550 Chapter XXIII
combination of various anti- Directory activists, the “communism” may be no more
than an excrescence.^10
The other group, typified by Babeuf, was composed of men who had been anti-
Robespierrist in 1793–1794. Most of them had played no constructive role during
the period of the Terror, much of which Babeuf had spent in prison. In the days of
the Revolutionary Government they had denounced that government as a dicta-
torship. They were what Robes pierre called ultras or Hébertists. They were not true
sans culottes, but stormy journalists and intellectuals, who had clamored for the
Constitution of the Year I as early as the summer of 1793—that is, had tried to
overthrow the Revolutionary Government, the Committee of Public Safety and
the Convention, as they now in 1796 tried to overthrow the Directory. These men,
Thermidorians of the Left, had rejoiced in Robespi erre’s fall, and called him, once
he was dead, an ogre, a monster, a Caligula “justly abhorred,” a tyrant crazed by
private ambition. Babeuf had even written a book, Le système de dépopulation, alleg-
ing that it had been Robespierre’s studied policy to solve the social problems of
France by reducing the population through the guillotining of two million people.
(^11) In Babeuf, unlike Buonarroti, there was no yearning for an especially moral re-
public. With Babeuf, but not with Buonarroti, revolutionary ideology had under-
gone a “sudden mutation” in abruptly departing both from sans- culottisme and
from Robespierre.
Both men in 1796, however, felt themselves to be marching in Robespierre’s path.
Both represented themselves as his successors, bearing the standard that had been
struck from his hands. Precisely how they did so is of interest, since it illustrates
the kind of continuity that existed between the French Revolution and the later
revolutionary movements of which Babouvism was in some ways an anticipation.
What Buonarroti most feared is illustrated by an episode at the house of James
Monroe, which occurred on March 12, 1796, the very moment at which the Con-
spiracy of Equals was being formed. Monroe gave a state dinner, at which various
ambassadors and high personages of the French government were present. Toasts
were drunk, including one aux rois amis de la France, which was enthusiastically
cheered. The Prussian ambassador commented on this attitude in the French re-
publicans, who now believed that kings could be their friends.^12 Buonarroti had
just published a pamphlet of directly opposite tendency, La paix perpetuelle avec les
rois.^13 As an Italian patriot, he was afraid that the French would sign an armistice
with the King of Sardinia (as they soon did), instead of befriending the Italian re-
publicans who were working to overthrow him. Toward kings, Buonarroti argued,
there was no proper policy except unconditional surrender. They could never be
trusted, they would never negotiate honestly with the France of the Revolution.
France, to protect itself, must make common cause with all other peoples. “I invite
10 Saitta, I, 27, “... ovvero perche il comunismo era una superfetazione sul tronco della
cospirazione?”
11 Du système de dépopulation, ou la vie et les crimes de Carrier... (Paris, 1795); Dommanget, Pages
choisies, 178–85.
12 P. Bailleu, Preussen und Frankreich von 1795 bis 1807, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1881–1887), I, 60.
13 Published in full by Saitta as one of Buonarroti’s “unknown or forgotten writings,” II,
238–43.