The Great Fear in the Countryside

While Paris rose, the countryside erupted. In late July and early August 1789, rumours spread that nobles had hired bands of 'brigands' to destroy crops and punish peasants for defying their lords. This panic, known as the Great Fear, travelled from village to village along several separate currents. Armed peasants found no brigands, but in many regions they turned on the châteaux, seeking and burning the documents that recorded their feudal dues.

Some property was destroyed and there was some violence, though fewer people were killed than the scale of the panic might suggest. Georges Lefebvre's classic 1932 study traced how rumour, hunger and hope combined. The rural revolt mattered enormously: it showed deputies in Versailles that the peasantry would not wait for gradual reform, and it directly prompted the dramatic decisions of the night of 4 August.