em. Thus we read that it was a Jew, Rosenthal, who
headed the legion known by his name, which was sent against La Vendee
but took to flight,[629] and which was the subject of complaint when
employed to guard the Royal Family at the Temple[630]; that amongst
those who worked most energetically to deprive the clergy of their goods
was a Jewish ex-old-clothes seller, Zalkind Hourwitz; that it was a Jew
named Lang who murdered three out of the five Swiss guards at the foot
of the staircase in the Tuileries on August 10[631]; that Jews were
implicated in the theft of the crown jewels on September 16, 1792, and
one named Lyre was executed in consequence; that it was Clootz and the
Jew Pereyra, and not, as I had stated, Hebert, Chaumette, and Momoro,
who went to the Archbishop Gobel in November 1793 and induced him by
means of threats to abjure the Christian faith.[632]

All these facts were unknown to me when I wrote my account of these
events; it will be seen then that, far from exaggerating the role of the
Jews in _The French Revolution_, I very much underrated it. Indeed the
question of their complicity had not occurred to me at all when I wrote
this book, and the only Jew to whom I referred was Ephraim--sent to
France by the Illuminati Frederick William II and Bischoffswerder--whom
M. Kahn indicates as playing an even more important part than I had
assigned to him.

But illuminating as these incidents may be, it is yet open to question
whether they prove any concerted attempt on the part of the Jews to
bring about the overthrow of the French monarchy and the Catholic
religion. It is true, nevertheless, that they themselves boasted of
their revolutionary ardour. In an address presenting their claims before
the National Assembly in 1789, they declare:

Regenerators of the French Empire, you would not wish that we
should cease to be citizens, since for already six months we have
assiduously performed all duties as such, and the recompense for
the zeal we have shown in accelerating the revolution will not be
to condemn us to participate in none of its advantages now that it
has been consummated.... Nosseigneurs, we are all very good
citizens, and in this memorable revolution we dare to say that
there is not one of us who has not proved himself.[633]

In all these activities, however, religious feeling appears to have
played an entirely subordinate part; the Jews, as has been said, we