This is an edited extract from a contemporary translation of Augustin Barruel's Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du jacobinisme, which I have referred to elsewhere.
"At an early period of the French Revolution, there appeared a sect calling itself Jacobin, and teaching that all men were equal and free. In the name of their equality and disorganizing liberty, they trampled under foot the altar and the throne; they stimulated all nations to rebellion, and aimed at plunging them ultimately into the horrors of anarchy....
Whence originated these men, who seem to arise from the bowels of the earth, who start into existence with their plans and their projects, their tenets and their thunders, their means and ferocious resolves; whence, I say, this devouring sect? Whence this swarm of adepts, these systems, this frantic rage against the altar and the throne, against every institution, whether civil or religious, so much respected by our ancestors?...
We have seen men obstinately blind to the causes of the French Revolution: we have seen men who wished to persuade themselves that this conspiring and revolutionary sect had no existence anterior to the revolution. In their minds this long chain of miseries which has befallen France, to the terror of all Europe, was the mere offspring of that concourse of unforeseen events inseparable from the times; it is in vain, in their conceptions, to seek conspirators or conspiracies, vain to search for the hand that directs the horrid course....
[W]e shall demonstrate that, even to the most horrid deeds perpetrated during the French Revolution, every thing was foreseen and resolved on, was combined and premeditated: that they were the offspring of deep-thought villainy, since they had been prepared and were produced by men, who alone held the clue of those plots and conspiracies, lurking in the secret meetings where they had been conceived, and only watching the favorable moment of bursting forth....
The result of our research, corroborated by proofs drawn from the records of the Jacobins, and of their first masters, has been, that this sect with its conspiracies is in itself no other than the coalition of a triple sect, of a triple conspiracy, in which, long before the revolution, the overthrow of the altar, the ruin of the throne, and the dissolution of all civil society had been debated and resolved on.
1st. Many years before the French Revolution, men who styled themselves Philosophers conspired against the God of the Gospel, against Christianity, without distinction of worship, whether Protestant or Catholic, Anglican or Presbyterian. The grand object of this conspiracy was to overturn every altar where Christ was adored. It was the conspiracy of the Sophisters of Impiety, or the ANTICHRISTIAN CONSPIRACY.
2dly. This school of impiety soon formed the Sophisters of Rebellion: these latter, combining their conspiracy against kings with that of the Sophisters of Impiety, coalesce with that ancient sect whose tenets constituted the whole secret of the Occult Lodges of Free-masonry, which long since, imposing on the credulity of its most distinguished adepts, only initiated the chosen of the elect into the secret of their unrelenting hatred for Christ and kings.
3dly. From the Sophisters of Impiety and Rebellion, arose the Sophisters of Impiety and Anarchy. These latter conspire not only against Christ and his altars, but against every religion, natural or revealed: not only against kings, but against every government, against all civil society, even against all property whatsoever.
This third sect, known by the name of Illuminés, coalesced with the Sophisters conspiring against Christ, coalesced with the Sophisters who, with the Occult Masons, conspired against both Christ and kings. It was the coalition of the adepts of impiety, of the adepts of rebellion, and the adepts of anarchy, which formed the CLUB of the JACOBINS. Under this name, common to the triple sect (originating from the name of the order, whose convent they had seized upon to hold their sittings,) we shall see the adepts following up their triple conspiracy against God, the King, and Society. Such was the origin, such the progress of that sect, since become so dreadfully famous under the name of JACOBIN....
Let not the Reader take this for the language of enthusiasm or fanaticism; far be such passions either from myself or my readers. Let them decide on the proofs adduced, with the same coolness and impartiality which has been necessary to collect and digest them...."
