From the first months of 1789, France was gripped by a “conspiratorial fever” which persisted in seeking the hidden causes of the Revolution. For many contemporaries, this incredible event can only be the fruit of a conspiracy. In The Hidden Hand – Another Story of the French Revolution (Perrin, 368 p., 24 euros), Edmond Dziembowski, specialist of the period, retraces the history of this belief. His book reveals the disturbing echoes of revolutionary conspiracy with ours, without denying the differences.
L’Express: How is the French Revolution the mother of conspiracy?
Edmond Dziembowski: Of course, conspiracy did not wait for the French Revolution to manifest itself. A century earlier, during the Stuart Restoration, England experienced an extremely virulent anti-conspiracy, anti-papist and anti-Catholic wave. But at times of extremely serious political crisis, some observers tend, rather than face the facts, to interpret events using a less traumatic alternative grid. This conspiracy reached, under the French Revolution, a remarkable density. It comes in several variants, which appear from the first days of the Revolution. These explanations will continue throughout the revolutionary process, to settle gradually during the Empire. Due to the exceptional dimension of the phenomenon, the Revolution therefore played an essential role in the birth of contemporary conspiracy.
Who are these conspirators? Can we draw a robot portrait of it?
Their psychological profile resembles that of contemporary conspiracy theorists described by American essayist Richard Hofstadter. Their approach is fundamentally paranoid and autistic. If we strive to prove them wrong, they will reply that we are sadly naive by giving credence to the official version of the facts. Or even that we are the agents of the conspiracy they denounce! Politically speaking, these conspirators of the revolutionary era are also very colorful. Many belong to the royalist and clerical camp. But some revolutionaries also embraced these alternative interpretations. To cite only him, in 1793, Camille Desmoulins was convinced that the Revolution had been fomented from its beginnings by England.
How did the fear of conspiracy influence the course of the Revolution?
In the first weeks of the Revolution, the phobia that Georges Lefebvre analyzed in his book The Great Fear of 1789. Bands of brigands would have spread throughout France and threatened the cottages. Another rumor circulates in parallel: that of the aristocratic conspiracy. It is announced that the partisans of the Old Regime are ready to do anything to undermine the bases of the revolutionary process, even if it means attacking the crops. This unfounded rumour, in certain provinces, favored the attack of the castles by the peasantry. Finally, as soon as the revolutionary process began, a final rumor began to spread: the French Revolution had been meticulously prepared, down to the smallest detail.
Some accuse England of having fomented it: why? Is this attack based on a grain of truth?
This way of looking at things is very much based on Anglophobic sentiment, which is very present in the country. It is totally unfounded. It is said, among other things, that England would have started the Revolution to take revenge for the French participation in the war in North America. In reality, from the beginning of the revolutionary events, the government of William Pitt adopted a position of neutrality. But things changed from 1793, when France declared war on England. In this context of conflict, especially economic, it fabricates false assignats to precipitate the collapse of French finances. Later, under the Directory, it tries to influence, by corruption, the course of the annual elections. But, contrary to the accusations of the conspirators, the objective is not to add oil to the flames of the Revolution, but, on the contrary, to facilitate the election of moderate and/or royalist candidates.
And the other defendants, namely Freemasons, Protestants and Enlightenment philosophers?
Behind a conspiracy theory are facts, but facts truncated and reinterpreted. For the imaginary plot of the philosophers of the Enlightenment, the most famous theoretician was Abbé Barruel. In his Memoirs to serve the history of Jacobinism (1797), he relies on quotes from Voltaire, Diderot, great encyclopaedists, taken out of context. In reality, the Enlightenment philosophers were never revolutionaries. Well settled in society, they had no desire to harm it.
Ditto for the myth of the Protestant conspiracy, which does not hold water. It is claimed that the Revolution was fomented by a minister of this confession, Jacques Necker. His reform policy, which was based, in a very modern way, on public opinion, is incriminated.
Finally, Barruel establishes a causal link between the development of Masonic lodges and the rise of revolutionary clubs. All Freemasonry specialists have demonstrated the absurdity of this thesis.
How to explain this profusion of conspiracy theories? By the disarray faced with an event as unprecedented as the French Revolution?
Faced with disturbing, even terrifying news, we seek and find what is reassuring. Everyone is tempted to find the explanation in line with their opinion of society, of religion, of the political order. This applies to aristocrats, who incriminate philosophers and Freemasons. But also for the revolutionaries, who attack England. In 1793, Robespierre affirmed in his turn that, until the capture of the Tuileries on August 10, 1792, the French Revolution had been the work of England. First there would have been a revolution of foreign origin, prepared and manipulated by England to favor its world domination, then, after three years, finally a French revolution, republican and egalitarian, the work of the sans-culottes and of the Mountaineers.
You claim that conspiracy always includes a part of xenophobia. For what ?
Analyzing conspiracy amounts to tackling what Jean Delumeau studied in a great book: the ancestral fears which have always weighed on the course of events. Among these fears, that of the stranger. From 1789, foreigners were in the hot seat: it was the Genevan Necker who was suspected of having prepared the collapse of the Old Regime, it was the innumerable and alleged agents of England who allegedly facilitated the outbreak of the Revolution and which, subsequently, would have contributed to its radicalization. This xenophobia was masterfully exploited under the Consulate (1799-1804) when propaganda tried to distinguish between a “good” Revolution, that of 1789, whose principles were those of the consular and soon to be imperial regime, and a bad revolution, that of Terror and dechristianization. This bad revolution would have been the exclusive work of Perfidious Albion. To finally turn the page of the revolutionary episode, it is important for the writers under Bonaparte’s orders to “denationalize” everything that undermines the image of 1789, the founding moment of the order that is being put in place.
Is yesterday’s conspiracy the same as today’s?
Today, launching a conspiracy theory is much easier than in the 18th century. If you expose the worst nonsense on the Internet, you will immediately find people who believe you. And with the multiplier effect of social networks, the rumor will spread like lightning. Moreover, current conspiracy theories are much more extravagant than those of the 1790s. Under the Revolution, the civilization of the book reigned supreme. Booksellers-printers would never have accepted to publish certain theories that are current today… Even in its most dubious excesses, the conspiracy of the revolutionary era was a reflection of the intelligentsia of the enlightened century that had preceded it . Our political, social and cultural imagination no longer has much to do with that of 1789. Barruel was a very cultured man, which is far from being the case with our 21st century conspirators.