After the French Revolution, the Agricultural Management Committee, originally established in 1787, was dissolved. After Chaptal took over as Minister of the Interior, he had to rebuild local governments and handle all manner of affairs. The Paris Agricultural Association was still a semi-official organization rather than an actual department, and for the time being it had been housed in the Bois de Boulogne in western Paris.
Since the seventh century, the Bois de Boulogne had been the king's hunting grounds. Since the reign of Louis XIV, the forest had often been filled with handsome thoroughbred horses, impeccably dressed gentlemen, and extravagantly adorned ladies.
This was where the wealthy gathered. Security was good, the surroundings were pleasant, and many upper-class clubs had been established here. As the royal family gradually declined, the owners of the villas in Boulogne had changed. They now included officers who had won military honors, financiers, bankers, socialites, artists, and the like. A member of the Agricultural Association had donated his villa as a meeting place, and Georgiana brought Dermide here.
Just how backward were France's agricultural planting methods?
According to the renowned agronomist François-Hilaire Gilbert in 1787, French agriculture had made no progress whatsoever since ancient Rome. A cultivation method called "irregular planting" still existed. Along the Mediterranean coast and in regions such as Brittany and Thiérache, wasteland was reclaimed and planted continuously, only to revert to being covered in reeds after a few crops, or even turn back into forest. It was little different from the slash-and-burn farming of the Neolithic Age.
The two-year crop rotation practiced in southern France was a legacy of the ancient Mediterranean, while the large tracts of farmland came from Roman military colonies.
Georgiana could not possibly go south herself. What was she supposed to plant there in the dead