François Noël Babeuf

Background

Babeuf was born in 1760 at St. Nicaise near the town of Saint-Quentin, France. His father, Claude Babeuf, had deserted the French army in 1738 and taken service under Maria Theresa, rising, it is said, to the rank of major.

Education

He had received from his father the smatterings of a liberal education, but until the outbreak of the Revolution he was a domestic servant, and from 1785 occupied the invidious office of commissaire a terrier, his function being to assist the nobles and priests in the assertion of their feudal rights as against the unfortunate peasants.

Career

The hardships endured by Babeuf during early years do much to explain his later opinions.

In the circumstances it is not surprising that he was the life and soul of the malcontents of the place.

In 1789 he drew up the first article of the cahier of the electors of the bailliage of Roye, demanding the abolition of feudal rights.

Then, from July to October, he was in Paris superintending the publication of his first work: Cadastre perpetuel, dedii a Vassemblee nationale, Van ij8g et le premier de la liberti franqaise, which was written in 1787 and issued in 1790.

The same year he published a pamphlet against feudal aids and the gabelle, for which he was denounced and arrested, but provisionally released.

In October, on his return to Roye, he founded the Correspondant picard, the violent character of which cost him another arrest.

Here he was accused of fraud for having substituted one name for another in a deed of transfer of national lands.

It is probable that his fault was one of negligence only; but, distrusting the impartiality of the judges of the Somme, he fled to Paris, and on the 23rd of August 1793 was condemned in contumaciam to twenty years' imprisonment.

Meanwhile he had been appointed secretary to the relief committee (comiti des subsistances) of the commune of Paris.

The judges of Amiens, however, pursued him with a warrant for his arrest, which took place in Brumaire of the year II (1794).

The court of cassation quashed the sentence, through defect cf form, but sent Babeuf for a new trial before the Aisne tribunal, by which he was acquitted on the 18th of July. Babeuf now returned to Paris, and on the 3rd of September 1794 published the first number of his Journal de la liberie de la presse, the title of which was altered on the 5 th of October to Le Tribun du peuple.

The execution of Robespierre on the 28th of July had ended the Terror, and Babeuf-now self-styled " Gracchus " Babeuf-defended the men of Thermidor and attacked the fallen terrorists with his usual violence.

He emerged from prison a confirmed terrorist and convinced that his Utopia, fully proclaimed to the world in No. 33 of his Tribun, could only be realized through the restoration of the constitution of 1793.

In February 1795 he was again arrested, and the Tribun du peuple was solemnly burnt in the Theatre des Bergeres by the jeunesse dorSe, the young men whose mission it was to bludgeon Jacobinism out of the streets and cafes.

Achievements

• His newspaper Le tribun du peuple ("the tribune of the people") was best known for his advocacy for the poor and calling for a popular revolt against the Directory, the government of France.
  
  He was a leading advocate for democracy, the abolition of private property and the equality of results.
  
  He has been called "The First Revolutionary Communist. "

Politics

Historically, his importance lies in the fact that he was the first to propound socialism as a practical policy, and the father of the movements which played so conspicuous a part in the revolutions of 1848 and 1871.

Views

Quotations: "Society must be made to operate in such a way that it eradicates once and for all the desire of a man to become richer, or wiser, or more powerful than others. "

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

Connections

His father had died in 1780, and François-Noël Babeuf was now the sole support, not only of his wife and two children, but of his mother, brothers and sisters.

Father:

Claude Babeuf