All the revolutionaries
of the Constituent Assembly were initiated into the third degree.
We place in this class the Duc d'Orleans, Valence, Syllery, Laclos,
Sieyes, Petion, Menou, Biron, Montesquieu, Fauchet, Condorcet,
Lafayette, Mirabeau, Garat, Rabaud, Dubois-Crance, Thiebaud,
Larochefoucauld, and others.[620]

Amongst these others were not only the Brissotins, who formed the
nucleus of the Girondin party, but the men of the Terror--Marat,
Robespierre, Danton, and Desmoulins.

It was these fiercer elements, true disciples of the Illuminati, who
were to sweep away the visionary Masons dreaming of equality and
brotherhood. Following the precedent set by Weishaupt, classical
pseudonyms were adopted by these leaders of the Jacobins, thus Chaumette
was known as Anaxagoras, Clootz as Anacharsis, Danton as Horace, Lacroix
as Publicola, and Ronsin as Scaevola[621]; again, after the manner of
the Illuminati, the names of towns were changed and a revolutionary
calendar was adopted. The red cap and loose hair affected by the
Jacobins appear also to have been foreshadowed in the lodges of the
Illuminati.[622]

Yet faithfully as the Terrorists carried out the plan of the Illuminati,
it would seem that they themselves were not initiated into the innermost
secrets of the conspiracy. Behind the Convention, behind the clubs,
behind the Revolutionary Tribunal, there existed, says Lombard de
Langres, that "most secret convention [_convention secretissime_] which
directed everything after May 31, an occult and terrible power of which
the other Convention became the slave and which was composed of the
prime initiates of Illuminism. This power was above Robespierre and the
committees of the government, ... it was this occult power which
appropriated to itself the treasures of the nation and distributed them
to the brothers and friends who had helped on the great work."[623]

What was the aim of this occult power? Was it merely the plan of
destruction that had originated in the brain of a Bavarian professor
twenty years earlier, or was it something far older, a live and terrible
force that had lain dormant through the centuries, that Weishaupt and
his allies had not created but only loosed upon the world? The Reign of
Terror, like the outbreak of Satanism in the Middle Ages, can be
explained by no material causes--the orgy of hatred, lust, and cruelty
directed not only against the rich but still more against t