[5] The members of the feudal aristocracy normally fled from their castles and were rarely subjected to violence, being located by the militia who were sent to reinstate order after the end of the uprising.
[5] Of those aristocrats captured by the peasants, most were simply forced to leave their estates; only a minority were reported to have been subjected to mistreatment such as beatings and humiliation, and there are only three confirmed cases of a landlord actually having been killed during the uprising.
[5] Although the Great Fear is usually associated with the peasantry, all of the uprisings tended to involve all sectors of the local community, including some elite participants, such as artisans or well-to-do farmers.
[6][7] Although the main phase of the Great Fear died out by August, peasant uprisings continued well into 1790 and left few areas of France (primarily Alsace, Lorraine and Brittany) untouched.
[8] As a result of the Great Fear, the National Assembly, in an effort to appease the peasants and forestall further rural disorders, on 4 August 1789, formally abolished the "feudal regime", including seigneurial rights.
In spite of all that is suggested by the political history of the period, the peasant disturbances at the beginning of the French Revolution did not depart from the typical community revolt of the preceding century".
Whether the brigands were English, Piedmontese or merely vagabonds was not easily determined, and when the Great Fear had spread to its largest expanse, it was a system, feudalism, rather than a specific person or group, at which its animosity was directed.
[12] The Cahiers de doléances had opened the door to the people’s opinion directly affecting circumstances and policy, and the Great Fear evidenced that change.
From 1593 to 1595 in Limousin and Périgord, groups of peasants rose up against the armed forces that occupied the countryside and raised funds by levying taxes and ransom.
When the chaotic political situation was stabilized with the coronation of Henry IV, the revolts ended, and the peasants were eventually accorded the tax rebate they had demanded earlier.
Thus, the threat of roaming bandits was a particularly poignant one, which evoked an era of lawlessness thaf the French monarchy had successfully countered in previous years.
There was much in common between the peasantry in the Great Fear of 1789 and the peasants of the revolts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but they were malleable and changed by the experience of Bourbon rule and its subsequent dissolution.