The Great Fear

Between mid-July and early August France in 1789 was gripped by apprehension and worry in what became known as the Great Fear.  Since the calling of the Estates General there was much to be hopeful for across France.  This was tempered with a series of alarming news: Paris had been surrounded by foreign troops, men were arming themselves in Paris and subsequent reports of the fall of the Bastille.

People in the country worried that the nascent Revolution was about to be destroyed by a combination of beggars, brigands, foreign troops and/or avenging aristocrats.  Tension was already high as there were increasing food prices due to a series of poor harvests.  Towns and villages began to arm themselves as people fled from their homes at onrushing spectral hordes which would had the effect of spreading rumours of chaos.

Many citizens were also confused as to what the status of their seigneurial dues were.  Some assumed that having listed their grievances in the Cahiers prior to the calling of the Estates General they no longer had to pay their dues.  This caused some to break into manor houses of the local nobility and tear up title deeds or to chase of the local aristocrats for fear of retribution.  This was the start of the émigrés movements out of France.  The end of feudalism started during the Great Fear would be completed by the Estates General on the Night of the 4th August 1789.

Madam De La Tour Du Pin on the Great Fear. Escape from the Terror The Journal of Madam De La Tour Du Pin, The Folio Society, London (1979) p90-91

On 28th July, there occurred one of the most extraordinary phenomena of the Revolution, one which has never yet been properly explained.  It is, in fact, incomprehensible unless one accepts the existence of some gigantic network stretching to every corner of France permitting one single action to communicate revolt, agitation and terror to every commune in the Kingdom simultaneously. … I saw it with my own eyes- and the same thing was happening everywhere else…

I heard a mass of people rushing into the square beneath my window- our house stood on a corner- all of them showing every sign of desperate fear.  Women were weeping and wailing, men were raging, swearing, threatening, others raised their hands to Heaven crying “We are lost!” in their midst, haranguing them, was a man on horseback.  He wore a disreputable green coat, which looked torn, and was hatless.  His dapple-grey was covered in lather, its cruppers cut and flecked with blood.  He stopped under my window and began a sort of harangue in the style of quacks in public places, saying: “They (referring to the Austrians) will be here in three hours; they are pillaging everything at Gaillefontaine; they are setting fire to the barns…..” and so on.  After a few sentences in this vein, he clapped spurs to his horse and galloped off towards Neufchatel.

Since I am not by nature fearful, I went downstairs, mounted my horse and rode at walking pace along the street which was filling with people who thought their last day had come.  I talked to them and tried to convince them that there was not one word of truth in what they had been told, that it was impossible for the Austrians, with whom we were not at war, to have arrived, as the impostor had been saying, in the heart of Normandy without anyone having heard that they were on the march.  When I reached the door of the church, I found the curé arriving to sound the tocsin.  At the moment, M. de La Tour du Pin rode up, fetched from the fountain by my groom.  They found me still mounted and holding on to the curé  by the collar of his cassock, trying to explain to him what folly it would be to alarm his flock by sounding the tocsin, instead of joining his efforts to mine to prove to them that their fears were groundless.

The Marquis de Bouille on the Great Fear.  Taken from Memoirs Relating to the French Revolution by the Marquis de Bouille, Cadell and Davies, London (1797) p92

The scarcity of corn, which threatened the people with famine, was the reason given for the insurrections which took place throughout the whole kingdom, from the time of the meeting of the States General, till the fourteenth of July, and the retreat of the troops assembled under Marshal Broglio in the environs of Paris: from that time quite different motives were assigned; the fear of a counter revolution by the aristocrats, the great majority of whom had already fled into other countries; apprehensions lest foreign armies should enter France these were the pretexts made use of to alarm the people and keep them in continual agitation ; it was from this period that they took arms in every part of France, forming themselves into companies, battalions, and regiments, under the name of national guards; nor did the government think it prudent to oppose this popular torrent, but distributed among the people muskets from the arsenals, and even cannon, which they demanded in a manner that showed they would not bear a refusal.