Suchergebnisse

Lorsque la guerre franco-allemande éclata, Michel Bakounine, rentré en Europe le 27 décembre 1861 après onze ans de prison et d'exil, avait, depuis cinq ou six années, donné une forme définitive aux idées qui sont restées pour toujours associées à son nom.

At the University of Pisa, where he studied law, Buonarroti had been acquainted with the i8th century social philosophers especially Helvetius, Mably, Rousseau and Morelly, who had moulded his social and political ideology. When the French Revolution broke out he was among the most courageous protagonists to defend its ideas: "J'attendais depuis longtemps le signal, il fut donné". In October 1789 he left his native Tuscany, "ivre de l'amour de la liberté, épris de la courageuse entreprise des Français, indigné centre la tyrannic, et las de l'inquisition et des persécutions du despotisme", as he said later in his defence at Vendôme. In Corsica he published an Italian paper in defence of the French Revolution, the Giornale Patriottico, and in November 1790 he obtained a post in the administration of the island as head of the "Bureau des domaines nationaux et du clergé". In this capacity he had to deal with the administration and sale of landed property. The rural economy of the island was based on a nearly equal distribution of very small holdings, there were hardly any labourers, and there existed a strong tradition of common interests and collective rights. In his Survey of Corsica Buonarroti wrote: "La communalité des biens semble garantir partout au pauvre le sentiment de son indépendance: partout les communes des campagnes réclament des biens que la tyrannic génoise et française ravit au peuple pour récompenser les crimes de ses favoris. Les grands propriétaires sont en très petit nombre: l'homme sans terre est rare, comme celui sans courage".

On the 27th May 1797 the High Court at Vendôme sentenced Babeuf to death and Buonarroti, then 36 years old, to deportation, but this being postponed there followed a long life of imprisonment and exile. Buonarroti led a mysterious life, and our knowledge about certain phases of his life and activities since Vendôme is incomplete. Buonarroti has, of course, always been known as one of the important actors of the conspiracy connected with the name of Babeuf, and as the author of a book, dealing with this conspiracy. This rare and famous book, published in 1828, was mainly regarded as the historical account of an eye-witness and participant of a post-thermidorian episode of the French Revolution. The book, however, was also a landmark in the historiography of the French Revolution, and did much for the revaluation and the rehabilitation of Robespierre and the revival of the Jacobin tradition under the Monarchy of July. By exposing the social implications of the Terror, and by a detailed account of the organisation and the methods and the aims of the conspiracy of 1796, the book became a textbook for the communist movement in the 1830's and fourties in France, and the fundamental source for its ideology. In fact, with the "Conspiration" started the Jacobin trend in European socialism.