This book describes what happened over the course of May, June, and into late July of 1789 in the French countryside. Fear spread across the country: fear of starvation, fear of thieves and riotous strangers, fear of an aristocratic conspiracy to reverse the gains of the Third Estate, and fear of an impending army of brigands who had just pillaged, burned, and destroyed your neighbour's village and were tonight on their way to do the same to yours.

Almost none of it was true, and almost none of the fears were realised.

The book starts out by painting a fascinating and detailed picture of how villagers and peasants lived in the countryside in 1789. Then it moves into an interesting but slightly confusing tale of how the countryside reacted to the Estates General. The final part, about how the final climatic panic about what was happening just over the horizon spread its tentacles over much of France, is almost indecipherably confusing and vague: countless pages list countless French villages and towns in rapid succession. For anyone who doesn't have an encyclopedic knowledge of French geography the effect is deadening, soporific, and infuriating.

But don't let that stop you, for there are so many fascinating details and stories tucked in there: the page describing the mechanics of how news spread from Paris to other parts of France, going into the details of who exactly was writing letters to who, and how long they took to get from here to there; the countless hilarious stories of how panicked peasants and townsfolk mistook noisy cows or arguments in the fields for rampaging brigands; the frightened nobility dodging this way and that to try and avoid consequences; the sometimes sensible and sometimes panicked government officials trying to make sense out of chaos. Worthwhile reading for the details.