At the very time when the conspirators were so occupied with the abolition of the Jesuits and all religious orders, Voltaire was meditating a project destined to give impiety its own apostles.
It was in the years 1760 and 1761 that he seems to have first conceived the idea of this new means to finally achieve the extirpation of Christianity.
"Would it be possible," he wrote then to d'Alembert, "that five or six men of merit who understood each other would not succeed, after the examples we have of twelve scoundrels who succeeded." (Letter 70, year 1760.)
The object of this gathering is explained and developed in another letter, which I have already cited, in which he says:
"Let the true philosophers form a brotherhood like the Freemasons, let them assemble, let them support each other, and let them be faithful to the brotherhood, and then I would be burned for them. This secret academy will be worth more than that of Athens and all those in Paris. But everyone thinks only of themselves, and they forget that the first of duties is to crush the infamous thing" (Letter 85 to d'Alembert, year 1761).
The conspirators had not forgotten this first of duties, but they encountered obstacles. Religion still found zealous defenders in France; Paris did not yet seem a secure refuge for such an association. It appears that Voltaire was for some time obliged to renounce it. However, he resumed his project a few years later; he turned to Frederick for its execution, and proposed to him, says the very editor of their correspondence, "to establish at Cleves a small colony of French philosophers, who could there freely speak the truth, without fearing ministers, priests, or parliaments." Frederick responded to this proposition with all the zeal that the new founder could hope for from the crowned sophist.
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"I see," he told him, "that you have at heart the establishment of the small colony you spoke to me about. I believe the simplest method would be for these people (or rather your associates) to send someone to Cleves, to see what would suit them, and what I can dispose of in their favor." (Letter of Oct. 24, 1765.)
It is unfortunate that several of Voltaire's letters on this subject are suppressed in his correspondence. But those of Frederick suffice to show us Voltaire constant in his project, returning to the charge and insisting with an ardor of which one cannot doubt, when we see the former respond again:
"You speak to me of a colony of philosophers who propose to establish themselves at Cleves. I do not oppose it, I can grant them all they ask, except for wood, which the sojourn of their compatriots has almost entirely destroyed in these forests. However, on condition that they spare those who must be spared, and that in printing, they observe decency in their writings." (Letter 146, year 1766: 1)
When we come to the anti-monarchical conspiracy, we shall see what Frederick means here by those who must be spared. As for this decency to be observed, it was to be one more means to arrive at the great object of the new colony, without revolting minds by outbursts that could harm the conspirators themselves, and which would have necessitated politics to repress their boldness or impudence.
While soliciting from the King of Prussia the aid and protection which the new apostles of impiety would need to wage war on religion in complete safety, Voltaire was elsewhere occupied with recruiting men worthy of such an apostolate. He was ready to sacrifice himself, to place himself at their head, leaving behind all the delights of Ferney.
"Your friend persists always in his idea," he wrote to Damilaville; "it is true, as you have said, that he will have to be torn away from many things that are his consolation and the object of his regrets, but it is better to leave them by philosophy than by death. All that astonishes him is that several persons have not formed this resolution in concert. Why would a certain philosophical baron not come work at the establishment of this colony? Why would so many others not seize such a fine opportunity?"
From this same letter, we see that Frederick was not the only prince Voltaire had already brought into this project; for he adds: "Your friend has recently received at his home two sovereign princes, who think entirely as you do. One of them would offer a town, if the one concerning the great work were not suitable." (Letter of Aug. 6, 1766.)
The time when Voltaire wrote this letter was precisely when the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel had just paid his homage to the idol of Ferney. The date of the journey and the conformity of sentiments leave us little doubt that it was this same prince who undertook to furnish a town to the anti-Christian colony, supposing Cleves was not suitable (See the letter of the Landgrave, Sept. 9, 1766).
However, the apostles of the new messiah, whatever their zeal for the great work, were not equally ready for the same sacrifices. D'Alembert, who played the first role among the philosophers in Paris, felt that near Voltaire he would only be a subordinate deity. This Damilaville, their common friend, whom Voltaire himself paints as hating God; this Damilaville was a necessary personage in Paris for the secrecy of the correspondence.
Diderot and this certain philosophical baron and the other adepts found in France enjoyments that the German towns did not offer them. So many delays disconcerted Voltaire; he tried to rekindle the ardor of the conspirators. To prick their honor, he wrote:
"Six or seven hundred thousand Huguenots abandoned their homeland for the follies of John Calvin, and there will not be found twelve wise men who make the slightest sacrifice to universal reason which is outraged" (Letter to Damilaville, Aug. 18, 1766).
To represent to them that nothing more was lacking on their part than to consent to the great work, he wrote again:
"All I can tell you today by a sure route, is that everything is ready for the establishment of the manufactory. More than one prince would dispute the honor; and from the banks of the Rhine to the Ob, Tomplat, (that is to say, the Plato Diderot) would find safety, encouragement, and honor."
Fearing that this hope would not suffice to decide the conspirators, it was then that Voltaire recalled the great object of the conspiracy. It was then that, to instill in their hearts all the hatred that inflamed his against Christ, he added, he cried out to them, he repeated: "Crush the infamous thing, crush the infamous thing, crush the infamous thing." (Letter to Damilaville, Aug. 25, 1766).
Such lively, pressing solicitations and entreaties did not prevail over the attractions of Paris. That same reason, which told Voltaire to sacrifice even the delights of Ferney to go to the depths of Germany, to consecrate his writings and his days to the extinction of Christianity, told the adepts that they must know how to unite zeal with all that the world, and especially Paris, offered them in pleasures. They had therefore finally to renounce the hope of expatriating these apostles. To conceive how sensitive Voltaire was to this, we must hear him express it himself, three or four years after this lack of success:
"I will confess," he wrote then to Frederick, "that I was so vexed and so ashamed of the little success of the transmigration to Cleves, that I have not dared, since that time, to present any of my ideas to Your Majesty. When I think that a madman and an imbecile, like St. Ignatius, found a dozen proselytes who followed him; and that I could not find three philosophers, I was tempted to believe that reason was good for nothing." (November 1769.).
"I will never console myself for not having been able to execute this design. It was there that I should have ended my old age." (October 12, 1770).
We shall see in these memoirs that at the moment Voltaire complained so bitterly of the coldness of the conspirators, they deserved these reproaches far less.
D'Alembert especially had quite other projects to follow. Instead of expatriating his adepts, instead of exposing himself to losing his dictatorship, he took pleasure above all in securing for them in Paris the honors of the Palladium, whose empire he had known how to monopolize. We shall see him even, in his time, with the elect of the adepts, abundantly supplement this project. The manner alone in which he set about erecting the French Lycée into a true colony of conspirators should have sufficed to console Voltaire.
Source: Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism – Abbé Barruel 1803