Released in early 1835, he served as a lawyer for 164 defendants indicted for republican insurgency during 1834, and, in July 1835, he assisted twenty-eight of them to escape from Sainte-Pelagie prison in Paris, an institution reserved for political troublemakers.

He responded by founding the short-lived Society of Avengers, which was followed, the next year, by the League of Families, the organization for which Barbès composed the oath of membership, a must for all aspiring conspirators.

There, he devised plans for a new secret society and wrote the brochure that will remain his only contribution to revolutionary literature, "A Few Words to Those who Sympathize with Workers without Work".

Four hundred insurgents managed to seize the National Assembly, the city hall, and the Palace of Justice, but they were unable to maintain their grip for more than a few hours because of a lack of numbers and weapons.

Shortly after that, Barbès contracted what he called consumption (tuberculosis), probably, in fact, persistent bronchitis brought on by the cold and damp of Mont-Saint-Michel.

When he was released from prison in 1848, Barbès seemed to have regained his enthusiasm, and he rallied the revolutionary left in a more moderate and pragmatic direction to oppose Blanqui.

A month earlier, in March 1848, the hostility between Barbès and Blanqui had erupted with the publication in the mainstream press of the so-called document Taschereau, said to be derived from police records.

A goodly number of historians now consider it highly likely that this document was "a false broadcast, in the form of leaks by the government" to destabilize and undermine [citation needed].

Nonetheless, both are major figures in the Republican pantheon, where they both enjoy a reputation as uncompromising revolutionaries, never diminished by the inevitable compromises necessitated by the exercise of power.

Barbès, initially opposed the demonstration, and he tried to disperse the crowd, but he seemed to lose his head when he saw Auguste Blanqui in the assembly chamber[citation needed].

In an effort to seize the demonstration as a tool to bludgeon his enemy, he sparked a riot in front of the city hall, where a new, and more radical, republic was proclaimed.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment in April 1849 by the High Court of Justice, after he was found guilty of two major charges, an attack that aimed to overthrow the government, and incitement to civil war.

Later, Karl Marx wrote in Class Struggles in France: "On 12 May [1848, the proletariat] sought unsuccessfully to regain its revolutionary influence, but only managed to deliver to the bourgeoisie's jailers their most energetic leaders."

He realized that returning to French society would only tempt him to further political involvement [citation needed], so he withdrew into voluntary exile at the Hague, where he died on 26 June 1870, aged 60.