into a foreign land will no longer enjoy the
happiness of consideration, nor the charms of society, nor the
gifts of commerce.

And de Luchet ends with this despairing appeal to the powers of Europe:

Masters of the world, cast your eyes on a desolated multitude,
listen to their cries, their tears, their hopes. A mother asks you
to restore her son, a wife her husband, your cities for the fine
arts that have fled from them, the country for citizens, the fields
for cultivators, religion for forms of worship, and Nature for
beings of which she is worthy.

Five years after these words were written the countryside of France was
desolate, art and commerce were destroyed, and women following the
tumbril that carried Fouquier-Tinville to the guillotine cried out:
"Give me back my brother, my son, my husband!" So was this amazing
prophecy fulfilled. Yet not one word has history to say on the subject!
The warning of de Luchet has fallen on deaf ears amongst posterity as
amongst the men of his own day.

De Luchet himself recognizes the obstacle to his obtaining a hearing:
there are too many "passions interested in supporting the system of the
Illumines," too many deluded rulers imagining themselves enlightened
ready to precipitate their people into the abyss, whilst "the heads of
the Order will never relinquish the authority they have acquired nor the
treasure at their disposal." In vain de Luchet appeals to the Freemasons
to save their Order from the invading sect. "Would it not be possible,"
he asks, "to direct the Freemasons themselves against the Illumines by
showing them that whilst they are working to maintain harmony in
society, those others are everywhere sowing seeds of discord" and
preparing the ultimate destruction of their Order? So far it is not too
late; if only men will believe in the danger it may be averted: "from
the moment they are convinced, the necessary blow is dealt to the sect."
Otherwise de Luchet prophesies "a series of calamities of which the end
is lost in the darkness of time, ... a subterranean fire smouldering
eternally and breaking forth periodically in violent and devastating
explosions." What words could better describe the history of the last
150 years?

The _Essai sur la Sects des Illumines_ is one of the most extraordinary
documents of history and at the same time one of the most mysterious.
Why it should have been written by the Marquis de Luchet, w