offices, salons, academies, and cafes of France had been awash with reports raising alarm about an impending wood famine and its potential impact on the country’s economy and naval strength. For the comte d’Essuiles, a retired army officer charged in 1786 with taking stock of the situation:

the ruin of a large part of the forests, the dearth of wood in over three-quarters of the realm, all demands that the ministry cease procrastinating and applying mild palliatives against major predicaments. 

While modern historians of forestry have mitigated the gravity of this alleged nationwide ‘dearth’, for contemporaries something had gone wrong, which required an immediate response from the state’s forestry administrators.