Jacobins had imposed what was called a maximum, which set the price of set up a limit on the price of bread. So as France is heading into winter, the convention gets rid of price controls. Prices go through the roof and poor people starve to death. The committee of 11 takes it upon itself to abolish the democratic Constitution of 1793 at draft a new Constitution. That's the Constitution that brings the directory into being.
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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