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As Jaurès has pointed out, the mind of Marx sometimes harked back to the dramatic side of the French Revolution, and was captivated by such episodes as the conspiracy of Babeuf and his friends, who in their day, while the proletariat was a small minority, even as it is in Russia now, sought to establish its dominion.
The projects of the democrats produced a movement of opinion, contrary to that which had been manifested after Vendemiaire, and the counter-revolutionists in their turn became emboldened. The secret chiefs of this party hoped to find auxiliaries in the troops of the camp of Grenelle, who had repelled the Babeuf faction.
It has led the former into egregious blunders, and has caused the latter to utter incredible platitudes. Gracchus Babeuf wished all superiority to be STRINGENTLY REPRESSED, and even PERSECUTED AS A SOCIAL CALAMITY. To establish his communistic edifice, he lowered all citizens to the stature of the smallest.
Under the reaction, it still formed a compact mass; under Babeuf, it maintained the position of a formidable association. From that time democrates existed, but the party was broken up. In the interim between the Grenelle enterprise and Babeuf's condemnation, the royalists also formed their conspiracy.
The democrats re-established their club at the Pantheon, which the directory tolerated for some time. They had for their chief, "Gracchus" Babeuf, who styled himself the "Tribune of the people." He was a daring man, of an exalted imagination, an extraordinary fanaticism of democracy, and with great influence over his party. In his journal, he prepared the reign of general happiness.
The success of the Extremists of 1793 and 1848 in similar experiments not to speak of the Communistic rising of Babeuf in 1797 was only temporary; but doubtless it encouraged the "Reds" of 1871 to make their mad bid for power. Now, however, the case was very different. France was no longer a lethargic mass, dominated solely by the eager brain of Paris.
The memory of the enragés of 1793 and of Babeuf and his conspiracy of 1795 had been kept green by Buonarotti and Maréchal. The ruling classes had very cunningly lauded liberty and fraternity, but they rarely mentioned the struggle for equality, which, of course, appeared to them as a regrettable and most dangerous episode in the great Revolution.
This strange attempt, savouring so strongly of fanaticism, and which could only be a repetition of the insurrection of Prairial, without its means and its hopes of success, excited the greatest terror. The public mind was still terrified with the recent domination of the Jacobins. Babeuf, like a daring conspirator, prisoner as he was, proposed terms of peace to the directory:
Bartholomew," with the old Conventionists who could not get themselves elected, at their head, Drouet, Amar, Vadier, Ricord, Laignelot, Chaudieu, Huguet, Cusset, Javogues. Alongside of them, the friends of Chalier, Robespierre's and Marat's followers, and the disciples of Saint-Just, Bertrand de Lyon, Buonarotti, Antonelle, Rossignol and Babeuf.
The members of this principal committee were Babeuf, the chief of the conspiracy, ex-conventionalists, such as Vadier, Amar, Choudieu, Ricord, the representative Drouet, the former generals of the decemviral committee, Rossignol, Parrein, Fyon, Lami. Many cashiered officers, patriots of the departments, and the old Jacobin mass, composed the army of this faction.
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