and expand. He died comparatively young; for his constitution had been shattered by habits of intoxication, to which he often refers penitently and sorrowfully in his "Memoirs." During the last fifteen months of his life he was unable to attend to the business of government; but his death was preceded by the exhibition of a fine trait of generosity and parental affection. His favourite son (and successor), Humayoun, was dangerously ill, and the father, in accordance with the Oriental superstition, resolved to sacrifice his own life to preserve that of his son. He walked three times round the bed of Humayoun, and then, after deep prayer to God, exclaimed, "I have borne it away, I have borne it away." Humayoun recovered, and Baber died. In accordance with his own wishes, his corpse was removed to and buried at Cabul. Where he lies, according to Sir Alexander Burnes, "a running and clear stream yet waters the fragrant flowers of the cemetery, which is the great holiday resort of the people of Cabul." "There is," adds the same writer, "a noble prospect from the hill that overlooks Baber's tomb." He is described as a man above the middle size, and of great vigour of body.
As a conqueror, Baber cannot be compared to his ancestors, Timur and Genghis Khan; nor as a ruler, to his descendants, the wise Akbar and the splendid Aurungzebe. It is as a man, much more than as a conqueror or a ruler, that Baber attracts; and this is owing to the frankness with which he has exhibited himself in his autobiographical "Memoirs," a work unique in Oriental literature. In that singular book, which in style alone, by its easy and familiar simplicity, contrasts most favourably with the studied pomposity of so much of Eastern composition, we are presented with the picture of a wild Tartar prince engaged from early boyhood in savage and desperate warfare, and yet preserving through life the warmest and most sleepless affection for his friends; a strong love and ceaseless cultivation of poetry; a keen relish for the beauties of nature; a moral sense which the necessities and temptations of his position could not extinguish; and a fund of sentiment, which seems strangely but charmingly out of place in the emulous descendant of the terrible Timur and Genghis. It is as if Alexander the Great were writing with the pen of Béranger! In his worst plights he never omits to console himself with the muse, or forgets to note and describe anything beautiful or picturesque in the scenery amid which he is wandering, perhaps a hopeless exile. When the Mogul dynasty (erroneously so-called) is extinguished and forgotten, India will still owe to Baber the new plants and fruit-trees which, in his love of horticulture, the often cruel invader introduced into his conquered dominions. Baber's affectionate disposition gives, perhaps, the principal fascination to his book; and nothing reads more pleasantly than his garrulous and loving gossip about his relatives and friends. He never forgets persons and places once dear to him. On the throne of Cabul he sighs for the pleasant fields of Ferghana, endeared by recollections of boyhood; and in the midst of his triumphant Indian campaigns "a musk-melon from Cabul" excites in the wild Tartar a strange feeling of home-sickness, and he "shed tears on eating it." "Sentiment" is generally considered to be a recent and European growth, but it is to be found not only in abundance, but genuine in quality, scattered among the pages of Baber's "Memoirs," and rescuing from dulness his details of marches and battles. The most accessible form in which this work has appeared is the English translation, excellently edited and annotated, published in London in 1826, as "Memoirs of Zehir-ed-din-Mohammed Baber, emperor of Hindostan, written by himself in the Jaghatai Tùrki, and translated partly by the late John Leyden, Esq., M.D., partly by William Erskine, Esq., with notes and geographical introductions." There may be also consulted an abridgment of this translation, executed by R. D. Caldecott, Esq., and published in 1844 as "The Life of Baber, emperor of Hindostan." A succinct, lively, and sympathetic account of Baber's career is to be found in the second volume of Mr. Mountstuart Elphinstone's "History of India," London, 1841.—F. E.
BABER or BABOUR, a Persian prince, grandson of Timur, governed Asterabad in 1446, and died of intemperance in 1467.
BABEUF, Francis Noel, a French writer and political theorist, was born at St. Quentin in 1764; died at Paris, 27th May, 1797. Left an orphan at the age of sixteen, he commenced his career as apprentice to an architect, and was subsequently engaged in land-surveying. When the Revolution broke out, he was one of its earliest and most violent partizans, defending and propagating its principles in the Correspondent Picard, a journal published at Amiens. For these writings he was prosecuted, carried to Paris and tried, but was acquitted 14th July, 1790. He was then appointed administrator of the department of the Somme; dismissed soon after, but managed to procure a similar appointment at Montdidier. He was here charged with forgery, fled to Paris, was arrested, and sent for trial before the tribunal of the Aisne, where he had the good fortune to be once more acquitted. In 1794 he returned to Paris and established a journal called "Le Tribun du Peuple, or Le Defenseur Liberté de la Presse," in which he wrote under the name of Caius-Gracchus, taking for his motto the maxim of Rousseau, that "the end of society is the public good." He here promulgated the doctrines of absolute equality, which he soon after endeavoured to reduce to practice. In March, 1796, Babeuf and his adherents formed themselves into a secret committee of the Société du Panthéon, a society supposed to number about 16,000 persons, divided into local sections, and directed by commissioners who communicated with the central leaders, but not with each other. Their plan was to seize Paris by a simultaneous attack of all the sections, and they hoped to enlist in their favour a certain number of the troops, as well as to secure the aid of the working classes as soon as the fray had commenced. The plans in fact were drawn up with considerable skill, and might possibly have been successful, but for the treachery of an agent named Grisel, who revealed the plot to the government. To ascertain the true nature of the danger, the director Barras pretended to join the conspirators; and next day, at a meeting held to fix the time for action, the principal movers of the scheme were arrested. Babeuf was captured at his own house, while engaged with Buonarotti (who afterwards wrote the narrative of the conspiracy) in drawing up the manifestos that were to be issued on the day of the insurrection. The trial was commenced at once. The conspirators, to the number of sixty-five, were brought before the high court of Vendome; an inferior court not being able to try one of the prisoners, Drouet, who was a representative of the people. The trial lasted three months. Babeuf pleaded the truth of his principles, but the plea was of course rejected. On the 26th May, 1797, the jury returned a verdict condemning Babeuf and Darthé to death; seven others, among whom were Buonarotti, were sentenced to transportation, and fifty-six were acquitted. Babeuf and Darthé stabbed each other in the very presence of the judges when sentence was pronounced, and, like Robespierre, were dragged in an expiring state to the scaffold.
Babeuf's principles, though containing some elementary truths, were of the wildest and crudest description. Absolute equality was his one idea, and to this he would have sacrificed, if necessary, all the arts of life, and all the fruits of civilization. "Philosophy, theology, poetry, fiction, painting, sculpture, &c., were little more than superfluous recreations. He was a communist, and would have had no property; a uniformist, and would have had all people dressed alike. He was, however, perhaps the first who perceived that the great Revolution was a change in the social condition of France, and not merely a political overturn. He left a work on surveying, entitled "Cadastre Perpetuel," Paris, 1789, and a "System of Depopulation, or the Life and Crimes of Carrier," Paris, 1794.—P. E. D.
BABEUF, Emile, a French writer, son of the preceding, was born in 1795. He followed the calling of bookseller till 1814, when his enthusiasm for Napoleon carried him to Elba, in the suite of the emperor. After the Restoration he was condemned to imprisonment for offensive political writing, but regained his liberty in 1818.—J. S., G.
BABEY, Athanase Marie Pierre, a French advocate, deputy to the states-general from Laval, and afterwards a member of the convention, was born at Orgelet in 1744. He distinguished himself in July, 1791, by a motion for the dethronement of the king, in the event of his refusing to subscribe the constitution. After the trial of Louis, Babey voted for banishment, and recommended the convocation of the original assemblies. He was imprisoned in 1793, but escaped to Switzerland, whence he was recalled the year following. Died in 1815.
BABI, Jean François, born at Tarascon in 1759, commanded during the Reign of Terror the army of Toulouse. After the fall of Robespierre he was arrested, and brought to trial as
