15. Untrue Facts That Nonetheless Produced a Good Result
The French peasants’ main goal was to burn feudal documents that placed them under the thumbs of the aristocrats and clergy. While they were at it, they were not above burning aristocratic manor houses, church estates, or assailing nobles and clerics. Their panic-driven actions often caused more panic. Armed peasant bands, out to save the peasantry from the elites, were often mistaken by other peasants for bandits and foreigners supposedly hired by the elites to carry out the Famine Plot. It was untrue, but it did not matter.
The peasants armed themselves, or if already armed, redoubled their vigilance and hatred of the aristocrats and clergy who had hired the bandits and foreign marauders seen roaming the countryside. To appease the peasants and avert further rural unrest, the newly-created National Constituent Assembly abolished the feudal regime and its privileges on August 4th, 1789. So the Great Fear turned out to be one of those rare instances in which a mass panic, caused by false rumors and fake news, produced something good. The abolition of feudalism brought the rural turmoil to an end, but peasant unrest boiled over in various parts of France for years afterward.
