The French Crash Program for Saltpeter Production, 1776-94

Abstract

In 1775 the French scientific periodical, Observations sur la physique, published in its literary news an account of an extraordinary prize proposed by the Academie Royale des Sciences for the year 1778. The prize was inspired by a report of the controller general of finances, Turgot, on the state of saltpeter manufacture and the diminution of its production. The king, it declared, wanted an improvement in production and at the same time an amelioration of the abuses of the fouille, and had decreed that a prize contest be offered under the auspices of the Academy.1 The fouille (literally, digging) was a widespread institution among European governments for the production of the major constituent of gunpowder, which occurred as an efflorescent salt on the surfaces of masonry buildings and on certain soils. Its collection, generally by scraping walls and sweeping stables, the material collected then being leached for soluble salt, resembled agriculture more than any other technology. It had been practiced generally since gunpowder had become essential for national that is, from the mid-17th century, sometimes under the direct control of a government bureaucracy, sometimes under lease as a legally protected private enterprise. The operation of the fouille, which obligated the property owner to submit to the operations of saltpeter hunters who sometimes insisted on scraping even the walls of his living rooms, was an abuse which was deplored even by many of those who practiced it. The necessities of defense, however, could hardly be denied. In one country, England, saltpeter production appears to have been