16. Sometimes It Does Not Matter Whether Something is Untrue, but Whether People Believe it and Act Based Upon That Belief
As revolution swept France in 1789, the peasants believed that the aristocrats had engineered grain shortages to starve and debilitate them. The end goal was to force the downtrodden back into submission and obedience to their social betters. That was not enough, however. To speed things up, the nobility had also summoned foreigners to burn the peasants’ crops, and hired bandits to loot their meager possessions, abuse and have their way with the women, murder the men, and burn their houses. All of that was untrue, but what mattered at the time was not whether it true or not. What mattered was whether the peasants believed it.
The peasants might not have understood the Enlightenment ideals and issues being debated in Paris in 1789. However, they understood the fear of evil elites plotting to harm them. So they acted based on their belief in “the Famine Plot”, even if that plot was untrue. In so doing, the peasants supercharged and saved the French Revolution. From July 22nd to August 6th, 1789, what came to be known as “The Great Fear” swept rural France. Armed peasants, sometimes supported by artisans and local bourgeoisie, went after aristocratic estates, as well as those of privileged clergy. Their chief aim was to find and burn documents that granted the nobility and clergy their privileges.