The Great Fear of 1789

✍ Scribed by Georges Lefebvre

• Publisher: Schocken
• Year: 1989
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 250
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This major work, graphically describes the panic, paranoia, and social chaos that sparked the Revolution. One of France's great historians analyzes the causes of the mass hysteria that overcame rural France during the summer of 1789, as hungry villagers flocked into towns to look for work or to beg for charity, and as vagrants and beggars choked the rural roads, threatening reprisals against householders who refused to give them shelter or a crust of bread.

Originally published in 1983.

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✦ Table of Contents

Contents
Table of Maps
Introduction
Foreword
Glossary
Part I: The Countryside in 1789
1. Hunger
2. The Wanderers
3. The Riots
4. The Beginnings of the Revolution and the First Peasant Revolts
5. The People in Arms and the First Outbreaks of Fear
Part II: The ‘Aristocrats’ Plot’
1. Paris and the Idea of Conspiracy
2. How the News was Spread
3. The Reaction to the ‘Plot’ in the Provinces I: The Towns
4. The Reaction to the ‘Plot’ in the Provinces II: The Countryside
5. The Peasant Revolts
6. The Fear of Brigands
Part III: The Great Fear
1. Characteristics of the Great Fear
2. The Original Panics
3. How the Panics Spread
4. The Warning Panics
5. The Relays
6. The Currents of the Great Fear
7. The Later Fears
8. The Consequences of the Great Fear
Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliographical Notes
Index of Place Names