The trial was unmistakably stacked against the defendants. A major tension emerged over the basic strategy and framing of their defense. Beboof found himself silenced by his own allies and acquiescing to a defense he loathed. The person in the courtroom who does the most to make this defense is Philippo Bonerhoti.
Featuring Laura Mason on her book The Last Revolutionaries: The Conspiracy Trial of Gracchus Babeuf and the Equals. Mason discusses Babeuf's call to abolish property, his radically egalitarian conspiracy against the Directory government, and the end of the French Revolution. How a centrist government turned its back on popular democracy, presided over growing inequality and working-class poverty, and abetted the rise of the reactionary right that would ultimately overthrow it.
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