Question

Describe the Great Fear both in countryside and cities

Answer 1

The Great Fear (in French, Grande Peur) was a wave of peasant riots and violence that swept through France in July and August 1789. These riots were caused by economic concerns, rural panic and the power of rumour. Already excited by the summer’s political developments, France’s peasants began to hear rumours about roving bands of hired brigands, who were reportedly rampaging through the countryside, raiding villages and stealing grain. These rumours appeared in different places, took different forms and invoked different levels of response. Many peasants responded by arming themselves and mobilising to defend their property. Some went further and engaged in revolutionary violence, taking to the road, looting the châteaux of landed aristocrats and destroying feudal contracts. The peasants, it seems, became the destructive brigands they had initially feared. While few people were killed during the Great Fear, millions of livres of private and feudal property was either stolen or destroyed.