BABEUF, FRANOIS-NOL

born Nov. 23, 1760, Saint-Quentin, France died May 27, 1797, Vendme byname Gracchus Babeuf early political journalist and agitator in Revolutionary France whose tactical strategies provided a model for left-wing movements of the 19th century and who was called Gracchus for the resemblance of his proposed agrarian reforms to those of the 2nd-century-BC Roman statesman of that name. The son of a tax farmer, Babeuf worked in the 1780s as a land surveyor, maintaining records of dues owed and paid by the peasants to the local seigneuries. His increasing distaste for these feudal agricultural duties led him to begin an active career as a political journalist (178892). In 1789 he was appointed to help prepare for the States General the cahier of Roye (in Picardy), a list of grievances containing demands for the abolition of feudal rights. In 1790 he was arrested and briefly imprisoned in Paris. Following his release he returned to Picardy and founded a journal, Le Correspondant picard. He advocated a program of radical agrarian reforms, including the abolition of feudal dues and the redistribution of land. During this period he served as an administrator in the Montdidier district of the Somme, but in February 1793 he returned to Paris, where, during the Reign of Terror, Maximilien Robespierre's radical-democratic rgime, he was again arrested and imprisoned. After his release following Robespierre's fall in July 1794, he founded a new journal, Le Journal de la libert de la presse (shortly thereafter renamed Le Tribun du peuple), in which he at first defended the Thermidorians and attacked the Jacobins. When he began to attack the Thermidorians, he was arrested (Feb. 12, 1795) and imprisoned at Arras. During this brief imprisonment, Babeuf continued to formulate his egalitarian doctrines, advocating an equal distribution of land and income, and after his release he began a career as a professional revolutionary. He quickly rose to a position of leadership in the Society of the Pantheon, which sought political and economic equality in defiance of the new French Constitution. After the society was dissolved in 1796, he founded a secret directory of public safety to plan an insurrection. On May 8, 1796, a general meeting of Babouvist, Jacobin, and military insurrectionary committees took place in order to plan the raising of a force of 17,000 men to overthrow the Directory and to institute a return to the Constitution of 1793, which the committee members considered the document most legitimately sanctioned by popular deliberation. On May 10, however, the conspirators were arrested after an informant revealed their plans to the government. The trial took place between Feb. 20 and May 26, 1797. All conspirators were acquitted except Babeuf and his companion, Augustin Darth, both of whom were guillotined.