1796

Gracchus Babeuf and the Conspiracy of the Equals

---

The conspiracy of equality organised by Babeuf and his followers aimed at provoking an armed uprising of the plebeian masses against the bourgeois regime of the Directory and establishing a revolutionary dictatorship as a transitional stage to “pure democracy” and “egalitarian communism.” The conspiracy was disclosed in May 1796. At the end of May 1797 its leaders were executed.

Letter to “l’Observateur”, 1789

Babeuf 1789

Letter to “l’Observateur”

August 16, 1789

It can be seen, Monsieur, that you are new to the work of a publicist. Even if the title of your latest issue didn’t assure us that it was issue number four, one could recognize that you are a young writer from your style. By casting aside in the future some improper, or rather poorly placed, expressions it is possible that you will be read. You must cure yourself of these defects. Receive then, a few lessons that are the fruit of my long experience.

For example, what do you mean in saying: “Frenchmen! The freedom of the press has made us citizens. It is this which created the National Assembly, which, etc, etc.”

Go gently, Monsieur, go gently. Learn that these great phrases begin to be out of fashion. We are returning to our former ways. It was worth attempting all of these innovations, but it seems that it’s already been recognized that the preceding forms, i.e., those of arbitrary power, were worth more than all the trappings of this vaunted liberty that has been substituted for it. A public writer, monsieur, if he wants to make his way in the world, must accommodate himself to the time and the circumstances. Model yourself on one of your wise colleagues who, while you continue to be in a state of transport as was done four days ago, prudently conforms himself to the tone of the aristocratic regime that we are being made to hope will be reborn. Consult the following:

“M. the Director General of Finances remits to the Subsistence Committee of the Etats-Generaux, on the part of the King, an instructional memorandum, etc. etc.”

This, Monsieur, is how we are again beginning to speak. It is always good, as you see, to warn young people and to guarantee them from the dangers to which their inattention exposes them. You, in the place of the colleague, might perhaps have still said; “the National Assembly,” a meaningless term of a shocking dissonance for many readers.

If you feel the true value of the good offices that my letter can render you I don’t think you will find that I demand excessive recognition in asking that you insert it in issue five of “l’Observateur.” This will serve to prove to me that you have profited from my warnings and want to share them with the citizens who read you.

I am, Monsieur, one of these Citizens. BABEUF, Rue Quincampoix, no. 40

 

The New Calendar of the French Republic, 1793

Gracchus Babeuf 1793

The New Calendar of the French Republic

To my Fellow Citizens:

I hastily prepared this first edition, where I restricted myself to the sole object of usefulness, because my compatriots need to use the new calendar, and they need to do so immediately. A new edition is at the publisher. For this one I took a little more time: I enriched it with accessories which, I believe, will make it approach the merit of the “Double Almanack of Liege,” and I don’t despair of supplanting the “Mathieu Lansberg.”

There is not a single citizen for whom the new calendar isn’t an indispensable and instant necessity. Not a letter, not an act, not an affair can be treated of without the intervention of the date, and it’s necessary that everyone only use the true one, the only good one, the Republican. The Convention had promised to send the calendar to the administrative bodies and the constituted authorities, but it must be put within the reach of all individuals, and this is what I’ve done.

I placed the decree at the head, which is the best material for giving information about the new organization of the French year.

After this the work consists, for every day of the year, in a bringing together the former era with the new, so next to such and such a date of the old calendar is found that following the new one. Knowing the first, I help you find next to it the second. Examples: September 22 is the first day of the first decade of the first month; January 1, 1794 is the second day of the second décade of the fourth month, etc.

It is only with the assistance of such a comparative table that we will manage to familiarize ourselves with this new form. Though this work is quite simple, and it doesn’t tax the imagination, its usefulness is such that people will be quite grateful to me for having produced it. This attitude is my recompense.

Gracchus Babeuf

 

Prospectus for Le Tribun du Peuple, 1795

Gracchus Babeuf 1795

Prospectus for Le Tribun du Peuple

The goal of society is the common happiness. This was my motto before the government of a free people gave me a forever- memorable proof of its respect for the sacred right of the press.

This goal of society, this fundamental maxim, mother of all the principles of the just, will still be the only lamp by whose light I will continue to march, since the cannons of 13th Vendémiare, which broke my irons, allowed the rearmament of my truthful and plebian pen.

The goal of the French Revolution is also the common happiness. The honorable task of a tribune, that I had the courage to embrace, imposes upon me the sublime obligation of indicating to the French the path that shall lead them to this greatest of goals If they follow me they will arrive there, despite the obstacles profusely spread across that route, despite the maneuvers, the intrigues, and the plots of royalists and patricians.

Since the fatal Thermidorian reaction patricians and royalists have managed to lead the people towards the counter-goal, towards common unhappiness. The people have now reached the apex of this revolutionary period. Its position there is too unnatural, too horrible. It is time that it came to an end. Its up to the advocate of the true people, to the enemy of the gilded people, to teach 24 million oppressed how to counter-react, how one can revolutionize after having de-revolutionized, how there exist no forces, however formidable they might appear, that can prevent the arrival at the true goal, the only equitable goal, at society’s goal, at common happiness.

We too know a little bit about what elements are used to move men. The best lever is their own interest. The late tyrants, the starvers, the directors-in-chief of assassinations, knew this well. They did everything to persuade the people that a government of freedom was a monstrous chimera, that the more one sought to pursue it the more refinement in slavery, famine, persecution and death one met…that consequently it was in everyone’s interest to hope for the return of absolute domination. We will use the same lever of interest, but in a truer manner, less iniquitous, less horrible. We’ll prove to all our fellow citizens that freedom is freedom, that the republic can be not the gathering of all tyrannies, of all evils, that popular government should and can have as a result the ease and happiness of all individuals, the inalterable happiness of all members of the association.

The people are apathetic, pusillanimous, their detractors say; and so, they add, being strangled is their inevitable lot. Be silent, imbecilic dominators! Be silent as well, slaves! The people will prove to you that they are not heedless; they will make you definitively see that they know what to do when their guides have let them know the “why and wherefore” of the revolution, when we will have clearly and demonstratively explained to them what in the last analysis that revolution should be for them, despite all the opposition of the enemies of the common happiness. The people will expose to your dumbstruck eyes, frozen in fear, their intrepid, their prodigious energy when they will have come to know for what great and majestic motive they deploy it…when they will have come to know (let us tear all the veils and let the final word escape) that it is in order to guarantee to each of its members a state of stable happiness, and the fulfillment of the needs of all; an inalterable fulfillment, independent of the ineptitude, the immorality and the malevolence of those who govern…, when they will have come to know that there can be a term to the precarious and constantly unhappy state in which the tyrants of all regimes have made the great mass of men languish. There is no tyrannical dam that the torrent of the people would not then be capable of smashing and taking on in its impetuous effervescence, in those rivers before which everything retreats.

This is the doctrine of which I loudly declare myself the apostle. Frenchmen! Men free and just! Ready yourselves to follow this new gospel: I will call on you to decide whether the morality of it is pure. The benevolence of all of you who received my first essays was too generous; I only showed you a half-light there. I am now going to offer you nature’s great clarity. My hardy brush will be dipped in the colors of original justice, of first truths. Republicans of the North and the South, no, no, you will not fall into discouragement. You will not condescend to the reestablishment of a king or any other tyranny. You will not allow the opinion to prevail that subjection is necessary for the good and the tranquility of peoples. You are not tired, as they say; you proved that this is not so long ago. The same recent experience has also demonstrated that it’s not yet true that you are no longer strong. Despite cowardly massacres and horrible assassinations you are still superior to the partisans of slavery. You will not allow it to grow stronger, in whatever form it shows itself.

Rally with confidence around my coat of arms. My battle-ready lance is not the stiletto of a paid assassin of the Appian faction or the descendants of Tarquin. Compared to us, what are those miserable athletes who I see mechanically battling in the arena, who all have the physiognomy of venal gladiators who’ve broken their spears on behalf of all parties, and who will only ever have the métier of breaking them for whoever pays best? Compared to us, what can these pygmy champions, these armor carriers of the throne and the patricians do? No, there is no need to receive a stipend or to be inspired to fight like Hercules. If it’s already been seen that I tossed thunderbolts, it’s because I was as independent as the master of the gods. My quiver and arrows have been returned to me and we’ll yet again see thunder and lightning fly out from them. Along with you, friends, patriots, I am proud enough to guarantee my ability to pulverize and annihilate, with the flick of a wrist, Atlas and all the giant-indoctrinators and warriors, who so zealously work to win over souls, be it from the gilded million or from the monarch of France and Navarre.

Far from the defenders of the people, far from the people itself this diplomacy, this so-called Machiavellian prudence, this hypocritical policy that’s only worthy of tyrants and, when it was employed this past period by the patriots, cost them the best fruits of the victory if 13 Vendémiaire. Based on all available examples, my ideas led me to believe that in a people’s state the truth must always appear clear and naked. It must always be spoken: make it public, confide in the people all that concerns its major interests. Circumspection, dissimulation, whisperings among exclusive groups of men and so-called regulators only serve to kill energy, to render opinion erroneous, unstable, uncertain, and because of this, heedless and servile. It provides tyranny with all it needs to organize itself without any obstacles. Eternally persuaded that nothing great can be done without the People, I believe that in order to do anything with them its always necessary to tell them everything, ceaselessly show them what must be done, and we should fear less the inconveniences of the publicity from which politics profits, than count on the advantages of the colossal force that always undoes politics…we must calculate all the strength that is lost by leaving opinion apathetic, without aliment or object, and all that we gain in activating it, in enlightening it, in showing it a goal.

 

P.S. My journal will appear irregularly, five to six times a month, and even more. The size of the issues will not be uniform, since the importance of the subjects and the circumstances will lead each issue to have more or less pages. All reasonable readers will feel that a labor both substantive and of a kind that must be clearly thought through, cannot be measured in the same way as the routine work of newspapers that simply cover the news or are full of nothing.

 

Creation of an Insurrectionary Directory, 1796

Gracchus Babeuf 1796

Creation of an Insurrectionary Directory

French democrats, painfully affected, profoundly indignant, justly revolted by the sad spectacle offered by the unheard of state of misery and oppression of their country;

Penetrated by the memory that when a democratic constitution was given to the people and accepted by it, it was placed under the guard of all virtues;

Consequently, considering that the initiative of undertaking the avenging of the people when, like today, its rights are usurped, its freedom stolen and even its existence compromised, belongs to the purest and most courageous virtues;

Recognizing that it is an unfair reproach to accuse the people of cowardice, and that the people have only postponed justice till now because it lacked good leaders to appear at its head;

Recognizing that the overflowing measure of a usurping authority has ripened the disposition of all souls in favor of a revolutionary explosion, and this to such a point that in order to render it fruitful it would perhaps be necessary to temper rather than accelerate the impulse of free men in order to put the regulators in a position to assure its success;

They have resolved the following:

First Article
From this moment an Insurrectional Directory is formed, under the name of Secret Directorate of Public Salvation. In that quality they take the initiative of guiding all the movements that will lead the people to regain its sovereignty.

II. This Directory has four members

III. This Directory shall be secret; the names of its members will not even be known by the principal agents. Between the latter and the members of the Directorate there shall be intermediary members to effectuate communications between the former and the latter.

IV. The Secret Directory of Public Safety commits to fulfilling the immense scope of the obligations imposed by this great title.

V. A distinctive mark shall be placed on those written instructions that it will be indispensable to give to principal agents, and this mark shall serve to protect against any surprise through false instructions; it will guarantee, despite the lack of a signature, the authenticity of the acts they will receive from the Secret Directorate.

 

Fragment of a Projected Economic Decree, 1796

Gracchus Babeuf and the Conspiracy of the Equals 1796

Fragment of a Projected Economic Decree

In 1828, more than thirty years after the Conspiracy’s failure, Philippe (born in Pisa as Filippo, and a descendant of Michelangelo) Buonarroti, one of its leaders (and its greatest chronicler), set down on paper the new economic order the Equals sought to establish. It’s a vision that looks something like a Fourierist phalanstery, a kolkhoz, a kibbutz, and war communism, all growing from the left-wing of Jacobinism.

Art. 1

In the republic, there will be established a great national community

Art. 2

The national community consists of the following goods, to wit:

Goods which, having been declared national, were not sold the 9th Thermidor of the year II;

Goods of enemies of the Revolution, which the decrees of the 8th to the 13th Ventose of the year II had given the poor;

Goods having fallen due to the republic as a result of judicial condemnation;

Buildings currently occupied by the public service;

Goods which communes enjoyed use of before the law of June 10, 1793;

Goods turned over to alms-houses and establishments of public instruction;

Lodgings occupied by poor citizens in the carrying out of the proclamation to the French of …;

Goods of those who have abandoned the republic;

Goods usurped by those who enriched themselves in the exercise of public functions;

Goods whose owners neglect their cultivation.

Art. 3

The right of succession ab intestate or by testament is abolished; all goods currently owned by individuals will revert, upon their death, to the national community.

Art. 4

Shall be considered “current owner” those children of a father today living who are not called by law to the army.

Art. 5

Every Frenchman, of one or the other sex, who abandons to the fatherland all his goods, and who consecrates to it his person and the work of which he is capable is a member of the great national community.

Art. 6

The elderly, who have reached their 60th year, and the infirm, if they are poor, are by right members of the national community.

Art. 7

Are also members of the national community young people raised in national houses of education

Art. 8

The goods of the national community are exploited in common by all able-bodied members

Art. 9

The great national community maintains all its members in an equal and honest mediocrity; it furnishes them with all they need.

Art. 10

The republic invites good citizens to contribute to the success of this reform by a voluntary abandonment of their goods to the community.

Art. 11

Effective …, no one can be a civil or military functionary if he is not a member of said community.

Art. 12

The great national community is administered by local magistrates chosen by its members, under the laws and under the direction of the Supreme Administration.

Art. 13

…

ON COMMON LABOR

Art. 1

Every member of the national community owes it the agricultural labor and the useful arts of which he is capable.

Art. 2

The elderly aged 60 years and the infirm are excepted.

Art. 3

Those citizens who by the voluntary abandonment of their goods become members of the national community, will not be forced to submit to any painful labor, if they’ve reached their 40th year, and if they didn’t exercise a mechanical trade before the publication of the present decree.

Art. 4

In each commune the citizens are distributed by class; there are as many classes as useful arts; each class is composed of those who work in the same art.

Art. 5

In each class there are magistrates named by those who compose it. These magistrates direct the labor, ensure equal distribution, carry out the orders of the municipal administration, and set an example of zeal and activity.

Art. 6

For each season, the law determines the duration of the workday for members of the national community

Art. 7

Each municipal administration has a council of elders, delegated by each class of laborers; this council enlightens the administration on all that concerns the distribution, the lightening, and the improvement of work.

Art. 8

The supreme administration shall apply to the labors of the national community the use of machines and those processes needed to diminish the suffering of men.

Art. 9

The municipal administration constantly has before its eyes the state of the laborers of each class, and that of the tasks they must accomplish: it will regularly instruct the Supreme Administration of this.

Art. 10

The movement of laborers from one commune to another is ordered by the Supreme Administration, according to its knowledge of the strengths and needs of the community.

Art. 11

The Supreme Administration obliges to work at forced labor those individuals of the two sexes whose lack of civic spirit, idleness, profligacy, and disorders set society a pernicious example. Their goods are turned over to the national community.

Art. 12

The magistrates of each class watch over the stock in the storehouses of the national community, the fruits of the earth, and the products of the arts capable of conservation.

Art. 13

The accounting of these objects is regularly communicated to the Supreme Administration

Art. 14

The magistrates attached to the agricultural class have guard over the propagation and improvement of animals that can be used as food, clothing, transport, and for the lightening of human labor.

ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND USE OF COMMON GOODS

Art. 1

A member of the national community can only enjoy the use that which the law gives him by the real tradition of the magistrate.

Art. 2

From this time forward, the national community assures each of its members:

A healthy, comfortable, and properly furnished lodging; work and leisure clothes of linen or wool, in conformity with the national costume; laundry, lighting and heat; a sufficient quantity of foodstuffs in the form of bread, meat, fowl, fish, eggs, butter or oil, wine and other drinks commonly used in the various regions; vegetables, fruits, seasoning, and other objects with the gathering together of constitutes a mediocre and frugal ease; the assistance of the healing arts.

Art. 3

In each commune there will be, at pre-determined times, meals in common, which all members must attend.

Art. 4

The pay rate of public functionaries and the military will be the same as that of the members of the national community.

Art. 5

Any member of the national community who receives a salary, or keeps money, is punished.

Art. 6

Members of the national community can only receive the common ration in the district in which they reside, except for transfers authorized by the administration.

Art .7

The domicile of those who are currently citizens is that which they enjoy at the time of publication of the present decree. That of young people raised in houses of national education is their commune of birth.

Art. 8

In each community there are magistrates charged with the distribution to the homes of members of the national community of the products of agriculture and the arts.

Art. 9

The law determines the rules of this distribution

Art. 10

…

ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE NATIONAL COMMUNITY

Art. 1

The national community is under the legal direction of the Supreme Administration of the state.

Art. 2

In relation to administration, the republic is divided into regions.

Art. 3

A region consists of all contiguous departments of which the products are more or less the same.

Art. 4

In each region there is an Intermediate Administration to which Departmental Administrations are subordinated.

Art. 5

Telegraph lines speed up the correspondence between departmental and intermediate administrations, and between these and the Supreme Administration.

Art. 6

In accordance with the law, the Supreme Administration determines the nature and amount to be distributed to members of the community in each region.

Art. 7

In accordance with this determination, the Departmental Administration makes known to the Intermediate Administration the deficit or surplus of the respective districts.

Art. 8

As far as possible, the Intermediate Administrations fill the deficit of one department by the surplus of another, order deposits and necessary transport, and give an accounting to the Supreme Administration of their needs or their surplus.

Art. 9

The Supreme Administration meets the needs of regions that are lacking in certain objects with the overflow of those with too much, or by foreign trade.

Art. 10

Above all, every year the Supreme Administration deducts and deposits in military stores a tenth of all the community harvests.

Art. 11

It ensures that the surplus of the republic is carefully saved for famine years.

ON COMMERCE

Art. 1

All individual commerce with foreign peoples is forbidden. Any merchandise from this source will be confiscated to the profit of the national community. Violators will be punished.

Art. 2

The republic procures for the national community the objects it lacks by exchanging its surplus in agriculture and manufactured goods for those of foreign peoples.

Art 3

To this effect, appropriate warehouses are established on the land and sea borders.

Art. 4

The Supreme Administration trades with foreigners by means of its agents; it deposits the surplus that it wishes to exchange in the warehouses, where it receives from foreigners the agreed-upon goods.

Art. 5

The agents of the Supreme Administration in the commercial warehouses are often changed. The dishonest are severely punished.

ON TRANSPORT

Art. 1

In each commune there are magistrates charged with the directing of communal goods from one commune to another.

Art. 2

Each commune is granted sufficient means of transport, by land and by sea.

Art. 3

The members of the national community are in turn called upon to drive and keep guard over the objects transported from one commune to another.

Art. 4

Every year the Intermediate Administrations commission a certain number of young people, taken from all the departments subordinate to them, to carry out the most distant transports.

Art. 5

Citizens, commissioned to handle any transport, are maintained in the communes in which they are found.

Art. 6

The Supreme Administration transports from commune to commune those objects by which they fill the deficits of regions in need by the shortest route, under the guard of the Lower Administration.

ON CONTRIBUTIONS

Art. 1

Those individuals who do not participate in the national community are the sole taxpayers.

Art. 2

They owe the contributions established in the preceding.

Art. 3

These contributions will be made in kind, and deposited in the storehouses of the national community.

Art. 4

The sum due from this year’s taxpayers is double that of last year.

Art. 5

This total will be broken down by department, and levied against taxpayers in a progressive fashion.

Art. 6

Non-participants in the community can be required, in case of need, to deposit in the storehouse of the national community an advance on future contributions, in the form of their surplus of agricultural or manufactured goods.

ON DEBTS

Art. 1

The national debt is erased for all Frenchmen

Art 2

The republic will reimburse foreigners for the capital amount of the perpetual pensions it owes them. It sets the rates for this, as well as that of lifetime annuities, on a per capita basis.

Art. 3

The debts owed to another Frenchman by any Frenchman who becomes a member of the national community are erased.

Art. 4

The republic assumes responsibility for the debts owed by members of the community to foreigners

Art. 5

Any fraud in this matter is punished by perpetual slavery.

ON MONIES

Art. 1

The republic no longer issues money.

Art 2

Minted matter which falls due to the national community will be employed in purchasing from foreign peoples those objects it needs.

Art. 3

Any individual not participating in the community who shall be convicted of having offered minted matter to one of its members will be severely punished.

Art. 4

Neither gold nor silver will ever again be brought into the republic.

 

Manifesto of the Equals, 1796

Gracchus Babeuf and the Conspiracy of the Equals 1796

Manifesto of the Equals

Real equality, final goal of social art
-Condorcet

People of France!

For fifteen centuries you lived as a slave and, consequently, unhappy. For the last six years you barely breathe, waiting for independence, freedom and equality.

EQUALITY! The first wish of nature, the first need of man, the first knot of all legitimate association! People of France! You were not more blessed than the other nations which vegetate on this unfortunate globe! Everywhere and at all times the poor human race, handed over to more or less deft cannibals served as an object of all ambitions, as feed for all tyrannies. Everywhere and at all times men were lulled with beautiful words; at no time and in no place was the thing ever obtained through the word. From time immemorial they hypocritically repeat; all men are equal; and from time immemorial the most degrading and monstrous inequality insolently weighs upon the human race. As long as there have been human societies the most beautiful of humanity’s rights is recognized without contradiction, but was only able to be put in practice one time: equality was nothing but a beautiful and sterile legal fiction. And now that it is called for with an even stronger voice we are answered: be quiet, you wretches! Real equality is nothing but a chimera; be satisfied with conditional equality; you’re all equal before the law. What more do you want, filthy rabble? Legislators, you who hold power, rich landowners, it is now your turn to listen.

Are we not all equal? This principle remains uncontested, because unless touched by insanity, you can’t say it’s night when it’s day.

Well then! We claim to live and die equal, the way we were born: we want this real equality or death; that’s what we need.

And we’ll have this real equality, at whatever price. Unhappy will be those who stand between it and us! Unhappy will be those who resist a wish so firmly expressed.

The French Revolution was nothing but a precursor of another revolution, one that will be bigger, more solemn, and which will be the last.

The people marched over the bodies of kings and priests who were in league against it: it will do the same to the new tyrants, the new political Tartuffes seated in the place of the old.

What do we need besides equality of rights?

We need not only that equality of rights transcribed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen; we want it in our midst, under the roofs of our houses. We consent to everything for it, to make a clean slate so that we hold to it alone. Let all the arts perish, if need be, as long as real equality remains!

Legislators and politicians, you have no more genius than you do good faith; gutless and rich landowners, in vain you attempt to neutralize our holy enterprise by saying: They do nothing but reproduce that agrarian law asked for more than once in the past.

Slanderers, be silent: and in the silence of your confusion listen to our demands, dictated by nature and based on justice.

The Agrarian law, or the partitioning of land, was the spontaneous demand of some unprincipled soldiers, of some towns moved more by their instinct than by reason. We reach for something more sublime and more just: the common good or the community of goods! No more individual property in land: the land belongs to no one. We demand, we want, the common enjoyment of the fruits of the land: the fruits belong to all.

We declare that we can no longer put up with the fact that the great majority work and sweat for the extreme minority.

Long enough, and for too long, less than a million individuals have disposed of that which belongs to 20 million of their like, their equals.

Let it at last end, this great scandal that our nephews will never believe existed! Disappear at last, revolting distinctions between rich and poor, great and small, masters and servants, rulers and ruled.

Let there no longer be any difference between people other than that of age and sex. Since all have the same faculties and the same needs, let there then be for them but one education, but one food. They are satisfied with one sun and one air for all: why then would the same portion and the same quality of food not suffice for each of them?

Already the enemies of the most natural order of things we can imagine raise a clamor against us.

They say to us: You are disorganisers and seditious; you want nothing but massacres and loot.

PEOPLE OF FRANCE:

We won’t waste our time responding to them; we tell you: the holy enterprise that we are organizing has no other goal than to put an end to civil dissension and public misery.

Never has a plan more vast been conceived of or carried out. Here and there several men of genius, several wise men, have spoken in a low and trembling voice. None have had the courage to tell the whole truth.

The moment of great measures has arrived. Evil has reached its height: it covers the face of the earth. Under the name of politics, chaos has reigned for too many centuries. Let everything be set in order and take once again its proper place. In the voice of equality, let the supporters of justice and happiness organize. The moment has come to found the REPUBLIC OF EQUALS, this great home open to all men. The day of general restitution has arrived. Groaning families, come sit at the common table set by nature for all its children.

PEOPLE OF FRANCE:

The purest of all glories was thus reserved for you! Yes it is you who the first should offer the world this touching spectacle.

Ancient habits, antique fears, would again like to block the establishment of the Republic of Equals. The organization of real equality, the only one that responds to all needs, without causing any victims, without costing any sacrifice, will not at first please everyone. The selfish, the ambitious, will tremble with rage. Those who possess unjustly will cry out about injustice. The loss of the enjoyments of the few, solitary pleasures, personal ease will cause lively regret to those heedless of the pain of others. The lovers of absolute power, the henchmen of arbitrary authority, will with difficulty bow their superb heads before the level of real equality. Their shortsightedness will penetrate with difficulty the imminent future of common happiness; but what can a few thousand malcontents do against a mass of happy men, surprised to have searched so long for a happiness that they had in their hands.

The day after this real revolution, they’ll say with astonishment: What? Common happiness was so easy to obtain? All we had to do was want it? Why oh why didn’t we desire it sooner? Did they really have to make us speak of it so many times? Yes, without a doubt, one lone man on earth richer, stronger than his like, than his equals, and the balance is thrown off: crime and unhappiness are on earth.

PEOPLE OF FRANCE;

By what sign will you now recognize the excellence of a constitution? …That which rests in its entirety on real equality is the only one that can suit you and fulfill all your wishes.

The aristocratic charters of 1791 and 1795 tightened your chains instead of breaking them. That of 1793 was a great step towards true equality, and we had never before approached it so closely. But it did not yet touch the goal, nor reach common happiness, which it nevertheless solemnly consecrated as its great principle.

PEOPLE OF FRANCE,

Open your eyes and your hearts to the fullness of happiness: recognize and proclaim with us the REPUBLIC OF EQUALS.

Fragment of a Projected Speech to the Victorious People, 1796

Gracchus Babeuf and the Conspiracy of the Equals 1796

Fragment of a Projected Economic Decree

Art. 1

In the republic, there will be established a great national community

Art. 2

The national community consists of the following goods, to wit:

Goods which, having been declared national, were not sold the 9th Thermidor of the year II;

Goods of enemies of the Revolution, which the decrees of the 8th to the 13th Ventose of the year II had given the poor;

Goods having fallen due to the republic as a result of judicial condemnation;

Buildings currently occupied by the public service;

Goods which communes enjoyed use of before the law of June 10, 1793;

Goods turned over to alms-houses and establishments of public instruction;

Lodgings occupied by poor citizens in the carrying out of the proclamation to the French of …;

Goods of those who have abandoned the republic;

Goods usurped by those who enriched themselves in the exercise of public functions;

Goods whose owners neglect their cultivation.

Art. 3

The right of succession ab intestate or by testament is abolished; all goods currently owned by individuals will revert, upon their death, to the national community.

Art. 4

Shall be considered “current owner” those children of a father today living who are not called by law to the army.

Art. 5

Every Frenchman, of one or the other sex, who abandons to the fatherland all his goods, and who consecrates to it his person and the work of which he is capable is a member of the great national community.

Art. 6

The elderly, who have reached their 60th year, and the infirm, if they are poor, are by right members of the national community.

Art. 7

Are also members of the national community young people raised in national houses of education

Art. 8

The goods of the national community are exploited in common by all able-bodied members

Art. 9

The great national community maintains all its members in an equal and honest mediocrity; it furnishes them with all they need.

Art. 10

The republic invites good citizens to contribute to the success of this reform by a voluntary abandonment of their goods to the community.

Art. 11

Effective …, no one can be a civil or military functionary if he is not a member of said community.

Art. 12

The great national community is administered by local magistrates chosen by its members, under the laws and under the direction of the Supreme Administration.

Art. 13

…

ON COMMON LABOR

Art. 1

Every member of the national community owes it the agricultural labor and the useful arts of which he is capable.

Art. 2

The elderly aged 60 years and the infirm are excepted.

Art. 3

Those citizens who by the voluntary abandonment of their goods become members of the national community, will not be forced to submit to any painful labor, if they’ve reached their 40th year, and if they didn’t exercise a mechanical trade before the publication of the present decree.

Art. 4

In each commune the citizens are distributed by class; there are as many classes as useful arts; each class is composed of those who work in the same art.

Art. 5

In each class there are magistrates named by those who compose it. These magistrates direct the labor, ensure equal distribution, carry out the orders of the municipal administration, and set an example of zeal and activity.

Art. 6

For each season, the law determines the duration of the workday for members of the national community

Art. 7

Each municipal administration has a council of elders, delegated by each class of laborers; this council enlightens the administration on all that concerns the distribution, the lightening, and the improvement of work.

Art. 8

The supreme administration shall apply to the labors of the national community the use of machines and those processes needed to diminish the suffering of men.

Art. 9

The municipal administration constantly has before its eyes the state of the laborers of each class, and that of the tasks they must accomplish: it will regularly instruct the Supreme Administration of this.

Art. 10

The movement of laborers from one commune to another is ordered by the Supreme Administration, according to its knowledge of the strengths and needs of the community.

Art. 11

The Supreme Administration obliges to work at forced labor those individuals of the two sexes whose lack of civic spirit, idleness, profligacy, and disorders set society a pernicious example. Their goods are turned over to the national community.

Art. 12

The magistrates of each class watch over the stock in the storehouses of the national community, the fruits of the earth, and the products of the arts capable of conservation.

Art. 13

The accounting of these objects is regularly communicated to the Supreme Administration

Art. 14

The magistrates attached to the agricultural class have guard over the propagation and improvement of animals that can be used as food, clothing, transport, and for the lightening of human labor.

ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND USE OF COMMON GOODS

Art. 1

A member of the national community can only enjoy the use that which the law gives him by the real tradition of the magistrate.

Art. 2

From this time forward, the national community assures each of its members:

A healthy, comfortable, and properly furnished lodging; work and leisure clothes of linen or wool, in conformity with the national costume; laundry, lighting and heat; a sufficient quantity of foodstuffs in the form of bread, meat, fowl, fish, eggs, butter or oil, wine and other drinks commonly used in the various regions; vegetables, fruits, seasoning, and other objects with the gathering together of constitutes a mediocre and frugal ease; the assistance of the healing arts.

Art. 3

In each commune there will be, at pre-determined times, meals in common, which all members must attend.

Art. 4

The pay rate of public functionaries and the military will be the same as that of the members of the national community.

Art. 5

Any member of the national community who receives a salary, or keeps money, is punished.

Art. 6

Members of the national community can only receive the common ration in the district in which they reside, except for transfers authorized by the administration.

Art .7

The domicile of those who are currently citizens is that which they enjoy at the time of publication of the present decree. That of young people raised in houses of national education is their commune of birth.

Art. 8

In each community there are magistrates charged with the distribution to the homes of members of the national community of the products of agriculture and the arts.

Art. 9

The law determines the rules of this distribution

Art. 10

…

ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE NATIONAL COMMUNITY

Art. 1

The national community is under the legal direction of the Supreme Administration of the state.

Art. 2

In relation to administration, the republic is divided into regions.

Art. 3

A region consists of all contiguous departments of which the products are more or less the same.

Art. 4

In each region there is an Intermediate Administration to which Departmental Administrations are subordinated.

Art. 5

Telegraph lines speed up the correspondence between departmental and intermediate administrations, and between these and the Supreme Administration.

Art. 6

In accordance with the law, the Supreme Administration determines the nature and amount to be distributed to members of the community in each region.

Art. 7

In accordance with this determination, the Departmental Administration makes known to the Intermediate Administration the deficit or surplus of the respective districts.

Art. 8

As far as possible, the Intermediate Administrations fill the deficit of one department by the surplus of another, order deposits and necessary transport, and give an accounting to the Supreme Administration of their needs or their surplus.

Art. 9

The Supreme Administration meets the needs of regions that are lacking in certain objects with the overflow of those with too much, or by foreign trade.

Art. 10

Above all, every year the Supreme Administration deducts and deposits in military stores a tenth of all the community harvests.

Art. 11

It ensures that the surplus of the republic is carefully saved for famine years.

ON COMMERCE

Art. 1

All individual commerce with foreign peoples is forbidden. Any merchandise from this source will be confiscated to the profit of the national community. Violators will be punished.

Art. 2

The republic procures for the national community the objects it lacks by exchanging its surplus in agriculture and manufactured goods for those of foreign peoples.

Art 3

To this effect, appropriate warehouses are established on the land and sea borders.

Art. 4

The Supreme Administration trades with foreigners by means of its agents; it deposits the surplus that it wishes to exchange in the warehouses, where it receives from foreigners the agreed-upon goods.

Art. 5

The agents of the Supreme Administration in the commercial warehouses are often changed. The dishonest are severely punished.

ON TRANSPORT

Art. 1

In each commune there are magistrates charged with the directing of communal goods from one commune to another.

Art. 2

Each commune is granted sufficient means of transport, by land and by sea.

Art. 3

The members of the national community are in turn called upon to drive and keep guard over the objects transported from one commune to another.

Art. 4

Every year the Intermediate Administrations commission a certain number of young people, taken from all the departments subordinate to them, to carry out the most distant transports.

Art. 5

Citizens, commissioned to handle any transport, are maintained in the communes in which they are found.

Art. 6

The Supreme Administration transports from commune to commune those objects by which they fill the deficits of regions in need by the shortest route, under the guard of the Lower Administration.

ON CONTRIBUTIONS

Art. 1

Those individuals who do not participate in the national community are the sole taxpayers.

Art. 2

They owe the contributions established in the preceding.

Art. 3

These contributions will be made in kind, and deposited in the storehouses of the national community.

Art. 4

The sum due from this year’s taxpayers is double that of last year.

Art. 5

This total will be broken down by department, and levied against taxpayers in a progressive fashion.

Art. 6

Non-participants in the community can be required, in case of need, to deposit in the storehouse of the national community an advance on future contributions, in the form of their surplus of agricultural or manufactured goods.

ON DEBTS

Art. 1

The national debt is erased for all Frenchmen

Art 2

The republic will reimburse foreigners for the capital amount of the perpetual pensions it owes them. It sets the rates for this, as well as that of lifetime annuities, on a per capita basis.

Art. 3

The debts owed to another Frenchman by any Frenchman who becomes a member of the national community are erased.

Art. 4

The republic assumes responsibility for the debts owed by members of the community to foreigners

Art. 5

Any fraud in this matter is punished by perpetual slavery.

ON MONIES

Art. 1

The republic no longer issues money.

Art 2

Minted matter which falls due to the national community will be employed in purchasing from foreign peoples those objects it needs.

Art. 3

Any individual not participating in the community who shall be convicted of having offered minted matter to one of its members will be severely punished.

Art. 4

Neither gold nor silver will ever again be brought into the republic.

Analysis of the Doctrine of Babeuf, 1797

Gracchus Babeuf and the Conspiracy of the Equals 1797

Analysis of the Doctrine of Babeuf

In April 1796, hundreds of placards of the Analysis of the Doctrine of Babeuf were pasted up around Paris. Though not written by Babeuf, the text was officially sanctioned by the leaders of the Conspiracy. Its doctrine is heavily Rousseauist, and the form strangely resembles that of Spinoza’s Ethics, with the truth of the statements backed up by separate sections of proofs. There was a guerilla war around these posters, as the Equals would paste them up, and opponents would tear them down, only to see the Conspirators put them back up again.

Proscribed by the Directory for having told the truth

Art 1

Nature gave every man an equal right to the full enjoyment of his goods.

Proofs drawn from the discussion piece

Before they were first brought together, all men were equally the masters of the products which nature profusely spread around them.

1. When men were brought together on uncultivated land, what could establish inequality among them? Is it their natural differences? They all have the same organs and the same needs. Is it the dependence of some on others? But no one was strong enough to enslave his like, when the smallest discontent could cause him to move elsewhere; and the advantages of mutual aid and benevolence made it necessary for all of them to respect in others the rights which they felt were invested in them by nature. Is it the ferocity of their hearts? But compassion is the immediate result of their organization, and ferocity is born of the frustration of the passions. Is it an innate tendency towards humiliation and servitude? But the mere sight of this is a painful sensation, a source of jealousy and hatred for even the most savage beings.
2. If families are the first models of society, they are also the most striking proof of the rights of which we speak. Equality is a pledge of the tenderness of fathers, of the union and happiness of children. And if it’s broken? Sorrow and jealousy introduce disorder and violence. Everything concerning the love of parents, inspires in children the hatred of partiality, which parents themselves cannot apply without risking the introduction of dangerous passions into the family.
3. The most strict equality had to be consecrated in the first agreements among men, for what could make men who had up to then been enemies of any form of distinction consent to privations and inferiority?
4. The neglect of equality has introduced among men:

False ideas of happiness;
The straying of the passions;
The dwindling away of the species;
Violence, troubles, and wars;
The tyranny of some and the oppression of others;

Civic, political and religious institutions which, in consecrating injustice have finally dissolved societies, after having for a long time torn them apart.

The sight of distinctions, of the pomp and luxury that they don’t enjoy, was and will always be for the multitude an endless source of torment and worries. It is given to only a small number of wise men to avoid corruption, and once they’ve been separated from it, moderation is a good that the common folk no longer know how to appreciate.

What happens if some citizens create new needs, and they introduce into their pleasures refinements unknown to the multitude? Simplicity is then no longer loved, and happiness ceases to be found in an active life and a peaceful soul; distinctions and delight become the supreme good; no one is any longer satisfied with his state, and all seek in vain the happiness to which inequality has closed access to society.

The more distinctions one obtains, the more one wants, and the more jealousy and envy are excited; this is the source of so many extravagant enterprises; this is the source of the unquenchable and criminal thirst for gold and power; this is the source of hatred, violence and murder; this is the source of the bloody wars caused by a spirit of conquest and a jealousy of commerce, which don’t leave sorrowful humanity a single moment of rest.

In the midst of this overturning of ideas, weakness and sorrow destroy one portion of the species, enervates the other, and prepares for society generations incapable of defending it. From the attachment to distinctions is born the precautions we take to preserve them, despite the envy and the discontent they engender; these precautions take the form of barbaric laws, exclusionary forms of government, religious fables, servile morality: in a word, tyranny on one side, oppression on the other. Nevertheless, the voice of nature cannot be entirely stilled; it sometimes makes its ungrateful children blush; it avenges by its thunderous peal humanity’s tears, and if it rarely manages to reestablish itself in its rights, it always manages to disrupt those societies that ignore its laws.

If the equality of goods follows from that of our organs and our needs, if public and individual unhappiness, if the ruin of societies are the necessary effects of the blows which are struck against it, then this equality is a natural right.

Art. 2

The goal of society is to defend this equality, often attacked in the state of nature by the strong and the wicked, and to add to common happiness by the working together of all.

Proofs:

1. We mean by society an association guided by agreed upon rules; and by state of nature accidental and imperfect society, in which men necessarily found themselves before submitting themselves to laws.
2. Without examining here if attacks on liberty, such as those mentioned in this Article, can have taken place in the state of nature, it is obvious that if the inconveniences of that state determined men to establish laws, it was only those inconveniences that are born of the violation of equality. Whatever the case, the preservation of equality is the goal of association, because it’s only through it that men gathered together can be happy.
3. In uniting their forces, mankind surely wanted to assure itself the maximum of pleasure with the minimum of pain.

The abundance of necessary things assures these pleasures, and is itself assured by the labor of those who are leagued together. This labor is reduced to the minimum for each of them only when it is shared by all.

Art. 3

Nature has imposed on everyone the obligation to work; no one can, without committing a crime, shirk labor.

Proofs

1. Labor is a precept of nature for all.

1st — Because a man isolated in the desert could not, without some form of labor, obtain subsistence.

2nd — because the activity occasioned by moderate labor is a source of health and recreation for man.

2. This obligation could not be weakened by society, either for all as a group or each as an individual.

1st — Because its preservation depends on this

2nd — Because each one’s toils are the least possible only if all participate.

Art. 4

Labor and pleasures should be in common

Explanation

That is to say that all must put up with an equal amount of work, and draw from it an equal amount of goods.

The justice of this principle flows from the proofs of Articles One to Three above. But what do we mean by community of labor? Do we want all citizens to be forced to do the same work? No; but we want all the different labors to be so shared that no able-bodied individual is idle. We want the increase in the number of workers to guarantee public abundance; we want it to be that in return each receive from the fatherland all he needs to meet his natural needs, as well as those artificial needs which all can satisfy.

An objection can be made: What would become of the productions of industry that are the fruit of time and industry? Is it not to be feared that, not being paid any more than other jobs, they vanish to the detriment of society? Sophism! It is to the love of glory, and not the love of riches that are owed for all time the efforts of genius. Millions of poor soldiers go to their deaths for the honor of serving the whims of a cruel master. How can we doubt of the powerful effect that happiness, love of equality and the fatherland, and the workings of a wise political system can have on the human heart? And would we have any need of the glitter of art, and the showiness of luxury, if we had the joy of living under the laws of equality?

Art. 5

Oppression exists when there is one who wears himself out at work and lacks everything, while another swims in abundance while doing nothing.

Proofs

1 — Inequality and oppression are synonymous. If to oppress someone is to violate the law as it relates to him, those who are weighed down by inequality are oppressed, because inequality wounds natural law, to which it is absurd to oppose human laws.

2 — To oppress means: to restrict someone’s faculties, or to increase his burden. This is precisely what inequality does in diminishing the joys of he whose obligations it increases.

Art. 6

No one can, without committing a crime, exclusively expropriate the goods of the earth or of industry

Explanation and Proofs

If we can demonstrate that inequality has no other cause than this exclusive expropriation, we will have demonstrated the crime of those who introduce the distinction of mine and yours.

Private property was born the moment lands were parceled out. From that point everyone was absolute master of all he could take out of the fields that fell to him and the work he carried out.

It is probable that men working in the arts of primary necessity were at the same time excluded from any territorial possession, which they were in any case unable to exploit. Some were thus the masters of the things necessary for existence; others had a right to nothing but the salary the first group was willing to pay them. Nevertheless, this didn’t bring about any perceptible change, as long as the number of salaried employees didn’t exceed the number of landowners. But as soon as natural events, the thrift, or the skill of some; the wastefulness or the handicaps of the others, and territorial property having been brought together in the hands of a few families, those receiving salaries became more numerous than those paying salaries, and the former were at the mercy of the latter who, proud of their opulence, reduced the others to a frugal lifestyle.

It is from this revolution that the sinister effects of inequality outlined in Art 1 date. Since then, we have seen the idler, by a revolting injustice, live by the sweat of the working man, overwhelmed under the weight of fatigues and privations; we have seen the rich as if they were master take control of the state and dictate tyrannical laws to the poor brutalized by need, degraded by ignorance and fooled by religion.

Unhappiness and slavery flow from inequality, and the latter from property. Property is thus the greatest of society’s plagues. It is a veritable public offence.

It will be said that property existed prior to society, and that society was formed to defend it. But how could we have had even the idea of such a right, as long as contracts didn’t assure to the owner the fruits of his labor? How can society owe its origin to that institution the most subversive of social feeling?

Let no one tell us that it’s only fair that the hard-working and thrifty should be paid to live in opulence and the idler punished by misery. It is doubtless only fair that the active man, in paying off his debt, receive from the fatherland what it can give him without ruining itself; it’s only fair that he be repaid in public recognition. But he can’t, for all that, acquire the right to poison his country, no more than a soldier by his valor acquires that to enslave.

There are certainly some evil subjects who have only their own vices to blame for the misery to which they’re reduced , but it’s not likely that all of the poor can be put in that class. A large mass of field and factory workers live on bread and water, in order that the vile libertine enjoy in peace the inheritance of an inhuman father, and so that a millionaire manufacturer can send cheap fabrics and jewels to other countries, that in turn supply our lazy sybarites Arabian perfumes and exotic birds. These evil subjects, would they be so without the vices and follies to which they are dragged by the social institutions which punish them for the effects of the passions whose development it provokes?

Art 7

In a real society there should be neither rich nor poor.

Art 8

The rich who don’t renounce their excess in favor of the indigent are the enemies of the people.

Art 9

No one can, through the accumulation off all means available, deprive another of the instruction necessary for his happiness. Instruction must be for all.

Proofs

1. This accumulation blocks working people from even the possibility of acquiring the knowledge necessary for every citizen.
2. Even if the people don’t require a broad education, they need some education in order not to be the prey of tricksters and so-called experts. It must know its rights and its obligations.

Art. 10

The goal of the revolution is to destroy inequality and restore common happiness

Proofs

Who is the honest man who would want to deliver his fellow citizens to the convulsions and evils of a political revolution which would have as its goal to render them more unhappy still, or to put them in a state from which would flow their total ruin? To skillfully seize the moment for reform is not the least of tasks for a clever and virtuous politics.

Art. 11

The constitution of 1793 is the true constitution of the French, for the people solemnly accepted it; because the Convention did not have the right to change it; because in order to arrive at this, they shot down the people who demanded its fulfillment; because it chased and killed those deputies who did their duty in defending it; because terror against the people and the influence of emigrants presided over the writing and the acceptance of the constitution of 1795, which didn’t even receive a quarter of the votes of that of 1793; because the constitution of 1793 consecrated the inalienable rights of each citizen to consent to laws, to exercise political rights, to assemble, to demand that which it considers useful, to be educated and not die of hunger; rights which the counter-revolutionary act of 1795 openly and completely violated.

Art 13

Every citizen is obligated to re-establish and defend in the constitution of 1793 the will and the happiness of the people.

Art. 14

All powers emanating from the so-called constitution of 1795 are illegal and counter-revolutionary.

Art 15

Those who raised their hand to the constitution of 1793 are guilty of the crime of lese majesté against the people.

Babeuf’s last letter to his family before his execution, 1797

Gracchus Babeuf and the Conspiracy of the Equals 1797

Babeuf’s last letter to his family before his execution

To my wife and my children:

Good evening, my friends. I am ready to wrap myself in the eternal night. I express myself better to the friend to whom I addressed the two letters you saw; I better express to him my situation as far as it concerns you than I do to you yourselves. It seems that feeling too much, I feel nothing. I put your fate in his hands. Alas, I don’t know if you’ll find him in a position to do what I ask of him: I don’t know how you can reach him. Your love for me has led you here through all of poverty’s obstacles. Your faithful feelings have led you to follow every instant of this long and cruel proceeding which you, like me, have drunk to the dregs; but I don’t know how you will return to the place from which you started; I don’t know how my memory will be appreciated, though I believe I carried myself in an irreproachable manner; finally, I don’t know what will become of the republicans, their families, and even the babies still at their mothers’ breasts, in the midst of the royalist fury that the counter-revolution will bring. O my friends! How heart-rending these thought are in my final moments!… To die for the fatherland, to leave a family, children, a beloved wife, all would be bearable if at the end of this I didn’t see liberty lost, and all that belongs to sincere republicans wrapped in a horrible proscription. Ah, my tender children! What will become of you? I can’t defend myself against the strongest of feelings…. Don’t think that I feel any regret for having sacrificed myself for the most beautiful of causes; even if all I did for it was useless, I fulfilled my task…

If contrary to my expectations you are able to survive the terrible storm that breaks over the republic and everything connected to it, if you are able once again to find yourselves in a peaceful situation, and find a few friends who can assist you in triumphing over your ill fortune, I suggest that you all live together ; I recommend to my wife that she attempt to guide the children with much kindness, and I recommend to my children that they merit the kindnesses of their mother, by respecting her and always obeying her wishes. The family of a martyr for freedom must set an example of all the virtues, in order to attract the esteem and the attachment of all good people. I would like my wife to do everything possible to give her children an education, by having all her friends assist her in doing everything that is possible for them with this aim in view. I invite Emile to accept this wish on the part of a father who believes he was loved, and who loved in his turn; I invite him to do so without wasting any time, and as soon as possible.

My friends, I hope you’ll remember me, and that you’ll speak of me often. I hope that you’ll believe that I always loved you. I couldn’t conceive of any other way to make you happy than through the happiness of all. I failed; I sacrificed myself; it is also for you that I die.

Speak of me often with Camille; tell him thousands and thousands of times that I had him with tenderness in my heart.

Say the same to Caius, when he’ll be able to understand it.

Lebois has said that he’ll publish our defense separately: you must give mine the widest possible publicity. I recommend to my wife, my good friend, that she never give Baudoin, Lebois, or anyone else a copy of my defense without having another correct one in her possession, in order to be sure that this defense is never lost. You will know, my dear friend, that this defense is precious, and that it will always be dear to the virtuous hearts of the friends of their country. The only property that will be left to you will be my reputation. And I am sure that you and the children will be consoled in having possession of it. You will love hearing all feeling and upright hearts say, in speaking of your spouse: he was perfectly virtuous.

Farewell. I hold on to the earth by a thread, which tomorrow shall break. This is certain, I see it clearly. The sacrifice must be made. The evil are the stronger, and I surrender to them. At least it is sweet to die with a conscience as clean as mine; the only thing that is cruel, that is heart-rending, is to tear myself from your arms, O my tender friends! O all that is dear to me!!! I tear myself away; the violence is done…Farewell, farewell, ten million times farewell…

…One more word. Write to my mother and my sisters. Send them, by coach or otherwise, my defense as soon as it’s published. Tell them how I died, and try to make these good people understand that such a death is glorious and far from being dishonorable…

So farewell again , my beloved, my tender friends. Farewell forever. I wrap myself in a breast of a virtuous sleep…

G. Babeuf

Babeuf and the Conspiracy of the Equals, E. Belfort Bax, 1911

Ernest Belfort Bax

The Last Episode of the French Revolution
Being a History of
Gracchus Babeuf
and the Conspiracy of the Equals

(1911)

 

List of Authorities

Preface

Introduction

I. Origin and Youth of Babeuf

II. The Revolutionary Drama Opens

III. Vicissitudes of Fortune and Ripening of Ideas

IV. The Society of the Pantheon

V. The Secret Directory and its Principles

VI. The Projected Insurrection and its Plans

VII. The Catastrophe

VIII. The Trial of Babeuf and his Colleagues

IX. End of Trial, and Tragic Death of Babeuf

X. Conclusion

---

Note on Authorities

As the principal sources that have been used in the preparation the following study may be mentioned:

(1) The careful and exhaustive Histoire de Gracchus Babeuf et du Babouvisme, largely based on hitherto unpublished documents, by M. Victor Advielle. 2 vols. (Paris, 1884).

(2) Gracchus Babeuf et le Conspiration des Egaux, by Philippe Buonarroti (Paris, 1830), a first-hand narrative by one of the principal actors in the drama he describes.

(3) Babeuf et le Socialisme en 1796, par Edouard Fleury (Paris, 1851), a book preserving some interesting details, but prejudiced and not altogether reliable.

(4) Among the contemporary sources for the history of the movement, the Copie des Pieces saisies dons le local que Babeuf occupait lors de son arrestation (Paris, Nivose, Ann. V.) occupies an important place. It consists in a volume officially published by the High Court immediately after the trial, containing a complete collection of the pieces de conviction which formed the basis of the prosecution.

(5) The collection of the numbers of Babeuf’s journals, the Journal de la Liberty de la Presse and the Tribun du Peuple, together with the few numbers of the Éclaireur, a journal published for a short time by Babeuf’s friend Sylvain Maréchal, to be found in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.

Other, minor, references are given in the text.

Allusions to, and accounts of, the movement are, of course, to be found in all the journals of the time, but they are for the most part utterly prejudiced, and contain no facts of importance not given by Buonarroti or contained in the officially published documents.

 

Philippe Buonarotti.

The Conspiracy of Equals

Philippe Buonarotti

---

Source: Notice Biographique sur Buonarotti. Epinal, 1838;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor.

---

Philippe Buonarotti, descendant of the great Michelangelo Buonarotti, was born in Pisa on November 11, 1761. He could easily have obtained the favor of princes, but only ever incurred their rage. He was only twelve when Grand Duke Leopold who, feeling affection for his father had decorated him with the cordon de Saint-Etienne, amused himself by having the young Philippe play with the bauble. It is said that he himself had received that order, but this is not true: Buonarotti never wore a single decoration. Barely embarked upon real life he tore up his letters of noblesse and renounced all his family privileges. Of an illustrious origin, he had the vigor, the love of labor, the patience and the courage of a man of the people. He owed his illustriousness to his own popular virtues alone.

He attracted the displeasure and anger of the prince who had attempted to awaken the desire for external distinctions as soon as the French Revolution broke out because of his ardor in saluting it with his wishes and efforts. Forced to seek refuge in Corsica, he published there a newspaper entitled “The Friend of Italian Freedom.” In 1792 he left his retirement and went to Paris, where the energetic and sincere expression of his republicanism made him stand out at the Jacobin Society. Sent as an envoy to Corsica with extraordinary powers, upon his return he had the Convention pronounce the joining of the island of Saint-Pierre, near Sardinia, to French territory. The Committee of Public Safety then honored him with several missions, both in the French interior and beyond the Alps. He rendered great service to the Italian states, where he had been delegated as agent of the French Republic, until he was arrested at the time of the Thermidorian reaction and brought back to Paris. Buonarotti then began the long career of persecutions that he sanctified by a complete sacrifice of that which commonly attaches men to life. This time he remained a prisoner until the month of Vendémiaire, year IV in the prison of Plessis where he formed ties with Babeuf, Germain, and a great number of departmental revolutionary committees, ties which were to cause him to be rudely tested. Here is how he expressed himself on the time of his first captivity in his book titled Conspiration de Babeuf:

“From these houses of pain burst the electric sparks that so many times made the new tyranny go pale. A spectacle as touching as it was new beautified the interior of prisons: those that aristocracy had plunged there lived in the most intimate frugality; took honor from their chains and poverty, the result of their patriotic devotion; gave themselves over to work and study and conversed only about the ills of the fatherland and the means of ending them. The singing in chorus of civic songs every evening brought together a crowd of citizens attracted by their curiosity or the analogousness of their sentiments with those of the prisoners.”

Buonarotti’s first imprisonment having increased the patriotic party’s confidence in him, when freed for a few instants he was charged with the command at Loano. He was recalled after being denounced. From that time on he observed the march of affairs, reproved them and, just as an austere judge has the sentence he conscientiously pronounced carried out without remorse, he occupied himself solely with actively conspiring against the government he had condemned in the probity of his soul. Arrested with Babeuf and Darthe he, like them, disdained to bargain for his life by having recourse to denial. “Brought before the high court of Vendome,” we read in the Biographie des contemporains by Rabbe, “he took pride in having taken part in the projected insurrection for which he was accused, and solemnly professed his devotion to pure democracy. The public ministry, which judged him as guilty as the actual chief of the conspiracy, demanded the death penalty for him. But the jury only pronounced the death penalty for Babeuf and Darthe and struck Germain, Cazin, Moroy, Blondeau, Menessier and Buonarotti with deportation. “ It was on the very bench of the accused that the latter made the promise to his two friends who were about to die that he would dispel the slanders spread about them. He kept this promise after having devoted thirty-two years of study to the examination of the immense questions he was to raise; so fearful was this honest soul of spreading any kind of error that could surprise him. The book La Conspiration de Babeuf only came out in 1828 in Brussels.

It would be appropriate here to point out an error in the biography that was just cited. It is said that Buonarotti obtained the commutation of his sentence to the simple surveillance that he underwent until 1806 in a city in the Alpes Maritimes. Buonarotti never asked for anything, never addressed a single plea to those in power.

Those condemned to deportation were taken to the fort constructed on Pelée Island at the entry to the harbor of Cherbourg. They traversed the long route that separated them from it in barred cages, sometimes exposed to insults and threats, sometimes receiving the most touching signs of affection and respect. At Falaise, Caen, and Valogne they suffered imminent danger, but they were received with friendship and honors at Mellereau, Argentan and Saint-Lo. In this last city the mayor, at the head of the municipal body, congratulated them and embraced them, calling them our unfortunate brothers. He said: “ You defended the rights of the people. Every good citizen owes you love and recognition.” By decree of the general council they were lodged in the meeting room, where they received the most tender care and consolations.

The deportees awaited their transport to Guyana for quite some time at the fort of Cherbourg. Finally, in the year VIII, they were taken to the island of Oleron. It was from there that Buonarotti, without having been told of either the cause or the execution of this measure, was removed and sentenced to surveillance in a city in the east. Perhaps the First Consul remembered that for a brief time he had lived in the same room and slept in the same bed with he whose noble misfortune caused him a too bitter remorse.

Nevertheless, the man who had heard Bonaparte cry out after May 31: “Here’s a good occasion to make myself King of France” and who had judged the man, didn’t hide his thoughts about the new emperor, exiled though he was. “The cause of freedom,” he said, “is once again condemned by the aristocrats, who prefer engorging themselves with gold, decking themselves with braids, and crawling under the scepter of a soldier, to living free and equal with the people.” He couldn’t remain in France and retired to the area of Geneva, where he lived modestly from his profession of composer. This was one more thing he had in common with J-J Rousseau, whose contemporary and devoted follower he was. Brought up in a Jesuit college he had been tormented there for having read Rousseau.

European diplomacy didn’t allow him any repose and obtained his expulsion from Swiss territory. He took refuge in Belgium and remained there until the July Revolution.

It can be seen how much he loved the people. He made the following reflections on the constitution of the year III, which can be applied to many others:

“In order to impose silence on all its pretensions and to forever close all paths to innovations favorable to the people, all of their political rights were either stolen or truncated. Laws are made without its participation and without their being able to exercise any kind of censure over them. The constitution forever enchains them, both themselves and their posterity, for it is forbidden to them to change it. It declares the people sovereign but any deliberation by the people is declared seditious. After having spoken in a confused fashion of equality of rights, the rights of the mass of citizens is taken from them there, and that of naming to principal state functions is exclusively reserved to the well-to-do. Finally, in order to forever maintain that unfortunate inequality, the source of immorality, injustice and oppression, the authors of that constitution carefully cast aside any institution tending to enlighten the entire nation, to form republican youth, to diminish the ravages and damages of ambition, to rectify public opinion, to improve morals, or to rescue the mass of the people from the idle and the ambitious.

“As soon as wealth was made the basis for the happiness and strength of society, they were necessarily led to refuse the exercise of political rights to all those who, through their fortune, don’t offer a guarantee of their attachment to that order, reputed to be the good par excellence.

“It’s a fact worthy of observation that the national energy for the defense of the revolution increases or decreases according to whether or not the laws favor equality or distance themselves from it. It’s the working class, so unjustly held in contempt, which gave birth to so many prodigious acts of devotion and virtue. Almost everyone else has constantly hindered public regeneration.”

Listen to his judgment on the goal proposed by Jean-Jacques:

“Rousseau proclaimed the rights inseparable from human nature. He pleaded for all men without distinction. He placed the prosperity of society in the happiness of each of its members and its strength in the attachment of all to the laws. For him public wealth resides in the labor and the moderation of its citizens; liberty resides in the might of the sovereign, which is the entire people, every element of which preserves the influence necessary for the life of the social body through the effect of the impartial sharing of joy and enlightenment.”

Finally, judge how much importance he attached to the power of morality:

“The reform of morality must precede the enjoyment of liberty. Before conferring on the people the exercise of sovereignty it is necessary to render general the love of virtue, and to substitute disinterestedness and modesty for avarice, vanity, and ambition, which maintain among the citizens a perpetual war. The contradiction established by our institutions between the needs of love and independence must be annihilated, and the means of misleading, frightening, and dividing must be torn from the hands of the natural enemies of equality. To renounce this preliminary reform means abandoning power to those who are the friends of all abuses and losing the means of assuring public happiness.”

Buonarotti was 70 when he returned to Paris in 1830. The thirty-five years that had passed since he left it, though devoured by prison or exile, had been entirely dedicated to study, under the inspiration of the most religious love of humanity. He had always employed his days and a part of his nights to work, and he only suspended his industrious habits when sickness had defeated him, less than three weeks before his death. The only book he produced is La Conspiration de Babeuf, but he left behind precious manuscripts that will not be lost. What is more, he was so modest that he never wrote anything with publicity in mind. He only studied and instructed himself so as to pour into the souls of his friends the treasures of his knowledge and, even more, his eminent virtue. His counsels were without showiness or vanity, like the rest of his life. He was a sage. He conversed with the old man, the mature man, with the young man or the child as the most intimate friend and brother. He was a witness to the most terrible epochs of our revolution and had taken part in them. Neither his body nor his soul had bent under nearly a half a century of the worst persecutions, and that soul, gifted with so much vigor, far from having been hardened by the struggle, preserved all its gentleness and goodness. No one had more of a right to be severe than Buonarotti, yet no one was more indulgent than he. But indulgent towards faults and reparable errors; inflexible towards the vices of the heart, towards the corruptions of money, towards the cowardly betrayals that sacrifice nations to mad pride or the cupidity of a few men.

Buonarotti’s life was prolonged for 77 years without a single stain having ever been discovered. Those who regularly approached him, who lived most intimately with him, were able to find nothing in his past, surprise nothing in the present, which could trouble this soul worthy of antiquity.

His most extreme old age was not completely sheltered from the suspicions of power. The prefect of police (it was M. Gisquet) had this venerable man arrested and appear before his agents, and only freed him when he had before his eyes the decree of the Convention declaring Philippe Buonarotti a French citizen in recognition of the services he had rendered the republic. “Monsieur, you are not a Frenchman,” the employee charged with interrogating him said to him. “You were not yet born when I already was one,” the descendant of Michelangelo gently answered him, “look in your boxes for the decree of May 27, 1793.”

Without that striking adoption by the National Convention they would cruelly have driven from France, at age 74, he who had so worthily served it. It was under the protection of the decree of the Republic that he was able to die in France.

But he died there under a name other than his own. The condemnation at the High Court of Vendome had pronounced his civil death, and no act had lifted that condemnation. The amnesty of 1830 in favor of those condemned during the Restoration prudently guarded its silence on all previous condemnations. A legal fiction had dispossessed of his name a man whose life any moral power would have singled out for public recognition. Don’t you think that we find in this a bitter irony in our official justice and society? He was insensible to this iniquity, as he was to all others. As long as he did good it made no difference to him if he did it under the name of Buonarotti or Raymond. He regretted the errors of men and never became irritated because of them, always seeking in those that he suffered from a reason to help others avoid similar attacks.

After having fulfilled eminent functions Buonarotti remained poor: what use would riches have been to this sage who had no need of them? Until almost his final days he lived from the lessons in mathematics and music he gave, and it was later said how many noble struggles were necessary to obtain from the nearly blind elderly professor that he finally cease, not to study and learn at his home, but to pursue occupations outside of it.

At his last moments his friends saw him as strong as ever, having guarded the memory, intelligence, and affectionate sentiments of his youth up till the end. Several among them heard him say a few minutes before expiring, and with accents of profound piety; “I am soon going to join those virtuous men who set us such good examples.” And when one of his friends answered: “It is we who have need of yours, and you will remain with us yet,” he added, “You treat me with too much indulgence, speak to me of those whose memory we honor.”

Fifteen hundred citizens followed his remains. Almost all were able to see that high forehead, that so beautiful face in which the great proportions of Michelangelo were preserved. Buonarotti seemed to be sleeping: nothing of death’s sad aspect could be found on his face. Everyone said that they had never seen a more beautiful type. There was power in these cold relics, and those young people who contemplated it took away a lesson in virtue.

– Trélat