[553] Barruel’s main reliance is the correspondence of Voltaire, as published in the edition of Kehl.
[554] Barruel, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 25 et seq.
[555] Ibid., pp. 26, 27, 33.
[556] Ibid., pp. 54 et seq. Barruel represents the Encyclopedists as arguing that force could not be employed until there had first been a revolution in all religious ideas; hence L’Encyclopédie, with all its insinuating doubts, its artful cross-references, its veiled impiety, was planned to give the first great impulse in that direction. Thus the old forms of thought would perish “as it were, by inanition;” later, the laying of the axe to the altar would not be hazardous.
[557] Ibid., pp. 75 et seq.
[558] Ibid., pp. 127 et seq.
[559] Ibid., pp. 163 et seq. According to Barruel, the conspirators numbered among their adepts the following: Joseph II of Germany, Catherine II of Russia, Christian VII of Denmark, Gustave III of Sweden, Poniatowski, king of Poland, and the landgrave Frederick of Hesse-Cassel.
[560] Ibid., p. 154.
[561] Barruel, op. cit., p. 157.
[562] Ibid., pp. 321 et seq.