Pearson Edexcel International GCSE in History · 4HI1 · Free · no account needed

The Grande Peur and the setting up of the National Assembly

Who abolished feudalism in France — the deputies who voted for it, or the peasants who had stopped obeying it?

Option 1 · The French Revolution, c1780–99 › Key topic 2 · Short-term causes of the Revolution: from Assembly of Notables to Estates General, 1787–89 — one of 4 lessons in this key topic. Paper 1 — depth study: The French Revolution, c1780–99, key topic 2 (30 marks: 6 · 8 · 16).

Learn the Grande Peur and the setting up of the National Assembly, teach it to an AI pupil, then defend it in a marked debate — this lesson carries all three.

What the specification asks for

“the Grande Peur, the setting up of the National Assembly” — examined through consequence and change. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

A panic that spread faster than news

Through the second half of July and into August 1789 a rumour swept rural France: that brigands in the pay of the nobility were coming to destroy the standing crops before the harvest. There were no brigands. The panic moved along the roads at a speed that has been mapped, and the response in village after village was the same — the peasants armed themselves, found no brigands, and turned on the châteaux instead.

What they attacked was specific. They burned the terriers, the manorial registers recording seigneurial dues, tithes and services. This is the detail that turns an anecdote into an argument: they were destroying the legal evidence of their obligations, which is a considered act rather than a riot.

The night of 4 August

The National Assembly at Versailles now faced a countryside in which its own supporters' property was burning and its authority did not run. The response, on the night of 4 August 1789, was to abolish the feudal regime. The session was theatrical: the Vicomte de Noailles and the Duc d'Aiguillon, both nobles, opened it by renouncing their own privileges, and deputies competed through the night to surrender hunting rights, seigneurial courts, tithes, venality of office and provincial exemptions.

The decrees drafted afterwards were considerably less generous than the night suggested. Personal servitudes were abolished outright; dues regarded as attached to property were declared redeemable, meaning peasants were expected to buy them out. Redemption was widely refused and simply not paid, and the obligations were finally abolished without compensation in 1793.

The August decrees were followed on 26 August by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which stated the principles the new order would rest on. The two together are what the Assembly did with the authority the crowd and the countryside had won for it.

What changed, and who changed it

The abolition of the feudal regime is the largest single social change of the Revolution and it outlasted everything else — the monarchy came back in 1814 and feudal dues did not. It is worth being precise about who accomplished it.

The Assembly voted; the countryside had already acted. The deputies were ratifying a fact rather than granting a concession, and the evidence is the timing: the Great Fear runs through late July, and the night of 4 August follows it. Had the Assembly refused, the registers would still have burned.

That is the argument to carry into an essay. It does not diminish the deputies, several of whom surrendered real property that night. It relocates the causation: the greatest achievement of the National Assembly was made possible by people who had no vote, no representation and no seat in it.

There is a second consequence of the Great Fear that answers a different question. The panic put muskets and pikes into the hands of villagers across most of France, and the militias formed to meet imaginary brigands did not disband afterwards; many became the rural National Guard. The Revolution therefore acquired, in a fortnight and without any decision by anybody, an armed provincial population — which is one reason the counter-revolution of 1793 had to be fought as a civil war rather than suppressed as a riot.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

July–August 1789
The Great Fear spreads through rural France; peasants burn manorial registers. Why this date: It made the collection of seigneurial dues impossible before any law abolished them, which is why the abolition arrived as ratification.
4 August 1789
The Assembly abolishes the feudal regime in a night session. Why this date: It is the largest social change of the Revolution and the only one that survived every later restoration.
26 August 1789
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is adopted. Why this date: It states the principles on which the new order rests and becomes the document against which every later government is measured.

The figures, and how far to trust them

  • 4 August 1789 — The night session that abolished the feudal regime — a date, not a quantity, and the one most worth producing under pressure.
  • 1793 — The year the redeemable dues were finally abolished without compensation. (The gap between 1789 and 1793 is the point: the August decrees left an obligation to buy out dues that was widely refused.)

The people to place

  • Vicomte de Noailles — Opened the session of 4 August by renouncing his own seigneurial privileges.
  • Duc d'Aiguillon — One of the wealthiest landowners in France; supported the renunciation on the same night.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

  • The 'peasant revolution' reading: The rural risings of July 1789 destroyed the seigneurial system in practice, and the Assembly's decrees registered a change that had already occurred outside its control. Contested by The reading that stresses what the decrees actually said — that the distinction between abolished and redeemable dues shows the deputies limiting the concession, and that the completion in 1793 required four more years of political struggle..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: Feudalism was abolished outright on 4 August 1789.

This: Personal servitudes were abolished; dues treated as property rights were made redeemable, meaning peasants had to buy them out. Full abolition without compensation came in 1793.

Not this: The Great Fear was caused by real attacks by brigands.

This: There were no brigands. It was a panic, and what makes it historically important is what people did in response to a threat that did not exist.

Two things students merge

Blurred: The night of 4 August and the August decrees.

The distinction: The night was a session of renunciations; the decrees drafted over the following week were narrower, distinguishing abolished from redeemable dues. Answers that treat the two as identical miss why the peasantry remained discontented until 1793.

Blurred: The Great Fear and ordinary bread riots.

The distinction: Bread riots attacked grain stores and markets and France had them regularly. The Great Fear attacked manorial registers, which is an attack on a legal relationship rather than on a price, and that is why it produced legislation.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer notices what the peasants chose to burn. They did not attack the château's furniture or its owner; they took the terriers, the registers in which their obligations were written down, because an obligation nobody can produce evidence of is an obligation that has ended — and the Assembly's decree three weeks later was catching up with a decision already taken in several thousand villages.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 1 (a) (6 marks — “What impression does the author give about …? You must use Extract A to explain your answer.”); Paper 1 (b) (8 marks — “Explain two effects of … on ….”); Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “'[A statement about the period.]' You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own. How far do you agree? Explain your answer.”).

What earns marks: The burning of the terriers, named as such. It converts a general claim about rural unrest into evidence that the peasants were destroying the legal basis of the dues, which is what makes 4 August a ratification.

The cap that bites here: The 8-mark question caps one effect at 4 marks. The rural and the legislative are two distinct effects and using both is the safe structure.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

  1. What impression does the author give about the events in the French countryside in the summer of 1789? [6 marks · Paper 1 (a)]
  2. Explain two effects of the Great Fear on the National Assembly. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
  3. Explain two effects of the decrees of August 1789 on French society. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
  4. 'The abolition of feudalism was the greatest achievement of the National Assembly.' How far do you agree? [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
  5. 'The peasants achieved more in 1789 than the deputies did.' How far do you agree? [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Decide it

This lesson feeds a Decide History judgement — a position you commit to, an objection you answer, a criterion you name: What was the most significant event of 1789?.

Think you understand it?

Reading is the start. On Incandio a topic counts as mastered only once you have taught it and defended it — the two things a revision guide cannot ask of you.

Incandio this topic → Prove it. Teach it. Defend it. What does “Incandio it” mean?

  1. Prove it — five questions on the Grande Peur and the setting up of the National Assembly, marked on the spot, that tell you what was missing rather than just what was wrong.
  2. Teach it — Explain the Grande Peur and the setting up of the National Assembly — what happened, why, and what it made possible — to Ember, an AI pupil who asks the awkward question. Understanding is credited; wording is not required.
  3. Defend it — Argue the Grande Peur and the setting up of the National Assembly against the historical mind with the strongest claim on it — three rounds, marked against descriptors you can read before you begin.
  4. Then the exam — 15 authored exam-style questions on this option, marked on Incandio with the mistake you actually made named.

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The debate is against The Case for the Crowd — the case itself, argued at its strongest, because on this strand there is no single person whose position the learner has to defeat.

Carry on through the option