Conspiracy of the Equals

It was the attempts of the Directory to deal with the economic crisis that gave Babeuf his historical importance. The new government was pledged to abolish the system by which Paris was fed at the expense of all France, and the cessation of the distribution of bread and meat at nominal prices was fixed for 20 February 1796. The announcement caused the most widespread consternation. Not only were the workmen and the large class of proletarians attracted to Paris by the system, but rentiers and government officials, whose incomes were paid in assignats on a scale arbitrarily fixed by the government, saw themselves threatened with starvation. The government yielded to the outcry; but the expedients by which it sought to mitigate the evil, notably the division of those entitled to relief into classes, only increased the alarm and discontent.

The universal misery gave point to virulent attacks by Babeuf on the existing order, and gained him a hearing. He gathered around him a small circle of followers known as the Societé des égaux, soon merged with the rump of the Jacobin Club, who met at the Panthéon; and in November 1795 he was reported by the police to be openly preaching "insurrection, revolt and the constitution of 1793".

Seven men joined Babeuf to direct the conspiracy: Philippe Buonarroti, Augustin Alexandre Darthé, Sylvain Maréchal - who was in charge of writing the manifesto - Félix Lepeletier, Pierre-Antoine Antonelle, Debon, and Georges Grisel. A network of military agents was created by Jean Antoine Rossignol, who placed revolutionary agents in every district of Paris. .

Gracchus Babeuf and his comrades denounced the privileged who benefited from the Revolution. They advocated a radical reform of society: the abolition of private property and equality for all of France. To realize their ideal, they planned to overthrow the Directory. The purpose of the Conspiracy was to continue the revolution, and to lead it to the collectivization of lands and the means of production, to obtain "perfect equality" and "common happiness". They also demanded the application of the Constitution of Year I (dating from 1793, the first constitution of the Republic, which was never actually applied).

The ideas of the Conspiracy were particularly set forth in the "Manifesto of Equals" (1796). It reads:

" We need not only that equality of rights written into the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen; we want it in our midst, under the roofs of our houses. [...] Let it at last end, this great scandal that our descendants will never believe existed! Disappear at last, revolting distinctions between rich and poor, great and small, masters and servants, rulers and ruled. [...] The moment has come to found the REPUBLIC OF EQUALS, the great home open to all men. [...] The organisation 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."[1]

For a time the government, while keeping itself informed of his activities, left him alone. It suited the Directory to let the socialist agitation continue, in order to deter the people from joining in any royalist movement for the overthrow of the existing régime. Moreover the mass of the ouvriers, even of extreme views, were repelled by Babeuf's bloodthirstiness; and the police agents reported that his agitation was making many converts - for the government. The Jacobin Club refused to admit Babeuf and René-François Lebois, on the ground that they were "égorgeurs" ("throat-cutters").

With the development of the economic crisis, however, Babeuf's influence increased. After the club of the Panthéon was closed by Napoleon Bonaparte on 27 February 1796, his aggressive activity redoubled. In Ventôse and Germinal (roughly late winter and early spring) he published, under the nom de plume of Lalande, soldat de la patrie, a new paper, the Eclaireur du Peuple, ou le Défenseur de Vingt-Cinq Millions d'Opprimés, which was hawked clandestinely from group to group in the streets of Paris.

At the same time Issue 40 of the Tribun excited an immense sensation. In this Babeuf praised the authors of the September Massacres as "deserving well of their country", and declared that a more complete "2 September" was needed to annihilate the actual government, which consisted of "starvers, bloodsuckers, tyrants, hangmen, rogues and mountebanks".

The distress among all classes continued; and in March the attempt of the Directory to replace the assignats by a new issue of mandats created fresh dissatisfaction after the breakdown of the hopes first raised. A cry went up that national bankruptcy had been declared, and thousands of the lower class of ouvriers began to rally to Babeuf's flag. On 4 April 1796, the government received a report that 500,000 people in Paris were in need of relief. From 11 April, Paris was placarded with posters headed Analyse de la Doctrine de Baboeuf [sic], Tribun du Peuple, of which the opening sentence ran: "Nature has given to every man the right to the enjoyment of an equal share in all property", and which ended with a call to restore the Constitution of 1793.

The Arrondissements of Paris were thoroughly agitated by the propaganda of Equals,[2] and Babeuf's comrades no longer bothered to conceal their "seditious activity" in the eyes of the police. Babeuf's song Mourant de faim, mourant de froid ("Dying of Hunger, Dying of Cold"), set to a popular tune, began to be sung in the cafés, with immense applause; and reports circulated that the disaffected troops of the French Revolutionary Army in the camp of Grenelle were ready to join an insurrection against the government.

Philippe Buonarroti publicly read a draft decree proclaiming an egalitarian republic. The first words that were written declared: "The people advanced, tyranny is no more. You are free ". This project predicted that "a large national community will be established in the republic". "Intestacy and inheritance will be abolished: all property currently owned by private individuals will, upon their death, fall to the national community. "The goods of the national community will be exploited collectively, by all its valid members. The national community will provide each of its members with decent accommodation, clothing, adequate food, and "relief in the art of healing." Finally, "the republic will no longer make money".

The conspiracy was denounced to the police for a fee, by one of its own leaders: Georges Grisel. Faced with the repression that then fell upon the democratic circles of Paris, several attempted to provoke an uprising, first within the police legion. The Directory considered that the Babouviste propaganda had dangerously agitated public opinion and, on May 2, 1796, it ordered the dismissal and disarmament of a police legion because: "seduced by the Babouviste faction they became more undisciplined every day." After its dissolution, the Babouvistes turned to the soldiers of the 21st Regiment of dragons, who were camped at Grenelle.

Depiction of the unrest in the military camp of Grenelle

The Directory thought it time to react; the bureau central had accumulated through its agents, notably the ex-captain Georges Grisel, who had been initiated into Babeuf’s society, complete evidence of a conspiracy for an armed rising fixed for Floréal 22, year IV (11 May 1796), in which Jacobins and socialists were combined. On 10 May Babeuf, who had taken the pseudonym Tissot, was arrested; many of his associates were gathered by the police on order from Lazare Carnot: among them were Augustin Alexandre Darthé and Philippe Buonarroti, the ex-members of the National Convention, Robert Lindet, Jean-Pierre-André Amar, Marc-Guillaume Alexis Vadier and Jean-Baptiste Drouet, famous as the postmaster of Sainte-Menehould who had arrested Louis XVI during the latter's Flight to Varennes, and now a member of the Directory's Council of Five Hundred. 245 arrest warrants were issued by Carnot who intended to put a stop to demands for equality.

The government crackdown was extremely successful. The last number of the Tribun appeared on 24 April, although René-François Lebois in the Ami du peuple tried to incite the soldiers to revolt, and for a while there were rumours of a military rising.

The trial of Babeuf and his accomplices was fixed to take place before the newly constituted high court of justice at Vendôme. On Fructidor 10 and 11 (27 August and 28 August 1796), when the prisoners were removed from Paris, there were tentative efforts at a riot with a view to rescue, but these were easily suppressed. The attempt of five or six hundred Jacobins (7 September 1796) to rouse the soldiers at Grenelle met with no better success. A shoot-out greeted them, leaving about 20 dead, 132 captured and many others wounded.

The trial of Babeuf and the others, begun at Vendôme on 20 February 1797, lasted two months. The government, for reasons of its own, depicted the socialist Babeuf as the leader of the conspiracy, even though people more important than himself were implicated; and his own vanity played admirably into their hands. And Darthé, who has himself locked up in utter silence during the debates was accused of writing an order for the execution of the Directors. On Prairial 7 (26 May 1797) Babeuf and Darthé were condemned to death. On hearing his death sentence, Babeuf struck himself in the courtroom with several blows, and was carried dying the next day to the scaffold. Darthé, who had also tried to commit suicide, was guillotined alongside him on at Vendôme, Prairial 8 (27 May 1797), without appeal. Some of the prisoners, including Buonarroti and Germain, were deported; the rest, including Vadier and his fellow former-Montagnards, were acquitted. Drouet succeeded in making his escape, according to Paul Barras, with the connivance of the Directory.

The Conspiracy of Equals would probably have disappeared in the flood of great events of the Revolution, but the publication in 1828 of Buonarroti's book, Conspiracy of Equals, kept it in the history books. Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx recognized in the Conspiracy of Equals "the first appearance of a truly active Communist party".[3]

Although the words "anarchist" and "communist" did not exist at the time of the conspiracy, they have both been used to describe its ideas by later scholars. The English word "communism" was coined by Goodwyn Barmby in a conversation with those he described as the "disciples of Babeuf".[4]

• The Conspiracy of the Equals, at the Mises Institute