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During the War of the Fronde, supporters on all sides of the contributed by writing vers burlesques satirizing all parties: Jules Cardinal Mazarin, the Queen mother, under-age King Louis XIV, the Prince of Condé, members of parliament, guild members and the bourgeoisie. It was so politically messy and lethal that Voltaire wrote in Le Siècle de Louis XIV, “The war ended and was renewed again at several different times;” he wrote, “and there was not a person who had not frequently changed sides.”
Among the burlesques of 1649 was Les Charmans effects des barricades, où l’amitié durable de la comapgnie des frères de Bacchique de Pique-Nique. According to the satirist, even while military engagements were still occurring in Paris, the satirist delights in suggesting that Pique-Nique and his cohorts have given up their swords and muskets and become gluttons, “perturbateurs de la joye,” deviants of pleasure. Their bravado and acts of heroism are confined to the table where they pleasurably grillades, ragouts, and cabirotades [stews] while swilling gallons of wine.
Henry Vizetelly. A History of Champagne. London: Vizetelly & Co., 1882 .
As often happens, a word’s context shifted, and its meaning morphed. Four decades after Pique-Nique and his Bacchic Company disappeared, the denotation of gluttony and heavy was forgotten, but sharing dining costs became stylish among Parisians. Un repas á piquenique until Gilles Ménage included piquenique in his Dictionnaire du Etymologique de la Langue Françoise. Spelling it without a hyphen, Ménage defined piquenique as a sophisticated dining style for which each participant paid his reckoning, “Nous disons faire un repas á piquenique, pour dire faire un repas où chacun paye son écot.”
Menage’s definition was the standard for more than sixty-eight years until superseded by the Dictionnaire de L’Académie française, 4th Edition (1762), which restated the 1694 definition intact. Despite Ménage’s fame as an etymologist, his entry does not refer to Pique-Nique or the Bacchic Brotherhood.