Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon,…
March 1795 CE
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, had been made prisoner during the Terror period for being suspect of counterrevolution activities.
After eleven months of captivity, he had been released in 1794 after the fall of Robespierre and the consequent end of the Reign of Terror.
Having thus recovered his freedom, Saint-Simon has continued to speculate in confiscated church property and has amassed a fortune, which his business partner steals.
He now decides to devote himself to political studies and research.
Saint-Simon was born in Paris as a French aristocrat, but the political ideologies he will adopt in his later life do not fall into the category that people today consider aristocratic.
He belongs to a younger branch of the family of the duc de Saint-Simon.
From his youth, Saint-Simon had been highly ambitious, ordering his valet to wake him every morning with, "Remember, monsieur le comte, that you have great things to do."
Among his early schemes was one to connect the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans by a canal, and another to construct a canal from Madrid to the sea.
At the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, Saint-Simon had quickly endorsed the revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity.
In the early years of the revolution, Saint-Simon had devoted himself to organize a big industrial structure, in order to found a scientific school of improvement.
He had needed to raise some funds to achieve his objectives, which he had done by land speculation.
That was only possible in the first few years of the revolution, because of the growing instability of political situation in France, which had prevented him from continuing his financial activities and, more than that, put his own life at risk.