Enragé priest who demanded controls on subsistence prices
The leading spokesman of the Enragés, he demanded action against the wealthy in the name of poor Parisians' survival, presented the Enragés' programme to the Convention in 1793, and was arrested amid Montagnard and Jacobin attacks.
A priest and radical activist in Paris’s Gravilliers section, Roux became a leading figure among the Enragés. He attacked food monopoly and speculation, demanded forceful price controls and economic equality, and presented the Enragés’ programme to the Convention in 1793. Arrested after attacks from Montagnard and Jacobin leaders, he died by suicide in prison.
Activities and affiliations
- –1794
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EnragésMain
Political and party leadership
Career Timeline
- 1791Elected to the Paris Commune.
- 1793When food-price riots broke out in Paris, he defended such direct action.
- 1793Presented the Enragés' programme to the Convention: the 25 June address demanding taxation of necessities and punishment of speculators.
- 1793Arrested in August, released, then rearrested on 5 September and interned at Sainte-Pélagie.
- 1794On being sent before the Revolutionary Tribunal, he tried twice to kill himself in prison and died on 10 February.
Related historical events
Political position and stakes in the Revolution
Roux’s politics were tied to the subsistence questions raised in Paris’s Gravilliers section. He treated grain, prices, monopoly, and speculation not as mere moral failings but as political-economic threats to poor people’s survival. He therefore demanded strong price controls and action against the wealthy. Such demands brought abstract equality down to everyday questions of food, wages, and circulation.
The Enragés were neither a formal party nor simply a left wing of the Mountain. They were a loose current of radical demands shared by section activists and writers. Convention and Jacobin leaders could use their pressure while treating independent popular politics as a threat; Roux was arrested and died in prison. His case reveals the tension of a revolutionary government that introduced economic controls while repressing more democratic control from below.