As grain prices soared, even people with jobs had to spend as much as 80 percent of their income on bread.

The “Great Fear”

In such desperate times, rumors ran wild and set off what was later called the “Great Fear.” Tales of attacks on villages and towns spread panic. Other rumors asserted that government troops were seizing peasant crops.

Inflamed by famine and fear, peasants unleashed their fury on nobles who were trying to reimpose medieval dues. Defiant peasants set fire to old manor records and stole grain from storehouses. The attacks eventually died down, but they clearly showed peasant anger with the injustice of the old order.

Paris in Arms

Paris, too, was in turmoil. As the capital and chief city of France, it was the revolutionary center. A variety of factions competed to gain power. A faction is a group or clique within a larger group that has different ideas and opinions than the rest of the group.

Moderates looked to the Marquis de Lafayette, the aristocratic “hero of two worlds” who had fought alongside George Washington in the American Revolution. Lafayette headed the National Guard, a largely middle-class militia organized in response to the arrival of royal troops in Paris. The Guard was the first group to don the tricolor—a red, white, and blue badge that was eventually adopted as the national flag of France.

A more radical group, the Paris Commune, replaced the royalist government of the city. It could mobilize whole neighborhoods for protests or violent action to further the revolution. Newspapers and political clubs—many even more radical than the Commune—blossomed everywhere.

Some demanded an end to the monarchy and spread scandalous stories about the royal family and members of the court.

The National Assembly

Peasant uprisings and the storming of the Bastille stampeded the National Assembly into action. On August 4, in a combative all-night meeting, nobles in the National Assembly voted to end their own privileges. They agreed to give up their old manorial dues, exclusive hunting rights, special legal status, and exemption from taxes.

Peasant rebellions during the Great Fear began amid rumors that the king and other aristocrats wanted to overthrow the Third Estate.

An End to Special Privilege

“Feudalism is abolished,” announced the proud and weary delegates at 2 A.M. As the president of the Assembly later observed, “We may view this moment as the dawn of a new revolution, when all the burdens weighing on the people were abolished, and France was truly reborn.”

Were nobles sacrificing much with their votes on the night of August 4? Both contemporary observers and modern historians note that the nobles gave up nothing that they had not already lost. In the months ahead, the National Assembly turned the reforms of August 4 into law, meeting a key Enlightenment goal—the equality of all male citizens before the law.

Declaration of the Rights of Man

In late August, as a first step toward writing a constitution, the Assembly issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. The document was modeled in part on the American Declaration of Independence, written 13 years earlier. All men, the French declaration announced, were “born and remain free and equal in rights.” They enjoyed natural rights to “liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.” Like the writings of Locke and the philosophes, the declaration insisted that governments exist to protect the natural rights of citizens.

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