In March 1814 he was one of the band of students who, on the heights of Montmartre and Saint-Chaumont, attempted resistance to the armies of the Sixth Coalition which had engaged in the invasion of Paris.

In consequence of this outbreak of patriotic enthusiasm, the school was soon after closed by Louis XVIII, and the young student was compelled to seek another career.

Besides contributing to Le Globe, he made appeals to the people by systematic preaching, and organized centres of action in some of the main cities of France.

Bazard, who concentrated on organizing the group, had devoted himself to political reform, while Enfantin, who favoured teaching and preaching, dedicated his time to social and moral change.

The antagonism was widened by Enfantin's announcement of his theory of the relation of man and woman, which would substitute for the "tyranny of marriage" a system of "free love".

The latter became sole "father", leading a chiefly religiously-oriented movement, joined by new converts (according to Enfantin's estimate, the total number of followers would have reached 40,000).

His extravagances and success at length brought him to the attention of authorities, who argued that he was endangering public morality - Enfantin had announced that the gulf between the sexes was too wide and this social inequality would impede rapid growth of society.

Enfantin had declared 1833 the Year of the Mother, and upon arrival in Istanbul the group began to strongly preach their views about gender relations and New Christianity.

In Egypt at that time, Muhammad Ali, the Egyptian Viceroy, was at odds with the Ottoman Sultan in Constantinople, and also practiced public-private contracts known as concessions with mostly European companies to build cheap infrastructure.

Ali did not agree to a project linking the two seas because he did not want to cut out the duties he collected from overland trade in Egypt, but did allow Enfantin's group to work on the Delta Barrage - a type of dam - north of Cairo - with unpaid laborers - that would act to limit Nile flooding and create predictable crop yields.

He became first a postmaster near Lyon, and in 1841 was appointed, through the influence of some of his friends who had risen to posts of power, member of a scientific commission on Algeria, which led him to engage in researches concerning North Africa and colonization in general.

Father Enfantin held fast by his ideal to the end, but he had renounced the hope of giving it a local habitation and a name in the degenerate obstinate world.

Its members included Arlès-Dufour, Jules, Lon and Paulin Talabot, the British Robert Stephenson and Edward Starbuck, the Austrian Alois Negrelli, inspector of the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway, and Feronce and Sellier of Leipzig as representatives of the German interest.