For older generations raised on Walter Cronkite and traditional print journalism, the pervasiveness of deliberately deceitful media may feel like a recent phenomenon or a symptom of the digital age. But there’s nothing new about fake news (ever heard of a famous radio adaptation of War of the Worlds?). Fake news has been a part of society since the days when our ancestors painted mythical beasts on the walls of caves.

Throughout human history, fake news has had real and often tragic consequences. In the late 18th century, unfounded rumors caused a wave of violence across the French countryside; scandal-mongering publications lead to the death of a king and queen. Ultimately, fake news helped create and shape one of the most important events of the last millennium: the French Revolution.

Somehow, it was easier for Americans in 1938 to believe that Martians might invade Earth than that the Nazis might invade Poland.

In the 18th century, kings and queens still ruled most of Europe through divine right — in other words, with no one to answer to but God. A person’s place in society was based on their relation to the monarch; there were no citizens in France, just subjects. But things were changing. The Enlightenment movement had inspired philosophers and statesmen to challenge long-held traditions, in particular the concept of absolute monarchy. By the late 18th century, universities, libraries, salons, and coffeehouses all across Europe were bursting with revolutionary ideas about equality and popular sovereignty.

But it wasn’t just in high culture where people were questioning the authority of the monarch. Even the lowly workers of Paris, who weren’t much for reading philosophical treatises, were losing reverence for their king, thanks in large part to a controversial form of 18th century French literature. Libelles (yes, this is where the word ‘libel’ comes from) were tabloid-esque publications that gave racy — and often totally fabricated — accounts of the private lives of the nobility. Their use of blue humor and pornographic imagery made them immensely popular with the French lower-class. They portrayed Versailles as a carnival of sin, a grotesque world where a narcissist king and queen and their entourage of perfumed and powdered nobles all lived decadent lives of tax-free luxury, drinking, eating, dancing, fucking, oblivious to the widespread suffering beyond their palace walls.

Libelle writers (libellistes) were typically French emigres who lived and worked in London to avoid censorship and arrest. Their reputation for pedaling smut led to their nickname Rousseaus du ruisseau (‘Rousseaus of the gutter’). One of the most popular and influential libellistes was Charles de Morande, whose Gazetier Cuirassé (‘Battleship Gazette’) published lurid tales of sex and intrigue set in the court of King Louis XV. He accused Madame du Barry, the king’s mistress, of sleeping with her butler, and alleged that several noble women had lost their teeth and hair from syphilis.

During the reign of King Louis XVI, libellistes took particular joy in smearing the queen. Marie Antoinette — or, as the libellistes were fond of calling her, l’Autrichienne (“the Austrian bitch”) — was often portrayed as a cold-hearted nymphomaniac who engaged in deviant sex acts with various men, women, and even members of her own family. When the Revolution began in 1789, the attacks on her increased in number and ferocity. She was said to have conspired against the king and the French people, to have squandered large sums of money, and — most famously — to have suggested that the starving people of France “eat cake.” One especially cruel libelle insinuated that she’d poisoned her own child, who’d recently died from tuberculosis.

The libellistes were only slightly less harsh with the king. They ridiculed him for his passivity and aloofness, portraying him as a pathetic man-child always being deceived by his corrupt ministers and cuckolded by his sex-crazed wife. One cartoon showed him watching in shock as Marie Antoinette made love to his brother, the comte d’Artois. To many, his inability to stifle such criticism only added to his image as an impotent leader and lover.

When it came to satisfying his wife, the king was unable to compete with the giant dick-horse seen on the right.

While libelles might have painted an exaggerated picture of the aristocracy, the French people had plenty of real reasons to be angry with the ruling class. French society was structured around a rigorous hierarchical system known as the ‘estates of the realm,’ which divided the population into three castes: the First Estate, made up of the clergy; the Second Estate, consisting of the nobles; and the Third Estate, which included everyone else (e.g. the urban workers, rural peasants, and a small but budding new class of upwardly mobile commoners known as the bourgeoisie). The First and Second Estates were exempt from most royal taxes, which meant that the lion’s share of the tax burden fell on the Third Estate. The years leading up to the French Revolution were especially hard for France’s poor, as meager harvests coupled with the government’s misguided economic policies led to famine and social unrest. In the Parisian working-class neighborhood of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, residents were spending up to 90% of their income on bread.

The Faubourg Saint-Antoine lay in the shadow the Bastille, an infamous prison and armory, and during the summer of 1789, home to the libertine writer the Marquis de Sade. Sade's work was known for its graphic depictions of sexual violence. He'd spent much of his adult life in prison and exile for rape, sodomy, and blasphemy. During his imprisonment at the Bastille, he wrote his most notorious work, 120 Days of Sodom, a novel so disturbing that it has since been banned in numerous countries and contributed to his legacy as the namesake for the term ‘sadism’.

The Marquis de Sade: one sick fuck

Peering through the bars of his cell window, Sade could sense the growing angst of the denizens of the surrounding neighborhood. Throughout the summer, riots and looting had become commonplace. Resentment had bred a new, revolutionary class of workers called the sans-culottes (which literally translates to “without britches”) who met at night in the city’s wine shops and taverns to vent their frustrations. “A great revolution is in the works in our country,” Sade wrote. “France is tired of the crimes of our sovereigns, of their cruelty, of their debauches and follies. It is tired of despotism and it is gong to break its ties.”

Over the years, the Bastille had come to be seen as a symbol of royal oppression. Parisian folklore was full of gruesome tales of rat-infested dungeons and torture chambers hidden deep within its castle walls. There were legends of a mysterious man — possibly an illegitimate member of the royal family — who’d spent decades locked in one of the fortress’s medieval towers, forced to wear an iron mask.

In reality, the Bastille was nothing like the hellish gulag most Parisians imagined it to be. It functioned more as a rehab for disgraced nobles who’d slept with the wrong guy’s wife. It was lightly guarded by a small garrison of invalides (veteran soldiers no longer capable of field service) and usually housed fewer than 10 prisoners at any single time. Not only were there no torture chambers, but inmates were actually treated quite well. The philosopher Voltaire, who served two stints in the Bastille, was known to dine each night at the governor’s table and received five to six visitors a day. Prisoners were even allowed to bring their own furniture and servants.

Despite the comforts provided by his hosts during his imprisonment, Sade was not one to pass up a good chance to cause public scandal. On the night of July 2nd 1789, he began to scream from his cell, “They are killing the prisoners here!” The stone walls of his cell created a megaphone effect that carried his cries to the streets below. A crowd formed and demanded to know what was happening. Bernard-René de Launay, the governor of the Bastille, tried to calm the incredulous crowd. He had Sade transferred two days later to the Charenton insane asylum. Less than two weeks later, de Launay was killed in history’s most famous act of mob violence. His head was cut off with a pocketknife and paraded through the streets of Paris atop a pike. He was the first of many who would lose their lives in the coming years over fake news.

A reminder that putting heads on pikes isn’t the best way to convince future generations that you were the good guys.

In the weeks leading up to de Launay’s decapitation, Paris teemed with paranoia. The journalist François-Noël Babeuf wrote:

On my arrival in Paris there was talk everywhere of a conspiracy led by the Count d’Artois [the king’s brother] and other aristocrats… A large number of the population of Paris would be killed, except those who submitted to the aristocrats and accepted the fate of slavery by offering their hands to the iron chains of the tyrants… If the Parisians had not discovered this plot in time, a terrible crime would have been committed. Instead, it was possible to form a response to this perfidious plan, which is unparalleled in all of history.

The sans-culottes scoured the city for guns and ammunition. A mob made its way to the Bastille on July 14th shouting, “Death to the rich! Death to all aristocrats! Death to hoarders! Drown the fucking priests!” After a brief battle, they stormed the fortress and killed the governor.

Despite its uninviting appearance, the Bastille actually wasn’t that bad of a place to serve time. It was basically the Club Fed of its day.

Peasants in the country felt emboldened by news of the events in Paris, but also feared reprisal. Strange rumors, much like the ones that had led the sans-culottes to revolt, spread from village to village, stories of foreign armies on the march across France and roving gangs of hired brigands terrorizing the countryside. Just like the sans-culottes, the peasants armed themselves and sought out members of the First and Second Estates on whom they could take vengeance.

In villages across France, peasants organized gangs to plunder the wealthy landowners’ manors. They stripped the fields of crops and raided grain silos, kidnapped and murdered noblemen, and robbed and set fire to their châteaux. In the end, the peasants became the very brigands they feared. “There no longer exists either executive power, laws, magistrates or police,” wrote the Venetian Ambassador. “A horrible anarchy prevails.” A royal official in Paris described the anxiety of the nobility in a letter dated August 13 1789:

The flames are sweeping through Anjou and Maine. The comte de Laurencin read out to us yesterday the terrible events suffered by Madame, his sister, at two chateaux in Dauphine: papers burnt, the chateaux pillaged and roofs removed if they were not burnt. They were not even left with the means of gathering and securing their harvest… In Alsace the inhabitants destroyed the superb forests at Bitche and Hagueneau, destroyed the fine glass-making establishments at Baccarat, and the king’s own magnificent ironworks. They are at work now in the forest of St-Germain, cutting down the finest trees. It is impossible to be sure now, and for the immediate future, where to live in France, or who can preserve their wealth. The king is in a state of despondency and in reply to complaints, says that there is nothing he can do.

Back when Europeans rioted over things other than soccer.

The causes of la Grande Peur (‘the Great Fear,’ as the wave of panic and violence came to be called) are a mystery. While it’s easy to view these events as a deadly, politically-charged game of telephone, historians are unable to account for the rapidity by which the rumors spread. In the age before the telegraph and locomotive, news only moved as fast as the quickest horse could take it. Yet, records show that during the Great Fear the same rumor would often arise in villages 20 miles apart on the same day. One historian in the 1980s proposed that the Great Fear might have been caused by peasants eating flour contaminated with ergot, a fungus containing lysergic acid (the hallucinatory compound in LSD).

The Great Fear was a terrifying reckoning for the aristocracy and a pivotal moment in the Revolution. Centuries of hardship and oppression had filled the peasants with pent-up rage, and all it took was some misinformation to unleash their murderous potential. The summer of 1789 was only a preview of the years of carnage that were to follow.