Great Fear
Encyclopedia
The "Great Fear" occurred from 20 July to 5 August 1789 in France at the start of the French Revolution
. Rural unrest had been present in France since the worsening grain shortage of the spring, and the grain supplies were now guarded by local militias as rumors that bands of armed men were roaming the countryside spread.
In response, fearful peasants armed themselves in self-defense and, in some areas, attacked manor house
s. The content of the rumors differed from region to region – in some areas it was believed that a foreign force were burning the crops in the fields while in other areas it was believed that bandits were burning buildings. Fear of the peasant revolt was a deciding factor in the Night of 4 August decision to abolish feudalism
.
demonstrated that revolt in the countryside can be followed in remarkable detail. The revolts had not only economic but also political causes, pre-dating the events in the summer of 1789. As Lefebvre commented, "To get the peasant to rise and revolt, there was no need of the Great Fear, as so many historians have suggested: when the panic came, he was already up and away."The rural unrest can be traced back to the spring of 1788, when a drought threatened the prospect of the coming harvest. Harvests had in fact been bad ever since the massive 1783 Laki
volcanic eruption on Iceland
. Storms and floods also destroyed much of the harvest during the summer, leading to a fall in seigneurial dues and defaults on leases. Frosts and snow damaged vines and wrecked chestnut and olive orchards in the south. Vagrancy became a serious problem in the countryside and in some areas, such as the Franche-Comté
in late 1788, peasants had gathered to take collective actions against the seigneurs.
In early 1789, the king's financial minister Jacques Necker
was warned that the countryside risked a general uprising, and in April peasant uprisings were increasingly organised and anti-seigneurial in character. Demands were made for the cancellation of harvest payments and the restoration of rights, such as that of grazing. The drawing up of the Cahiers de doléances
and subsequent elections contributed to the general expectation of reform. While Lefebvre argued that fear of aristocratic conspiracy was a contributing factor in the peasant revolts, Timothy Tackett has recently demonstrated that the rumors circulting in Paris could not possibly have traveled across the countryside quickly enough to have caused the uprising. Tackett posits a fear of anarchy, rather than of aristocratic conspiracy, as the "mystical multiplier" which Lefebvre originally set out to uncover. Peasants began to arm themselves, ringing church bells to warn of danger, and took to attacking the symbols of the seigneurial regime, reclaiming tithes and grain.
The panic began in the Franche-Comté, spread south along the Rhône
valley to Provence
, east towards the Alps
and west towards the centre of France. Almost simultaneously, a panic began in Ruffec
, south of Poitiers
, and travelled to the Pyrenees
, towards Berry
and into the Auvergne
. The uprising coalesced into a general 'Great Fear' as neighbouring villages mistook armed peasants for brigands. Although the main phase of the Great Fear died out by August, peasant uprisings continued well into 1790, leaving few areas of France untouched (Alsace
, Lorraine
and Brittany
remained largely untouched).
Although the Great Fear is usually associated with the peasantry, all the uprisings tended to involve all sectors of the local community, including some elite participation, such as artisans or well-to-do farmers. Often the bourgeoisie had as much to gain from the destruction of the feudal regime as the poorer peasantry.
The Great Fear was most intense between 20 July and 6 August, and partly explains why the nobility and the clergy surrendered their privileges on the Night of 4 August.
This event led to the abolition of serfdom and feudal obligations, and brought up the need for a new social structure. Even during the months of July and August many communities took legal action against their feudal lords which forced them to submit their feudal titles for judicial review, and refused to pay their dues during the trial.
The Great Fear was largely responsible for the National Constituent Assembly
's dismissal of feudal rights and obligations; this in effect led to the general unrest of the nobility of France.
, a hallucinogenic fungus. In years of good harvests, wheat with ergot was thrown away, but when the harvest was poor, the peasants could not afford to be so choosy.
in the Oise Valley, the sixteenth-century saw the and the seventeenth-century Croquants rebellions. Yves-Marie Bercé, in History of the Peasant Revolts, concludes "peasant revolts of the years 1789–92 had much in common with their seventeenth-century counterparts: unanimity of the rural community, rejection of new taxation to which they were unaccustomed, defiance of enemy townsmen and a belief that there would be a general remission in taxes, particularly when the king decided to convene the estates general. In spite of all that is suggested by the political history of the period, the peasant disturbances at the beginning of the French Revolution did not depart from the typical community revolt of the proceeding century.
The usual cause of communal violence was “an assault launched from outside upon the community as a whole” whether that outsider be those profiting from unfairly high bread prices, maurading bandits, witches or magistrates abusing power. This statement about sixteenth- and seventeenth-century uprisings appears, at first, to apply equally to the Great Fear of 1789. However, a distinctive aspect of the latter was an ambiguous outsider at the outset of disturbance. Whether the brigands were English, Piedmontese or merely vagabonds was not easily determined and, when the Great Fear had spread to its largest expanse, it was a system, feudalism, rather than a specific person or group, at which its animosity was directed. Earlier revolts had not been subversive, but rather looked to a golden age that they wished to be reinstated; the socio-political system was implicitly validated by a critique of recent changes in favour of tradition and custom. The Cahiers des doléances had opened the door to the people’s opinion directly affecting social circumstances and policy and the Great Fear evidences this change.
The most glaring difference between the Great Fear of 1789 and previous peasant revolts is its scope. Spreading from a half-dozen or so separate nuclei across the countryside, almost all of France found itself in rural uproar. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, revolt was almost always contained within the borders of a single province. This change in magnitude reflects to what extent social discontent was with the entire governmental system (and its ineffectiveness) rather than with anything particular to a locality. While the specific manifestation of the fear of brigands (who they were, what they were most likely to attack) may have been contingent upon local contexts, as Tackett argues, nevertheless, that the brigands were perceived as a genuine threat to the peasants across the country in a wide-variety of local contexts speaks to a more systemic disorder.
Comparing the peasant revolts of the Tard Avisés with the Great Fear of 1789 demonstrates some key similarities and differences. From 1593–1595, in Limousin and Périgord, groups of peasants rose up against armed forces that occupied the countryside and raised funds by levying taxes and ransom. In a series of assemblies, the Croquants, as they were derogatively called, worked on a military plan for action and successfully expelled the garrisons from their lands. The letters between these assemblies justified their armed resistance as opposition to unjust claims on their property. When the chaotic political situation was stabilized with the coronation of Henry IV, the revolts ended and the peasants were eventually accorded the tax rebate they had demanded earlier. The Tard-Avisés had specific goals and achieved them; the same cannot be said of the participants in the Great Fear.
The Great Fear of 1789 broke with another pattern typical of peasant revolts in earlier centuries. The panic lasted for more than a few weeks and during the most labour-intensive months of the year. The Tard-Avisés and other revolts of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries occurred during the Spring months when the peasants had spare time. The panic of brigands destroying the harvest was so great in 1789 that peasants actually forwent working on the harvest in late June and July. The pragmatism of the previous revolts, which had produced real results, had disappeared by the end of the Ancien Régime.
Communal violence was but one tactic out of many for opposing an enemy and the peasants of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries, drawing on a heritage of communal justice, might rise up to prevent enclosement of a communal grazing space, like a marsh, to demand lower bread prices, or to evade their taxes. During the reign of Louis XIV, however, popular revolt became less and less of a viable option for reform as the state became better able to respond to insurgency and addressed many of the issues at the heart of peasant revolt. Reforms in the military structure prevented French soldiers from plundering French soil and armed conflict with other powers was not fought at home. Thus, the threat of roaming bandits was a particularly poignant one – it evoked an era of lawlessness which the French monarchy had successfully countered in previous years.
There was much in common between the peasantry in the Great Fear of 1789 and the peasants of the revolts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but they were not unmalleable nor unchanged by the experience of Bourbon rule and its subsequent dissolution. Without the monarchy or a replacement government to administer and protect the people, the harvest, and with it, life itself, was in grave danger.
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
. Rural unrest had been present in France since the worsening grain shortage of the spring, and the grain supplies were now guarded by local militias as rumors that bands of armed men were roaming the countryside spread.
In response, fearful peasants armed themselves in self-defense and, in some areas, attacked manor house
Manor house
A manor house is a country house that historically formed the administrative centre of a manor, the lowest unit of territorial organisation in the feudal system in Europe. The term is applied to country houses that belonged to the gentry and other grand stately homes...
s. The content of the rumors differed from region to region – in some areas it was believed that a foreign force were burning the crops in the fields while in other areas it was believed that bandits were burning buildings. Fear of the peasant revolt was a deciding factor in the Night of 4 August decision to abolish feudalism
Feudalism
Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...
.
Causes and course of the revolts
French historian Georges LefebvreGeorges Lefebvre
Georges Lefebvre was a French historian, best known for his work on the French Revolution and peasant life. He coined the term "history from below", which was later popularised by the British Marxist Historians...
demonstrated that revolt in the countryside can be followed in remarkable detail. The revolts had not only economic but also political causes, pre-dating the events in the summer of 1789. As Lefebvre commented, "To get the peasant to rise and revolt, there was no need of the Great Fear, as so many historians have suggested: when the panic came, he was already up and away."The rural unrest can be traced back to the spring of 1788, when a drought threatened the prospect of the coming harvest. Harvests had in fact been bad ever since the massive 1783 Laki
Laki
Łąki may refer to the following places in Poland:*Łąki, Lower Silesian Voivodeship *Łąki, West Pomeranian Voivodeship *Łąki, Lublin Voivodeship...
volcanic eruption on Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
. Storms and floods also destroyed much of the harvest during the summer, leading to a fall in seigneurial dues and defaults on leases. Frosts and snow damaged vines and wrecked chestnut and olive orchards in the south. Vagrancy became a serious problem in the countryside and in some areas, such as the Franche-Comté
Franche-Comté
Franche-Comté the former "Free County" of Burgundy, as distinct from the neighbouring Duchy, is an administrative region and a traditional province of eastern France...
in late 1788, peasants had gathered to take collective actions against the seigneurs.
In early 1789, the king's financial minister Jacques Necker
Jacques Necker
Jacques Necker was a French statesman of Swiss birth and finance minister of Louis XVI, a post he held in the lead-up to the French Revolution in 1789.-Early life:...
was warned that the countryside risked a general uprising, and in April peasant uprisings were increasingly organised and anti-seigneurial in character. Demands were made for the cancellation of harvest payments and the restoration of rights, such as that of grazing. The drawing up of the Cahiers de doléances
Cahiers de doléances
The Cahiers de Doléances were the lists of grievances drawn up by each of the three Estates in France, between March and April 1789, the year in which the French Revolution began...
and subsequent elections contributed to the general expectation of reform. While Lefebvre argued that fear of aristocratic conspiracy was a contributing factor in the peasant revolts, Timothy Tackett has recently demonstrated that the rumors circulting in Paris could not possibly have traveled across the countryside quickly enough to have caused the uprising. Tackett posits a fear of anarchy, rather than of aristocratic conspiracy, as the "mystical multiplier" which Lefebvre originally set out to uncover. Peasants began to arm themselves, ringing church bells to warn of danger, and took to attacking the symbols of the seigneurial regime, reclaiming tithes and grain.
The panic began in the Franche-Comté, spread south along the Rhône
Rhône River
The Rhone is one of the major rivers of Europe, rising in Switzerland and running from there through southeastern France. At Arles, near its mouth on the Mediterranean Sea, the river divides into two branches, known as the Great Rhone and the Little Rhone...
valley to Provence
Provence
Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...
, east towards the Alps
The Alps
The Alps is a 2007 American documentary film about the climbing of the north face of the Eiger in the Bernese Alps by John Harlin III, son of John Harlin who died on the same ascent 40 years earlier...
and west towards the centre of France. Almost simultaneously, a panic began in Ruffec
Ruffec
Ruffec may refer to the following places in France:*Ruffec, Charente, a commune in the Charente department*Ruffec, Indre, a commune in the Indre department...
, south of Poitiers
Poitiers
Poitiers is a city on the Clain river in west central France. It is a commune and the capital of the Vienne department and of the Poitou-Charentes region. The centre is picturesque and its streets are interesting for predominant remains of historical architecture, especially from the Romanesque...
, and travelled to the Pyrenees
Pyrenees
The Pyrenees is a range of mountains in southwest Europe that forms a natural border between France and Spain...
, towards Berry
Berry (province)
Berry is a region located in the center of France. It was a province of France until the provinces were replaced by départements on 4 March 1790....
and into the Auvergne
Auvergne (province)
Auvergne was a historic province in south central France. It was originally the feudal domain of the Counts of Auvergne. It is now the geographical and cultural area that corresponds to the former province....
. The uprising coalesced into a general 'Great Fear' as neighbouring villages mistook armed peasants for brigands. Although the main phase of the Great Fear died out by August, peasant uprisings continued well into 1790, leaving few areas of France untouched (Alsace
Alsace
Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...
, Lorraine
Lorraine (province)
The Duchy of Upper Lorraine was an historical duchy roughly corresponding with the present-day northeastern Lorraine region of France, including parts of modern Luxembourg and Germany. The main cities were Metz, Verdun, and the historic capital Nancy....
and Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
remained largely untouched).
Although the Great Fear is usually associated with the peasantry, all the uprisings tended to involve all sectors of the local community, including some elite participation, such as artisans or well-to-do farmers. Often the bourgeoisie had as much to gain from the destruction of the feudal regime as the poorer peasantry.
The Great Fear was most intense between 20 July and 6 August, and partly explains why the nobility and the clergy surrendered their privileges on the Night of 4 August.
This event led to the abolition of serfdom and feudal obligations, and brought up the need for a new social structure. Even during the months of July and August many communities took legal action against their feudal lords which forced them to submit their feudal titles for judicial review, and refused to pay their dues during the trial.
The Great Fear was largely responsible for the National Constituent Assembly
National Constituent Assembly
The National Constituent Assembly was formed from the National Assembly on 9 July 1789, during the first stages of the French Revolution. It dissolved on 30 September 1791 and was succeeded by the Legislative Assembly.-Background:...
's dismissal of feudal rights and obligations; this in effect led to the general unrest of the nobility of France.
Ergotism
Historian Mary K. Matossian argued that one of the causes of the Great Fear was consumption of ergotErgot
Ergot or ergot fungi refers to a group of fungi of the genus Claviceps. The most prominent member of this group is Claviceps purpurea. This fungus grows on rye and related plants, and produces alkaloids that can cause ergotism in humans and other mammals who consume grains contaminated with its...
, a hallucinogenic fungus. In years of good harvests, wheat with ergot was thrown away, but when the harvest was poor, the peasants could not afford to be so choosy.
Comparison to previous peasant revolts
Peasant revolt was clearly not a new phenomenon in late eighteenth-century France: the fourteenth-century saw the JacquerieJacquerie
The Jacquerie was a popular revolt in late medieval Europe by peasants that took place in northern France in the summer of 1358, during the Hundred Years' War. The revolt, which was violently suppressed after a few weeks of violence, centered in the Oise valley north of Paris...
in the Oise Valley, the sixteenth-century saw the and the seventeenth-century Croquants rebellions. Yves-Marie Bercé, in History of the Peasant Revolts, concludes "peasant revolts of the years 1789–92 had much in common with their seventeenth-century counterparts: unanimity of the rural community, rejection of new taxation to which they were unaccustomed, defiance of enemy townsmen and a belief that there would be a general remission in taxes, particularly when the king decided to convene the estates general. In spite of all that is suggested by the political history of the period, the peasant disturbances at the beginning of the French Revolution did not depart from the typical community revolt of the proceeding century.
The usual cause of communal violence was “an assault launched from outside upon the community as a whole” whether that outsider be those profiting from unfairly high bread prices, maurading bandits, witches or magistrates abusing power. This statement about sixteenth- and seventeenth-century uprisings appears, at first, to apply equally to the Great Fear of 1789. However, a distinctive aspect of the latter was an ambiguous outsider at the outset of disturbance. Whether the brigands were English, Piedmontese or merely vagabonds was not easily determined and, when the Great Fear had spread to its largest expanse, it was a system, feudalism, rather than a specific person or group, at which its animosity was directed. Earlier revolts had not been subversive, but rather looked to a golden age that they wished to be reinstated; the socio-political system was implicitly validated by a critique of recent changes in favour of tradition and custom. The Cahiers des doléances had opened the door to the people’s opinion directly affecting social circumstances and policy and the Great Fear evidences this change.
The most glaring difference between the Great Fear of 1789 and previous peasant revolts is its scope. Spreading from a half-dozen or so separate nuclei across the countryside, almost all of France found itself in rural uproar. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, revolt was almost always contained within the borders of a single province. This change in magnitude reflects to what extent social discontent was with the entire governmental system (and its ineffectiveness) rather than with anything particular to a locality. While the specific manifestation of the fear of brigands (who they were, what they were most likely to attack) may have been contingent upon local contexts, as Tackett argues, nevertheless, that the brigands were perceived as a genuine threat to the peasants across the country in a wide-variety of local contexts speaks to a more systemic disorder.
Comparing the peasant revolts of the Tard Avisés with the Great Fear of 1789 demonstrates some key similarities and differences. From 1593–1595, in Limousin and Périgord, groups of peasants rose up against armed forces that occupied the countryside and raised funds by levying taxes and ransom. In a series of assemblies, the Croquants, as they were derogatively called, worked on a military plan for action and successfully expelled the garrisons from their lands. The letters between these assemblies justified their armed resistance as opposition to unjust claims on their property. When the chaotic political situation was stabilized with the coronation of Henry IV, the revolts ended and the peasants were eventually accorded the tax rebate they had demanded earlier. The Tard-Avisés had specific goals and achieved them; the same cannot be said of the participants in the Great Fear.
The Great Fear of 1789 broke with another pattern typical of peasant revolts in earlier centuries. The panic lasted for more than a few weeks and during the most labour-intensive months of the year. The Tard-Avisés and other revolts of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries occurred during the Spring months when the peasants had spare time. The panic of brigands destroying the harvest was so great in 1789 that peasants actually forwent working on the harvest in late June and July. The pragmatism of the previous revolts, which had produced real results, had disappeared by the end of the Ancien Régime.
Communal violence was but one tactic out of many for opposing an enemy and the peasants of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries, drawing on a heritage of communal justice, might rise up to prevent enclosement of a communal grazing space, like a marsh, to demand lower bread prices, or to evade their taxes. During the reign of Louis XIV, however, popular revolt became less and less of a viable option for reform as the state became better able to respond to insurgency and addressed many of the issues at the heart of peasant revolt. Reforms in the military structure prevented French soldiers from plundering French soil and armed conflict with other powers was not fought at home. Thus, the threat of roaming bandits was a particularly poignant one – it evoked an era of lawlessness which the French monarchy had successfully countered in previous years.
There was much in common between the peasantry in the Great Fear of 1789 and the peasants of the revolts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but they were not unmalleable nor unchanged by the experience of Bourbon rule and its subsequent dissolution. Without the monarchy or a replacement government to administer and protect the people, the harvest, and with it, life itself, was in grave danger.