562 Chapter XXIII
Södermanland, to be Jacobins or Illuminati. Of the Poles, he named no one but
Kosciuszko. He knew of Genet’s agitations in Russia, but not in the United States.
He declared, however, that he knew for a fact, from a letter received from Boston,
that the secret societies were at work in America. He correctly named David
McLane as a conspiratorial subversive executed at Quebec in 1797. His informa-
tion was best for the German countries. He named Campe, Mauvillon, Sonnen-
fels, and Immanuel Kant, who though not conspirators were adepts in his sense of
the word. He knew of the more truly conspiratorial Mainz Jacobins of 1792 (For-
ster, Boehmer, and a mathematician named Metternich, unrelated to the princely
house) and of the Cisrhenane republicans of 1797, but not of the intrigues of Po-
teratz in 1796. For Austria, he knew of persons named Billek, Hackl, Hebenstreit,
Hoffman, Riedel, and Wolstein, all of whom were in fact implicated in the con-
spiracy at Vienna in 1794. He knew nothing of the Martinovics conspiracy in
Hungary, merely remarking that the Austrian Jacobins were executed with seven
Hungarian gentlemen. In short, his information was sporadic. He had written five
volumes, and missed the conspiratorial aspects of agitation in Ireland, Belgium,
Holland, Hungary, and Italy. It is obvious that Barruel reflected only a few Ger-
man sources.
He knew enough, however, and it may be credited to him as a merit, to believe
that the revolution was not merely French but universal. Though he included a
chapter on Geneva in the 1760’s, he concluded that the disturbance had begun in
America. “The sect first announced itself in America, with the first elements of its
code of equality, liberty and sovereignty of the people.” It may be noted that in the
English translation, and ensuing American reprint, the words “in America” were
simply omitted at this point.^41 We may easily suggest an explanation: even for
conservative English- speaking persons, it was simply not believable that the
American Revolution had been brought on by a sect of adepts, and they might
conclude that Barruel’s whole thesis was unsound.
He ended his final volume with a chapter on “The universality of successes of
the sect, explained by the universality of its plots.” At the time of his writing this
final chapter, in 1798, the revolution had in fact spread very far, even to “Rome it-
self.” Barruel’s message was the same as Burke’s: “It is not France extending a for-
eign empire over other nations; it is a sect aiming at universal empire, and begin-
ning with the conquest of France.”^42 Everywhere, in all countries, there were
plotters, adepts, lurking initiates of secret societies, Freemasons, Illuminati, and
Jacobins in their hidden cells and lodges who were everlastingly and tirelessly
working, for no reason except to forward their own misguided philosophy, to un-
dermine all government, property, and religion.
41 Ibid., V, 310–11; Eng. trans., IV, 354. The reference to David McLane at Quebec was also de-
leted from the English translation, which, however, supplemented the original with an appendix on
the political clubs in England and on the Irish rebellion of 1798, both of which it attributed to Jaco-
bins, Freemasons and Illuminati. That the American Revolution had also been caused by secret societ-
ies was affirmed in Germany by counterrevolutionaries as early as 1790. F. Valjavec, Entstehung der
politischen Strömungen in Deutschland (Munich, 1951), 149, n. 15.
42 Regicide Peace, Work’s (Boston, 1877), V, 345.