When Russian peasants set fire to hundreds of buildings in Moscow in 1648, the acute cause was a sharp rise in the price of salt. When they rioted again 12 years later, it was to protest a government policy that made copper money equal in value to coins made from silver—a policy that naturally caused widespread price inflation.
An increase in the price of bread, and an inept government response to it, helped set the French Revolution on its bloody course.
