The consequence was that the months of July and August were signalised by a sense of insecurity amounting to terror. The wildest rumours pervaded the country, and the most extraordinary instances are found of places where the people, panic-stricken by some vague, unfounded report of the approach of brigands, who had no existence out of their imagination, rushed to arms or fled into concealment to protect themselves against their own alarm. One result of the 'great fear' was that volunteer forces of citizens, interested in restoring order, sprang up on all sides, in imitation of the National Guard just organised in Paris, to which they were destined before long to be assimilated; and these volunteer forces, though sometimes used by the bourgeois to repress the movements and to maintain the subjection of the labouring class, were still invaluable in restoring peace. Moreover, in place of the authorities of the Ancien Régime, there sprang up, to exercise the duties of administration, informal municipal committees composed of electors, which, usurping the powers abdicated by the Government, rapidly organised themselves, secured the obedience of their fellow-citizens, and set to work, as best they could, to reconstruct the administration of the country. The rapidity and skill with which these municipal committees and their volunteer forces organised themselves, clearly illustrate the readiness of the provinces to act on their own initiative and to take over the responsibilities of the Revolution, and show how completely the people of France at first kept pace with, if they did not outstrip, their leaders in Paris and Versailles.