 the great fear () was a general panic that occurred between 17 july and 3 august 1789 at the start of the french revolution.john merriman, a history of modern europe, volume 2: from the french revolution to the present (1996), 481. rural unrest had been present in france since the worsening grain shortage of the spring, and fueled by the rumours of an aristocrat "famine plot" to starve or burn out the population, peasant and town people mobilized in many regions. in response to rumours, fearful peasants armed themselves in self-defense and, in some areas, attacked manor houses. the content of the rumours differed from region to region -â 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 decision to abolish feudalism. ==causes and course of the revolts==  french historian georges lefebvre 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-comtÃ© in late 1788, peasants had gathered to take collective actions against the seigneurs. in early 1789, the king's financial minister jacques necker 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 dolÃ©ances 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 rumours circulating 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 or
1789_events_of_the_French_Revolution