The Role of British Intelligence in the French Revolution

By Richard Poe (From How the British Invented Communism and Blamed it on the Jews)

On November 25, 1789—four months after the storming of the Bastille—King Louis XVI was still on his throne, showing every willingness to work with the new National Assembly to form a constitutional monarchy. Sadly for Louis—and for all of France—events took a fateful turn that day. The catalyst was a letter from the London Revolution Society to the French National Assembly, which was read aloud to the members. It directly inspired the formation of the so-called Jacobin clubs, from which Danton, Marat, Robespierre, and the Reign of Terror would emerge.

Paid Agents

Jefferson expressed the same view in a letter of January 31, 1815 to William Plumer, a New Hampshire lawyer and politician.63

“[W]hen England took alarm lest France, become republican, should recover energies dangerous to her,” wrote Jefferson, “she employed emissaries with means to engage incendiaries and anarchists in the disorganisation of all government there…”

According to Jefferson, these hired “incendiaries and anarchists” infiltrated the Revolution by “assuming exaggerated zeal for republican government,” then gained control of the legislature, “overwhelming by their majorities the honest & enlightened patriots…”

Their pockets filled with British gold, these paid agents “intrigued themselves into the municipality of Paris,” said Jefferson, “controlled by terrorism the proceedings of the legislature…” and finally “murdered the king,” thus “demolishing liberty and government with it.”

In the same letter, Jefferson accused Danton and Marat by name of being on the British payroll.

The London Revolution Society

Jefferson’s views find unexpected support from U.S. historian Micah Alpaugh, who has revealed the extensive influence British reformers exerted over the French revolutionaries. Unlike Jefferson, Alpaugh sees nothing nefarious in this influence, but nonetheless remarks on its surprising extent.

In his 2014 paper, “The British Origins of the French Jacobins,” Alpaugh notes that France’s radical Jacobin clubs were consciously modeled after an existing British organization, the London Revolution Society.64

This was a group of English intellectuals who began meeting at the London Tavern in Bishopsgate in 1788, ostensibly to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of William III’s Glorious Revolution. It soon became clear, however, that their true goal was to agitate for revolution in the present day.

On November 25, 1789—four months after the storming of the Bastille—King Louis XVI was still on his throne, showing every willingness to work with the new National Assembly to form a constitutional monarchy.

Sadly for Louis—and for all of France—events took a fateful turn that day which would end all possibility of cooperation. The catalyst for this catastrophe was a letter from the London Revolution Society to the French National Assembly.

The so-called “English Jacobins” offered their French disciples a poisoned chalice of “cosmopolitanism, internationalism, and universalism” (Alpaugh’s words), urging the French idealists to put aside the narrow interests of their own country, in favor of the broader interests of mankind. But the broader interests of mankind pushed by the “English Jacobins” turned out to be little more than a smokescreen for British imperial interests.

British Radicals Intervene

That day, November 25, 1789, the president of the French National Assembly read aloud to the legislators a letter from the London radicals.

The letter directly inspired the formation of the so-called Jacobin clubs, from which Danton, Marat, Robespierre, and the Reign of Terror would later emerge.

The letter called on the French to disdain “National partialities” and join with their English brethren in a revolution that would make “the World free and happy.”

Alpaugh writes that the letter “produced a ‘great sensation’ and loud applause in the Assembly, which wrote back to London declaring how it had seen ‘the aurora of the beautiful day’ when the two nations could put aside their differences and ‘contract an intimate liaison by the similarity of their opinions, and by their common enthusiasm for liberty’.”

This letter fueled a “growing Anglophilia” (Alpaugh’s words), inspiring the French revolutionaries to found a Societé de la Révolution, directly modeled after the London Revolution Society.

The Societé de la Révolution was later renamed, but always kept its English-style nickname Club des Jacobins—pointedly retaining the English word “club” as a tribute to the group’s British origin, Alpaugh explains.65

The Poisoned Chalice

As Jacobin “clubs” sprang up all over France, they typically retained close ties to their English mentors.

Alpaugh writes, “Early French Jacobins created their network in consultation with British models,” such as the London Revolution Society and the London Corresponding Society. “Direct correspondence between British and French radical organizations between 1787 and 1793 would develop reciprocal and mutually inspiring relationships…helping inspire the rise of Jacobin Clubs throughout France,” writes Alpaugh.66

Deliberately or not, the so-called “English Jacobins” (as they came to be known) offered their French disciples a poisoned chalice of “cosmopolitanism, internationalism, and universalism” (Alpaugh’s words), urging the French idealists to put aside the narrow interests of their own country, in favor of the broader interests of mankind.67

This was, in fact, a deception.

Alpaugh may not see it this way, but the broader interests of mankind pushed by the “English Jacobins” turned out to be little more than a smokescreen for British imperial interests.

The Jacobin Clubs gave rise to Marat, Danton, and Robespierre, ultimately leading to the Reign of Terror and the murder of King Louis XVI.

They also gave rise to a new ideology which has come to be known as communism.

“The term ‘communism’ in the France of the 1840s denoted… an offshoot of the Jacobin tradition of the first French revolution,” wrote Marxist historian David Fernbach in 1973. “This communism went back to Gracchus Babeuf’s Conspiracy of Equals” which was already shaking up Paris more than 20 years before Marx was born. Babeuf derived many of his ideas from British mentors, at least some of whom were British intelligence operatives.

The Invention of Communism

Communism was born on the streets of revolutionary Paris.

More than fifty years before Marx and Engels penned The Communist Manifesto, a faction of French radicals calling itself the Conspiracy of Equals was already preaching classless society, abolition of private property, and the need for revolutionary action.

Led by “Gracchus” Babeuf —whose real name was François-Noël Babeuf—the Conspiracy of Equals tried unsuccessfully to overthrow the so-called Directory, France’s last revolutionary government, in 1796.68

Their conspiracy failed, and Babeuf was put to death. But his ideas live on.

Marx and Engels called Babeuf the first modern communist.69

No record exists of Babeuf using the word communiste, though he sometimes called his followers “communautistes” (usually translated “communitarian”).70

However, a contemporary of Babeuf, Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne, often used the word “communist” in his writings, beginning as early as 1785.71

Babeuf’s prosecutors apparently believed that Restif was secretly in league with the Conspiracy of Equals, and some evidence suggests he may have been, according to James Billington, in his 1980 book Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith.72

Jacobin Communism

For all these reasons, it is not surprising that the self-styled “communistes” who emerged in Paris during the 1830s and 1840s saw themselves, at least partly, as following in the footsteps of Babeuf.73

“The term ‘communism’ in the France of the 1840s denoted… an offshoot of the Jacobin tradition of the first French revolution,” wrote Marxist historian David Fernbach in 1973. “This communism went back to Gracchus Babeuf’s Conspiracy of Equals… This egalitarian or ‘crude’ communism, as Marx called it originated before the great development of machine industry. It appealed to the Paris sans-culottes—artisans, journeymen and unemployed—and potentially to the poor peasantry in the countryside.”74

Thus, Babeuf’s “crude” communism was already shaking up Paris more than 20 years before Marx was born.

By March, 1840, the Communist movement in Paris was deemed sufficiently threatening that a German newspaper denounced it, saying, “The Communists have in view nothing less than a levelling of society— substituting for the presently-existing order of things the absurd, immoral and impossible utopia of a community of goods.”75

When these words were written, the 21-year-old Karl Marx was studying classics and philosophy in Berlin. He had not yet shown a strong interest in radical or revolutionary politics.

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Via https://richardpoe.substack.com/p/how-the-british-invented-communism