THE SUBVERSIVES

These men desired no change of dynasty or in the government ; their aim was purely destructive. Three years later, when the monarchy was abolished, many of the revolutionary leaders declared that they had all along been Republicans at heart, but if we examine their earlier writings we shall find that at the beginning of the Revolution none of them had formulated any such political creed. “ There were not ten of us Republicans in 1789,” Camille Desmoulins wrote afterwards, and since Camille at this http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (14 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31

 

Nesta Webster, The French Revolution

date was one of the Duc d’Orléans’ most enthusiastic admirers, the number may be reduced at least by one. With the exception perhaps of Lafayette, whose experiences in the American War of Independence inspired him with Republican sympathies, those of the earlier revolutionaries who were not Orléanistes had no definite theories of reconstruction—their aim was merely to clear the ground of all existing conditions. “ All memories of history,” said Barrère, “ all prejudices resulting from community of interest and of origin, all must be renewed in France ; we wish only to date from to-day.” “ To make the people happy,” said Rabaud de Saint-Étienne, “ their ideas must be reconstructed, laws must be changed, morals must be changed, men must be changed, things must be changed, everything, yes, everything must be destroyed, since everything must be re-made.” [21]

These subversive theories emanated from certain secret societies of which an English writer calling himself John Robison described the aims in the title of his book, Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe carried on in the Secret Meetings of the FreeMasons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies. Robison, who was himself a genuine Freemason, made a tour of the Continental lodges, where he found that a new and spurious form of masonry had sprung into existence. Both in France and Germany “ the lodges had become the haunts of many projectors and fanatics, both in science, in religion, and in politics, who had availed themselves of the secrecy and freedom of speech maintained in these meetings… . In their hands Freemasonry became a thing totally unlike, and almost in direct opposition to, the system imported from England, where the rule was observed that nothing touching religion or government shall ever be spoken of in the lodges… .” The Association, in fact, was “ all a cheat, and the leaders … disbelieved every word that they uttered and every doctrine that they taught … their real intention was to abolish all religion, overturn every government, and make the world a general plunder and wreck.” A further development of German Freemasonry was the Order of the Illuminati founded in 1776 by Dr. Adam Weishaupt, a professor of the University of Ingoldstadt in Bavaria. Weishaupt, who had been educated by the Jesuits, succeeded in persuading two other ex-Jesuits to join him in organizing the new Order, and it was no doubt this circumstance that gave rise to the belief entertained by certain contemporaries that the Jesuits were the secret directors of the sect. The truth is more probably that, as both Mirabeau and the Marquis de Luchet, in their pamphlets on the Illuminati, asserted, Illuminism was founded on the régime of the Jesuits, although their religious doctrines were diametrically opposed. [22] Weishaupt, whom M. Louis Blanc described as “ one of

the deepest conspirators that ever existed,” had adopted the name of Spartacus—the leader of an insurrection of slaves in ancient Rome—and he aimed at nothing less than http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (15 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31

 

Nesta Webster, The French Revolution

world revolution. [23] Thus the Order of the Illuminati “ abjured Christianity, advocated sensual pleasures, believed in annihilation, and called patriotism and loyalty narrow-minded prejudices 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 imprescriptible rights of man, and as preparation 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.” [24]

These were precisely the principles followed by the Subversives of France in 1793 and 1794, and the method by which this project was carried out is directly traceable to Weishaupt’s influence. Amongst the Illuminati, says Robison, “ nothing was so frequently discoursed of as the propriety of employing, for a good purpose, the means which the wicked employed for evil purposes ; and it was taught that the preponderancy of good in the ultimate result consecrated every means employed, and that wisdom and virtue consisted in properly determining this balance. This appeared big with danger, because it seemed evident that nothing would be scrupled at, if it could be made appear that the Order would derive advantage from it, because the great object of the Order was held superior to every consideration.” [25]

It is this doctrine that provides the key to the whole policy of the leading revolutionaries of France, and that, as we shall see later, brought about the Reign of Terror.

Quintin Craufurd, the friend of Marie Antoinette, writing to Pitt in 1794, remarked : “ There is a great resemblance between the maxims, as far as they are known, of the Illuminés and the early Jacobins, and I am persuaded that the seeds of many of those extravagant but diabolical doctrines that spread with such unparalleled luxuriance in the hotbeds of France were carried from Germany.”[26] The lodges of the German Freemasons and Illuminati were thus the source whence emanated all those anarchic schemes that culminated in the Terror, and it was at a great meeting of the Freemasons in Frankfurt-am-Main, three years before the French Revolution began, that the deaths of Louis XVI. and Gustavus III. of Sweden were first planned. [27]

The Orléanist leaders, quick to see the opportunity for advancing their own interests, joined the Freemasons, and the Duc d’Orléans succeeded in getting himself elected Grand Master of the Order in France. A little later Mirabeau went to Berlin, and whilst in Prussia attracted the attention of “ Spartacus ” and his colleague “ Philo,” alias the Baron Knigge of Frankfurt-am-Main, who through the influence of Mauvillon, a disciple http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (16 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31

 

Nesta Webster, The French Revolution

of Philo’s, persuaded him to become an Illuminatus. On his return to Paris Mirabeau, together with Talleyrand and the Duc de Lauzun, inaugurated a lodge of the Order, but none of the three being as yet adepts they were obliged to apply to headquarters for aid.

Accordingly two Germans were sent to initiate them further in the doctrines of the sect.

Before long the Club Breton, the first revolutionary club, later to be known as the Club des Jacobins, became the centre of Illuminism and Freemasonry, for all its members were also members of the two secret societies. But though the leading Orléanistes were all Freemasons, all Freemasons were not Orléanistes ; some were pure Subversives, and M. Gustave Bord is no doubt right in stating that the duke was only the visible head of the sect whose members used him as a cover to their designs, whilst he and his supporters used them with the same object. Thus Chamfort, though a member of the Orléaniste conspiracy, was at heart a Subversive, as an illuminating conversation he once held with Marmontel at the beginning of the Revolution testifies. Chamfort having remarked that it would not be a bad thing to level all ranks and abolish the existing order of things, Marmontel replied :

“ Equality has always been the chimera of republics and the bait that ambition offers to vanity. But this levelling down is all the more impossible in a vast monarchy, and in attempting to abolish everything it seems to me that we should go further than the nation expects, and further than it wishes.”

“ True,” said Chamfort, “ but does the nation know what it wishes ? One can make it wish, and one can make it say what it has never thought … the nation is a great herd that only thinks of browsing, and with good sheepdogs the shepherds can lead it as they please.” He went on to explain that one must help the people according to one’s own lights, not according to theirs, and spoke cheerfully of a Revolution that would make a clean sweep of the Old Régime, a scheme he thought by no means impossible to carry out, for though it might be difficult to move the industrious citizens, there was always the class that has nothing to lose and everything to gain which could be stirred up by rumours of massacre, famine, and so forth. The Duc d’Orléans, he ended by remarking, must be made use of for this purpose. When to this Marmontel suggested that the duke had hardly the makings of a leader, Chamfort replied imperturbably :

“ You are right, and Mirabeau, who knows him well, says it would be building on mud to count on him, but he has identified himself with the popular cause, he bears an imposing name, he has millions to distribute, he hates the King, he hates the Queen still more.”

Such, then, were the “ democratic ” principles of the Subversives, and the methods described by Chamfort were, as we shall see, precisely those employed to work up the people. The first item on their programme was the systematic dissemination of class http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_01.html (17 of 32)5.4.2006 10:39:31

 

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hatred and the promise of unlimited booty.

“ Name me as your representative at the States-General,” said Robespierre in his electioneering speeches, “ and you will be for ever exempt from those burdens which have so far been required of you on the pretext of the needs of the State… . This will not be the only benefit you will enjoy if I succeed in becoming one of your representatives ; too long have the rich been the sole possessors of happiness. It is time that their possessions should pass into other hands. The castles will be overthrown and all the lands belonging to them will be distributed amongst you in equal portions.” To the agricultural labourers he promised the fields they cultivated, to the retainers of the nobles he offered freedom from all duties. “ Everything will be changed, for masters will become servants, and you will be served in your turn.”[28]

It will be seen, therefore, that from the outset “ equality,” the great watchword of the Revolution, had no place in the minds of the Subversives ; conditions were simply to be reversed, wealth was to change hands, a process that was to be never-ending, since that which was at the top was to be perpetually thrust to the bottom, and that which was at the bottom raised to the top.

Towards religion the Subversives displayed the same attitude as towards government ; their animosity was not directed against the Church of Rome more than against Protestantism ; it was religion in itself they detested, and that they set out to destroy.

When we study the manner in which they carried out their design, when we read of the frightful profanity that was inaugurated during the Terror, the desecration of the churches, the blasphemies against Christ and the Holy Virgin, and the worship of Marat, it is almost impossible to disbelieve in demoniacal possession, to doubt that these men, inflamed with hatred against all spiritual influences working for good in the world, became indeed the vehicles for those other spirits, the powers of darkness, whose cause they had made their own. And in their hideous deaths, for nearly every one perished on the scaffold, were they not, perhaps, like the Gadarene swine, victims of the demons that drove them to destruction ?