Taking Matters Into Our Own Hands

In almost every municipality, self declared committees followed the lead of the paris electors and started unilaterally taking control of local government. Citizen militias were then organized with the help of defecting soldiers from the regular army. While this revolution was going on in the municipalities, the cities and the bigger towns, something much less focused was brewing out in the countryside. As many peasants acted as if the simple act of writing down their complaints had broken any obligation to pay this toll or work on that project for free. And as they too heard only of deadlock an versailles, they started to get restless. So when the provincials too hit the hungry midsummer weeks of july 17 89 with no