French Directory between Extremes 559
of the Bourbons. Malouet, in London, thought that no sane or patriotic French-
man could rally to Louis XVIII.^30
These more or less practical activities were accompanied by a profuse output of
extreme counter- revolutionary writing, which enjoyed a kind of classic flowering
in the years from 1795 to 1797. Most of it was by French émigrés publishing out-
side France, but British and German writers also made their contributions. There
was the Savoyard- Frenchman Joseph de Maistre, who has been called the French
Burke. There was an adventurer named Montgaillard, who thought that all Europe
was corroded by revolution, that “the democratic principle spreads even into cabi-
nets,” and the French republicans “concoct their poison even in the councils of
kings.”^31 There was the Count de Ferrand, who thought the moment had come for
all conservative governments to form “a holy alliance.”^32 There was Montjoie, a
prolific royalist pamphleteer, who thought that if Louis XVI had been truly abso-
lute before 1789 there need have been no revolution, and that the Revolutionaries
had been fanaticized by a misunderstanding of certain words, such as liberté and
pouvoir constituant.^33 J. F. La Harpe also found “fanaticism” a satisfying explanation
of the Revolution.^34 In England, Burke’s Letters on a regicide peace and other pam-
phlets by other authors gave currency to similar views. In Germany there was
much lucubration, in which various elaborate theories were propounded, including
the theory that the French Revolution, and other revolutionary disturbances
throughout Europe, were the work of highly organized secret conspirators, deriv-
ing from the Illuminati of Bavaria of the 1780’s.^35 These German findings were
taken up by a Scottish chemist of considerable repute (he had received an honor-
ary degree from Princeton College in America in 1790) who in 1797 published his
Proofs of a conspiracy against all the religions and governments of Europe, carried on in
the secret meetings of Free Masons, llluminati and Reading Societies.^36 The Abbé Bar-
ruel also drew on German researches for a similar book published in 1797.
The most important of these works are those of de Maistre and Barruel. De
Maistre’s fame came after the Restoration of 1814, but his Considérations sur la
Révolution française was published in 1797. It was very much a part of the contro-
versies of the moment, for he expressed agreement with both Louis XVIII and
Babeuf, declaring his full approval of the Declaration of Verona, and quoting Ba-
beuf to argue that the existing republic was an appalling tyranny. The Considéra-
30 Beik, 92; Walter, 397; Malouet, Mémoires, 515, 521.
31 Comte de Montgaillard, L’an 1795, ou conjectures sur les suites de la Révolution française (Ham-
burg, 1795), 5.
32 Beik, 55, quoting Ferrand, Des causes qui ont empêché la contre- révolution en France (Berne,
1795).
33 C. F. de la T. Montjoie, Eloge historique et funèbre de Louis XVI (Neuchatel, 1796), 154; Nouveau
dictionnaire pour servir à l ’ intelligence des termes mis en vogue par la Révolution (Paris, 1792).
34 J. F. La Harpe, Du fanatisme dans la langue révolutionnaire (Paris, 1797).
35 J. Droz, L’Allemagne et la Révolution française (Paris, 1949), Part V, chap. 1, “La lutte contre
l’illuminisme.”
36 Robison’s book had at least five editions. According to the records of Princeton University, the
Dictionary of National Biography is in error in attributing the Princeton degree to the year 1798; the
point is of no importance except to show that the college awarded Robison the degree for his scientific
attainments, not for his political opinions of 1797, which, however, were certainly agreeable to the
college authorities.