Bonneville, Nicolas

Born Mar. 13, 1760, in Évreux; died Nov. 9, 1828, in Paris. Leader in the Great French Revolution and publicist.

At the end of 1789, together with Abbé C. Fauchet, Bonneville founded the “Social Circle,” which became one of the ideological and organizational centers of the republican movement in Paris. In 1790 and 1791, Bonneville was editor of the newspaper La Bouche de fer, in which he sharply criticized social inequality and propagandized for egalitarian ideas, demanding the redistribution of property with priority given to the universal division of land. Advocating gradual reforms as a means of attaining social equality, Bonneville spoke out in September 1792 against the development of the revolutionary movement and joined the opponents of the Jacobins. During the period of the Jacobin dictatorship (June 1793-July 1794), he was arrested twice. Bonneville’s attempts to resume propagandizing his egalitarian ideas after the Thermidorian coup d’etat (July 1794) were unsuccessful. His social views contributed to the formation of the ideas of Utopian communism.