The new government was pledged to abolish the system by which Paris was fed at the expense of all France, and the cessation of the distribution of bread and meat at nominal prices was fixed for 20 February 1796.

The government yielded to the outcry; but the expedients by which it sought to mitigate the evil, notably the division of those entitled to relief into classes, only increased the alarm and discontent.

He gathered around him a small circle of followers known as the Societé des égaux, soon merged with the rump of the Jacobin Club, who met at the Panthéon; and in November 1795 he was reported by the police to be openly preaching "insurrection, revolt, and the constitution of 1793".

Seven men joined Babeuf to direct the conspiracy: Philippe Buonarroti, Augustin Alexandre Darthé, Sylvain Maréchal - who was in charge of writing the manifesto - Félix Lepeletier, Pierre-Antoine Antonelle, Debon, and Georges Grisel.

Buonarroti shared Babeuf’s principles about private property and advocated for an equally distributed and collaborative social scheme in France.

The manifesto advocated a radical reform of France which went further than the French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen to enforce the practice of absolute equality across all aspects of society.

The manifesto further denounced the privileged bourgeoisie who benefited from the Revolution such as the wealthy landowners who continued to profit off the ‘common good’ of land.

[3] Although the Conspiracy acknowledged the ‘selfish’ would oppose their aims to preserve their unjust privileges, their sacrifice of power was deemed necessary to enact real equality.

It suited the Directory to let the socialist agitation continue, in order to deter the people from joining in any royalist movement for the overthrow of the existing régime.

Moreover the mass of the ouvriers, even of extreme views, were repelled by Babeuf's bloodthirstiness; and the police agents reported that his agitation was making many converts - for the government.

The distress among all classes continued; and in March the attempt of the Directory to replace the assignats by a new issue of mandats created fresh dissatisfaction after the breakdown of the hopes first raised.

The Arrondissements of Paris were thoroughly agitated by the propaganda of Equals,[5] and Babeuf's comrades no longer bothered to conceal their "seditious activity" in the eyes of the police.

Babeuf's song Mourant de faim, mourant de froid ("Dying of Hunger, Dying of Cold"), set to a popular tune, began to be sung in the cafés, with immense applause; and reports circulated that the disaffected troops of the French Revolutionary Army in the camp of Grenelle were ready to join an insurrection against the government.

The Directory thought it time to react; the bureau central had accumulated through its agents, notably the ex-captain Georges Grisel, who had been initiated into Babeuf’s society, complete evidence of a conspiracy for an armed rising fixed for Floréal 22, year IV (11 May 1796), in which Jacobins and socialists were combined.

On 10 May Babeuf, who had taken the pseudonym Tissot, was arrested; many of his associates were gathered by the police on order from Lazare Carnot: among them were Augustin Alexandre Darthé and Philippe Buonarroti, the ex-members of the National Convention, Robert Lindet, Jean-Pierre-André Amar, Marc-Guillaume Alexis Vadier and Jean-Baptiste Drouet, famous as the postmaster of Sainte-Menehould who had arrested Louis XVI during the latter's Flight to Varennes, and now a member of the Directory's Council of Five Hundred.

The last number of the Tribun appeared on 24 April, although René-François Lebois, in the Ami du peuple, tried to incite soldiers to revolt.

[6] Leon Trotsky would echo these sentiments, stating that the foundation of the Communist International marked a ‘carrying on in direct succession the heroic endeavours and martyrdom of a long line of revolutionary generations from Babeuf’.