[5] They played an active role in the 31 May – 2 June 1793 Paris uprisings that forced the expulsion of the Girondins from the National Convention, allowing the Montagnards to assume full control.
Jacques Roux, Jean-François Varlet, Jean Théophile Victor Leclerc and Claire Lacombe, the primary leaders of the Enragés, were strident critics of the National Convention for failing to carry out the promises of the French Revolution.
[9] In 1793, Jacques Roux delivered a speech at the National Convention known as the Manifesto of the Enragés that represented the essential demands of the group.
He demanded the National Convention take severe action to repress counterrevolutionary activity, promising to "show them [enemies] those immortal pikes that overthrew the Bastille".
Many Parisians feared that the National Convention protected merchants and shopkeepers at the expense of the sans-culottes, the lower-class working peoples.
Jacques Roux and Jean-Francois Varlet emboldened the Parisian working poor to approach the Jacobin Club on 22 February 1793 and persuade them to place price controls on necessary goods.
This provoked outrage and criticism throughout Paris, and some went as far as to accuse the National Convention of protecting the merchant elite's interests at the expense of the sans-culottes.
They complained that the National Convention ordered men to fight on the battlefield without providing for the widows and orphans remaining in France.
In his Manifesto of the Enragés, Jacques Roux colorfully expressed this sentiment to the National Convention, asking,[12] Is it necessary that the widows of those who died for the cause of freedom pay, at the price of gold, for the cotton they need to wipe away their tears, for the milk and the honey that serves for their children?They accused the merchant aristocracy of withholding access to goods and supplies to intentionally drive up prices.
Roux demanded that the National Convention impose capital punishment upon unethical merchants who used speculation, monopolies and hoarding to increase their personal profits at the expense of the poor.
Those who adhered to the ideologies presented in the Manifesto of the Enragés wished to emphasize to the National Convention that tyranny was not just the product of monarchy, and that injustice and oppression did not end with the execution of the king.
The Enragés called on the National Convention to restrict commerce, so that it might not "consist of ruining, rendering hopeless, or starving citizens".
Varlet formed the Enragés by provoking and motivating working poor women and organizing them into a semi-cohesive mobile unit.
Revolutionary proto-feminists held vital positions within the Enragés, including Claire Lacombe and Pauline Léon.