Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism (French: Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du Jacobinisme) is a book by Abbé Augustin Barruel, a French Jesuit priest. It was written and published in French in 1797–1798, and translated into English by one Robert Clifford in the same years.
In the book, Barruel claims that the French Revolution was the result of a decades-long conspiracy to subvert and then overthrow the European ancien régime of throne, altar and aristocracy. The plot was allegedly hatched by a coalition of philosophes, Freemasons, and Illuminati, creating a system that was eventually brought to fulfillment by the Jacobin revolutionaries. Barruel was the first to allege such a scheme in a fully developed historical context with voluminous documentary evidence. The first three volumes each focus on a separate contributing group of conspirators, and the fourth on their culminating union in the Jacobins.
Barruel's Memoirs are representative of the criticism of the philosophes and the Enlightenment that spread throughout Europe in reaction to the Revolution. It was immediately popular, and was read and commented on by most of the important literary and political journals of the day.Hofman, 28. It was published in a number of languages and remained in print well into the 20th century, stirring debate about the role of the philosophes, their ideas, and the Enlightenment in the Revolution. Barruel wound accusations tightly around his foes and tied them firmly into compromising positions.Darrin M. McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 192. The work is considered one of the founding documents of the right-wing interpretation of 18th century French history, closely linking the Enlightenment and the Revolution, a connection which remains a topic of historical debate.Amos Hofman, “Opinion, Illusion, and the Illusion of Opinion: Barruel’s Theory of Conspiracy,” Eighteenth Century Studies Vol. 27 No. 1 (1993), 28.
Background
Abbé Augustin Barruel (1741–1820) became a Jesuit in 1756 but by 1762 anti-Jesuit feeling in France had become so strong that he left and travelled for many years, returning only in 1773.Peter Knight, Conspiracy Theories in American History, (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2003), 115. The events of the French Revolution in 1792 caused him to leave again and take refuge in England. His dislike and hostility towards the philosophers was well known and well developed before 1789, as he had been on the editorial staff of the popular anti-philosophe literary journal Année littéraire decades before the Revolution.Graeme Garrard, Counter Enlightenments: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 37. He wrote the Memoirs in 1797 as an exile in London. It was published in French by the French publishing company at 128 Wardour Street, Oxford Street, London.Jasper Ridley, The Freemasons, (London: Constable and Company Limited, 2003), 142. An English edition was issued the same year, and the work quickly became a commercial success.Will Kaufman, Britain and the Americas, (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2005), 488. The multi-volume work went through four revised French editions by 1799 and was translated into English, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, and Russian as editions were issued in London, Hamburg, Augsburg, Luxembourg, St. Petersburg, Dublin, Naples and Rome before the fall of Napoleon.McMahon, 113.
Synopsis
Outline of the work In his "Preliminary Discourse", Barruel defines the three forms of conspiracy as the "conspiracy of impiety" against God and Christianity, the "conspiracy of rebellion" against kings and monarchs, and "the conspiracy of anarchy" against society in general.Abbé Augustin Barruel, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism, (Hartford: Hudson & Goodwin, 1799), Vol. 1, vii. He sees the end of the 18th century as "one continuous chain of cunning, art, and seduction"Barruel, Vol. 1, 363. intended to bring about the "overthrow of the altar, the ruin of the throne, and the dissolution of all civil society".Barruel, Vol. 1, Preliminary Discourse, xiii.
The first volume examines the anti-Christian conspiracy which Barruel claims began in 1728, when Voltaire "consecrated his life to the annihilation of Christianity".Barruel, Vol. 1, chap. 3, 48. He alleged that the sect of philosophes, led by Voltaire, the scientist d’Alembert, the Encyclopedist Denis Diderot, and King Frederick II of Prussia, planned out the course of events that led to the French Revolution. They began with an attack on the Church with a "subterranean warfare of illusion, error, and darkness"Barruel, Vol.4, Conclusion, 561., creating the intellectual framework that put the conspiracy in motion and controlled the ideology of the burgeoning secret societies. "Writers of this species, so far from enlightening the people, only contribute to lead them into the path of error".Barruel, Vol. 5, chap. 14, 561.
Their fervent appeals for equality and liberty really aimed to legitimize "pride and revolt".Barruel, Vol. 4, chap. 12, 399. Barruel returned to the principal texts of the Enlightenment and drew close links between the philosophism of the time and the anti-Christian campaigns of the Revolution.McMahon, 101. Barruel's direct and extensive quotes show a deep knowledge of the philosophes' beliefs which is unusual among the enemies of the Enlightenment.Garrard, 45.
The second volume focuses on the anti-monarchical conspiracy led by Jean Jacques Rousseau and Baron de Montesquieu, who sought to destroy the established rulers under the guise of "independence and liberty".Barruel, Vol. 2, chap. 4, 138. Barruel analyses and criticizes Montesquieus The Spirit of Laws and Rousseaus Social Contract as "giv[ing] birth to that disquieted spirit which fought to investigate the rights of sovereignty, the extent of their authority, the pretended rights of the free man, and without which every subject is branded for a slave - and every king a despot".Barruel, Vol. 2, chap. 4, 136–137. He believed that the influence of these two writers was essential to the rise of the revolutionary spirit, agreeing in this with the revolutionaries themselves.
Barruel believed that the philosophes' writings and spirit directly inspiried the anti-monarchical feelings of the Jacobins and the revolutionaries, as they trampled "underfoot the altars and the thrones in the name of that equality and that liberty which summon the peoples to the disasters of revolution and the horrors of anarchy".Barruel, Vol. 1, chap. 2. 36. Barruel equated the rejection of monarchy with a rejection of any type of order, government, and civil society, leading to a "reign of anarchy and absolute independence".Barruel, Vol. 4, Conclusion, 584.
Barruels third volume addresses the antisocial conspiracy of the Freemasons and the Order of the Illuminati, which built on the philosophes' attacks on church and throne. He believed these secret societies constituted a single sect of over 300,000 members who were "all zealous for the Revolution, and all ready to rise at the first signal and to impart the shock to all others classes of the people".Barruel, Vol. 2, chap. 14, 461-462. Barruel surveyed the history of Masonry and maintained that its higher mysteries had always been of an atheist and republican cast.David Chandler, “Abbé Barruel, SJ, William Taylor, and the Pelican Business,” The Allen Review Issue No. 19, (1998), 1. He believed the Freemasons kept their aims secret for many years, but on August 12, 1792, two days after the fall of the French monarchy, they ran through the streets shouting "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity", agitating for the establishment of the republic.Ridley, 143.
In other countries, however the Masons still plotted in secret. A division of the group into numerous lodges ensured that if one lodge were exposed, the rest would remain hidden. The Illuminati refined the Masons' secret structure. Even after the Illuminati leader Johann Adam Weishaupt was discovered and tried in court, the proceedings could not uncover the universal influence of the sect and no steps were taken against them.Hofman, 38. The secret socieities functioned to radicalize social and political movements against the throne and altar, and enrolled members of the population to subscribe to their hidden principles.Hofman, 34.
For Barruel, the final designs of the coalition of the philosophes, the Freemasons and the Illuminati were achieved by the Jacobin clubs. They were formed by "the adepts of impiety, the adepts of rebellion, and the adepts of anarchy"Garrard, 48. working together to achieve their radical aims. Barruel believed that the Jacobins were the direct successors and executors of the older secret societies.Garrard, 48
The Memoirs and the French Revolution According to Barruel, the first major assault on the Enlightenment came during the French Revolution. In the minds of many, the Enlightenment was inextricably connected to the Revolution that followed. This presumed link resulted in an explosion of literature that was hostile to the Enlightenment. When the leaders of the Revolution canonized Voltaire and Rousseau and made the Enlightenment themes of reason, progress, anti-clericalism and emancipation central to their own revolutionary vocabulary, it created a link that meant any backlash against the Revolution would increase opposition to the Enlightenment.Garrard, 36. The advent of what Graeme Garrard has called the "continuity thesis" between the Enlightenment and the Revolution – the belief that they were connected in some intrinsic way, as cause and effect- proved damaging to the Enlightenment.Garrard, 36.
For Barruel, the Revolution was not a spontaneous popular uprising expressing a long-suppressed general will. It was instead the consequence of a united minority group who used force, subterfuge and terror to impose their will on an innocent and unsuspecting population.Garrard, 45. Barruel believed that the Revolution was caused by Voltaire, Rousseau and the other philosophes who conspired with secret societies to destroy Catholicism and the monarchy in France. He argued that the writings of the philosophes had a great influence on those who would lead the Revolution and that Voltaire and his followers were responsible for the training of revolutionaries. It was from the followers of the philosophes "that the revolutionary ministers Necker and Turgot started up; from this class arose those grand revolutionary agents, the Mirabeaux, Sieyes, Laclos, Condorcets; these revolutionary trumps, the Brissots, Champforts, Garats, Cheniers; those revolutionary butchers, the Carras, Frerons, Marats".Barruel, Vol. 4, conclusion, 562.
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