# Parmentier: The 18th-Century Trick That Made France Eat Potatoes

*History & War · Eleanor Hartwell · 2026-09-12*

## TL;DR

Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, a French pharmacist, promoted the potato in the 1780s after eating it as a prisoner of war. He won royal backing for the crop, staged guarded fields at Sablons that locals were meant to raid, and presented potato flowers to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who wore them and made them fashionable. France eventually adopted the tuber.

## Key facts

- Antoine-Augustin Parmentier was a French pharmacist and agronomist who became the leading advocate for the potato in France.
- As a prisoner of war in Prussia during the Seven Years' War, Parmentier was fed potatoes and returned to France in good health, which convinced him they were not harmful.
- In the 1780s, many people in France believed potatoes caused leprosy and were unfit for human consumption.
- Parmentier won the support of Louis XVI, who allowed him to plant potatoes on a plot at Sablons and wore a potato flower in his buttonhole.
- Parmentier is buried in Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, where visitors have long left potatoes at his grave.

## Why 18th-Century France Feared the Potato

In 18th-century France, the potato was widely feared and avoided. Many people believed the humble tuber caused leprosy, and for decades it was considered unfit for human consumption. A French peasant staring at a lumpy, dirt-caked vegetable pulled from the ground might genuinely wonder whether eating it could rot his skin. That was the world the potato had to survive.

The fear had layers. Potatoes grow underground, hidden in the dark, which struck many people as unnatural, even devilish. The plant also arrived from the New World, and anything that strange and unfamiliar was easy to associate with disease in an era of limited medical knowledge. On top of that, the potato was not mentioned in the Bible, and in a deeply religious society, a food absent from holy text carried a whiff of suspicion.

Then there was the skin. A potato's rough, lumpy surface looked unsettlingly like the sores of leprosy. For people who had seen the disease, that resemblance alone was enough to push the vegetable off the table. No one wanted to eat something that seemed to wear sickness on its face.

So the potato stayed on the margins, a crop that ordinary families avoided. Changing that reputation would take someone with patience, nerve, and a flair for theater. His name was Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, and the story of how he turned a feared tuber into a French staple starts here.

## The Prisoner Who Came Home Eating Potatoes

Antoine-Augustin Parmentier was a pharmacist and agricultural pioneer, and the potato owed its French reputation to him. His conversion did not happen in a laboratory or a lecture hall. It happened in a Prussian prison camp during the Seven Years' War, where he spent roughly three years as a captive and ate potatoes, day after day, as the core of his diet.

Think about what that meant in the 18th century. He had grown up in a France where the potato was treated as dangerous, a rough-skinned tuber from the New World that many believed caused leprosy. So when Parmentier walked back into France in good health after three years of eating the very thing his countrymen feared, he carried something no argument could give him: his own body as evidence. He was convinced, completely, that potatoes were not harmful.

That certainty ran straight into a wall. Parmentier realized that scientific explanations alone would not convince the public. You could publish, you could lecture, you could cite your own survival, and people would still push the potato away. Facts were not the problem. Belief was.

So he stopped trying to win the argument and started engineering a different one. If the French would not accept the potato as food, he would make them want it as a privilege. The setup for that trick began in the 1780s, when King Louis XVI granted him a large plot of land at Sablons, just outside Paris. What Parmentier did with that field turned a stubborn prejudice into a national craving.

## The Armed-Guard Trick at Sablons

By the 1780s, Antoine-Augustin Parmentier had a field, a king's blessing, and a problem. Persuading French peasants to eat a vegetable they had spent decades fearing was not going to happen through pamphlets alone. So he tried something stranger. In the 1780s, King Louis XVI granted Parmentier a large plot of land at Sablons, just outside Paris, and Parmentier planted it with potatoes, then ringed the field with armed guards.

Think about what that signaled. Soldiers do not stand watch over weeds. If the crown was protecting this crop with muskets, it had to be worth something. Parisians who had once crossed the street to avoid a potato now found themselves curious about what was behind the fence.

Here is where the story gets delicious, and where historians start to argue. As the popular legend goes, the guards carried secret instructions. They were to chase off thieves in daylight but look the other way after dark, reportedly even pocketing small bribes from anyone bold enough to slip into the field. Whether those orders were ever written down is debatable. What the traditional account claims is that Parisians began sneaking in at night, digging up potatoes, and replanting them in their own gardens.

True or embellished, the psychology landed. A crop that had been dismissed as unfit for ordinary people became something people wanted to possess. The fear was gone, replaced by desire.

**The reversal in one line:** the same tuber that had been feared as a cause of leprosy was now guarded like treasure, and the guarding itself was the advertisement.

Parmentier understood something his fellow agronomists kept missing. You cannot lecture a nation out of a superstition. You can, however, make that superstition look foolish by turning the forbidden thing into a status symbol. Sablons was not really a farm. It was theater, and the audience did exactly what he hoped.

## From Court Fashion to Famine Lifeline

Antoine-Augustin Parmentier understood something that most of 18th-century France did not: you can win an argument with data, but you win a country with dinner parties. So he threw lavish dinners where every course leaned on the potato, and he invited the most prominent names he could reach. Among his guests sat Benjamin Franklin, the American statesman then living in Paris. Serving a vegetable that most French diners still eyed with suspicion to a man of Franklin's reputation was a calculated move, and it worked.

Then came the masterstroke. Parmentier presented potato flowers to King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. The queen tucked the blossoms into her hair. The king pinned one to his buttonhole. Almost overnight, potato flowers became fashionable at the French court, and a plant once dismissed as fit only for animals and the desperately poor had a royal endorsement.

The timing could not have been luckier. In the late 1780s, France was hit by major grain shortages, the kind that emptied bread baskets and filled streets with anger. The potato was ready for that moment. It grows even in poor soil. It delivers more calories per acre than wheat. It shrugs off harsh weather that would wreck a grain harvest. Against the hunger that stalked France in those years, it was a genuine lifeline, and it played an important role in preventing hunger for thousands of people.

Parmentier died in 1813 and was buried in Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Even today, visitors leave potatoes at his grave, a small, strange tribute to the man who turned a feared tuber into the food that fed a nation.

## Parmentier's Grave and the Potatoes Left Behind

Antoine-Augustin Parmentier died in 1813, and his body was laid to rest in Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. More than two centuries later, the pharmacist who once begged his countrymen to eat a vegetable they feared still draws a steady trickle of visitors. What they bring with them is the strange part.

Walk past the rows of headstones and you may spot them: raw potatoes, sometimes a single one, sometimes a small pile, resting on the stone that marks his grave. Visitors leave them there on purpose, a quiet, slightly odd gesture of thanks. They are honoring the man who spent his career convincing France that the potato was not a threat but a gift.

It is a fitting tribute, and a funny one. The same crop that 18th-century Parisians once believed caused leprosy, the same lumpy tuber they distrusted because it grew underground and was not mentioned in the Bible, now gets placed at his tomb like flowers at a shrine. The thing they were told to avoid became the thing they carry to his grave.

Parmentier would likely have appreciated the joke. He had already tried nearly everything else to win people over, from the guarded field at Sablons to the potato dishes served at his own dinner table. The grave potatoes are simply the last chapter of that long campaign, carried on by strangers who never met him.

So the story ends where it began, with a potato and a skeptical crowd. Only now the crowd is on his side. If you ever find yourself wandering Père-Lachaise, keep an eye out near Parmentier's plot. Someone, at some point, will almost certainly have left a potato behind, proof that a stubborn idea, and a patient man, can outlast even the deepest of suspicions.


## Frequently asked questions

**Why did the French think potatoes caused leprosy in the 18th century?**

In 18th-century France, many people genuinely believed the potato caused leprosy, and the reasoning was oddly visual. The tuber's rough, lumpy skin resembled leprosy sores, and because it grew underground and never appears in the Bible, it carried an air of suspicion. In an era of very limited medical knowledge, that combination was enough to condemn it.

**How did Parmentier use armed guards to make potatoes popular in France?**

In the 1780s, King Louis XVI granted Antoine-Augustin Parmentier a large plot of land at Sablons near Paris. Parmentier planted it with potatoes and ringed the field with armed guards, which made passersby assume the crop must be enormously valuable. The guards were said to have secret orders to allow nighttime theft, a detail that belongs more to legend than to firm record.

**What role did King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette play in the potato's acceptance?**

Parmentier presented potato flowers to King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. The queen wore them in her hair, and the king placed them in his buttonhole. That single gesture reportedly turned potato blossoms into a fashion at the French court, lending the humble vegetable a respectability it had never enjoyed before.

**Was Parmentier a prisoner of war during the Seven Years' War?**

Yes. Parmentier, a pharmacist and agricultural pioneer, was captured by the Prussians during the Seven Years' War and spent roughly three years as a prisoner, largely eating potatoes. He returned to France in good health, and that experience convinced him the vegetable was nowhere near as dangerous as his countrymen believed.

**Did potatoes really help prevent famine in France during the 1780s?**

In the late 1780s, France faced severe grain shortages. Potatoes grew even in poor soil, delivered far more calories per acre than wheat, and tolerated harsh weather, so they became a genuine lifeline for thousands of people. A plant once deemed unfit for human consumption ended up playing a real role in preventing hunger.

**Why do people leave potatoes at Parmentier's grave in Père-Lachaise Cemetery?**

Parmentier died in 1813 and was buried in Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Today, visitors still leave potatoes on his grave to honor the man who persuaded France to eat them. It is a small, strange tribute, and entirely fitting for the pharmacist who turned a feared tuber into a national staple.

**What was Benjamin Franklin's connection to Parmentier's potato dinners?**

Parmentier hosted lavish dinners where course after course featured potato dishes, all aimed at winning over influential guests. Among those guests was Benjamin Franklin, the American statesman. Sharing a table with a figure of Franklin's reputation gave the potato a social endorsement that no pamphlet or lecture could have matched.

**How did the potato go from feared to fashionable in 18th-century France?**

It took a pharmacist, a king, and a little theater. Parmentier's guarded field at Sablons made the potato seem precious, his dinners made it respectable, and royal flowers made it chic. By the time grain shortages struck in the late 1780s, the potato had already completed its journey from a feared outsider to a prized crop. Editorial note: Details that remain unconfirmed, including some accounts of the Sablons guards and the extent of royal involvement, are presented here as reported rather than as settled fact.

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