François-Noël Babeuf trial before the Aisne tribunal, which acquitted him on 18 July 1794, only days before the Thermidorian Reaction. Babeuf returned to Paris, and on 3 September 1794 published the first issue of his "Journal de la Liberté de la Presse", whose title was changed on 5 October 1794 to "Le Tribun du Peuple". The execution of Maximilien Robespierre on 28 July 1794 had ended the Reign of Terror and begun the White Terror. Babeuf – now self-styled "Gracchus" Babeuf – defended the fallen Terror politicians with the stated goal of achieving equality "in fact" and not only "by proclamation". However
Paris in the 18th century The former city government, the Commune, had virtually disappeared; of the one hundred forty members of its General Council before the Terror, eighty-seven had been guillotined, and forty imprisoned. Of the thirty-three senior city administrators, twenty had been executed and ten imprisoned. It was impossible to have a document registered for lack of living city employees. On August 24, 1794, the new government of France, the Directory created a whole new city government. The forty-eight sections, each governed by a revolutionary committee, were replaced by twelve arrondissements, strictly under the control of the Directory. Each arrondissement was governed by a