An Account of the Destruction of the Jesuits in France

by Jean Le Rond d' Alembert

In order to explain myself with impartiality on the destruction of the Jesuits in France, the object of this treatise, we must begin very far back, and reascend to the very origin of this famous society, place in one point of view the obstacles which had been opposed to it, the progresses which it has made, the blows which it has given and received; lastly, the causes apparent and secret, which brought it to the brink of the precipice, and which have terminated by throwing it from thence.

It is somewhat above two hundred years since the society of Jesuits took birth. Its founder was a Spanish gentleman, who having had his brain heated by romances of chevalry, and afterwards by books of devotion, took it into his head to be the Don Quixote of the Virgin[1], to go and preach to infidels the christian religion which he knew nothing of, and to associate himself for that purpose with those adventurers who should think proper to join him.

It will be thought astonishing, without doubt, that an order, become so powerful and so celebrated, should have for its founder such a man. This founder was however wise enough to decline entering into the order of Theatins, which a cardinal, who some years after became pope, had just established a little before the Jesuits began to appear. Ignatius, in spite of all the opposition which his society experienced at its birth, chose rather to be the legislator of an institution than to subject himself to laws which were not of his making. It seems as if he foresaw, from that very time, the future grandeur of his order, and the small figure the other would make, though destined to be in our times the cradle of a pious prelate, raised from the bosom of that order (by an impenetrable Providence) to the first dignities of the state and of the church[2].

Ignatius had also the wit to perceive, that a society which made particular profession of devotion to the holy see, would find infallible support from the head of the Roman church, and by these means from the catholic princes, its dear and faithful sons; and that thus this society would triumph at length over the transitory obstacles which it might meet with at its origin. It was in this view that he gave to it those famous constitutions, since perfected, and always on the same plan, by two successors very superior to Ignatius, the two generals Lainez and Aquiviva, so celebrated in the annals of the Jesuits: the latter especially, intriguing, adroit, and full of great views, was on all these accounts very proper for the government of an ambitious society: to him it is indebted, more than to any other, for those regulations so well contrived and so wise, that we may style them the master-piece of the industry of human nature in point of policy, and which have contributed, during two hundred years, to the aggrandizement and glory of this order. These regulations, it is true, have ended in being the cause or the motive of the destruction of the Jesuits in France; but such is the fate of all human grandeur and power, it is in their very nature to grow worse and become extinct when they have arrived at a certain degree of greatness and lustre. The empire of the Assyrians, that of the Persians, the Roman empire itself, have disappeared, precisely for this very reason, because they were become too large and too powerful. These examples ought to console the Jesuits, if it be possible for Jesuitical pride to be consoled.

We cannot better compare this society, every where surrounded with enemies, and every where triumphant for the space of two centuries, than to the marshes of Holland, cultivated by obstinate labour, besieged by the sea, which threatens every instant to swallow them up, and perpetually opposing their dikes to that destructive element. Let these dikes be pierced but in one single place, Holland will be laid under water after so many ages of labour and of vigilance. This is what has happened to the society; its enemies have at last found out the weak part, and pierced its dike; yet those who had raised it with so much care and patience, those who had afterwards watched so long over its preservation, those who have cultivated, with so much success, the soil which was protected by this dike, merit nevertheless commendation on that account.

Scarce had the company of Jesus (for that is the name which it had taken), begun to shew itself in France, when it met with numberless difficulties in establishing itself there. The universities especially made the greatest efforts to expel these new comers; it is difficult to decide, whether this opposition does honour or discredit to the Jesuits who experienced it. They gave themselves out for the instructors of youth gratis; they counted already amongst them some learned and famous men, superior perhaps to those of whom the universities could boast: interest and vanity might therefore be sufficient motives to their adversaries, at least in these first moments, to seek to exclude them. We may recollect the like opposition which the Mendicant orders underwent from these very universities when they wanted to introduce themselves there; opposition founded on pretty nearly the same motives, and which ceased not but by the state into which these orders are fallen, now become incapable of exciting envy.

On the other side, it is very probable that the society, proud of that support which it found amidst so many storms, furnished arms to its adversaries by braving them; it seemed to shew itself, from this time, with that spirit of invasion which it has but too much displayed since, but which it has carefully covered at all times with the mask of religion, and of zeal for the salvation of souls. This desire of extending itself, and of domineering, appeared already on all sides: the society insinuated itself into the confidence of several sovereigns; it caballed at the courts of some others; it rendered itself formidable to the bishops, by the dependance which it affected on the court of Rome alone; in short, the more it aggrandized itself, the more it seemed to justify, by its credit and its intrigues, the rancour of its enemies against it. To govern the universe, not by force, but by religion, such appeared to have been the device of this society from its origin; a device which it has made appear further to proportion as its existence and its authority gained strength.

Never did it lose sight, either of this object, or of the means (as smooth as efficacious) which it was to employ in order to succeed in it. It is perhaps the only one of all the societies, as the house of Austria is the only one of all the powers of Europe, which has observed an uniform and constant policy; an inestimable advantage to societies and sovereign houses. Individuals only pass away, and are subject in that short space to a small circle of events, which by no means permit them to have any immutable system. Bodies and great houses subsist for a long time; and if they pursue always the same projects, the scene of the world, which, changes perpetually, brings on at last, soon or late, circumstances favourable to their views. We must, when once we have declared ourselves their enemy, either annihilate them entirely, or end in being their victim; so long as they have one gasp remaining, they cease not to be formidable. “You have drawn the sword against the Jesuits,” said a man of wit to a philosopher; “well, throw the scabbard into the fire.” But individuals, how numerous and animated soever they be, have very little force against a body: accordingly the Jesuits so decryed, so attacked, so detested, would subsist perhaps still with more lustre than ever, if they had not had for irreconcileable enemies other bodies still subsisting as well as them, and as constantly taken up with the project of exterminating them, as they have been with that of aggrandizing themselves.

The manner in which this society established itself in those places where it found the least resistance, discovers very plainly the project which we have attributed to them, of governing mankind, and of making religion subservient to that design.