ENGLAND

In the minds of certain contemporaries no doubt exists that yet another intrigue at work behind the revolutionary movement was that sinister influence—“ the gold of Pitt.” England, they declare, resentful of the help given by France to the American insurgents, took advantage of the disturbed state of the country to wreak her vengeance on the French Government by encouraging and actually financing sedition. Montmorin told Gouverneur Morris that he “ had indisputable evidence of the intrigues of Britain and Prussia that they gave money to the Prince de Condé and the Duc d’Orléans.” Bezenval, describing the riots of July 1789, speaks of the brigands employed by the Duc d’Orléans and by England. According to Madame Campan, Marie Antoinette herself shared the conviction of England’s complicity, and regarded Pitt as the leader of the intrigue. “ Do not go to Paris to-day,” she is said to have remarked, “ the English have been distributing money there ! ” or again : “ I cannot hear the name of Pitt without feeling cold shivers down my back ! What was the explanation of these rumours ? Was the Government of England really animated by a spirit of revenge ? It is certainly probable that the intervention of France on behalf of America appeared to Pitt as hostile an act as the sending of the Kruger telegram appeared to our Government of 1896, yet it must be remembered that Louis XVI. had entered reluctantly into the war, whilst the leaders of the expedition to America—Lafayette, Lauzun, De Ségur, and others—were later on partisans of the Revolution. If, therefore, Pitt desired revenge is it likely that he would have sought to obtain it by joining forces with the very men who had taken part against him ?

At the same time it is undeniable that a serious rivalry existed between France and England. As the two principal monarchies of Europe this was inevitable, nor in the past had it proved wholly disastrous. The perpetually recurring wars between the two rival powers had been conducted with gallantry and generosity on both sides, and had left little bitterness in the mind of either nation. But the reign of Louis XVI. introduced a more formidable menace to the power of England. For the first time in her history she saw her most cherished possession, the dominion of the seas, seriously threatened.

Louis XVI. was an enthusiast for the navy ; on the subject of shipbuilding he displayed surprising knowledge, and his visit to the port of Cherbourg—the construction of which was the greatest triumph of his reign—brought him a popularity he had never before enjoyed. Across the sea England watched and wondered. As a seafaring nation it was http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (22 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31

 

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perhaps the most anxious moment in her existence. In the correspondence of English diplomatists at this date we find a vague fear piercing, and with the outbreak of the Revolution an undeniable breath of relief. “ It is certainly possible,” writes Lord Dorset from Paris in September 1789, “ that from this chaos some creation may result, but I am satisfied that it must be long before France returns to any state of existence which can make her a subject of uneasiness to other nations.” Earlier in the year Hailes had expressed the same conviction.

Yet to show a certain degree of complacency at the spectacle of a foreign power that had threatened aggression weakening itself with internal dissensions is surely not to imply that one has deliberately set out to organize these dissensions. George III. throughout showed himself resolutely opposed to the Revolution, and Pitt, who consistently supported the King, could have had no conceivable object in furthering a movement that shook all the thrones of Europe. Far from sympathizing with the revolutionary leaders Pitt invariably displayed a marked aversion to the Orléanistes, whilst the Jacobins who were avowedly “ the natural enemies of England ” were the last people with whom he would be likely to ally himself. The hatred expressed for Pitt by both these parties of revolutionaries is again surely proof of his non-complicity—if Pitt was helping to finance them, why should they regard him as their enemy ? Why should “ l’or de Pitt ” be mentioned by Jacobin writers with the same indignation as by Royalists ? When, therefore, we find Pitt suspected by Royalists of abetting the Revolution and accused by Revolutionaries of aiding the Royalists, [30] we may surely conclude that his attitude was,

as he professed, one of strict neutrality. Moreover, as Madame de Staël points out, how could Pitt dispose of the vast sums of money he was said to have scattered among the rioters without accounting for them to Parliament ? Necker, she says, made minute investigations during his ministry, but “ was never able to discover the faintest trace of complicity between the popular party and the English Government,” [31] and M. Granier

de Cassagnac adds that “ historical documents have since then confirmed this conviction of Necker’s, for the official accounts of the finances of the emigration at the Bibliothèque Nationale prove that of all governments of Europe the English Government is the only one that never contributed any sum of money towards the divers enterprises of different parties during the French Revolution.”[32]

Even Sorel, who misses no opportunity of denouncing the aggressive policy of England, is obliged to admit the integrity of Pitt :

“ The ministry, that is to say William Pitt, was perfectly pacific. The Revolution ridded him for a time of a formidable rival ; it assured him of the peace he needed for his financial reforms, and surrendered to England all the benefits of which the crisis in public affairs deprived French industry and commerce. In every market, as in every http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (23 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31

 

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chancellery, England was free to substitute herself for France. Pitt would have been careful not to obstruct the development of a revolution so advantageous to his designs.

He also held that a king of France deprived of his prestige, with his rights limited and his power contested, would marvellously answer the convenience of England. But he was not one of those greedy politicians blinded by jealousy, whose covetousness leads them to take a brutal advantage of fortune. Certain of these, and notably his allies in Berlin, marvelled at his not seizing this occasion to throw himself on France, to crush her and take over her colonies. He was careful to refrain from this. The natural elevation of his soul restrained him as much as the foresight of his mind. Such perfidy was repugnant to him, and he held it to be dangerous.” [33]

This testimony of a hostile critic, and at the same time of the historian most versed in the politics of the eighteenth century, is surely convincing. If, in the opinion of Sorel, Pitt was above taking advantage of the Revolution to declare open war on France, is it conceivable that he would have descended to the ignoble policy of financing sedition, to the brutal expedient of scattering gold amongst an enraged mob ? The thing is unthinkable, and it is time that this gross calumny on our Government should be finally demolished. Suleau, the Royalist pamphleteer, knew better than many of his contemporaries when he wrote these noble words :

“ The English people have not degenerated from the magnanimity of their ancestors, and here wise policy is allied to generosity, for it would not be difficult to prove that the splendour of France will always be the surest guarantee for the prosperity of Great Britain.” England, then, far from abetting the Revolution, regarded it with undisguised aversion. Such liberal-minded men as Wordsworth and Arthur Young, who at first hailed it as the dawn of liberty, lived to recognize their error. “ In England,” says Cardonne, “ the majority of the people, including almost all those who belonged to the Government, the rich and noble owners of property, had conceived such a horror for the principles and acts of the French revolutionaries, and such a dread of seeing them adopted in their country, that they were anxious to break off all commerce between the two nations.” As we shall see in the course of this book, the “ people ” of England shared the opinion of their rulers.

What, then, is the explanation of the belief in English cooperation with the revolutionary movement ? Of the English guineas found on the rioters ? Of Englishmen mingling in the mobs of Paris during popular agitations ? Of the seditious pamphlets printed in London ? Of the traffic in letters, messages, and money maintained between England and the revolutionary leaders ? Many of these leaders, moreover, were constantly in England, both before and during the Revolution ; Marat lived for years in Soho, whilst http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (24 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31

 

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Danton, Brissot, Pétion, St. Huruge, Theroigne de Méricourt, and the ruffian Rotondo were all habitués of London. These facts admit of no denial ; to suppose, however, any complicity on the part of the English Government is illogical and absurd. The explanation seems to me to lie in a perfectly different direction.

I have already referred to the Due d’Orléans’ predilection for visits to London—a predilection that is not to be altogether accounted for by the “ anglomanie ” he professed. “ M. d’Orléans,” a contemporary shrewdly remarks, “ often went to England… . M. d’Orléans was very fond of England, though not of the English. The wisdom of their laws mattered very little to him, but the liberty of London mattered to him a great deal. This apparent love of the Due d’Orléans for the English was in the end the cause of all the calumnies against England with which the leaders of the different factions influenced public credulity, so as to throw on the policy of that nation the excesses of which they alone were guilty.” [34]

Here, then, is the key to a great part of the mystery ; the theory of “ l’or de Pitt ” was a fable circulated by the duke himself to shield his own manœuvres, and such was the skill with which it was disseminated that it was believed even by the Queen, who, as we know, never fully realized the complicity of the duke with the revolutionary outbreaks.

For ten years before his death, that is to say from 1783 onwards, the Duc d’Orléans continually deposited sums of money in London banks, and these sums, estimated at between ten to twelve millions of francs, were not exhausted in 1794. [35] Now since

countless witnesses testify that the revolutionary mobs were financed by the duke, it is surely more than probable that many of the guineas found on rioters were the Due d’Orléans’ money,[36] which with diabolical cunning he drew out in English coin, and

had sent over to France in order to throw suspicion on the English. This may to a large extent account for the sums distributed, but it does not entirely dispose of the belief in English cooperation. A further light is thrown on the matter by the following passage of Montjoie :

“ During his visits to London the Due d’Orléans personally, and by means of his agents in Holland, made fresh loans of money in England…. He attached to his interests …

Milord Stanhope and Dr. Price. These two men were the most important members of a society calling itself ‘ The Revolution Society.’ … D’Orléans also knew how to interest all that party known as the ‘ Opposition ’ in his cause. Fox, one of the oracles of this party, was throughout attached to d’Orléans, and still is to his family (1797) ; he is the declared protector of all the Frenchmen who belong to the faction of this prince.” Is it not possible, then, that the duke, fearing that even his vast fortune might prove inadequate to the demands made on it during the course of nearly five years, for http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (25 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31

 

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financing insurrection, may have supplemented it by sums raised amongst his friends in England ? In this case English gold did play a part in the revolutionary movement, but it was provided not by the Government, but by its opponents. The Opposition party in London formed an exact counterpart to the duke’s party in Paris ; headed by the Prince of Wales, the roues of Carlton House formed a Fronde against George III., such as the roues of the Palais Royal formed against Louis XVI. In the House of Commons Fox, the socalled “ friend of the people,” demanded that the enormous debts of the Prince of Wales should be defrayed by the nation. Thus in both countries it was the “ democratic ” party, the revolutionaries of France and the Whigs of England, who supported the follies and extravagances of these two dissolute princes, whilst in both countries the cause of order and morality was represented by the sovereign whom the democrats wished to dethrone. George III., like Louis XVI., was intensely respectable ; the Due d’Orléans was therefore even less to his taste than his own prodigal son, and he rightly discerned the demoralizing influence that the duke exercised over him. “ George, the Prince of Wales,” says Ducoin, “ had done the honours of the brothels and gambling-houses of the old city, and in Paris the Due d’Orléans had returned the hospitality shown him by the Prince of Wales in the suppers and orgies of London. Like Philippe, the Prince of Wales had adopted the Revolution, and hailed the dawn of a new era.” This era was apparently to consist in placing George III. under restraint and proclaiming the Prince of Wales Regent, a scheme in which the Prince’s boon companions, Fox, Sheridan, and others, heartily concurred. Meanwhile the same process was to take place in France, the regency in both countries being merely the preliminary to a change of sovereigns. With these two merry monarchs, George IV. and Philippe VII., on the thrones of England and France, an era of liberty seemed assured for the bons vivants of Carlton House and the Palais Royal, who found themselves perpetually hampered by the exercise of the royal authority.

Under these circumstances it is not surprising that Louis XVI. found it necessary to prohibit the Due d’Orléans from visiting England too frequently. In the Carrespondance Secrète we find on April 9, 1788, the following significant entry : “ It is confirmed that one of the conditions that the Due d’Orléans’ exile should be cancelled is that this prince should make a long journey to anywhere except England.

To the well-founded reasons the King may have for preventing him from breathing British air there is, they say, to be added the entreaty of George III., who, wishing to maintain the footsteps of the Prince of Wales on the paths of order and morality, has begged his most Christian Majesty not to allow his friends from Paris to approach him.” This, then, was the reason why Louis XVI. stipulated that the duke should not spend the term of his exile in England, a stipulation that, as we have seen, contributed more than http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (26 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31

 

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any other cause to the duke’s animosity towards the Court of France.

The prohibition to visit England was, of course, a serious obstacle to the designs of the Due d’Orléans and Choderlos de Laclos. These journeys, made ostensibly for pleasure, held a deeper purpose. Whilst the wine flowed freely, and George and Philippe basked in the smiles of their various enchantresses, who could suppose that plots of a serious nature were in progress, and that anything more important than the pleasure of the hour occupied the brains of the revellers ?

In England, as in France, however, the conspirators were divided in their aims. Not all the English revolutionaries belonged to the Prince of Wales’s party ; many, like their French counterparts, desired no change of sovereign but simple anarchy. Throughout the history of our country subversive spirits have from time to time arisen to advocate “ equality ” and the levelling of all ranks to an indifferent public. “ Pride,” said the Prince de Ligne, “ disdains revolutions ; vanity produces them.” The British people, far more proud than vain, have always responded with lukewarm interest to the instigators of class hatred ; perfectly satisfied with their own position in the social scheme they care not who considers himself their superior. Liberty they demand as a right ; equality they wisely recognize as impossible, and dismiss from their calculations. But in England, as in France, a minority has always existed, totally distinct from the people, whose vanity is greater than its pride. To them obscurity is far more intolerable than oppression.

Usually members of the middle class employed in sedentary occupations and deprived of the mental balance that manual labour brings, or occasionally of an aristocracy that has failed to show them the appreciation they desire, they seek to avenge their own wrongs rather than to redress those of the people. Like the Subversives of France they have seldom any definite plans of reconstruction—their aim is only to destroy. Of such elements were the “ Revolution Societies ” of England in 1789 composed. Dr. Robinet, who has described them admiringly in his Danton Émigré, under the title of “ The English Jacobins,” has given us illuminating details of their conduct during the course of the Revolution. Like nearly every French revolutionary, Dr. Robinet detests England, and his comments on the attitude of the British people towards the Revolution are very bitter—there were in England, he says, “ only a respectable minority, a numerous élite,” who sympathized with the movement. This “ respectable minority ” consisted of the Prince of Wales and his boon companions, and of the Revolutionary Societies headed by the renegade Lord Stanhope, by Dr. Price, Dr. Priestley, and the drunkard Thomas Paine. The natural allies of their country’s bitterest enemies, the Jacobins of France, we shall find them throughout the Revolution, not merely abetting the excesses committed abroad, but seeking to create a kindred movement at home. It was they, as I shall show, who subscribed towards the Revolution ; it was they who fraternized with the http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (27 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31

 

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revolutionary agitators on their visits to London ; it was they who committed the crimes that certain writers have falsely attributed to our Government.

The complicity of these English Subversives with the revolutionaries of France is a fact we should do well to realize, both in justice to the French nation and also with a view to understanding the potentialities of our own. The smug belief that none amongst our fellow-countrymen would have been capable of the atrocities committed in France is shattered at a blow when we read the comments of English revolutionaries on these deeds of horror—deeds not to be attributed as we are accustomed to attribute them to the excitability of the Latin temperament, but to political passions, of all passions the most terrible and relentless which men of our own race displayed at the same period without the same provocation. In the course of this book we shall see that the crimes committed by the lowest of the Paris rabble, and execrated by the honest democrats of France, were applauded by educated men and women in our country, and if England was not plunged in the horrors of anarchy it was not because she did not hold within her forces capable of producing them.

These, then, were the four great intrigues of the French Revolution. Their aims may be briefly recapitulated thus :

I. The intrigue of the Orléanistes to change the dynasty of France.

II. The intrigue of the Subversives to destroy all religion and all government.

III. The intrigue of Prussia to break the Franco-Austrian alliance.

IV. The intrigue of the English revolutionaries to overthrow the governments both of France and England.

To these four organized intrigues must be added the innumerable people of all classes, belonging to no particular party, but with private grievances of their own, and all ready to throw themselves into any subversive movement—Madame de la Motte, who raged at her punishment in the affair of the necklace, and to whom many of the libellous pamphlets against the Queen are due ; courtiers who had failed to secure the favours they solicited ; women who had been refused admittance to the Court, or like Madame Roland, felt humiliated by its magnificence—all those people who, either by the misfortune of their circumstances or by a natural biliousness of temperament, resented prosperity in others, and below them all that underworld of vice and misery that in every old civilization sinks to the bottom like the dregs in an old wine, and that any violent convulsion brings to the surface with terrible effect. All through the Revolution we shall see these heterogeneous rebels, inflamed with their own burning thirst for vengeance, mingling with the great conspiracies, and the great conspiracies in their turn joining http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (28 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31

 

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forces with each other ; we shall see the agitators of the Palais Royal fraternizing with the emissaries of Prussia, Madame de la Motte circulating libels through the agents of the Duc d’Orléans, and English revolutionaries corresponding with the cut-throats of September. All this confused and turbulent movement, formed of such conflicting units, running concurrently with the genuine movement for reform, succeeded so skilfully in blending with it as to deceive not only contemporaries, but the greater part of posterity.

“They had,” says Malouet, “the art and the wisdom to appear in a mass, marching under one banner, the banner of liberty, which floated over the heads of men whose secret aims were widely divergent, thus presenting a united front to the world.” So, though all the revolutionary elements put together formed but a small minority in the State, they were able, by means of this union, to hold their own against the immense but disunited majority that composed the Old Régime—a king at variance with his Court, a noblesse divided against itself, and a people who for want of leaders in their own ranks allowed themselves to be swayed by every breath of opinion. Before this rising tide of insurrection the Government erected no barriers, to the superb organization of the Orléaniste conspiracy provided no counter-organization, and to seditious doctrines replied with no corrective propaganda. “ Will posterity believe,” cried Arthur Young, as he watched the engineering of the Revolution, “ that while the press has swarmed with inflammatory productions, that tend to prove the blessings of theoretical confusion and speculative licentiousness, not one writer of talent has been employed to refute and confound the fashionable doctrines, nor the least care taken to disseminate works of another complexion ? ”

Playfair, another English contemporary, was amazed by the incredible inertia of the ruling classes : “ In this state of things, did the proprietors pay a single man of merit to plead their cause ? No. If by chance a man of merit refuted their enemies, did they make a small sacrifice to give publicity to his work ? No. He who pleaded the cause of murder and plunder saw his work distributed by thousands and hundreds of thousands, and himself enriched ; while he who endeavoured to support the cause of law, of order, and of the proprietor, had his bookseller to pay and saw his labours converted into waste paper.”[37]

So at the outbreak of the Revolution all dynamic force, all fire and energy, were to be found on the side of demolition, whilst the Old Régime, resolutely blind to the coming danger, allowed itself to be destroyed without striking a blow in self-defence.

 

1. Mémoires du Chancelier Pasquier, p. 46.

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2. See, for example, the opinion of the pro-revolutionary writer M. Jules Flammermont in his Journée du 14

Juillet : “Another witness of this surprising revolution (the revolution of July 1789) is Dr. Rigby, whom the chances of travel brought to France and kept in Paris during these glorious days . His letters to his wife form valuable evidence of which neither the authenticity nor the impartiality can be disputed… . He was a practical agriculturist and at the same time a man of science, and his letters though perhaps rather optimistic, make the counterpart to the criticisms of Arthur Young, who saw the dark side of everything .” 3. The Parlements, which played an active part in the revolutionary movement, had proved continually obstructive to the King’s schemes of reform, and it was they, as well as the monopolizers, who had opposed the free circulation of grain . “ It must appear strange,” wrote Arthur Young, “in a government so despotic in some respects as that of France, to see the parliaments in every part of the kingdom making laws without the King’s consent, and even in defiance of his authority” ( Travels in France, p. 321).

4. Moniteur, i. 215.

5. Mémoires de Hua, député à l’Assemblée, published by his grandson François Saint Maur in 1871.

6. Journal d’un Étudiant, edited by M. Gaston Maugras, p. 9.

7. Correspondance Secrète sur Louis XVI el Marie Antoinette, edited by M. de Lescure, p. 126.

8. “ Grand Triomphe de M. le Duc d’Orléans, ou Examen Impartial de Conduite,” p. 5, August 23, 1790.

9. Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, i. 213.

10. Mémoires du Comte de Tilly, ii. 110.

11. Le Général Choderlos de Laclos, by Émile Dard, p. 153.

12. Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, i. 93.

13. Les Fils de Philippe Égalité pendant la Terreur, by G. Lenôtre, p. 12.

14. That Mirabeau was definitely working in the interests of the Duc d’Orléans throughout the summer of 1789 is perfectly obvious from the evidence of all contemporaries, even those who were his friends, such as Dumont and La Marck, the latter only attempting — very unconvincingly — to prove that Mirabeau was not paid by the duke .

Weber, however declares that Mirabeau and the Duc d’Orléans “troubled so little to conceal their connection that notes signed by the Duc d’Orléans in favour of Mirabeau were seen publicly negotiated on the Paris Bourse” ( Mémoires de Weber, ii. 17). Perhaps the best summary of Mirabeau’s policy at this date is that given by Mounier : “ I have seen him pass from the nocturnal committees held by the friends of the Duc d’Orléans to those of the enthusiastic republicans, and from these secret conferences to the cabinets of the King’s ministers ; but if from the first months (of the Revolution) the ministers had consented to work with him he would have preferred to uphold the royal authority rather than to ally himself with men he despised . His principles must not be judged by the numerous contradictions in his speeches and writings, where he said less what he thought than what happened to suit his interests under such and such circumstances . He often communicated his real opinions to me, and I have never known a man of more enlightened intellect, of more judicious political doctrines of more venal character, and of a more corrupt heart ” ( De l’Influence attribué aux Philosophes, Franc Maçons et Illuminés, p. 100) . This passage gives the key to the whole of Mirabeau’s conduct during the early stages of the Revolution . On the nocturnal meetings between Mirabeau and the Duc d’Orléans see also Garat’s Conspiration de d’Orléans.

15. Histoire de la Révolution, by Blanc, ii. 331; Essais de Beaulieu, i. 302.

16. Mémoires de Hua, p. 53.

17. Letter of Lord Dorset, March 19, 1789, in Dispatches from Paris, ii. 175.

18. This was also the opinion of Arthur Young, who likewise believed that the revolutionary leaders had an interest in keeping up the price of corn . See Travels in france (edited by Miss Betham Edwards), p. 154.

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19. On this point see the articles on the “Pacte de Famine” by M. Gustave Bord, M. Leon Biollay, and M. Edmond Biré, which all demonstrate that even Louis XV. was innocent of this crime, and that the “bleds du roi” consisted in a benevolent scheme for keeping down the price of grain by storing supplies, and releasing them in a time of scarcity at a lower price than that demanded by the corn merchants and fanners.

20. On the immense liberality of the noblesse and clergy see Montjoie, Conjuration de d’Orléans, i. 202 ; Taine, La Révolution, i. 5 . “ The poor and needy,” says the English contemporary Playfair, “whom shame prevented from seeking aid, were themselves sought after, and relief was forced upon the poor starving family in their cold and hungry retreat by those same clergymen and nobility who soon after were driven from their own abodes … . These acts of charity were not the acts of a few, they were general, and were done without ostentation or show, as such actions always ought to be .” The Duc d’Orléans loudly proclaimed his charities in the press, but these, says Montjoie, existed principally on paper, at any rate they did not prevent him from investing, at this crisis, in a gorgeous new set of plate which his friends—and presumably not the hungry multitude—were invited to the Palais Royal to admire ( Mémoires of Madame de la Tour du Pin, I. 164). The Archbishop of Paris at the same moment sold all his plate to feed the poor.

21. Rabaud lived to see these theories carried into effect and to realize too late their disastrous folly. “ France,” he wrote only a short time later, “ might have been likened to an immense chaos ; power was suspended, authority disowned, and the wrecks of the feudal system were added to the vast ruins .” He repented still more bitterly when, in the reign of anarchy that followed, he was led to the scaffold . His wife killed herself in despair.

22. Confirmed by the Abbé Barruel, Mémoires sur le Jacobinisme, iii. 11

23. Ibid. p. 25 ; Histoire de la Révolution, by Louis Blanc, ii. 84, 85.

24. Robison’s Proofs of Conspiracy, pp. 107, 375.

25. Ibid. p. 107.

26. Craufurd here uses the word “Germany” as it was employed at that date, i.e. as a name covering Austria as well as Prussia and the other independent German states . Yet it was not in Austria, but in such towns as Berlin, Frankfurt, Mainz, Göttingen, Brunswick, Gotha, Breslau, etc., that Illuminism flourished most vigorously.

27. See the evidence of two French Freemasons present at this meeting published by Charles d’Héricault, La Révolution, p. 104.

28. Montjoie, Histoire de la Conjuration de Maximilien Robespierre, pp. 36, 37.

29. The correspondence from which all the following extracts are taken is to be found in a work entitled Rapport sur les Correspondances des Agents Diplomatiques étrangers en France avant la Révolution conservées dans les Archives de Berlin, Dresde, Genève, Turin … Gênes … Londres, etc., by Jules Flammermont (Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1896).

30. See, for example, the 5th number of the Vieux Cordelier, in which Camille Desmoulins accuses Pitt of being in league with Calonne, Malouet, and Luchesini to create a “ counter-revolution .” 31. Considérations sur la Révolution Française, i. 329, 331.

32. Histoire des Causes de la Révolution Française, I. 59.

33. L’Europe et la Révolution Française, II. 29.

34. Histoire des Factions de la Révolution Française, by Joseph Lavallée, i. 25 (1816).

35. See letters from General Montesquiou and the Due de Chartres published at the end of the Mémoires de Mallet du Pan, edited by A. Sayous, p. 455.

36. Fantin Désodoards, Histoire Philosophique, ii . 436.

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37. Playfair’s History of Jacobinism, p. 108.

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