The Last Revolutionaries: The Conspiracy Trial of Gracchus Babeuf and the Equals

The story of a poor man and radical activist who fought to revive the French Revolution, and whose failure heralded the republic’s defeat

Format: Hardback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 07 June 2022
Publisher: Yale University Press

The story of a poor man and radical activist who fought to revive the French Revolution, and whose failure heralded the republic's defeat, is a book for our times. Laura Mason's retelling of the trial of Gracchus Babeuf and the French Revolution shows how democracies end. Historians of revolutions and all those concerned with the arc of social justice movements have much to learn from this remarkable story.

Named by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as the "first modern communist," Babeuf was a poor man, an autodidact, and an activist accused of conspiring to reignite the Revolution and renew political terror. In one of the lengthiest and most controversial trials of the revolutionary decade, Babeuf and his allies defended political liberty and social equality against a regime they accused of tyranny. Mason refracts national political life through Babeuf's trial to reveal how this explosive event destabilized a fragile republic. Although the French Revolution is celebrated as a founding moment of modern representative government, this book reminds us that the experiment failed in just ten years. Mason explains how an elected government's assault on popular democracy and social justice destroyed the republic, and why that matters now.

Dimension: 235 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780300259551