Why was it Buonarroti who wrote the Memoirs of the Conspiracy of the Equals and not Félix Le Peletier, even though Gracchus had explicitly asked him to do so? (Theories)
Warning: The following text discusses how Félix Le Peletier described Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and Louis XVIII. These descriptions are historically hostile, exaggerated, or false, and in some cases insulting. They reflect Le Peletier’s own polemical style, not historical fact.
Before he died, Gracchus asked Le Peletier for several things: to take care of his family (and, to a lesser extent, he made the same request to Suzanne Le Peletier, the daughter of Michel Le Peletier and niece of Félix), and also to tell his story.
Le Peletier kept the first promise, as you can see here: https://www.tumblr.com/nesiacha/767963454663442432/letter-from-babeuf-to-f%C3%A9lix-le-peletier-5?source=share
He adopted Émile, treating him as his own son, likely took care of the two other boys, Camille and Caïus, and ensured that Gracchus Babeuf’s widow had enough means to run a small business. He treated them all like his own family. However, he did not keep the second promise. This was not due to any distancing from the Babeuf family—he remained close to them until the end, and they shared the persecutions imposed by successive regimes without ever betraying one another.
I believe there were several reasons for this. First, even though the friendship between Félix Le Peletier and Babeuf was deep—so much so that Babeuf reportedly said after Félix’s death: “What is joy? I barely ever knew it.”—and even though they never betrayed each other, historian Jean-Marc Schiappa notes that Babeuf only asked Félix to write his story because Buonarroti and Charles Germain had been sentenced to deportation at the Vendôme trial. They would have been his first choice. Thus, when Buonarroti was eventually spared deportation, Le Peletier may have believed that he should be the one to write the Conspiracy of the Equals—which he finally did in 1828.
Second: Buonarroti and Le Peletier presented their former “comrades” in very different ways. In his Histoire de la Révolution et de la Restauration, Le Peletier—strongly anti-Bourbon and fond of provocation—described Louis XVI as a man of “extreme weakness,” “stingy, selfish, coarse, and ill-tempered,” “mechanically devout,” and even attributed to him vulgar and degrading behavior such as the fact that he allegedly humiliated certain people by "(...)farting in their faces", according to Félix’s own words . Marie-Antoinette is described as having an “irritable and despotic nature.”
His attacks on Louis XVIII were even harsher: he mocked the king’s physical condition, saying he “ascended the throne as an impotent man, almost crippled,” and devoted ten scathing pages to him as well as to a supposed mistress. He even claimed that Louis XVIII’s young Savoyard wife took lovers—among them, according to him, a gardener from Petit-Montreuil—whom the king supposedly had arrested after discovering the affair. Le Peletier ended with this bitter remark: “One might excuse resentment or even vengeance in such a case from anyone able to enjoy such seductive prerogatives—if only one were not a nobody.”
As you may expect, his sources were extremely weak—almost exclusively Le Moniteur. His hatred of the Bourbons was both ideological and personal: he blamed them for his brother’s death, for the persecutions he himself suffered, and for the exile imposed on his political peers (temporary for some, fatal for others). His adopted son Émile Babeuf nearly died after being condemned to deportation during the White Terror in the 1816 “Affaire des patriotes,” though the sentence was later annulled. Caïus Babeuf died defending Paris in 1814.
Despite containing serious political reflections, his work is interesting for another reason: it contains virtually no reference to the doctrine of the 1796 conspirators, except for two brief remarks about land ownership—criticizing “the deplorable and nearly incurable wounds caused by the concentration of land in the hands of a few,” and arguing that the “indispensable right of property” must be balanced by “indemnity for the natural rights that such an indispensable right tramples.”
Concerning another historical figure, Le Peletier spoke of Lazare Carnot as “a name made great by virtue and talent.” This is unsurprising: Carnot had protected him during the repression of the Babouvists—even though he was one of the main architects of that repression. https://www.tumblr.com/aedislumen/789539824989339648/nesiacha-here-some-interesting-excerpts-i-found?source=share
Le Peletier also worked for Carnot during the Hundred Days and refused the Légion d’honneur he offered—not out of hostility toward Carnot, but because he despised Bonaparte.
Buonarroti would never have shared this positive view of Carnot, especially when writing the Conspiracy of the Equals. He was milder toward him than toward figures such as Barras, Fréron, Merlin de Thionville, Legendre, or Grisel, but the only passage referring to Carnot that I find on him is clear: " “At that time, the steadfast friends of equality were deeply distressed by the depravity which, creeping even into the opinions of many revolutionaries, threatened to consign democratic doctrines to eternal oblivion. In general, the patriots—most of whom acted more out of impulse than reflection—took pride in the victory of Vendémiaire, regarded the appointment of Barras and Carnot to the Executive Directory as one of the fortunate events of the Revolution, and consoled themselves for their long misfortunes with the prospect of the positions and favors they flattered themselves with obtaining. It seemed as though they had forgotten the cause for which they had fought, and that, viewing with an indifferent eye the encroachment upon the rights of the people—an encroachment that had just been accomplished—they placed the salvation of the fatherland in the alleviation of their own hardships.” .
The opinion that Buonarroti (and Babeuf himself) held of Carnot never changed: https://www.tumblr.com/nesiacha/767944757763883008/babeuf-et-la-r%C3%A9publique-pers%C3%A9e?source=share
Even though Émile Babeuf later worked for Carnot during the Hundred Days—and Carnot may have softened his stance toward the Babouvists—Buonarroti still saw him as one of the morally “cleanest” among those responsible for the repression, but still responsible nonetheless. Interestingly, Hippolyte Carnot wrote that Buonarroti attended a few Saint-Simonian lectures where he was treated with respect, though he quickly distanced himself—according to Hippolyte’s text On Saint-Simonism. These differences could only deepen existing ideological divides.
Another important point is that Le Peletier’s writings were far less documented than Buonarroti’s.
This leads me to another hypothesis. In one of his letters, knowing he was going to die, Babeuf wrote about his wife:
“When my body returns to the earth, nothing will remain of me but a large number of projects, notes, and drafts of revolutionary writings… My wife will be able to gather them all… When persecution subsides… you will then be able to search these scraps and present them to the disciples of Equality… for the benefit of my memory.”
In his farewell letter, he entrusted several documents to her, and she took great care of them. Contrary to what Babeuf sometimes pretended to protect her, she was far more politically involved than people claimed. Beyond helping him print pamphlets, she was cunning, politically astute, and deeply involved in clandestine activities. Her political views must have aligned closely with his (and likely influenced his as well).
She may therefore have believed that Buonarroti was the most suitable person to write the history of the conspiracy—perhaps even granting him access to certain documents (likely through correspondence), allowing him to refine his account as a participant of the first rank. Everything suggests she preferred Buonarroti’s perspective over that of Le Peletier, friendships notwithstanding.
Le Peletier’s strong dislike of Robespierre—as I explained here https://www.tumblr.com/nesiacha/795923031920885760/the-tumultuous-relationship-between-maximilien?source=share —while Buonarroti greatly admired him (as did Gracchus), is only a secondary factor in my view.
P.S.: In the Conspiracy of the Equals, Buonarroti deliberately protected those who were still alive at the time of publication, since France was then ruled by Charles X. This is why the roles of figures like Marie-Anne and Émile Babeuf are minimized, as well as those of several other conspirators.
This also suggests that if Marie-Anne preferred Buonarroti’s account to that of Félix Le Peletier, she must have disapproved even more of her son’s memoirs, which were entirely inaccurate.
To learn more about the relationships between Émile Babeuf, his parents, Félix Le Peletier, and Buonarroti; his political involvement as a child of the French Revolution; the persecutions he suffered under Bonaparte and Louis XVIII; his position during the 100 days when he worked for Carnot and his later reactionary turn that cost him the political trust of his parents’ friends. , see here: https://www.tumblr.com/nesiacha/797365648777953280/the-beginning-of-the-revolutionary-period?source=share
