The general 'mood of rebellion' riding the country quickly spread to the provinces and the countryside. Seeing the weakness of the government, they started organising rent strikes in an effort to force the landowners to pay out higher wages. They began trespassing on the land of the gentry, chopping down trees and harvesting their hay. When early summer came and it became clear that the harvest had failed, the peasants started launching large, organised attacks on the estates; they would loot the properties, and set the manor on fire, making the landowner flee. The uprising was mainly caused by the peasants misunderstanding the October Manifesto as a license to seize the countryside from the gentry: despite some rural unrest in the spring of 1905, and more in the summer, the unrest only 'exploded' after October 17. During this 'Great Fear of 1905', many landowners seemed open to accept expropriation and concessions to save themselves.
Trepov had once even said to
Sergey Witte: 'I myself am a landowner and I would be glad to relinquish half of my land if I were convinced that under these conditions I could keep the remainder.' However, as the revolutionary mood died down, the landowners became less willing to compromise. The army was called to put down the disorder, but the vast majority of the
Imperial Russian Army's private soldiers were peasants, and the soldiers' morale was severely impacted by news received from their own villages. As the army was called out to put down the peasant uprisings' of 1905–1906, many units — especially in the infantry, which consisted mainly of peasants — refused to obey orders and mutinied in favor of the Revolution; between autumn 1905 and winter 1906 over 400 mutinies took place, causing the army to be brought to the brink of collapse, with it taking several years to restore something close to order. ==Aftermath and reaction==