Great fear

The Great fear is a popular movement which took place in France from July 20th, 1789 to August 6th, 1789.

Origin

It finds its origin in province and is based on the rumors of aristocratic plot and the emotion caused in the peasants by the news coming from Paris. The noise was spread indeed that brigands were recruited by the Aristocratie to traverse the campaigns in order to cut the green corns and to thus destroy harvest. It is the idea of the “aristocratic plot”. One believed moreover than the noble owners “monopolized” the grains to sell them with the most price at the time of the “welding”. The fear of the brigands was spread quickly and the revolts burst quasi simultaneously: six panics burst in Franche-Comté with the explosion of a powder reserve to the castle of Quincey, close to Vesoul; in Champagne, the dust raised by a herd of sheep was taken for that of a troop of soldiers moving; in the Beauvaisis, the Maine; in the area of Nantes and in that of Ruffec, the monks beggars were taken for gangsters.

Disorders

Everywhere plunderings, riots, attacks, fires burst: with Marseilles, Lyon, Grenoble, Strasbourg, Rennes, Saint-Malo, the Harbor, Dijon, but also in the villages and the villages country, as in the Mâconnais, of which the properties seigneuriales were devastated by the “Brigands”, name which one gave to the revolted peasants. The peasants armed and formed militia to defend themselves against the brigands. But, as those Ci were only the fruit of imagination and of the fear, the peasants did not find them. Gathered and agitated by the ambient fear, they are caught some then with the castles and the abbeys, carrying the grains and burning the files and the burrows (collection of the seigneuriaux and feudal rights where is consigned what each one owes to the lord). The “fear” of Ruffec, for example, was spread very quickly: started on July 28th, 1789, it gained towards North Civray and Châtellerault, towards the West Saintes, the East Confolens and Montlucon, and towards the South Angouleme, Limoges, Cahors, Brive on July 30th, Montauban on July 31st, Toulouse and Rodez on August 1st, Lombez on August 2nd, Pamiers, Saint-Bosoms, Saint-Gaudens on August 3rd, Foix and Tarbes on August 5th. Whole areas however remained safe from this great fear: the Brittany, the Alsace, the Languedoc

In Aquitaine, which saw the beginning and the end of the Guerre One hundred Year old, the fear took the name of Peur of the English .

Here the account of the priest of Prayssas in Resident of Agen, Barsalou, cleaned later constitutional: PANIC FEAR: The last of the month of July 1789 day of Friday at ten o'clock in the evening, there was in parroisse great alarm caused by the fear of Anglois with which we were in peace, and which one disoit to be ten thousand men, sometimes with the wood of Feuga, sometimes with St-Pastou, Clairac, Lacépède and elsewhere. One sonnoit the alarm bell of touttes shares since eight hours of the evening. Wise people did not believe anything of it, and one sounded icy only at the day; alarm was large up to eleven hours before midday. On the consecutive envoy of three emissary of Lacépède which demandoit of the help for Clairac threatened - disoient-they - by ten thousand brigands, ours, were armed there with rifles, the faulx and the pins. Arrived at Lacépède they learned that touts the noises were without base. Widespread alarm étoit gradually. in Bordeaux during the night from Wednesday to Thursday, in Condom Friday at midday. In Agen Thursday evening at 9 a.m. one sounded the alarm bell in all the city where had gone of all shares fifteen thousand men-at-arms. All was calm in Agen around one hour after midnight. In 1690, even alarm in Agenois on August 20th day of Sunday under the denomination of fear of Huguenots.

The last mention is particularly interesting. It attaches the event to a history of the collective fears which remains to be written.

The peasants, once armed, did not meet “brigands”. They were caught some with the castles and claimed, to burn them, the old charters on which were registered the feudal right of which they had asked the suppression in the Registers of grievances: “burrows” (for “Book burrow”). They went sometimes until setting fire to the old residences seigneuriales. “The flame was so large between one and two hours of the night that I could have read with my window with the gleam of fire. In twenty-four hours this well furnished castle was very plundered and burned; one saw nothing any more but chimneys in the air and walls calcined by fire or blackened by smoke; there remained nothing there, not even hinges. ” consigned in his registers the priest of the parish of Bissy-la-Mâconnaise, witness of the fire of the castle of Lugny in Mâconnais.

The insurrectionists had fear mutually and made fear with the “aristocrats”. Georges Lefebvre of described five currents in its book “the Great fear of 1789”. There seems not to have been no dialog between these various currents which were however animated by common causes and goals. Great fear generated a anti-feudal armed revolt. By burning the castles and by destroying the burrows, the peasants sent to the assembly the symbol of their wish: suppression of the Feudality. It is to put an end to this revolt which the National Assembly issued the abolition of the privileges on August 4th, 1789.

According to Mary Matossian, the Pin of rye, present in great quantity in the flour of the time and showing hallucinatory characteristics, would have belonged to the causes of Great fear.

References

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