The Great Fear or, as how the French would call it, La Grande Peur was a period of time during the French Revolution where there were riots and panic rising over the peasants. The peasants’ paranoia worsened when they began hearing of rumours that the king and the privileged wanted to overthrow and kill the Third Estate which basically consisted of majority of the French population. Also, rural unrest was already present since the harvests had been poor during that time of the year thus prices escalated which added more to the economic desperation of the peasants.
There were actually no plans of the king and the higher class of overthrowing and killing the peasants as well as keeping them away from the new harvests, but the peasants believed it because the French Revolution was in talks of bringing new rights for them. The peasants responded by violently rising up against their local lords, forcing them to renounce their rights over the peasants then killing them. Many aristocratic properties were also ransacked and looted mainly for grain, wine and written records. These written records were highly sought out by the peasants to destroy and remove any trace of their due dates of land-payments. This Great Fear quickly spread throughout France and did a lot of damage until the August Decrees were issued and militias were finally able to put order and control. Basically, the Great Fear finally showed the vulnerability of the French government at that time which was to say its lack of authority especially over the peasants. This even made the deputies at Versailles believe that the administration of rural France had collapsed.
There were actually no plans of the king and the higher class of overthrowing and killing the peasants as well as keeping them away from the new harvests, but the peasants believed it because the French Revolution was in talks of bringing new rights for them. The peasants responded by violently rising up against their local lords, forcing them to renounce their rights over the peasants then killing them. Many aristocratic properties were also ransacked and looted mainly for grain, wine and written records. These written records were highly sought out by the peasants to destroy and remove any trace of their due dates of land-payments. This Great Fear quickly spread throughout France and did a lot of damage until the August Decrees were issued and militias were finally able to put order and control. Basically, the Great Fear finally showed the vulnerability of the French government at that time which was to say its lack of authority especially over the peasants. This even made the deputies at Versailles believe that the administration of rural France had collapsed.
References:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/243266/Great-Fear
http://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/great-fear/
http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100206035158AAYxda2
http://www.hubertlerch.com/images/Great_Fear.jpg
Researchers:
Kathleen Lacson #15
Andrea Lim #16