Promulgated by the Convention the September 29th 1793, the law of the general maximum makes following the “Loi of the maximum”, on May 4th 1793, instituting the maximum decreasing of the price of the grains. Confronted with the dizzying increase of the prices caused by the depreciation of the Assignat S, the Parisian Sans-culotte S imposed on the national Convention this law fixing of maximum for the prices of the food products of first need and blocking the wages to try to cure the food shortage which prevails in besieged revolutionary France.

Variable according to the areas, the maximum price for the food products of first need was in general higher of a third than the current prices of 1790. As for the maximum of the wages, it was of half superior at the average level of 1790.

The human factor made that this first attempt at planned economy on behalf of a government produced contrary effects with the anticipated results. The peasants starting to dissimulate their harvests not to have to sell them at low prices and the speculators precipitating to acquire all that they could, it resulted a shortage without precedent from it worsened by the fact that the blocking of the wages was, as for him, much easier to make apply.

The attempt of Convention to prevent the failure of the law of the general maximum by repression while imprisoning and by guillotinant the contraveners contributed to make some, with the guillotine and the assignat, one of the symbols honnis of the Terreur. It caused a general dissatisfaction which involved its abolition, the December 24th 1794, by the Convention thermidorienne.

This disastrous economic measure produced a happy by-effect for the historians: counting the food products in circulation in revolutionary France, the “tables of the maximum” drawn up on this occasion constitute a priceless resource for the historians of the gastronomy in the inventory of the culinary inheritance of France.