[citation needed] Inspired by the French Revolution, Russo fled to Milan, then Switzerland, and then to Rome where he supported the French-supported Roman Republic of 1798–9.
During this period he took an active part in the cultural life of the republic, helping organise heated discussions in the democratic clubs and writing for the newly founded press.
[citation needed] However, the republic was short-lived: Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo soon counter-attacked with his army of Sanfedisti, fighting on the side of the Bourbon king (aided in this mainly by the British), and supported by an uprising of the royalist rabble, the Naples Lazzaroni.
In his most important work, "Pensieri politici",[5][6] published in Rome in 1798, Russo puts forward a socio-political theory of a peasant state, founded on justice and barbarism, where the degree of egalitarianism was to exceed even that of Louis Saint-Just.
He therefore rejects industrial development and commerce[8] on the basis that they would create, respectively, unhealthy living conditions for workers, and a craving for ever more wealth to the detriment of an honest and simple life.