Lecture 6 French Revolution

Fr. Seraphim of Platina.
Orthodox Survival Course

Essential to understanding these difficult times is Fr Seraphim Rose’s and Father Herman Podmoshensky’s “Orthodox Survival Course”, a rare and most valued orthodox resource. Fr. Seraphim and Fr. Herman taught this course in the 70;s at the Platina monastery.

When reading, you should keep in mind that this is a transcript of the live oral speech of Father Seraphim, and not a written and slowly thought-out text.


Lecture 6
French Revolution

Now after examining the ideas which have been replacing one another in modern times from the Middle Ages and forming the modern mentality, we come to our own day, that is, the history of the last two hundred years. Because everything which came before the French Revolution has a different spirit; what comes after has a new spirit. The period before 1789 was called the “Old Regime,” and the period after that is the “Revolutionary Age” which is the same now as it was in the 1790’s.

This will take a number of lectures because now we will continue both the historical description of the modern mentality, but at the same time we will now do something else. At the very same time we are doing this, we will stop and analyse what is the underlying unity of these ideas. That is, what is the basic philosophy; in fact, what is the basic theology of the revolutionary mind?

And what do we mean by saying the revolutionary “theology”? Just as Orthodox Christianity has its theology, a whole dogmatic structure, which, when one believes it, enters into and changes every aspect of one’s life; so too the modern mentality, which has achieved its final form in the Revolution, has a whole belief system which affects the whole of one’s life and moulds history.

The idea that modern history is a chance play of conflicting forces is totally unrealistic. There is a definite pattern, a definite philosophy or theology that is being worked out, so much so that astute “prophets,” so-called, among the modernists have been able to predict in advance how man is going to change in accordance with this “theology.” We can cite, for example, a little later on we will give more and more examples. We can cite, however, here Nietzsche who says, I think in The Will to Power, “What I am describing here is the history of the twentieth century, the triumph of Nihilism, because when the masses get the ideas which I am now proclaiming, there will be a revolution such as the world has never seen.” And indeed the ideas filter down from the philosophers to the masses and then tremendous changes are caused.

Or we could quote another one, who was a crazy one also, Heinrich Heine, a Jew from Germany, who was very much akin to all this revolutionary spirit. And he says a few things which show that he’s in tune with what’s coming up. He wrote a history of Religion and Philosophy in Germany in which he quite accurately saw what was behind Luther, what was behind Kant, Hegel and these modern philosophers. This was in 1834 already he wrote this. He says, “Mark this, ye proud men of action, ye are nothing but unconscious hodmen,” workers, “of the men of thought who, often in humblest stillness, have appointed you your inevitable task. Maximilian Robespierre was merely the hand of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the bloody hand that drew from the womb of time the body whose soul Rousseau had created.”

In another place he even makes a prophecy about his own country. He tells the French that the Germans also are going to make a revolution. He says, “The old stone gods will then arise from the forgotten ruins and wipe from their eyes the dust of centuries, and Thor with his giant hammer will arise again, and he will shatter the Gothic cathedrals.... Smile not at the fantasy who one foresees in the region of reality the same outburst of revolution that has taken place in the region of intellect,” because Germany was indeed the avant guard of philosophy. “The thought precedes the deed, as the lightning the thunder. German thunder is of true German character: it is not very nimble, but rumbles along somewhat slowly. But come it will, and when ye hear a crashing such as never before has been heard in the world’s history, then know that at last the German thunderbolt has fallen. At this commotion the eagles will drop dead from the skies and the lions in the farthest wastes of Africa will bite their tails and creep into their royal lairs. There will be played in Germany a drama compared to which the French Revolution will seem but an innocent idyl. At present, it is true, everything is tolerably quiet; and though here and there some few men create a little stir, do not imagine these are to be the real actors in the piece. They are only little curs chasing one another around the empty arena, barking and snapping at one another, till the appointed hour when the troop of gladiators appear to fight for life and death.

“And the hour will come. As on the steps of an amphitheatre, the nations will group themselves around Germany to witness the terrible combat.” Later on we’ll see what happens in Germany when there was indeed great revolutionary storm released.

No one author or history book or historical event contains the whole of the philosophy or theology which produced modern history, revolutionary history. And therefore, we shall have to examine many different historical events, many different writers, philosophers and try to grasp the underlying thread of this whole philosophy.

And in fact it is exactly like [approaching] Holy Fathers. There’s no one Holy Father you can read to get the whole teaching of Christianity, because many Holy Fathers express different points of view, different aspects. And the whole of the Fathers contain the wisdom of the tradition. And modern historians would like to say that one contradicts the other and so forth, but if, once you enter into the Orthodox spirit you see that one rather compensates for the other. And there’s a marvellous harmony in all the writings of Holy Fathers.

In the same way, there’s the same kind of harmony in all these modern thinkers, the ones who are really in contact with the spirit of the times. You can read one and get one aspect; read another and you a get different aspect. You can see in the French Revolution one aspect, in Napoleon a different aspect. When you put them all together, you see there’s a marvellous harmony to it; it aII makes sense. But this has not really been done before — such an analysis — and therefore we’ll have to look at very many different aspects.

With the revolution we must examine two aspects of the activity of the modern mentality: we call these the philosophers and the activists — the philosophers who have the ideas and the activists who produce the historical events. Or as one early historian of the French Revolution said, the one is called the “corrupting philosophers,” the ones who think the thoughts; the second are called the “massacring philosophers,” the ones who go out and massacre the people.

This is the age, this modern age, this revolutionary age, when modern philosophy produces the most profound effects in every day life. Before, philosophy was largely a matter of the upper classes, sort of idle people who had the time to think. And from now on, everyone is drawn into this, the modern philosophy because it changes the whole of life. These two aspects, the philosophy and activism, are not entirely separate but they intertwine. And so we have to understand first of all how they are related to each other.

First of all, the philosophy inspires the act. Without modern philosophy there would have been no revolution. In fact Napoleon even said, “Without Jean Jacques Rousseau I would never have existed.” Secondly, philosophy is not something which comes first and they act afterwards; the philosophy continues while the act is going on. And we can say that it consolidates what the act has gained and keeps pushing on the activists to do more. The revolutionary acts are often the work of a small organized group, but they succeed because they have the support of the common mind, that is, the spirit of the times, which is willing to excuse any kind of excesses. Without this support of the common mentality of the times, the revolution, all revolutions would collapse as soon as the plotters are killed off.

Even today we see very clearly that Communism continues to exist and to have half the world precisely because the West shares the same basic ideas and, therefore, is willing to excuse the crimes of Communism.

In looking at the acts of the revolutions, it is not possible for us to untangle exactly everything that happens and see exactly who inspired each separate act, which secret society is at work, where there are charlatans, where there is somebody who is trying to make a name for himself. The secret societies themselves, who were very much involved in all of this, make a point of hiding themselves. And therefore, there’s no way we can untangle everything and say — as some people like to point out: they can spot every place where the Communist conspiracy is going on. It’s much deeper than that. That is a kind of “John Birch” mentality [in] which someone is seen with somebody who is a friend of a Communist, [therefore,] that means that the plot is right there — and [that’s] not necessarily [the case] at all. The only thing we can do is look much deeper and examine the ideas which are expressed, and the acts which come out, and see how significant they are and how faithful they are to the modern philosophy — the revolutionary philosophy — and which ones are in accordance with the spirit of the times and are going to produce results in the future.

Therefore, first of all, we will try to trace the progress of modern thought in the revolution. And by revolution I mean, of course, the whole new concept of revolution, which is a universal thing, which begins with the French Revolution. We will try to show the unity of the whole revolutionary movement and analyse its theological philosophy and its psychology. This will give us an outward, unified view of the revolutionary age. And then in a later lecture we’ll turn to the inward, so-called “spiritual” striving of modern man which gives the inspiration for the final goal of the whole revolution.

In looking at the French Revolution, which is the place where we begin because this is where modern ideas have their first great outburst, we will have to have an approach which is different from most histories of the French Revolution. You can read... [historians explaining its events]

...as though the revolution was made by well-meaning people and unfortunately there were sometimes some hot heads who got mixed up with it; and historical circumstances changed, outward dangers caused changes of plans, and the whole thing just didn’t come off the way it was supposed to be. And the idealists were somehow frustrated and have to come back and start again. And this, if we look at the actual history of events, is a very naive view. It’s not that way at all. This is not to say that every single event is brought about by a conspiracy, because there are many other motives — there are many people who want themselves to take over, to kill off somebody else — and many byways in which the revolution gets sidetracked and then comes back to the main purpose. And so we have to look, as I said, to see what is the essence of the various changes which come about, and to follow the thread which occurs as a constant thread throughout all the revolutionary events.

In examining the revolution there is one book which is very great textbook of this. It is written by a person who was in Paris during the Revolution, during the 1790’s and wrote the book about 1797, I think. And this edition we have is 18I8. It’s called Memoirs to Serve for a History of Jacobinism by the Abb; Barruel. B-A-R-R-U-E-L. And he’s very valuable because he was right there when this was all very fresh. And he was faced by the same kind of thinkers we have today who say that the whole thing was a noble experiment which did not come off. And he made great research into many texts — and we’ll see what kind of texts they were — and shows that there’s a single thread which goes through the Revolution; it’s not some kind of chance thing. And many things which now people and historians might say are accidental results, he says, “No, they planned it that way.” And he has the texts to back it up.

I’ll read part of the introduction to his book which shows his whole approach. He says: “Under the disastrous name of Jacobins,” who are the radicals who immediately took over the Revolution, “Under the disastrous name of Jacobins, a sect appeared in the first days of the French Revolution, teaching that men are all equal and free; in the name of this equality and this disorganizing liberty, trampling underfoot the altars and the thrones; in the name of this same equality and of this same liberty, calling all the nations to the disasters of the rebellion and to the horrors of anarchy.

“From the first moments of its appearance, this sect found itself three hundred thousand members strong, supported by two million arms which it could set in motion throughout the whole extent of France, weapons of torches, pikes, hatchets, and of all the thunder-bolts of the revolution.

“It is under the auspices, it is by the movements, the impulsion, the influence and the action of this sect that were committed all the great atrocities which have inundated a vast empire by the blood of its bishops [pontiffs], its priests, its nobles, its wealthy, its citizens of every rank, every age, every sex. It is by these very men that King Louis XVI, the Queen his spouse, his sister Princess Elizabeth, battered by outrages and ignominy during a long captivity, were solemnly assassinated on the scaffold, and all the Sovereigns of the world were proudly menaced by the same fate. It is by these men that the French Revolution has become the scourge of Europe, the terror of powers vainly united to put an end to the progress of these revolutionary armies, more numerous and more devastating than the inundation of the Vandals.

“Who therefore are these men who come out, so to speak, from the bowels of the earth, with their dogmas and their thunder-bolts, with all their projects, all their means, and all the resolution of their ferocity. What is this devouring sect?...

“What might be their school and who might be their masters? What are their subsequent plans? This French Revolution brought to an end, will it finally cease to torment the earth, to assassinate the kings and to fanaticize the nations?”

“We have perceived them trying to persuade people that the whole revolutionary and conspiratorial sect, before this revolution itself, is only an imaginary sect. For those people, all the evils of France and all the terrors of Europe succeed one another, are connected by the simple concurrence of unforeseen circumstances, impossible to foresee. It seems to them useless to seek out the conspiracies and agents who had plotted the conspiracies and directed the chain of events. The ones [actors] who rule today do not know the plans of those who have preceded them; and those who will come after them will likewise be ignorant of the plans of their predecessors.

“Preoccupied with such a false opinion, filled with such a dangerous prejudice, these pretended observers will readily say to the various nations: let the French Revolution alarm you no longer. It is a volcano which has opened itself, without anyone being able to know the hot-bed where it was prepared; but it will wear itself out, with its fuel, on the counterforces which have seen it arise. You announce that — due to causes unknown in your climates, due to elements less likely to ferment, due to laws more analogous to your character, the public fortune being more secure — the fate of France could not become yours;” And so you do not be afraid. [and if you must one day participate in it, in vain will you seek to avoid it. The coincidence and the fatality of circumstances will sweep you away against your will. That which you might have done to escape it might perhaps be called the plague, and will only hasten your misfortune.]

“I have in my hands the memoir of an ex-minister,” of Louis XVI, who was “consulted about the causes of this Revolution, and in particular concerning the principal conspirators whom it would be good to know, and about the plan of the conspiracy. I have read how he pronounces that it would be useless to search out either men or an association of men who could have planned the ruin of the throne and of the altar, or formed any plan which could be called a conspiracy. Unfortunate Monarch! When the very ones who should have been watching out for you are unaware of even the name and even the existence of your enemies and those of your people, is it very astonishing that you and your people would be the victims of it!...”

“...We will tell them: in this French Revolution, everything including its most horrible crimes, all has been foreseen, planned, contrived, resolved, decreed: all has been the result of the most profound infamy, since all has been prepared, brought about by the men who alone possessed the thread of the conspiracies long ago plotted in the secret societies, and who have known how to choose and hasten the moments propitious to their plots.

“If, in these daily events, there exist certain circumstances which seem to be less the result of plots, there is nonetheless one cause of them from the secret agents who would both invoke these events, who would know how to profit from these circumstances or even to call them into existence, and who would direct them all towards the principal object. All these circumstances could well serve as a pretext and occasion, but the great cause of the Revolution, of its great crimes, of its great atrocities, would always be independent;” of these incidental circumstances. “And this great cause exists all within the conspiracies plotted long ago.”

“[In uncovering the object and the extent of these conspiracies, I ought to dispel an error even more dangerous.] It exists in one fatal delusion among men who would not have difficulty agreeing that this French Revolution has been planned; but they are not afraid to add that in the intention of its original authors it was bound to lead only to the happiness and the regeneration of the Empires; that if great misfortunes have come to interfere with their plans, it is because they came across great obstacles;” and besides, “that one does not regenerate a great people without great agitations; but that, after all, these storms are not eternal: that the waves will subside and the calm will return; that then the astonished nations, rather than having to fear the French Revolution, instead will imitate it by holding fast to its principles.”

“This error is above all what the leaders of the Jacobins strive all the more to confirm.” This explanation “was given as the first implements of the rebellion to that whole band of Constitutionalists, who still regard their decrees about the rights of man as a masterpiece of public law, and who still do not lose the hope of one day seeing the whole universe regenerated by this political rhapsody.” This explanation “was given to all those men whose stupid credulity, with all their good intentions, sees only a necessary misfortune in the horrors of the 10th of August and in the massacre of the 2nd of September,” which we will discuss, “It is given finally to all those men who even today are consoled by three or four hundred thousand assassinations, by those millions of victims which the war, the famine, the guillotine, the revolutionary tribulations have cost France; [to] all those men who yet today are consoled by this immense depopulation, under the pretext that all these horrors will eventually bring about a better order of things.”

“Against this false hope, against all these supposed intentions of the revolutionary sect, I set forth its true plans and its conspiracies for realising them. [I will speak, because it must be properly told at last, because all the proofs of it have been obtained:] The French Revolution has been what it had to be in the spirit of the sect. All the evil which it has done, it had to do; all its crimes and all its atrocities were but a necessary result of its principles and its systems. I will say even more, far from preparing in the distance a happy future, the French Revolution is only one attempt of the forces of this sect; its conspiracies extend over the entire universe.

“If among our readers there are those who conclude: the sect of the Jacobins must be eliminated or certainly the whole society may well perish, and that to our present governments everywhere without exception will come the convulsions, overturnings, massacres, and the infernal anarchy of France; I would reply, Yes, one must expect this universal disaster or” totally abolish “[crush] the sect....”

“That which the Jacobins have shattered before a first time, they will shatter yet again. They will pursue in the darkness the great object of their conspiracies; and by new disasters will teach the nations that the whole French Revolution was only the beginning of the universal dissolution which this sect plans.”

“One has seen the delirium, the rage and the ferocity of the legions of the sect; one recognizes them readily enough as the instruments of all the crimes, of all the devastations, of all the atrocities of the French Revolution; but one does not know enough what masters, what school, what vows, and what successively savage plots there are.”

“The result of these investigations and of all the evidence which I have gathered, above all in the archives of the Jacobins and of their first masters, has been that their sect and their plots are in themselves but the joining together, the coalition of a triple sect, of a triple conspiracy in which, long before the Revolution, was plotted and is yet being plotted, the overthrow of the altar, that of the throne and finally that of the whole civil society.” It was already planned. The three points he has in mind are the philosophers, the Masons and the Illuminati.

“You have believed the Revolution to be finished in France, but the revolution in France is but a first attempt of the Jacobins; and the vows, the oaths, and the plots of Jacobinism extend to England, Germany, Italy, to all nations as it does to the French nation.”

Voltaire

Now we will try to examine these ideas which before the French Revolution prepared the way for the Revolution. First of all, there is that thing which we already examined briefly in the previous lectures, that is, the philosophy of the Enlightenment. He finds the most significant philosopher of the Enlightenment to be Voltaire, in this respect, because when he was still a young man in England, he made a vow that he would devote his life to the destruction of Christianity, and from him comes this famous phrase, “Ecrasez l’infame” to exterminate the infamous thing, that is, religion of Christ and replace it, of course, with his religion which is Deism.

He and his followers, as I said, are the ones that this Barruel calls the philosophes corrupteurs, the corrupting philosophers. And the Jacobins are the philosophes massaceurs, the massacring philosophers, the ones who were still have ideas; but they go out and chop people’s heads off. He finds also most significant Diderot and D’Alembert, among the other French Deists philosophers, and Frederick II, king of Prussia, who frequently met with Voltaire. And we see at that time, as later on with Bolshevism, that the wildest revolutionaries have the ability to persuade princes and high rulers to go with them in their plans.

We will later on say something about the Jews, but right now we’ll just mention that it’s interesting that both D’Alembert and Voltaire, in their hatred for Christianity, tried to persuade several princes to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem in order to prove that Christianity was false, the same way that Julian the Apostate tried to do it. He even wrote a letter to Catherine II, “Please build the temple in Jerusalem.” But Catherine was rather smarter than that.

Many of the rulers, the small dukes in Germany, and the nobles in France were very much intrigued by these ideas; even the very wildest revolutionary ones were doing away with Christianity. And that’s, of course, one big reason why the Revolution had such support.

But Catherine II in Russia, although she was German and so forth, was much smarter than the other rulers. And she even told Voltaire that she couldn’t go along with all his ideas, although she was a very good friend of his; and that if his ideas were going to be put into practice, she would no longer be able to have her salon and invite him to give talks. And later on when the French Revolution broke out, of course, she arrested all the Masons; and that was the end of revolution for her.

Rousseau

Asecond great stream — the first one is Voltaire and the Deist philosophers who are rationalists, that is, they reduce everything to their limit of their understanding — a second great current of philosophy, which was very influential in the Revolution, was that of Jean Jacques Rousseau, who is the philosopher of feeling. He said of himself that he had a romantic spirit. He was filled with great feelings. He had always found somebody who would support him in his love affairs and everything else. He would go in the woods, some great prince would support him, and he would ramble in the woods, and his heart would swell up with great feelings, and he would recognize God everywhere, and that was his religion. He lived in his emotions, in the realm of the vague and the indefinite. But in the same way as Voltaire reduced everything to his mind, Rousseau reduced everything to his feelings. And these two things — of course, very strong in man, two sides of our nature — both entered into the revolutionary spirit. And the religion of feeling is, of course, much more accessible to the common people than the religion of mind.

He had a philosophy of nature which is extremely influential on the Revolution. It is with him that we get the idea of “back to nature,” away with artificiality and civilization. Although he was not absolutely saying we should discard civilization, he even said once that since we are corrupt anyway, we might as well be a little educated than uneducated. But he contrasted the artificiality of civilized life with the simplicity of what he thought was primitive life. In fact, he said that the first time that someone said “this is mine,” that was the origin of our corruption. He was even against the idea of private property.

He wrote a book Emile which describes the education of a young person, in which the person is supposed to be taught almost nothing at all, and nature is supposed to come out in him. And the teacher just removes obstacles to the development of nature in the child. There is no external authority. No religion is given; when he grows up, it’s time for him to choose his own religion. He will have no prejudices or habits or religion. And he even said that until the child is twelve years, he should not be able to tell the difference between his right hand and his left hand so he will not be corrupted by knowledge.

And Voltaire, when he read this book, wrote to Rousseau that reading this book makes him feel like walking on all fours, “but as it is more than sixty years since I have done this, it is impossible for me to resume the habit.” Nonetheless they were profoundly in agreement: one is destroying everything except his mind, the other everything except his feeling. So even [though they are] opposed in their basic outlook, since Rousseau also didn’t like this complicated rationalism, still their effect is even more powerful because it takes two strands and applies them to the revolutionary activists: they will be inspired by both of these.

In his politics he developed the idea that sovereignty comes not from God, not from the upper classes, but it comes from the people. Of course, this is the big idea of Revolution. But, as we’ll see later on, his very philosophy already justifies the strange fact that those inspired by this idea end up by establishing tyranny, because he said that the general will is superior to individual will. He thought once kings were overthrown that everyone would spontaneously be happy and have the same will; but if they don’t, then the masses are to dictate to the individual.

He [Rousseau] was the one who said, “Man is born free and is everywhere in chains.” Of course, the basic idea of the revolution adds up to Marx. He said...his religion is one of feeling. He was a deist like Voltaire, but his deism is not one that’s thought out; it’s just his own feeling about God. And he also believed in immortality. But all this is just his subjective feeling. All dogmas are subjected to his heart. His prayer is not any kind of petition because he did not believe that any God answers prayers; rather it was a outburst of enthusiasm, of joy in nature which became a hymn of praise to the Great Being, that is, the great God of Deism.

In his ideal commonwealth he said that no intolerant religion should be allowed, that is, Christianity, of course. There was to be a profession of faith which is purely civil and its articles are to be social sentiments, without which it is impossible to be a good citizen or a faithful subject — that is, a new religion which is rather autocratic. Those who do not accept this religion, since the whole society must have one religion, must leave the country. And if one accepts the religion and then acts contrary to it, he must be executed.

So these are the two philosophical strands which enter into the makeup of the revolutionary mind: one, the idea that I by myself can think through a system whereby society will be more harmoniously ordered; and the other that my feelings will guide me to the truth. And in neither one is there any safeguard: the idea of revelation, of tradition, of God is out. The only God left is a very vague God, the God of Deism.

And we Orthodox Christians know that one who removes revelation, tradition, the Church, and accepts whatever his mind tells him, or whatever his feelings dictate to him, opens the way for what? — for satan to enter, because satan enters by means of thoughts, by means of feelings. And we’ll see that in these revolutionary outbursts you cannot explain what happens except by the fact that satan is directing things. He’s inspiring these people with all kinds of plots, all kinds of ideas.

Secret Societies

But to these two philosophical elements there is added now a third thing, which is the secret societies. Of course, the secret societies have an underground existence throughout the period before the Enlightenment, but it is especially in the eighteenth century that there is born a new sect, or at least a reorganized [one], and that is Freemasonry, which was born in England in 1717, and very quickly spread to France and America and the rest of Europe. Later on we shall see that Freemasonry in England and in America became something rather different from Freemasonry on the continent, especially in the Catholic countries. And the reason for this is not so difficult to understand.

The English mentality which gave the world already the philosophy of deism is a so-called “conservative” mentality; that is, it’s capable of believing just about anything and being quite content, and not pushing its beliefs to any logical conclusions. Just as later on we’ll see David Hume destroys the whole of the world, and then sits back and enjoys himself, and drinks his coffee and smokes his pipe, not seeing that he’s given ideas which will drive people to despair.

In the same way, English Masonry was born out of the spirit of tolerance and seeking to find some kind of a religious belief which is neither Catholic nor Protestant, but which will bind together all men of goodwill. And they were satisfied with that. They had a deistic religion, the Grand Architect. There were no religious differences discussed in the Lodge — you have to put religion behind. And for the Englishman and later for the Americans this was considered to be sufficient. If you believe in God, you can go to your Protestant church or Anglican church and be happy.

b. Illuminati: (Adam) Weischaupt, born 1748; Jesuit training, but hated them, turned to French philosophers, Manicheans, and occult doctrines. Quotes, Webster 8-10.Very similar philosophy to Rousseau, but added secret revolutionary society, May 1, 1776, a combination of freemasonry and Jesuitry.:

The very ideas of Masonry, the ideas of a brotherhood of men — which is something above Catholicism or Protestantism — when they went to the continent they inflamed men’s minds and made them quite radical.

There is in particular one kind of Freemasonry, which apparently was evolved separately. And this is what is called Illuminism. This was the creature of one man, whose name is Adam Weishaupt. He was born in 1748, went through a Jesuit education, and later on came to hate the Jesuits, turned to the French philosophers, to Manichaean philosophy, and apparently had some kind of occult initiation in one of the many occult sects.

[Let us] examine here a few of his views. He says, in agreement with Rousseau, that civilization is a great mistake, and to this all the inequalities of human life were due. He says, “Man is fallen from the condition of Liberty and Equality, the State of Pure Nature. He is under subordination and civil bondage arising from the vices of Man. This is the Fall and Original Sin.” Notice he uses the Christian term here, “original sin.” Later on we’ll see how this is all an imitation of Christianity.

According to him, all the arts and sciences must be abolished. He says, “‘Do the common sciences afford real enlightenment, real human happiness? Or are they not rather children of necessity, the complicated needs of a state contrary to Nature, the inventions of vain and empty brains?... Why,’” he asks, “‘should it be impossible to the human race to attain its highest perfection, the capacity for governing itself?’ For this reason,” he taught that “not only should kings and nobles be abolished but even a Republic should not be tolerated, and the people should be taught to do without any controlling authority, any law, or any civil code. In order to make this system a success it would be necessary only to inculcate in Man ‘a just and steady morality,’ and since Weishaupt professed to share Rousseau’s belief in the inherent goodness of human nature this would not be difficult, and society might then ‘go on peaceably in a state of perfect Liberty and Equality.’ For since the only real obstacle to human perfection lay in the restraints imposed on Man by artificial conditions of life, the removal of these must inevitably restore him to his primitive virtue. ‘Man is not bad except as he is made so by arbitrary morality. He is bad because Religion, the State, and bad examples pervert him.’ It was necessary, therefore, to root out from his mind all ideas of a Hereafter, all fear of retribution for evil deeds, and to substitute for these superstitions the religion of Reason. ‘When at least Reason becomes the religion of men, then will the problem be solved.’

“After deliverance from the bondage of religion, the loosening of all social ties must follow. Both family and national life must cease to exist so as to ‘make of the human race one good and happy family.’ The origins of patriotism and the love of kindred are thus described by Weishaupt in the directions given to his Hierophants for the instruction of initiates:

“At the moment when men united themselves into nations they ceased to recognise themselves under a common name. Nationalism or National Love took the place of universal love. With the division of the globe and its countries benevolence restricted itself behind boundaries that it was never again to transgress. Then it became a virtue to spread out at the expense of those who did not happen to be under our dominion. Then in order to attain this goal, it became permissible to despise foreigners, and to deceive and to offend them. This virtue was called Patriotism. That man was called a Patriot, who, whilst just towards his own people, was unjust to others, who blinded himself to the merits of foreigners and took for perfections the vices of his own country. So one sees that Patriotism gave birth to Localism, to the family spirit, and finally to Egoism. Thus the origin of states or governments of civil society was the seed of discord and Patriotism found its punishment in itself.... Diminish, do away with this love of country, and men will once more learn to know and love each other as men, there will be no more partiality, the ties between hearts will unroll and extend.

“In these words, the purest expression of Internationalism as it is expounded today, Weishaupt displayed an ignorance of primaeval conditions of life as profound as that of Rousseau. The idea of palaeolithic man, whose skeleton is usually exhumed with a flint instrument or other weapon of warfare grasped in its hand, passing his existence in a state of ‘universal love,’ is simply ludicrous. It was not, however, in his diatribes against civilization that Weishaupt surpassed Rousseau, but in the plan he devised for overthrowing it. Rousseau had merely paved the way for revolution; Weishaupt constructed the actual machinery of revolution itself.

“It was on the 1st of May 1776 that Weishaupt’s five years of meditation resulted in his founding the secret society that he named, after bygone philosophical systems, the Illuminati.”

Web. 11-12,13. Abolition of religion, absolute obedience,

“The grades of the Order were a combination of the grades of Freemasonry and the degrees belonging to the Jesuits. Weishaupt, as has already been said, detested the Jesuits, but recognizing the efficiency of their methods in acquiring influence over the minds of their disciples, he conceived the idea of adopting their system to his own purpose. ‘He admired,’ says the Abb; Barruel, ‘the institutions of the founders of this Order, he admired above all those laws, that regime of the Jesuits, which under one head made so many men dispersed all over the universe tend towards the same object; he felt that one might imitate their methods whilst proposing to himself views diametrically opposed. He said to himself: “What all these men have done for altars and empires, why should I not do against altars and empires? By the attraction of mysteries, of legends, of adepts, why should not I destroy in the dark what they erect in the light of day?”’”

“It was in the training of adepts that Weishaupt showed his profound subtlety. Proselytes were not to be admitted at once to the secret aims of Illuminism, but initiated step by step into the higher mysteries — and the greatest caution was to be exercised not to reveal to the novice doctrines that might be likely to revolt him. For this purpose the initiators must acquire the habit of ‘talking backwards and forwards’ so as not to commit themselves. ‘One must speak,’ Weishaupt explained to the Superiors of the Order, ‘sometimes in one way, sometimes in another, so that our real purpose should remain impenetrable to our inferiors.’

“Thus to certain novices (the novices ecossais) the Illuminati must profess to disapprove of revolutions, and demonstrate the advantages of proceeding by peaceful methods towards the attainment of world domination.”

“The passage then goes on to say vaguely that this is not the case and that the Order only demands of the initiate the fulfilment of his obligations. Nor must antagonism to religion be admitted; on the contrary, Christ was to be represented as the first author of Illuminism, whose secret mission was to restore to men the original liberty and equality they had lost in the Fall. ‘No one,’ the novice should be told, ‘paved so sure a way for liberty as our Grand Master Jesus of Nazareth, and if Christ exhorted his disciples to despise riches it was in order to prepare the world for that community of goods that should do away with property.’”

Web. 13-14. Novices initiated step by step into the “higher mysteries,”

“It was not, then, until his admission to the higher grades that the adept was initiated into the real intentions of Illuminism with regard to religion. When he reached the grade of Illuminated Major or Minor, of Scotch Knight, Epopte, or Priest he was told the whole secret of the Order in a discourse by the Initiator:

“Remember that from the first invitations which we have given you in order to attract you to us, we commenced by telling you that in the projects of our Order there did not enter any designs against religion. You remember that such an assurance was given you when you were admitted into the ranks of our novices, and that it was repeated when you entered into our Minerval Academy.... You remember with what art, with what simulated respect we have spoken to you of Christ and of his gospel; but in the grades of greater Illuminism, of Scotch Knight, and of Epopte or Priest, how we have to know to form from Christ’s gospel that of our reason, and from its religion that of nature, and from religion, reason, morality and Nature, to make the religion and morality of the rights of man, of equality and of liberty.... We have had many prejudices to overcome in you before being able to persuade you that the pretended religion of Christ was nothing else than the work of priests, of imposture and of tyranny. If it be so with that religion so much proclaimed and admired, what are we to think of other religions? Understand then that they have all the same fictions for their origin, that they are all equally founded on lying, error, chimera and imposture. Behold our secret.... If in order to destroy all Christianity, all religion, we have pretended to have the sole true religion, remember that the end justifies the means, and that the wise ought to take all the means to do good which the wicked take to do evil. Those which we have taken to deliver you, those which we have taken to deliver one day the human race from all religion, are nothing else than a pious fraud which we reserve to unveil one day in the grade of Magus or Philosopher Illuminated.

“But all this was unknown to the novice, whose confidence being won by the simulation of religion was enjoined to strict obedience. Amongst the questions put to him were the following:

“If you came to discover anything wrong or unjust to be done under the Order what line would you take?

“Will you and can you regard the good of the Order as your own good?

“Will you give to our Society the right of life and death?

“Do you bind yourself to absolute and unreserved obedience? And do you know the force of this undertaking?

“By way of warning as to the consequences of betraying the Order a forcible illustration was included in the ceremony of initiation. Taking a naked sword from the table, the Initiator held the point against the heart of the novice with these words:

“If you are only a traitor and perjurer learn that all our brothers are called upon to arm themselves against you. Do not hope to escape or to find a place of safety. Wherever you are, shame, remorse, and the rage of our brothers will pursue you and torment you to the innermost recesses of your entrails.

“It will thus be seen that the Liberty vaunted by the leaders of the Illuminati had no existence, and that iron discipline was in reality the watchword of the Order.

“A great point impressed upon the adepts — of which we shall see the importance later — was that they should not be known as Illuminati; this rule was particularly enforced in the case of those described as ‘enrollers....’”

Women were to be used and fools with money

“Women were also to be enlisted as Illuminati by being given ‘hints of emancipation.’ ‘Through women,’ wrote Weishaupt, ‘one may often work the best in the world; to insinuate ourselves with these and to win them over should be one of our cleverest studies. More or less they can all be led towards change by vanity, curiosity, sensuality, and inclination. From this can one draw much profit for the good cause. This sex has a large part of the world in its hands.’ The female adepts were then to be divided into two classes, each with its own secret, the first to consist of virtuous women who would give an air of respectability to the Order, the second of ‘light women,’ ‘who would help to satisfy those brothers who have a penchant for pleasure.’ But the present utility of both classes would consist in providing funds for the society. Fools with money, whether men or women, were to be particularly welcomed. ‘These good people,’ wrote Spartacus to Ajax and Cato, ‘swell our numbers and fill our money-box; set yourselves to work; these gentlemen must be made to nibble at the bait.... But let us beware of telling them our secrets, this sort of people must always be made to believe that the grade they have reached is the last.”

15-16. System of universal spying

“Espionage formed a large part of Weishaupt’s programme. The adepts known as the ‘Insinuating Brothers’ were enjoined to assume the role of ‘observers’ and ‘reporters’; ‘every person shall be made a spy on another and on all around him’; ‘friends, relations, enemies, those who are indifferent — all without exception shall be the object of his inquiries; he shall attempt to discover their strong side and their weak, their passions, their prejudices, their connections, above all, their actions — in a word, the most detailed information about them.’ All this is to be entered on tablets that the Insinuant carries with him, and from which he shall draw up reports to be sent in twice a month to his Superiors, so that the Order may know which are the people in each town and village to whom it can look for support.”

16. Anti-science and civilization in general: sciences are “the complicated needs of a state contrary to nature, the inventions of vain and empty brains.” Sent “apostles” — Barruel IV, 9

“From the first year of his [Weishaupt’s] Illuminism, in his atrocious impiety, aping the God of Christianity, he conceived in these terms the orders he would give to Massenhausen to propagate his new gospel: ‘Did not Jesus Christ send forth his Apostles to preach throughout the universe? You who are my Peter, why would I allow you to be idle and quiet at home? Go then and preach.’”

Martinism also important: 1775 St. Martin called “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” the “sacred ternary.”

“In the book of Saint-Martin, Des erreurs et de la v;rit;, published in 1775, the formula ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’ is referred to as “le ternaire sacr;.”

“The Martinistes, frequently referred to in French contemporary records as the Illumin;s, were in reality dreamers and fanatics and must not be confounded with the Order of the Illunimati of Bavaria that came into existence twenty-two years later. It is by this ‘terrible and formidable sect’ that the gigantic plan of World Revolution was worked out under the leadership of the man whom Louis Blanc has truly described as ‘the profoundest conspirator that has ever existed.’[Weishaupt]”

c. 1782, Congress of Wilhelmsbod, Illumism and Freemasonry united to pursue common end, claiming 3 million members. Quote on “tragic secret” [Webster] p.19.

“But it was not until the Congr;s de Wilhelmsbad that the alliance between Illuminism and Freemasonry was finally sealed. This assembly, of which the importance to the subsequent history of the world has never been appreciated by historians, met for the first time on the 16th of July 1782, and included representatives of all the Secret Societies — Martinistes as well as Freemasons and Illuminati — which now numbered no less than three million members all over the world. Amongst these different orders the Illuminati of Bavaria alone had formulated a definite plan of campaign, and it was they who henceforward took the lead. What passed at this terrible Congress will never be known to the outside world, for even those men who had been drawn unwittingly into the movement, and now heard for the first time the real designs of the leaders, were under oath to reveal nothing. One such honest Freemason, the Comte de Virieu, a member of a Martiniste lodge at Lyons, returning from the Congr;s de Wilhelmsbad could not conceal his alarm, and when questioned on the ‘tragic secrets’ he had brought back with him, replied: ‘I will not confide them to you. I can only tell you that all this is very much more serious than you think. The conspiracy which is being woven is so well thought out that it will be, so to speak, impossible for the Monarchy and the Church to escape from it.’ From this time onwards,... ‘the Comte de Virieu could only speak of Freemasonry with horror.’”

d. 1784, Elector of Bavaria prohibited all secret societies, 1785 Illuminati arrested and tried and their documents publicized — recipes for bombs, description of the goal. [Webster] 25.

“Public opinion had now, however, become thoroughly roused on the subject of the society, and the Elector of Bavaria, informed of the danger to the State constituted by its adepts, who were said to have declared that ‘the Illuminati must in time rule the world,’ published an edict forbidding all secret societies. In April of the following year, 1785, four other Illuminati,.. disgusted by the tyranny of Weishaupt, were summoned before a Court of Inquiry to give an account of the doctrines and methods of the sect. The evidence of these men...left no further room for doubt as to the diabolical nature of Illuminism. ‘All religion,’ they declared, ‘all love of country and loyalty to sovereigns, were to be annihilated, a favourite maxim of the Order being:

“Tous les rois et tous les pr;tres

“Sont des fripons et des tra;tres.”

“Moreover, every effort was to be made to create discord not only between princes and their subjects but between ministers and their secretaries, and even between parents and children, whilst suicide was to be encouraged by inculcating in men’s minds the idea that the act of killing oneself afforded a certain voluptuous pleasure. Espionage was to be extended even to the post by placing adepts in the post offices who possessed the art of opening letters and closing them again without fear of detection.’ Robison, who studied all the evidence of the four professors, thus sums up the plan of Weishaupt as revealed by them:
“The Order of the Illuminati adjured Christianity and advocated sensual pleasures. ‘In the lodges death was declared an eternal sleep; patriotism and loyalty were called narrow-minded prejudices and incompatible with universal benevolence’; further, ‘they accounted all princes usurpers and tyrants, and all privileged orders as their abettors... they meant to abolish the laws which protected property accumulated by long-continued and successful industry; and to prevent for the future any such accumulation. They intended to establish universal liberty and equality, the unprescribable rights of man...and as necessary preparations for all this they intended to root out all religion and ordinary morality, and even to break the bonds of domestic life, by destroying the veneration for marriage vows, and by taking the education of children out of the hands of the parents.’

“Reduced to a simple formula the aims of the Illuminati may be summarized in the following six points:

1. Abolition of Monarchy and all ordered Government.

2. Abolition of private property.

3. Abolition of inheritance.

4. Abolition of patriotism.

5. Abolition of the family (i.e., of marriage and all morality, and the institution of the communal education of children).

6. Abolition of all religion.

“Now it will surely be admitted that the above forms a programme hitherto unprecedented in the history of civilization. Communistic theories had been held by isolated thinkers or groups of thinkers since the days of Plato, but no one, as far as we know, had ever yet seriously proposed to destroy everything for which civilization stands. Moreover, when, as we shall see, the plan of Illuminism as codified by the above six points has continued up to the present day to form the exact programme of the World Revolution, how can we doubt that the whole movement originated with the Illuminati or with secret influences at work behind them?”

“It was on the 11th of October 1786 that the Bavarian authorities descended upon the house of Zwack and seized the documents which laid bare the methods of the conspirators. Here were found descriptions of a strong box for safe guarding papers which if forced open should blow up by means of an infernal machine; of a composition which should blind or kill if squirted in the face; of a method for counterfeiting seals; recipes for a particularly deadly kind of ‘aqua toffana,’ for poisonous perfumes that would fill a bedroom with pestilential vapours, and for a tea to procure abortion. A eulogy of atheism entitled Better than Horus was also discovered, and a paper in the handwriting of Zwack describing the plan for enlisting women in the two classes mentioned above:

“It will be of great service and procure much information and money, and will suit charmingly the taste of many of our truest members who are lovers of the sex. It should consist of two classes, the virtuous and the freer-hearted.... They must not know of each other, and must be under the direction of men, but without knowing it... through good books, and the latter (class) through the indulging of their passions in concealment.

“....The fearful danger presented by the Illuminati now became apparent, and the Government of Bavaria, judging that the best manner of conveying a warning to the civilized world would be to allow the papers to speak for themselves, ordered them to be printed forthwith and circulated as widely as possible. A copy of this publication, entitled Original Writings of the Order of the Illuminati, was then forwarded to every Government of Europe, but, strange to say, attracted little attention, the truth being doubtless, as the Abb; Barruel points out, that the extravagance of the scheme therein propounded rendered it unbelievable, and the rulers of Europe, refusing to take Illuminism seriously, put it aside as a chimera.”

C. The Revolution

1. Calling of Sts—Gen because of financial difficulties — the pretext for Enlightenment ideas to work. The Revolution was radical from the beginning and had immense support from the “spirit of the age.” Wordsworth: “Bliss was it in that scene(?) to be alive, but to be young was very heaven.”

2. Jacobins: took the lead from the beginning, the only real party. Agreed beforehand on policy in National Assembly. Well organized — 406 affiliated societies in the provinces with 500,000 members by 1793. They take control, power from secret societies: Barruel IV, 1-2.

“Conceived not many years before the French Revolution, in the thoughts of a man whose total ambition seemed absorbed at Ingolstadt in the chalk-dust of schools, how is it that Illuminism, in less than twenty years, became that formidable Sect which under the name of Jacobins, counts today as its trophies so many altars fallen to pieces, so many Sceptres broken or mangled; so many Constitutions overturned, so many Nations subjugated; so many Potentates fallen under its daggers or its poisons or its executioners, so many other Potentates humiliated beneath the yoke of a servitude called “peace,” or of a servitude even more dishonourable called “alliance”?

“Under this same name of Jacobins, swallowing up simultaneously all the secrets, all the conspiracies, all the sects of sworn infidels, of seditious Plotters, of disorganizing Plotters, how is it that Illuminism sets up such a dominion of fear that, holding the universe in dismay, it permits not a single King to say: tomorrow I will still be King; and not a single people: tomorrow I will still have my laws and my religion; not a single citizen: tomorrow both my fortune and my home will still be mine; tomorrow I will not awaken beneath the tree of Liberty on the one side, and the tree of death, the ravenous guillotine on the other?

“Invisible authors, how it is that the secret adepts of modern-day Spartacus alone preside at all the crimes, at all the disasters of this plague of brigandage and of ferocity called Revolution? How do they still preside over all that the Sect plans, in order to consummate the desolation and dissolution of human societies?”

The Jacobins’ orders were instantly obeyed [Barruel] IV 337. They drink each others’ blood “to the death of kings.” Western fall of monarchy in 1792 destruction begins in earnest.

“I found the letter. It was composed in these terms: ‘Your letter, my dear friend, has been read in presence of the whole Club. It was surprising to find so much philosophy in a village Curate. Never fear, my dear Curate; we are three hundred; we mark the heads, and they fall. As for that of which you speak, it is not time yet. Only keep your people ready; dispose your parishioners to execute the orders, and they shall be given to you in time.

“This letter was signed...Dietrich, secretary.

“To the reflections which this letter suggests, I shall add only that the club from where it was sent, had changed the place of its meetings to go to the suburb of Ste. Honore, and that there it remained unknown to the Court; until the moment of one of these orgies, whose object would be to again apprise the King of the fate that awaited him. After one of these repasts celebrated in the name of fraternity, all the Brothers would prick their arms and drain their blood into their glass; all would drink of this blood, after having cried, ‘Death to the Kings,’ and this would be the last toast of their fraternal repast. This letter tells us also which men formed this legion of the Twelve Hundred, which Jean de Brie proposed to establish at the Convention, whose goal was to be spread into the Empires to assassinate all the Kings of the earth.”

3. Violence: the usual interpretation — incidental, passions aroused, national defence, etc. But evidence points to deliberate use: when there are real grievances, they are exploited by clever politicians to promote the Revolution, Great role of agitators.

(1) The “Great Fear” July 1789: Bourne p.100;

Web.32-33.

“To whatever agency we attribute it, however, the mechanism of the French Revolution distinguishes it from all previous revolutions. Hitherto the isolated revolutions that had taken place throughout the history of the world can be clearly recognized as spontaneous movements brought about by oppression or by a political faction enjoying some measure of popular support, and therefore endeavouring to satisfy the demands of the people. But in the French Revolution we see for the first time that plan in operation which has been carried on right up to the present moment — the systematic attempt to create grievances in order to exploit them..

“The most remarkable instance of engineered agitation during the early stages of the Revolution was the extraordinary incident known to history as “The Great Fear,” when on the same day, July 22, 1789, and almost at the same hour, in towns and villages all over France, a panic was created by the announcement that brigands were approaching and therefore that all good citizens must take up arms. The messengers who brought the news post-haste on horseback in many cases exhibited placards headed “Edict of the King,” bearing the words “The King orders all chateaux to be burnt down; he only wishes to keep his own!” And the people, obedient to these commands, seized upon every weapon they could find and set themselves to the task of destruction. The object of the conspirators was thus achieved — the arming of the populace against law and order, a device which ever since 1789 has always formed the first item in the programme of the social revolution.”

Protest of women Oct. 5, 1789: women also dressed as men, many forced to go along.

(2) The Reign of Terror under Robespierre: ostensibly invoked by foreign invasion, seeking “enemies of the people” inside; this a means of governing (cf. Communism). But deeper; there was a little-publicized plan of “depopulization.” Report of the Committee of Public Safety, Aug. 8, 1795: “Be peaceful; France has enough for 12 million men: all the rest (12 million) will have to be put to death. And then you will no longer lack for bread. (Barruel IV. p. 335).

“It was she [the sect] that extinguished even the affection of a brother for his brother; of the child for his father, when the adept Ch;nier, at the sight of a brother delivered over to his executioners, coolly replied, ‘If my Brother is not in the sentiment of the Revolution, let him be sacrificed’; when the adept Philip brought in triumph to the Jacobins the heads of his father and mother. This is the Sect always insatiable for blood, which by the mouth of Marat, demanded yet two hundred and seventy thousand heads, which before long could only be counted by millions. She [the Sect] knew it; all the secrets of its equality could only be accomplished in its greatest events by depopulating the world; and the sect which replied through Le Bo, to the Communes of Montauban, terrified for want of provisions, “Never fear; France has enough for twelve million men; it is necessary that the rest, that is, the other twelve million Frenchmen must be put to death, and then you will no longer lack bread. (Report of the Committee of Public Safety, meeting of August 8, 1975)”

Revolutionary Tribunal discussed reduction of population to 1/3 or 1;2; Committee of Public Safety calculated how many heads to have in each town and district. Drowned, guillotined, or shot — perhaps 300,000, of which only 3,000 nobles, most peasants and workers. At Nantes 500 children of poor people were killed in one butchery; 144 poor women thrown into river, etc.

(3) Killings and destruction especially fierce: Sept. 1792 massacres of priests and others in prisons — cannibalism and torture. The violence calculated — and Marx’s idea. Sieyes replies: (Barruel IV 335) “You speak to us always of our means, eh, Monsiuer, it is the end, it is the object and the goal that one must learn to see.”

“‘I will walk willingly with my feet in blood and tears,’said Robespierre’s coadjutor Saint-Just; and this, whether he admits it or not, must be the maxim of every revolutionary Socialist who believes that any methods are justifiable for the attainment of his end.”

4. Babeuf, “Conspiracy of the Equals.”

a. Disciple of Weischaupt, followed Robespierre’s Communist ideas. Said depopulization was the “immense secret” of the Terror (claimed it took 1 million lives). Formed his own masonic organization for bringing about “equality.” A Communist (Web. 56)

“Unfortunately the confusion of mind prevailing amongst the advocates of ‘Equality’ was so great that the meetings — which before long consisted of two thousand people — became ‘like a Tower of Babel.’ No one knew precisely what he wanted and no decisions could be reached; it was therefore decided to supplement these huge assemblies by small secret committees...and here the scheme of social revolution was elaborated. Starting from the premise that all property is theft, it was decided that the process known in revolutionary language as ‘expropriation’ must take place; that is to say, all property must be wrested from its present owners by force — the force of an armed mob. But Babeuf, whilst advocating violence and tumult as the means to an end, in no way desired anarchy as a permanent condition; the State must be maintained, and not only maintained but made absolute, the sole dispenser of the necessities of life. ‘In my system of Common Happiness,’ he wrote, ‘I desire that no individual property shall exist. The land is God’s and its fruits belong to all men in general.’ Another Babouviste, the Marquis d’Antonelle, formerly a member of the Revolutionary Tribunal, had expressed the matter in much the same words: ‘The State of Communism is the only just, the only good one; without this state of things no peaceful and really happy societies can exist.’”

Apr. 1796 finished his “Manifesto of Equals.” Web. 57-8.

“Babeuf then decided that a ‘Secret Directorate’ must be formed, of which the workings bear a curious resemblance to those of the Illuminati. Thus Weishaupt had employed twelve leading adepts to direct operations throughout Germany, and had strictly enjoined his followers not to be known even to each other as Illuminati; so Babeuf now instituted twelve principal agents to work the different districts of Paris, and these men were not even to know the names of those who formed the central committee of four, but only to communicate with them through intermediaries partially initiated into the secrets of the conspiracy. Like Weishaupt also Babeuf adopted a domineering and arrogant tone towards his subordinates, and any whom he suspected of treachery were threatened, after the manner of the secret societies, with the direst vengeance. ‘Woe to those of whom we have cause to complain!’ he wrote to one whose zeal he had begun to doubt; ‘reflect that true conspirators can never relinquish those they have once decided to employ.’

“By April 1796 the plan of insurrection was complete, and the famous Manifesto of the Equals drawn up ready for publication.

“‘People of France,’ this proclamation announced, ‘for fifteen centuries you have lived in slavery and consequently in unhappiness. For six years (i.e. during the course of the Revolution) you have hardly drawn breath, waiting for independence, for happiness, and equality. Equality! the first desire of Nature, the first need of Man and the principal bond of all legal association!

“‘Well! We intend henceforth to live and die equal as we were born; we wish for real equality or death, that is what we must have. And we will have this real equality, no matter at what price. Woe to those who interpose themselves between it and us! . . “‘The French Revolution is only the forerunner of another revolution, very much greater, very much more solemn, which will be the last!... What must we have more than equality of rights? We must have not only that equality transcribed in the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen,” we must have it in our midst, on the roofs of our houses. We will consent to anything for that, to make a clean sweep so as to hold to that only. Perish if necessary all the arts provided that real equality is left to us!

“‘The agrarian law and the division of lands were the momentary wish of a few soldiers without principle moved by instinct rather than by reason. We tend to something more sublime and equitable, the Common Happiness or the Community of Goods. No more private property in land, the land belongs to no one We claim, we wish for the communal enjoyment of the fruits of the earth: the fruits of the earth belong to every one.

“‘We declare that we can no longer endure that the great majority of men should work and sweat in the service and for the good pleasure of an extreme minority. Long enough and too long have less than a million individuals disposed of what belongs to more than twenty millions of their fellow men, of their equals. Let it cease at last, this great scandal in which our nephews will not be able to believe. Vanish at last revolting distinctions of rich and poor, of great and small, of masters and servants, of governors and governed. Let there be no other difference between men than that of age and sex. Since all have the same needs and the same faculties, let there be only one education, one kind of food. They content themselves with one sun and air for all; why should not the same portion and the same quality of food suffice for each of them?...

“‘People of France, we say to you: the holy enterprise that we are organizing has no other object but to put an end to civil dissensions and to public misery. Never has a more vast design been conceived and executed. From time to time a few men of genius, a few sages have spoken in a low and trembling voice. Not one of them has had the courage to tell the whole truth. The moment for great measures has arrived. The evil is at its height; it covers the face of the earth. Chaos under the name of politics has reigned for too many centuries.... The moment has come to found the Republic of the Equals, the great hostel open to all men.... Groaning families, come and seat yourselves at the common table set up by nature for all her children....

“‘People of France, Open your eyes and heart to the plenitude of happiness; recognize and proclaim with us the Republic of the Equals.’

“This document was destined, however, not to be displayed to the eyes of the public, for the Secret Committee finally decided that it would be inexpedient to admit the people into the whole plan of the conspiracy; particularly did they judge it inadvisable to publish the phrase which had been expressed in almost identical language by Weishaupt: ‘Perish all the arts, provided that real equality is left to us!’ The people of France were not to know that a return to barbarism was contemplated. Accordingly a second proclamation was framed under the title of ‘Analysis of the Doctrine of Babeuf’ — a far less inspiring appeal than the former Manifesto, and mainly unintelligible to the working-classes, yet, as M. Fleury remarks, ‘the veritable Bible or Koran of the despotic system known as Communism.’ For herein lies the crux of the matter. No one reading these two documents of the Babouvistes can fail to recognize the truth of certain of their strictures on society — the glaring disparity between poverty and riches, the uneven distribution of work and pleasure, the injustice of an industrial system whereby, owing largely at this period to the suppression of trade unions by the revolutionary leaders, employers could live in luxury by sweated labour — but the point is: how did Babeuf propose to redress these evils? Briefly, then, his system, founded on the doctrine ‘Community of goods and of labour,’ may be summarized as follows:

“Every one must be forced to work so many hours a day in return for equal remuneration; the man who showed himself more skilful or industrious than his fellows would be recompensed merely by ‘public gratitude.’ This compulsory labour was in fact not to be paid for in money but in kind, for, since the right to private property constituted the principal evil of existing society, the distinction of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ must be abolished and no one should be allowed to possess anything of his own. Payment could therefore only be made in the products of labour, which were all to be collected in huge communal stores and doled out in equal rations to the workers. Inevitably commerce would be entirely done away with, and money was no longer to be coined or admitted to the country; foreign trade must therefore be carried on by coin now in circulation, and when that was exhausted, by a system of barter.”

But people were not informed of this (; la Weischaupt), told only that the goods of the enemies of the people would be given to the needy.

“But the people were not in the secret of the movement. Just as in the great outbreaks of the Revolution the mob of Paris has been driven blindly forward on false pretexts supplied by the agitators, so once again the people were to be made the instruments of their own ruin. The ‘Secret Committee of Direction’ well knew that Communism was a system that would never appeal to the people; they were careful, therefore, not to admit their dupes among the working-classes into the whole of their programme, and believing that it was only by an appeal to self-interest and covetousness they could secure a following, they skilfully played on the people’s passions, promising them booty they had no intention of bestowing on them. Thus in the ‘Insurrectional Act’ now drawn up by the Committee it was announced that ‘the goods of the ;migr;s, of the conspirators (i.e., the Royalists), and the enemies of the people were to be distributed to the defenders of the country and the needy’; they did not tell them that in reality these things were to belong to no one, but to become the property of the State administered by themselves.... The people then were not to be allowed to know the truth about the cause in which they were asked to shed their blood — and that they would be obliged to shed it in torrents no sane man could doubt.”

His admiration for Robespierre — Web 64.

“...When it came to organizing the required insurrection Babeuf adopted a very different kind of language. In fact the former denouncer of Robespierre’s ‘system of depopulation’ now asserted that not only Robespierre’s aims but his methods were to be commended.

“I confess to-day that I bear a grudge against myself for having formerly seen the revolutionary government and Robespierre and Saint-Just in such black colours. I think these men alone were worth all the revolutionaries put together, and that their dictatorial government was devilishly well thought out.... I do not at all agree...that they committed great crimes and made many Republicans perish. Not so many, I think.... The salvation of twenty-five millions of men must not be weighed against consideration for a few equivocal individuals. A regenerator must take a wide outlook. He must mow down everything that thwarts him, everything that obstructs his passage, everything that can impede his prompt arrival at the goal on which he has determined. Rascals or imbeciles, or presumptuous people or those eager for glory, it is all the same, tant pis pour eux [so much the pity for them] — what are they there for? Robespierre knew all that and it is partly what makes me admire him.

“But where Babeuf showed himself the intellectual inferior of Robespierre was in the way he proposed to overcome resistance to his plan of a Socialist State. Robespierre, as he well knew, had spent fourteen months ‘mowing down those that obstructed his passage,’ had kept the guillotine unremittingly at work in Paris and the provinces, yet even then had not succeeded in silencing objectors. But Babeuf hoped to accomplish his purpose in one day — that ‘great day of the people’ wherein all opposition should be instantly suppressed, the whole existing social order annihilated, and the Republic of Equality erected on its ruins. If, however, the process were to be brief it must necessarily be all the more violent, and it was thus with none of the calm precision of Robespierre marking down heads for destruction that Babeuf set about his task.”

His frenzy — Web 65.

“When writing out his plans of insurrection, his secretary Pill; afterwards related at his trial, Babeuf would rush up and down the room with flaming eyes, mouthing and grimacing, hitting himself against the furniture, knocking over the chairs whilst uttering hoarse cries of ‘To arms! to arms! The insurrection! the insurrection is beginning!’ — it was an insurrection against the chairs, said Pill; drily. Then Babeuf would fling himself upon his pen, plunge it into the ink, and write with fearful rapidity, whilst his whole body trembled and the perspiration poured from his brow. ‘It was no longer madness,’ added Pill;, ‘it was frenzy!’ This frenzy, Babeuf explained, was necessary in order to work himself up to the required degree of eloquence, and in his appeals to insurrection it is difficult to see where his programme differed from the brigandage and violence he had deprecated....”

The “Great Day” of Revolution — Web 67-8.

“The following programme for the ‘Great Day’ was now drawn up by the Secret Directory: at a given moment the revolutionary army was to march on the Legislative Assembly, on the headquarters of the Army, and on the houses of the Ministers. The best-trained troops were to be sent to the arsenals and the munition factories, and also to the camps of Vincennes and Grenelle in the hope that the 8,000 men encamped there would join in the movement. Meanwhile orators were to hold forth to the soldiers, and women were to present them with refreshment and civic wreaths. In the event of their remaining proof against these seductions the streets were to be barricaded, and stones, bricks, boiling water, and vitriol thrown down on the heads of the troops. All supplies for the capital were then to be seized and placed under the control of the leaders; at the same time the wealthier classes were to be driven from their houses, which were immediately to be converted into lodgings for the poor. The members of the Directory were then to be butchered, likewise all citizens who offered any resistance to the insurgents. The insurrection thus ‘happily terminated,’ as Babeuf naively expressed it, the whole people were to be assembled in the Place de la Revolution and invited to co-operate in the choice of their representatives. ‘The plan,’ writes Buonarotti, ‘was to talk to the people without reserve and without digressions, and to render the most impressive homage to its sovereignty.’ But lest the people perchance, blinded to its truest interests, might fail to recognize its saviours in the person of the conspirators, the Babouvistes proposed to follow up their homage of the people’s sovereignty by demanding that ‘executive power should be exclusively confided to themselves’; for, as Buonarotti observed, ‘at the beginning of the revolution it is necessary, even out of respect for the real sovereignty of the people, to occupy oneself less with the wishes of the nation than to place supreme authority in strongly revolutionary hands.’ Once in these hands it would of course remain there, and the Babouvistes with all the civil and military forces at their back would be able to impose their system of State serfdom on the submissive people.”

Violence — 70.

At a meeting of the committee, there was “read aloud the finished plan of insurrection, to which further atrocious details had been added — every one attempting to exercise any authority was instantly to be put to death, the armourers were to be forced to give up their arms, the bakers their supplies of bread, and those who resisted hoisted to the nearest lantern; the same fate was reserved for all wine and spirit merchants who might refuse to provide the brandy needed to inflame the populace and drive them into violence. ‘All reflection on the part of the people must be avoided,’ ran the written directions to the leaders; ‘they must commit acts which will prevent them from going back.’

“Amongst the whole of this ferocious band, Rossignol, the former general of the revolutionary armies in La Vendee, showed himself the most bloodthirsty: ‘I will not have anything to do with your insurrection,’ he cried, ‘unless heads fall like hail...unless it inspires so great a terror that it makes the whole universe shudder..." — a discourse that met with unanimous applause.

“The 11th of May had been fixed for the great day of explosion, when not only Paris, but all the cities of France worked on by the agents of Babeuf were to rise and overthrow the whole structure of civilization.... [Meanwhile there was an informant] and the Government, warned of the impending attack, was ready to meet it. On the morning of the day appointed, a placard was found posted up on all the walls of Paris bearing these words:

“The Executive Directory to the Citizens of Paris

“Citizens, a frightful plot is to break out this night or tomorrow at the dawn of day. A band of thieves and murderers has formed the project of butchering the Legislative Assembly, all the members of the Government, the staff of the Army, and all constituted authorities in Paris. The Constitution of ‘93 is to be proclaimed. This proclamation is to be the signal for a general pillage of Paris, of houses an much as of stores and shops, and the massacre of a great number of citizens is to be carried out at the same time. But be reassured, good citizens; the Government is watching, it knows the leaders of the plot and their methods...; be calm, therefore, and carry on your ordinary business; the Government has taken infallible measures for outwitting their schemes, and for giving them up with their partisans to the vengeance of the law.

“Then, without further warning, the police burst into the house where Babeuf and Buonarotti were drawing up a rival placard calling the people to revolt. In the midst of their task the arm of the law surprised and seized them, and on the following morning forty-five other leaders of the conspiracy were arrested likewise and thrown into the Abbaye. Alas for the support they had hoped for from the populace! The revolutionary army on which they had counted, impressed as the people always are by a display of authority, went over to the police in support of law and order. With the removal of the agitators the whole populace came to their senses and realized the full horror of the plot into which they had been inveigled.”

Napoleon averted them and ended the last great attempt in French Revolution to realize the aim of Illumism.

5. Revolutionaries devoured each other — Barruel, IV, 338-9.

“Christ had no more Altar in France; the Kings had no more Throne; those who had destroyed the Altar and the Throne conspired against each other; the intruders, the atheists and the deists slaughtered the Catholics; the intruders, the atheists and the deists slaughtered one another. The Constitutionalists pursued the Royalists, the Republicans pursued the Constitutionalists; the democrats of the one and indivisible Republic, butchered the democrats of the federate Republic; the faction of the Mountain guillotined the faction of the Gironde. The faction of the Mountain divided into the faction of Hebert and of Marat, into the faction of Danton and of Chabot, into the faction of Cloots and of Chaumette, into the faction of Robespierre which devoured them all, and which would be in its turn devoured by the faction of Tallien and of Freron. Brissot and Gensonn;, Guadet, Fauchet, Rabaud, Barbaroux and thirty others were sentenced by Fouquier-Tinville as they had passed sentence on Louis XVI; Fouquier-Tinville was himself judged as he judged Brissot. Pethion and Buzot, wandering in the forests, perished consumed by hunger, devoured by beasts; Perrin died in chains, Condorcet poisoned himself in prison, Valage and Labat stabbed themselves, Marat was murdered by Charlotte Corday; Robespierre is no more; of them Syeyes still remains, because France must yet have its plagues. L’enfer, to establish the reign of his impiety, le Ciel to punish him for it, gave her [France] under the name of Directors her five tyrants or her Pentarques and her double Senate. Rewbel, Carnot, Barras, le Toureur, la Reveill;re-Lepaux rob her of her weapons, drive out the Deputies of her equality and her liberty, batter her sections with cannon and mortars, squeeze her in his clutches and cause to hang upon her a yoke of iron. All tremble before them; they are frightened, envying one another, withdrawing from one another; only allowing new tyrants to arrive and join together; the deportations, the stupor, the terror and these Pentarques, at this moment those are the Gods who rule over France. The silence of the terror in her empire, where her vast prison, twenty million slaves all dumb with terror under the shaft, at the mere name of la Guiane, of Merlin, or of Rewbel; behold this people so often proclaimed equal and free and sovereign.”

France ruined by Revolution — Webster 49-50

“...the condition of France at the end of the Terror...:

“‘France is demoralized. She is exhausted — this is the last trait of this country in ruins. There is no longer any public opinion, or rather this opinion is made up only of hatred. They hate the Directors (members of the Directory) and they hate the deputies; they hate the Terrorists and they hate the chouans (the Royalists of La Vend;e); they hate the rich and they hate the anarchists; they hate the Revolution and they hate the counterrevolution.... But where hatred reaches paroxysm is in the case of the newly rich. What is the good of having destroyed Kings, nobles, and aristocrats, since deputies, farmers, and tradesmen take their place? What cries of hatred!... Of all the ruins found and increased by the Directory — ruins of parties, ruins of power, ruins of homes, ruins of consciences, ruins of intellects — there is nothing more pitiable that this: the ruin of national character.’

“Eight years after the ending of the Terror, France had not yet recovered from its ravages. According to Redhead Yorke, even the usually accepted theory of agricultural prosperity is erroneous.

“‘Nothing can exceed the wretchedness of the implements of husbandry employed but the wretched appearance of the persons using them. Women at the plough, and young girls driving a team give but an indifferent idea of the progress of agriculture under the Republic. There are no farmhouses dispersed over the fields. The farmers reside together in remote villages, a circumstance calculated to retard the business of cultivation. The interiors of the houses are filthy, the farmyards in the utmost disorder, and the miserable condition of the cattle sufficiently bespeaks the poverty of their owner.’

“Everywhere beggars assailed the traveller for alms; in spite of the reduced population unemployment was rife, education was at a standstill, and owing to the destruction of the old nobility and clergy, and the fact that the new rich who occupied their estates were absentee landlords, there was no system of organized charity. Yorke is finally driven to declare:

“‘The Revolution, which was brought about ostensibly for the benefit of the lower classes of society, has sunk them to a degree of degradation and misfortune to which they never were reduced under the ancient monarchy. They have been disinherited, stripped, and deprived of every resource for existence, except defeats of arms and the fleeting spoil of vanquishing nations.’

“In another passage Yorke asks the inevitable question that arises in the minds of all thinking contemporaries:

“‘France still bleeds at every pore — she is a vast mourning family, clad in sackcloth. It is impossible at this time for a contemplative mind to be gay in France. At every footstep the merciless and sanguinary route of fanatical barbarians disgust the sight and sicken humanity — on all sides ruins obtrude themselves on the eye and compel the question, “For what and for whom are all this havoc and desolation?”’”

6. Religion

a. De-Christianization: Nov. 1793 — Lefebre v. 2, 77-8

...the church is desecrated. The same thing happened in this revolution. But in 1793 the new revolution to replace Catholicism became apparent. And this is one of the standard Lefebvre textbooks which is very objective and discusses this.

In 1793 “the festival of August 10th,...” the proclamation of the republic, “was purely secular. The new religion endowed itself with symbols and a form of liturgy, honoured the ‘holy Mountain,’” that is, the place, the party of the Mountain, “and venerated its martyrs, Lepeletier, Marat, and Chalier. On the 3 Brumaire, Year II (October, 24,1793),... the Convention adopted the revolutionary calendar.” The year one was to begin with August 10th, 1792, the republic. All the months are renamed in accordance with natural phenomena; that is, in the, I think December is called Pleuvoise which means rain, the rainy season, the rainy month and so forth. “It attempted to dechristianize daily life by replacing references to religious ceremonies and the saints with names borrowed from tools and products familiar to the French.” All feast days were abolished, and the seven day week was abolished also in favour of a ten day week; that is, there’s no more Sunday. In 1793 November “a report”... concerning “civic festivals constituted the prelude to the official organization of the” new “national religion....”

“At Nevers on September 22, 1793,... a festival was celebrated in the cathedral in honour of Brutus.” In this province in October of 1793 all ceremonies, all religious “ceremonies outside churches were abolished, and funeral processions and cemeteries were secularized.” Other local provinces adopted similar policies. “The district of Corbeil declared that the majority of persons under its jurisdiction no longer desired the Catholic form of worship.” In November 6th, 1793, the bishop of Paris resigned under compulsion and said that he had been deceived. “On the 17th” of November “he came with his vicars to the Convention to confirm his action officially. A Festival of Liberty was planned for 20 Brumaire, year II (November 10th, 1793). To celebrate the victory of philosophy over fanaticism, the Commune seized Notre Dame,” Cathedral, “a mountain was built in the choir, and an actress impersonated Liberty. Informed of this, the Convention proceeded to the cathedral — now called the Temple of Reason — and attended a second celebration of the civic festival.” By the way, they burned in effigy the image of atheism, because the revolution is not atheist; it’s deistic. “Some sections (provinces) followed this example. On the 30th (November 20) the citizens of the Unity section... adorned with priestly symbols, paraded before the Convention, singing and dancing.” And on November 23rd 1793 the churches were closed.

Temple of reason — Dawson 121-2

We have some sources which show and give insight into the spirit of these celebrations of Reason. For example, in the city of Chalons-on-the-Marne, there’s the following description of the inauguration of a Temple of Reason: “The festival was announced in the whole Commune the evening before. For this purpose retreat was sounded by all the drummers and by the trumpeters of the troops in barracks at Chalons and all parts of town. The next day at daybreak it was again announced by general quarters which was likewise sounded in all parts. The former church of Notre Dame was for lack of time and means cleaned and prepared only provisionally for its new use, and in its former sanctuary there was erected a pedestal supporting the symbolic statue of Reason. It is of simple and free design,” this is an eyewitness account, “It is of simple and free design, decorated only by an inset bearing this inscription: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ It was flanked by two columns surrounded by two antique bronze perfume boxes which emitted incense smoke during the whole ceremony. In front at the foot of three steps was placed an altar of antique form on which were to be placed the emblems of the various groups composing the procession would put there. On the four pillars of the corners of the sanctuary were four projecting brackets to receive the bust of Brutus,” and he’s the enemy of tyranny, “the father of the republics and the model of republicans, of Marat the faithful friend of the people,” who was a vicious killer, “of Lepelletier, who died for the republic, and the immortal Chalier. At precisely nine o’clock in the morning the general assemblage formed on the gravel promenade, otherwise called the Promenade of Liberty. The military detachments and other groups destined to form the procession had their places indicated there. Commissioners from the society arranged them in order. A detachment of cavalry, national constabulary and Hussars mingled together to strengthen the bonds of fraternity, leading the march; and on their pennant there were these words, ‘Reason guides us and enlightens us.’ It was followed by the company of cannoneers of Chalons preceded by a banner with this inscription, ‘Death to the Tyrants.’ This company was followed by a cart loaded with broken chains on which were six prisoners of war and a few wounded being cared for by a surgeon. This cart carried two banners front and back with these two inscriptions, ‘Humanity is a Republican Virtue’ and ‘They were very mistaken in fighting for tyrants,’” that is, these prisoners of war. “This cart was accompanied by two detachments of national guardsmen and regular troops fully armed. Other common people carried banners with the words, ‘Let us be united like it,’” like the tri-colour flag, “‘nothing can conquer us.’ Forty women citizens dressed in white and decorated with tri-colour ribbons carried a large tri-colour ribbon tied to each head. A liberty bonnet crowned this banner and young national guardsmen accompanied them carrying various pennants on which were written various mottos. In its train groups of children of both sexes carried baskets of fruit and vases of flowers accompanying a cart drawn by two white horses. In the cart was a young woman nursing an infant, beside her a group of children of different ages. It was preceded by a banner with this inscription, ‘They are the hope of the fatherland.’ From the cart flew a tri-colour streamer with this inscription, ‘The virtuous mother will produce defenders for the fatherland.’ This van was followed by a chariot of antique type decorated with oak branches and bearing a sexagenarian couple with a streamer on which was written these words, ‘Respect old age.’ Again there was a group of national guardsmen united arm-in-arm singing hymns to liberty and bearing two banners bearing these inscriptions, ‘Our unity is our strength’ and ‘We will exterminate the last of the despots.’ Next marched a group of women with tri-colour ribbons bearing a standard with this inscription, ‘Austere morals will strengthen the republic.’ All who composed this group were dressed in white, as were the drivers of the cart, and all were bedecked with tri-colour ribbons. Then followed the surveillance committees,” that is, the GPU, “grouped one after another. In front were four banners each bearing the name of a section and an emblem depicting a finger on the lips to indicate secrecy and another banner with this inscription, ‘Our institution purges society of a multitude of suspicious people.’ The republic section went first; it accompanied a chariot pulled by two white horses and led by two men on foot dressed in Roman style. In it was a woman dressed in the same way representing the Republic. On the front of this chariot appeared a tri-colour ensign bearing these words, ‘Government of the wise.’ Next marched the Equality section accompanying a plough pulled by two oxen and guided by a cultivator in work clothes. A couple seated on it carried a standard on which were written on one side, ‘Honour the plough’ and on the other side, ‘Respect conjugal love.’ The principal inspector and all the employees in the military storehouses formed a group which followed the plough. Two standards were carried by this group. The first had the words, ‘Military Supplies’ and the second, ‘Our activity produces abundance in our armies.’ Then marched the Fraternity section, consoling groups of convalescents whose physicians were close by. In the middle of this section was an open cart from the Montagne Hospital containing men wounded in the defence of the fatherland, who appeared to have been cared for and bled by health officers who were binding their wounds. They were partly covered by their bloody bandages. The front of this cart carried a banner with this inscription, ‘Our blood will never cease to flow for the safety of the fatherland.’ After the committees followed four women citizens dressed in white and adorned with tri-colour belts decorated with the attributes of the four seasons. After the four seasons came the people’s representative in the midst of the constituted authorities, civil and judicial, wearing their distinctive insignia. Each citizen held in his hand a wheat stalk and on the banner which preceded the constituted authorities was this inscription, ‘From the enforcement of the laws come prosperity and abundance.’ These were followed by various staff officers of the national guard who were preceded by a banner saying, ‘Destroy the tyrants or die.’ Next the illegitimate children of the fatherland were led by a woman bearing a banner, ‘The fatherland adopts us, we are eager to serve it.’ Finally the old people represented by veterans without weapons, preceded by two banners on which were the inscriptions, ‘The dawn of reason and liberty embellishes the end of our life,’ and ‘The French Republic honours loyalty, courage, old age, filial piety, misfortune. It places its constitution under the safe keeping of aII the virtues.’

“Finally there was a pause for singing patriotic songs. On the front steps of the city hall there had been built and painted a mountain, at the top of which was placed a Hercules defending a facies fourteen feet in height. A tri-colour flag flew above it on which was written in large letters, ‘To the Mountain from the grateful French.’” That is, like saying “To the Bolsheviks.”

“At the foot of the mountain pure water flowed from a spring falling by various cascades. Twelve men dressed as mountaineers armed with pikes and with civic crowns on their heads were hidden in caverns in the mountain. As the procession arrived singing the last couplet of the Marseilleise, the mountaineers quietly came out of their caverns without fully revealing themselves, and when ‘To Arms Citizens’ was sung, they ran to get axes to defend their retreat, posted themselves on different sides of the mountain, but seeing the cart with feudalism and fanaticism drawn by donkeys with miters on their heads, they ran towards them, axe in hand, grabbed the miters, copes and chasubles which adorned them as well as the Pope and his acolytes and chained them to the chariot of liberty. During this the band played a military charge.

“The mountaineers, seeing other carts arrive and feigning to believe that they were only the train following the one containing Fanaticism, advanced in their column to meet the first one they saw which was the chariot of Liberty. They lowered their axes as a sign of respect and the band played a march. Then a litter appeared supporting a chair decorated with garlands. The goddess descended from her cart, seated herself on the chair and was borne by eight mountaineers to the foot of the mountain. She was followed by two nymphs, one of whom was carrying a tri-colour flag and the other the Declaration of the Rights of Man. They marched upon the trash remnants of nobility and superstition which were then burned to the great contentment of all the citizens and climbing the mountain with people’s representative, Pleger, then present at this festival, and mountaineers who represented his colleagues while the band played, ‘Where can one better be than in the bosom of one’s family’ reached the summit. The goddess was crowned by the graces. Then a tri-colour flag was displayed and they sang, ‘Our country’s three colours.’ And still on the mountain they sang, ‘When from the mountain peeks the sun.’ The procession descended, the goddess stopped at the spring, a vase was presented to her by the president of the Commune. She drank some water from the mountain, then presented some to the people’s representative, to all the constituted authorities, citizens and officers of the different corps present, who all drank to the health of the republic, one and indivisible and of the Mountain,” the party.

“The goddess again on her chair was borne to her chariot by eight mountaineers. Four others placed themselves at her side, axes raised to drive away the profane. The others took their places with the administrative bodies to indicate that public dignitaries are consistent with virtue alone. From there they went to the Temple of Reason. All the musicians gathered behind the altar with the singers. At the moment when the procession entered the temple, the organ blared an overture. And the societ; populaire, the constituted authorities, the surveillance committees,” GPU, “and the groups described above took places in rows facing the altar of Reason in a certain distance from it. The military band played hymns to Reason, to Liberty, to hatred for tyrants, and to sacred love for the fatherland, after which the president of the soceit; populaire delivered the inaugural speech. The Commune president and others delivered speeches. After their harangues various patriotic hymns were repeated and accompanied by the military band, after which in front of the temple entrance, the trumpeters announced that the inauguration festival and the ceremony were concluded.

“In the evening fireworks were displayed on the mountain, a bouquet marked the gratitude of all the French to the mountaineers present, who were solemnly recognized to be the saviours of the republic. Then a ball was held and so brotherhood was twice celebrated in a single day. Each citizen taking part in this fine day evidenced this civic spirit. All took the oath to live in freedom or to die.”

But this is very much in harmony with, of course, Communist celebrations of various kinds — very rational, very ordered, very artificial. The triumph of the abstract mind which is the sign of reason is the highest reality.

One asks how this all fits together, and we’ll see later on how it all fits together because we want to examine both the reaction against this in the nineteenth century and the further development of the revolutionary ideas.

Already we can gain one idea which is very central to all of this. And that is that this whole Revolution, with these various strands, is very much like a secular form of something we already saw in the Renaissance period, that is, the chiliastic sects. Now, there’s a goddess of Reason, the same idea there’s a new order of the ages; history is now coming to an end. So far we see no talk of the Third Age of the Holy Spirit, because it’s all couched in rationalistic terms; but this is very much an outbreak of that same spirit. Now it’s much broader and takes over the whole society. We’ll see later on how deep this chiliastic strain goes into modern man.

Napoleon

And now we come to the last aspect of the Revolution, which is that of Napoleon. With Napoleon the Revolution actually comes to an end, that is, this bloody part. The whole of Europe is convulsed; half of it is welcoming the Revolution until it sees all the blood and begins to get a little upset; but still many people are welcoming revolution, and another half of it is horrified by it; and they begin to fight. And the French armies go out beyond the borders carrying the Revolution abroad. They saw how the.... Goethe, Beethoven and others think it’s a wonderful thing bringing liberty and equality to mankind.

And then comes one very talented and clever man, Napoleon, who takes over the whole thing and becomes over fifteen years the dictator for France. In many ways he offers a compromise, that is, he restores the church, in fact gives the church.... He has a concordat with the Pope, which gives the Pope much more power over the French Church than he had before. He restores the churches; he even restores a new kind of nobility, and establishes an empire, a new monarchy, but preserving the advantages of the Revolution. That is, he has a new law code, he dissolves the whole idea that there are different castes in society. All are supposed to be equal at least theoretically before the law. And we’ll look at few aspects of his life, which are not too often talked about, which were....

There’s a book by [Dimitri] Merezhkovsky, a Russian, crazy Russian, who however was very much attuned to Napoleon’s mystical ideas, so he quotes from many of his letters. To begin with, he has a frontispiece the motto for the whole book, a quote from Pushkin, who calls Napoleon “The Fateful Executor of a Command Unknown.” That is, the idea that he is representing something he knows not what. He himself is very aware of being on the crest of some movement in history, and as long as that movement supports him, he can he go forward and conquer the world; and when it departs, he feels he loses everything. This Merezhkovsky calls Napoleon “the titan who bridled the chaos — the Revolution.” He took over and gave it order.

There’s a Catholic thinker from the nineteenth century, Leon Bloy, who talks about Napoleon. He says, “Napoleon cannot be explained; he is the most inscrutable of men, because he is primarily and above all the prototype of Him Who must come and Who, perhaps, is not far distant; he is the prototype and forerunner, closely akin to us. Who among us, Frenchmen or even foreigners, living at the end of the nineteenth century but has felt the illimitable sadness of the consummation of this incomparable Epic?” “Who possessed with but an atom of a soul but was not overwhelmed by the thought of the verily too sudden downfall of the great Empire and its Leader? Who was not oppressed by the remembrance that but yesterday, so it seemed, men were on the highest pinnacle possible to humanity, because of the mere presence of this Beloved, Miraculous and Terrible Being, the like of whom had never before been seen in the world; and could, like the first human beings in paradise deem themselves lords of all God’s creation, and now immediately after must again be cast back into the age-long mud of the Bourbons” dynasty, because after Napoleon the monarchy was restored.

He [Napoleon] himself speaks of himself as someone who is very much one of the people, even though he was himself from some kind of little nobility. He says “Popular fibre responds to mine; I am come from the ranks of the people, and my voice has influence over them....”

“Great was my material power,” he said, “But my spiritual power was infinitely greater; it bordered on magic!”

When the people died for Napoleon they died for someone whom, as Victor Hugo writes, “Understanding that they were going to die..., they saluted their god who was standing in the midst of the tempest,” that is, Napoleon as a deity.

“On his return to Paris from Elba,...” that is, when he was first banished to Elba off the coast of France and then came back for a brief period before Waterloo, he came “into the Palace of the Tuilleries” in Paris and, “‘Those who carried him were frantic, beside themselves with joy, and thousands of others deemed themselves happy to be able to kiss or even touch the hem of his garments.’ ‘Me thought I was present at Christ’s resurrection,’” says one witness.

“When I was a child,” writes this same Leon Bloy, “I knew old veterans who could not distinguish him (Napoleon) from the Son of God.” Napoleon himself writes in his testament which he left, “I die in the Roman apostolical religion in the bosom of which I was born.” And in fact he lived, he was a member of the Roman Catholic Church, but in ideas, totally foreign to it. And he said, in fact, “I prefer Islam. At least it is not as absurd as our religion.”

“‘Napoleon is a daimoniac being,’ says Goethe using the word daimon in its antique pagan sense, neither god nor devil but someone betwixt the two.”

There was an “apocalyptic strain which runs throughout the whole Napoleonic mystery. It originated earlier still with the Revolution, when at times it reached such a pitch that it is almost akin to the early Christian eschatology, a premonition of the world’s approaching end.” This, of course, is very accurate because this is a chiliastic movement. “‘The end of all things is at hand; there will be a new heaven and new earth.’”

“The ancient dream of paradise lost, of God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven, together with a new vision of a human kingdom of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity drew men towards Napoleon.... Napoleon is the soul of the Revolution....” “‘I am the French Revolution,’ says he, as he begins the Empire; and at end he says, ‘The Empire is the Revolution.’”

“‘He was a bad man, an evil man!’ — he says of Rousseau standing over his grave. ‘Without him there would have been no French Revolution.... It is true that I, too, would not have existed.... Perhaps that would have been better for the happiness of France. Your Rousseau is a madman; it is he who has brought me to this.’ ‘Time will show whether it would not have been better for the peace of the world if neither Rousseau nor I had lived.” Still he was very much the spokesman of the Revolution.

He says of himself, “‘I closed up the chasm of anarchy. I put an end to Chaos. I cleansed the Revolution....’

“‘In spite of all its atrocities, the Revolution was the true cause of our moral regeneration. Thus the most foul-smelling manure produces the most noble vegetation. Men may restrain or temporarily suppress this progress but are powerless to crush it.’ ‘Nothing can destroy or efface the great principles of the Revolution. Its sublime truths will endure forever in the light of the wonderful deeds we have done, in the halo of glory with which we surrounded them, already they are immortal!... They live in Great Britain, shed their light in America; have become the heritage of the French nation. They are the torch which will illuminate the world.... They will become the religion of all nations and, say what you will, this new epoch will be associated with my name, because I kindled the torch and shed a light on its beginnings and now through persecution, I will be forever acclaimed as its Messiah. Friends and foes alike will call me the first soldier of the Revolution, its champion leader. When I am no more I shall remain for all nations the beacon star of their rights, and my name will be their battle cry, the slogan of their hopes.’”

As to the dichotomy between liberty and equality which, as anyone knows, exclude each other, he says, “‘Better abolish liberty than equality. It is the spirit of the times, and I wish to be a son of my times!’ ‘Liberty is the need of the few elect.... It can be constrained with impunity, but equality is pleasing to the majority.’”

This Merezhkovsky quite rightly notes that the Revolution seceded from Christianity in everything, save in the idea of universality. Dostoyevsky writes, “As a matter of fact the French Revolution was nothing more than the last variation and reincarnation of the same ancient Roman formula of universal unity,” which by the way we discovered earlier is one of the main themes of modern thought.

Napoleon says it himself, “My ambition? It was of the highest and noblest kind that ever perhaps existed — that of establishing and consecrating the Empire of reason and the full exercise and enjoyment of all human faculties.”

And he wanted to march on Asia. Before he became emperor, he was in Egypt and came back to take over France. For him Europe was but the route to Asia. He said, “Your Europe is a mole-hill! Only in the East have there been great empires and mighty upheavals; in the East, where dwell six hundred million people.”

“The lure of the East,” says this Merezhkovsky, “grips him all his life. In Egypt before the Syrian campaign, young General Bonaparte, poring for hours on the ground over huge outspread maps, dreams of a march to India across Mesopotamia following the route of Alexander the Great.” He says, “With overwhelming forces, I shall enter Constantinople, overthrow the Sultan, and found the new and great empire of the Orient. This will bring me immortal fame.”

Now we see about how he surrounds himself with a mysticism. At St. Helena when he’s in final exile, he says, “I always realized the necessity of mystery.... I always realized that my ends could best be served by surrounding myself with a halo of mystery which has such a strong fascination for the multitude. It fires the imagination, paves the way to those brilliant and dramatic effects which give one such power over men. This was the cause of my unfortunate march to Moscow. Had I been more deliberate I might have averted every evil, but I could not delay it. It was necessary that my movement and success should seem, as it were. supernatural.”

And about religion he says, “I created a new religion. Already I pictured myself on the road to Asia, riding on an elephant with a turban on my head and carrying a new Alcoran written by myself,” a new sacred book.

Napoleon realized that, as he said, “As soon as a man becomes king, he is a separate being from his fellow-men. I always admired Alexander’s (the Great) sound political instinct which prompted him to proclaim his divine origin.” “Had I returned from Moscow,” he says, “as a conqueror I should have had the world at my feet, all nations would have admired and blessed me. I might have withdrawn myself mysteriously from the world, and popular credulity would have revived the fable of Romulus; it would have said that I had been carried up to heaven to take my place among the gods!’...”

He realized that our life and time were not appropriate for calling himself God. He says, “Now were I to declare myself the son of the Father Almighty and order a thanksgiving service on the occasion, every fish-wife in Paris would jeer at me to my face. No, the people are too civilized nowadays. There is nothing great left for me to do!”

He used the Catholic faith, as he himself says, “Would you like me to invent some new and unknown religion according to my fantasy? No, I hold a different view on the matter. I need the old Catholic faith; it alone retains its grip on all hearts, and alone can turn the hearts of the people towards me and remove all obstacles from my path.”

But on St. Helena he notes that he had aims beyond conquering the world. He says, “I should have governed the religious with the same facility as the political world.” “I intended to exalt the Pope beyond measure, to surround him with grandeur and honours. I should have succeeded in suppressing all his anxiety for the loss of his temporal power. I should have made an idol of him; he would have remained near my person. Paris would have become the capitol of Christendom; and I should have governed the religious as well as the political world.”

And so we see some of these mystical ideas of Napoleon and other important things. We have in him the first time in [the] modern age a world conqueror, someone who consciously wanted to conquer the world and even perhaps set himself up as a god. He saw himself as the successor of the Roman Empire, after he defeated the Russians at Austerlitz in 1807 and the Germans in I806 — in fact, the Germans were so afraid that he would take the crown of the Holy Roman Empire that the Emperor of Austria abolished the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. Napoleon announced in 1807 after defeating the Russians that “I am now the Roman emperor because I have defeated the first Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, and the third Rome, which is Moscow, and I am now the heir of both.”

And a third aspect is his attitude towards the Jews. The age of revolution was preceded immediately by much agitation in favour of the Jews, especially on the part of very enlightened Jewish philosophers like Moses Mendelssohn and the liberal radical Jews who wanted to abolish the separate ghettos and so forth. In fact the Revolution gave a great deal of so-called “freedom” to the Jews, in every place the Revolution is usually accompanied by emancipation of the Jews. That, we’ll go back to that later on, that aspect.

The most interesting thing about Napoleon and the Jews is that after he had proclaimed himself Emperor, he called from all over the world a meeting of the Sanhedrin, which was the Jewish high court which condemned Christ to death and had not existed since the time of the fall of Jerusalem after the death of Christ. He called back this organization into existence for one purpose: so that the Jewish people would proclaim him to be emperor. There’s even an illustration of him at the Sanhedrin meeting in order to proclaim him Emperor; it is in a book I lost.

One asks the question how these — certainly there’s many enlightened and modern ideas here; he’s obviously a child of the Enlightenment — wonders how this whole idea of an empire, of a monarchy, a restored monarchy, fits in with the ideals of the Revolution which is a democracy, and a state of equality. How does it fit? And how could he be recognized as the carrier of the revolutionary ideal? In fact wherever he went his armies were tremendously enthusiastic because they felt they had an ideology; they were carrying the message of truth to other peoples. Obviously, it’s bound up with this chiliastic revolutionary ideal.

For now we won’t say much more about it. But we find later on other examples of this same phenomenon occurring again. But there are different strands of the Revolution; and the strand which Napoleon most evoked was this, which we’ve talked about before, the ideal of universal monarchy, which makes him one of the forerunners of Antichrist. The very thought that he could be proclaimed a god after conquering the world, that he would be conqueror of the world, one world ruler, that he is the Roman Emperor, and that the Jews proclaim him as the emperor, that is, almost messiah, shows that he has very definitely more than anyone before him in modern times is a forerunner of Antichrist. And we will see later there is one other person so far in modern history who had a similar function. In fact almost all these things have the same ideas, and that’s Hitler.

And this whole revolution beginning with the proclamation of the rights of man, and equality through the bloody massacres and deliberate depopulation, proclamation of Communism, the coming to power of one ruler who wanted to be ruler of the world. All of this is a rehearsal for a future kingdom of this world.

And once Napoleon was removed and the monarchy was restored — we’ll see that it was not a real restoration — these revolutionary ideas begin to be much more powerful; and the whole of the European intellectual class now becomes filled with these ideas. They change a few ideas but the basic ideal remains the same. There are some thinkers who go a little deeper into the question; some are more superficial. We will examine the views of the various ones and also the revolutionary outbreaks which they inspired. But to understand the Revolution we have to see it not as something which is complete in itself but as something which is an attempt of breaking through of the new forces, the new chiliastic forces. Later on these forces are able to take over not just most of Europe, but now most of the world, because meanwhile this process of apostasy, of the Mystery of Iniquity has gone much deeper and has entered into the lives of now everybody in the world.