60 Plan of Depopulation

Illuminati of Bavaria 1

Introduction

1 Robespierre’s Plan of Depopulation

IntroductionBernard Shaw, a playwright, and leading member of

the Fabian Socialists and member of the Theosophical soci-ety, wrote in 1928 how integral depopulation of nations are to the ultimate success of socialism:

When Socialism does away with the artificial overpopulation... the State will be face to face at last with the genuine population question: the question of how many people it is desirable to have in the country. To get rid of the million or so for whom our capitalists fail to find employment, the State now depends on a high death rate. . . . If [after Socialism is instituted] we find our population still increasing, we may have to discuss whether we should keep it down, as we keep down the cat population, by putting the superfluous babies into the bucket, which would be no wickeder than the avoidable infant mortality and surgical abor-tion resorted to at present.1

The Robespierre-led Jacobins in 1793-1794 tried reducing the population by killing people en masse. Initially, they justified this as a means of averting the problems of star-vation and unemployment. Their logic was unassailable. The less mouths to feed or people to work means more happy working people with food on their table. Later socialists like Shaw inherited this reasoning from the Robespierre-period of his domination over the Jacobin Clubs.

Robespierre’s Plan of Depopulation


Robespierre had expelled the Illuminist influence in France by late 1793, claiming their ideas on not executing the king and not killing people for revenge were too moderate. Robespierre hijacked the Jacobin clubs from Brissot and his Illuminists allies, and took the Revolution in an utterly differ-

1. Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capi-talism (N.Y.: Brentano’s Publishers, 1928) at 409-10 (emphasis added).

Such ideas were most recently proclaimed in a tape by Dr. Helen Caldi-cott entitled Saving the Planet (National Radio Broadcast, Portland, Oregon, November 12, 1989(1991) She is the founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility. In 1985, her organization won the Nobel Peace Prize for its work toward total world disarmament. To jumpstart evolution to the next level, Caldicott envisions moving the world to the point where humans no longer live on earth. “We think our life is very precious. Well, I suppose it is. But we’re all going to die anyway. We’re very fortunate to have been conceived... it’s an incredible privi-lege. But really, if you think about it, I think it's more important for the other species to survive. And I’m going to put forth a very radical con-cept.... I think we should put contraceptives in the water supplies of the world [i.e., chemicals that cause male sterility] and also some aphrodi-siacs to keep people happy. And I think we should stop having babies because if you say a family can have one baby that’s an open entry to have more babies....But generally you can’t stop people reproducing except I think if you mandate it. Now listen to this, and think of this. Bacteria that we kill because they kill us have as much right to exist as we do. Don’t they? They're a product of evolution. And if we believe in God, and I believe that the life process is god, the AIDS virus has as much right to live as we. Now isn’t that a strange concept? But it does in evolutionary terms. And if we stop being so egocentric and value our fellow creatures as much or more than us, then we might get the right perspective on things. Now what if we all stopped having babies? And I know a lot of young people don’t want to have babies because they don’t want to bring their children into a world that is so danger-ous... But a lot of people feel really worried about this. What if we stopped having babies, and we lived out our life span, we did a bit more pollution, and we made a few more nuclear reactors, and we ate drank and be merry, and within a hundred years we’d all disappear. Would that be a bad thing? I’ve lived my life, and I’ve had fun. You lived yours, and you lived yours. But what if there was no more people on the earth? And then trees started to grow up in the cities,... and everything just disintegrated and the earth became what it once was full of life, teaming with life without this evolutionary aberrant [humanity] upsetting the balance.”


First Published Mention Of The Plan of Depopulation

ent direction — one of purposeful depopulation, as we shall demonstrate in this chapter. Unfortunately, later liberal-left thinkers have taken Robespierre’s hijacked version of the rev-olution as the one to replicate rather than see the wisdom in the Illuminist ideal of promoting their policies by education, gradual enlightenment and by democratic agreement.

First Published Mention Of The Plan of Depopulation

In early 1794, the Jacobin society at Strasbourg men-tioned a program of depopulation. Their journal published the proceedings where this was openly debated in the club. Bau-dot started the meeting by saying: “Let us then utterly destroy them [that is, Jacobin opponents].... Were they a million would not one sacrifice the twenty-fourth part of one’s self to get rid of the gangrene which might infect the rest of the body?”2 Since France had twenty-four million citizens, this total represented one-twenty-fourth of the nation’s popula-tion. Baudot then said these must all be put to death in one blow.

D’Antonelle agreed. He thought “to constitute a republic an approximate equality of property should be established: and to do this, a third of the population should be suppressed.”3 At other times, D’Antonelle advocated reduc-ing “the population of France to only ten million inhabitants”

2. Taine, The French Revolution, supra, II at 51-52 n. 3 (quoting Collec-tion of Authentique Documents for the History of the Revolution at Strasbourg, II, at 210). See also, Taine, The French Revolution (Kessinger: ___) at 40 fn. 60 available at http://books.google.com/books?id=IFVl7XgNx5cC&pg=PA40.

3. Hippolyte A. Taine, The French Revolution Vol 2 The Jacobin Con-quest (2006 reprint) at 50, quoting Larevellière-Lépaux, Mémoires I:150; Taine, id., 52 n.3 quoting Beaulieu, Essai, V, at 200. See also, Taine, The French Revolution (Kessinger: 2004) at 39 fn. 60 available at http://books.google.com/books?id=IFVl7XgNx5cC&pg=PA39.



by means of a “perpetual war of extermination....”4 Thus, Jean D’Antonelle favored putting between eight to fifteen million to death.

Jean Bon St. André suggested “that for the solid foun-dation of the Republic in France, the population should be reduced by one-half.”5 St. André’s blood curdling recom-mendation represented the killing of 12 million.

The most extreme view was that of Robespierre. According to an upset colleague in a letter to Robespierre, he confirmed Robespierre felt the proposal to “reduce to two million men” the total population of France was “still too many” people to be left alive.6

Fortunately, these depopulation proposals did meet with some objection. Larevellière-Lépaux criticized its scope. A compromise was reached. The Jacobins at the Strasbourg club where this was discussed made a decision, according to Guffroy (a deputy of the Pas-de-Calais), to reduce the popula-tion of France to five million inhabitants.7 That would require the death/disappearance of only twenty-million people.

However, Pagés and Antoine-Étienne Fantin Des-doards (1738-1820)8 assert that the plan was not so extreme, and that instead it was generally agreed to reduce the popula-tion only to eight million.9 This would require the death/dis-appearance of merely seventeen million people.

4. Antoine Fantin Desodoards, Histoire Philosophique De La Revolution de France (4th edition) (Paris: Belin, 1801) Vol. VIII at 294-295 http://books.google.com/books?id=LpWH-t2E_eoC&dq

5. Mémoires de Larevellière Lépeaux (Paris: Pion, 1895) Vol. I at 150. Lépeaux was a member of the Directory and a theophilanthrope (a member of the new civil religion of France).


Robespierre’s Bloodcurdling Calls for Terror and Tyranny

Robespierre’s Bloodcurdling Calls for Terror and Tyranny

Concurrent with this discussion among Jacobins in early 1794, Robespierre, their national leader, had shifted from a democratic heart to a self-justified tyrant willing to employ terror to “break” their enemies and unabashedly establish “despotism.” He wrote to the Legislature in Febru-ary 1794:

[I]n this situation the first maxim of your pol-icy must be to guide the people with reason and the people’s enemies with terror . . . Ter-ror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, and inflexible; it is therefore an ema-nation of virtue. . . . Break the enemies of lib-erty with terror, and you will be justified as founders of the Republic. The government of

6. An audacious colleague wrote Robespierre about a project under dis-cussion: “You tend to dictatorship....You have lost the firm foundations of a Republic....What? Reduce France to two million men and ‘that is still too many,’ you said!” (“quoi! reduire France à deux millions d’hommes! et c’est trop encore, as tu dit!”). Papiers inédits trouves chez Robespierre, St. Just, Payan, etc., supprimés ou omis par Cour-tois; précédés du rapport de ce député à la Convention nationale, avec un grand nombre de facsimile et les signatures des principaux person-ages de la révolution [ed. St. Albin Berville](Paris: 1828) Vol. I at 56 http://books.google.com/books?id=yL0NAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA56 (citing Letter No. 58 in the Robespierre section of the papers in Vol. II at 153.)

Courtois had been charged in 1794 by the Convention with printing all of Robespierre’s writings that bore on the issues of his tyranny. However, Courtois was a relative of Danton, and for reasons apparently to protect Danton’s memory, “he refrained” from including an important series of letters among the Robespierrists which included accusations against Danton. This was corrected in the 1828 three volume edition by St. Albin Berville. See, The Principal Speeches of the Statesmen and Ora-tors of the French Revolution 1789-1795 (ed. H. Morse Stephens)(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892) at 559 http://books.goo-gle.com/books?id=tY8aAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA559.



the revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyrrany.10

Hence, Robespierre in early 1794 had blinded himself and suffered from an irrationality where self-contradictions were acceptable. A “despotism of liberty against tyranny” is tyranny no matter how you slice it. The fact it engages in ter-ror mercilessly is the clearest mark of the most dangerous kind of tyrrany.

Robespiere’s war of terror thus became a war against the majority of citizens of France. Rather than conciliation, and democratic education, Robespierre wielded a sword. The American Ambassador, Morris, wrote Thomas Jefferson fore-casting the horror this Jacobin policy would bring in a letter of January 6, 1793. He wrote:

[A] Person of cool discerning Temper and Understanding, who is in confidence of those who direct the Jacobins, told me when I last saw him that they are determined to rule or perish. You would easily suppose that this Pre-vision of Horrors is far from pleasant.11

7. Taine, supra, at 52 n. 3, citing Le Rougyff No. 8 (“Rougyff” is an ana-gram of Guffroy). This was the private diary of Guffroy.

8. “Vicaire général d’Embrun en 1789, il adopta les principes de la Révo-lution française et renonça à l'état ecclésiastique.” http://fr.wikipe-dia.org/wiki/Antoine_%C3%89tienne_Fantin-Desodoards (accessed 3/31/09).

9. Pagés Vol. II at 89; Antoine Fantin Desodoards [Histoire De La Repub-lique Francaise, Depuis La Separation De La Convention Nationale, Jusqu’a La Conclusion De La Paix Entre La France et l’Empereur (1797)?] (1797) Vol. IV at 131, cited in Nesta Webster, The French Revolution (1919) at 428.

10.Robespierre, Report to Legislature of February 5, 1794, quoted in Lynn Hunt, supra, at 46, citing Robespierre, “Rapport sur les principes de morale politique qui doivent guider la Convention nationale dans l'administration intérieure de la République,” Oeuvres 10: 356-57 (Feb. 5, 1794).


Disclosures Of The Depopulation Plan by The Left In 1793 and 1794

Disclosures Of The Depopulation Plan by The Left In 1793 and 1794

Soon, the Committee of Public Safety (CPS), con-trolled by the Robespierre-led Jacobins, implemented the depopulation plan discussed in February 1794 at the Jacobins quoted above. Henry Redhead Yorke, a British radical,12 met David, and asked him about whether this plan was true. David was a legislator, but is famous for having painted numerous murals in classical motif as propaganda for the Revolution. At this point in time, David was a close friend and associate of Robespierre, the head of the CPS.13 Yorke in his book of 1802 relates what David told him at this juncture in 1793:

I asked him whether it was true that a project had been in contemplation to reduce the pop-ulation of France to one-third of its present number. He answered that it had been seri-ously discussed and that [Edmund Louis] Dubois-Crancé [1747-1814] was the author.

* * * *

Monsieur de la Metherie [another associate of Robespierre] assured me that during the time of the Revolutionary Tribunals [of the Terror], it was in serious contemplation to reduce the population of France to 14,000,000 [from 25,000,000]. Dubois-Crancé was a very distin-

11.Gouverneur Morris, A Diary of the French Revolution (Ed. B.C. Dav-enport), II, at 599 (emphasis in original).

12.Yorke was tried in 1795 for sedition against Britain. See, Moncure Daniel Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine with a History of His Liter-ary, Political and Religious Career in America, France and England (N.Y.: G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1892) Vol. I, at 300.

13.Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled, supra, at 317.



guished and enthusiastic partisan of this humane and philosophical party.14

Dubois-Crancé, a Montagnard (Robespierre’s party) in the legislature was elected the President of the Convention on February 21, 1793 (as the Terror was introduced).15 In August 1793, he was appointed “representative on mission” to the Army of the Alps, and when General Kellerman “balked at using repressive measures” on civilians,16 Dubois-Crancé, was the civilian-legislator who then gave orders to the army to shoot down en masse civilians in revolt at Lyon.17 Dubois-Crancé then enforced the Convention’s decree to pillage all the inhabitants, with redistribution to the “indigent” and the partisans of the Jacobins.18 On October 12th, the Convention changed the name of Lyon to Ville-Affranchie (postage-stamp city), and in honor of its annihila-tion, a column was to be erected on its ruins: “Lyons waged war against liberty; Lyons has ceased to exist.”19

14.Henry Redhead Yorke, France in Eighteen Hundred and Two (ed. Christina Anne Jessica Cavendish-Bentinck Sykes, J. A. C. Sykes, Richard Davey) (Heinemann, 1906) at 102, 127. The spelling of Dubois-Crancé is spelled Crouée in the Sykes’ edition. In Webster’s quotation of these two passages in her book World Revolution (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1921) at 46, she identifies him as Dubois Crancé. Thiers identifies him as Dubois-Crancé.

Redhead Yorke was no political conservative. Yorke was an advocate of another revolution in America in 1789 as well as in Holland and France. The British government imprisoned him at Dorchester Castle for his activities from 1795 to 1799.

15.“Dubois Crancé,” The Encyclopaedia Britannica (N.Y.: 1910) Vol. VIII at 626.

16.Arno J. Mayer, The Furies (Princeton University Press, 2000) at 201.17.Adolphe Thiers, The History of the French Revolution (London: Rich-

ard Bentley, 1838) Vol. III at 115-16.


Babeuf Writes Exposure of the Plan of Depopulation


Babeuf was alias Gracchus at the Cercle Social under Illuminé Bonneville, and thus on the left during the Revolu-tion. Like all true Cercle Social members, Babeuf naturally opposed the Terror which usurped the Cercle Social’s power at the Jacobins in June 1793. The Terror had destroyed their influence over France by means of Brissotin ministers. Babeuf was arrested during the Mountain’s triumph over the Cercle Social / Brissotins, and not released until after Robe-spierre’s fall — on July 18, 1794.

Thus, consistent with his Cercle Social background, Babeuf in the December of 179420 wrote an entire book dedi-cated to exposing the true purpose behind the Terror was massive depopulation of France. Babeuf denied the terror was forced upon the revolution by circumstances. The plan was first utilized in the “War on the Vendee, and [then] their plan

18.François Guizot, France (N.Y.: Peter Fenelon, 1898) Vol. VI at 279 (“the goods of all citizens who had taken part in the revolt by staying in the city were confiscated”). The decree of July 11th “invites and encourages those who have nothing to fall upon and plunder the rich.” (F.C. Schlosser, History of the Eighteenth Century and of the Nine-teenth Till the Overthrow of the French Empire (Trans. D. David-son)(London: Chapman & Hall, 1845) Vol. VI at 471. The decree read: “Sont déstitués et déclarés trattres à la patrie tous fonctionnaires de cette ville coupable, &c. &c. Tous les biens des conspirateurs seront séquestrés; et aussitôt que la confiscation voulue par la loi sera pronon-cée par le tribunal révolutionnaire, la répartition en sera faite entre les patriotes indigens et opprimés. Tous paiemens des sommes dues à la ville ou aux habitans demeurent provi- soirement suspendus.” The key portion reads in English: “All property of the conspirators will be sequestered, and as soon as the forfeiture sought by the law shall be made by the Revolutionary Court, the distribution will be made between the indigenous and oppressed patriots.” Id.

19.Arno J. Mayer, The Furies (Princeton University Press, 2000) at 201.20.Charles Ammi, Catalogue of the Library of the Boston Athenaeum

1807-1871 (Boston: 1874) Part I at 483 (1794 edition is in Boston library). On the date of December 1794, see Adolphe Granier de Cas-sagnac, Histoire du directoire (Paris: Plon, 1855) Vol. 2 at 146.



had its application upon all the parties in the Republic.”21 He identified mass executions were the “secret plan of Desmou-lins...and other initiates which had an extensive and perpetual tendency, both bloody and totally destructive.”22 Babeuf knew it was Desmoulins who in early 1793 wrote the broad-side attack on the Brissotins as the Girondins — a smear — and which brought down Bonneville’s Cercle Social from power. Thus, Babeuf was implicitly saying those engaged in this murderous scheme were the unworthy succesors to the Cercle Social.23

Babeuf then pointed at Robespierre and identified the murderous purpose behind the plan:

In the eyes of Maximilian Robespierre and his counsel, depopulation was indispensable because the calculation had been made that the French population was in excess of the resources of the soil and of the requirements of useful industry, that is to say, that with us men jostled each other too much to be able to live at ease; that hands were too numerous for the exe-cution of all works of essential utility—and this is the horrible conclusion; that since the superabundant population could only amount to so much. . . . a portion of sans-culottes must be sacrificed; that this rubbish could be cleared up to a certain quantity, and that means must be found for doing it.24

21.Gracchus Babeuf, Du systême de dépopulation, ou, La vie et les crimes de Carrier: son procès, et celui du comité révolutionnaire de Nantes: avec des recherches et des considérations politiques sur les vues générales du décemvirat, dans l’invention de ce systême (Paris, [1794]) at cover page. The original of this is available at Gallica at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k847909.r=.langFR. It is hereafter referred to as Babeuf: 1794.

22.Babeuf: 1794 at 24.



Babeuf explained the ideological foundation of Robe-spierre was to make an equal division of land and foodstuffs, and guarantee the right sufficiently to each. But in that case, the population was too large and had to be reduced. Babeuf explained:

Maximilian and his council had calculated that a true regeneration of France could not operate with anything less than a new distribution through the territory of the men which occu-pied it. He was convinced by the Regulators that the People were nothing more than a stable and in order to form its regeneration, and thus realize the grand conclusion of J.J. Rousseau, and make its government perfect, that the citi-zens were too many, and in consequence, like Lycurgus of Sparta, assured as an inalienable right a home for each individual and his suf-ficient portion of food, guaranteed to all..., cal-culating for the proportion of the population and the sum total of all fruits of the soil...that it was necessary, within the plan of these great legislators, that already the population exceeds the proportion of the total productiv-

23.This is evident in another passage of Babeuf. He points out that “Choudie...attributed to the Girondin faction, to the emissaries who had corrupted the writings of Roland, the inertia and indifference of the Convention in regard to the movements in the Vendée, but then at the commencement of March 1793, the movements took a turn decidedly pronounced...so that the authors of the partisans would be rendered masters of numerous towns...menacing Nantes, Angers, Saumur, Fon-tenay....” (Babeuf: 1794 at 49-50.) Elsewhere, Babeuf praises the mod-erate approach of two committees of defense which he then reads their names, and his list is dominated by the so-called Girondins (Bris-sotins): “Brissot,...Isnard, Condorcet,...Vergniaux” who aimed to “spare the blood of the unhappy inhabitants of the Vendee....” (Id., at 51.) However, by May 31, the “montagnard faction held all power....” (Id., at 52.) The “infernal mystery of montagnard government” replaced the “humane and patriotic intention” of what was called the Girondin faction. (Id., at 52.)



ity annually of the territory — the proportion for residences and for food....25

To effectuate the plan, Robespierre created what Babeuf first coined as the “Tribunal of Blood.”26 Babeuf complained that Robespierre used with impunity the label of “government” but he was “nothing more than an assassin.”27

Quite astutely, Babeuf noted that the “revolutionary government...began as a government founded by the wisdom and virtue of the People, but it was not consolidated by the same elements [as founded it].”28 The inspirational leaders had been tossed aside, i.e., the Cercle Social — men like Brissot, Condorcet, etc.

Babeuf claimed that the explanation of events was the “system of depopulation and of a new division of riches among those who remain; this explains everything, the war of the Vendée, war with abroad, proscription, mass guillotin-ings, killings, drownings, confiscation, maximum, requisi-tions, largess to certain individuals, etc.”29 Babeuf also said Robespierre’s plan was to take “all properties into govern-ment hands” to redistribute, and the means chosen was by the

24.Gracchus Babeuf, Du systême de dépopulation, ou, La vie et les crimes de Carrier: son procès, et celui du comité révolutionnaire de Nantes: avec des recherches et des considérations politiques sur les vues générales du décemvirat, dans l’invention de ce systême (Paris, Year III [1795] [1st edition] quoted in Nesta Webster, World Revolution (Ed. Anthony Gittens) (Devon: Britons Publishing, 1971) at 56 and a virtu-ally identical translation in Bronislaw Baczko & Michel Petheram, Ending the Terror (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) at 183. This citation is hereafter Babeuf: 1795.

25.Babeuf: 1794.26.Gracchus Babeuf: 1795 at 161.27.Babeuf: 1794 at 11.28.Babeuf: 1794 at 12.29.Bronislaw Baczko & Michel Petheram, Ending the Terror (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1994) at 183 (quoting Babeuf, Du sys-teme de depopulation (1795).)



“sacrificing the big owners and by setting in motion a terror so powerful that it was capable of persuading others to submit to it willingly.”30

Babeuf said he learned Robespierre wanted to kill at least two million people as part of a plan of depopulation.31 Babeuf said Robespierre had conceived a strategy and decided:

having done the calculation, that the French population was to a certain extent exceeding the resources of the soil...that there were too many arms for the execution of the works of essential utility....Finally, (and this is the horri-ble conclusion) that the overabundant popula-tion could rise to such an extent...that a portion of the sansculottes would have to be sacrificed, that they would have to clear the rubble (the expression of Barrère; Causes Secrettes, p. 14), up to that quantity, it was nec-essary to find the means.32

This was the “grand secret of the state” explained in Causes Secrettes.33 It was the “key to a grand number of measures that were presented to solve what was presented as a great political problem.”34 This is why “confiscation” of possession was enacted on “all manner of pretexts.”35 This is why the Commission of Subsistence was created which “took

30.Bronislaw Baczko & Michel Petheram, Ending the Terror (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) at 183 (quoting Babeauf, Du sys-teme de depopulation (1795.)

31.R.R. Palmer, The Age of Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800, supra, Vol. II, at 238.

32.Babeuf: 1794 at 27-28. The same is quoted and translated in Baczko, supra, at 183 (quoting Babeuf, Du systeme de depopulation (1795).)

33.Babeuf: 1794 at 28.34.Babeuf: 1794 at 28.35.Babeuf: 1794 at 29.



possession of all the proprietors by the Government.”36 This is why so many were killed regardless of political outlook. The “conspiracy was manifest..when one considers the sys-tem of depopulation whereby rebels and faithful are all sent to their destruction; which only has an explanation by this sytem [of depopulation].”37 The “system of depopula-tion...explains everything: the war of the Vendée; the external war [with no effort at peace], the proscriptions, the guillotin-ings, drownings, confiscations, maximums, requisitions, arrests,...etc.”38

This is why generals like Westermann could write back to Paris so proudly and heartlessly that “we encountered an army of brigands at Mans on 22 frimaire, about 80-90,000 men, and they were completely destroyed over 12 days by the spirit and courage of the soldiers of the Republic...who amassed treasures from the despoiled enemies of the Repub-lic.”39 Civil war being used as a means of depopulation of mere ‘brigands’ whose goods were then confiscated by troops promised a reward for murder. Babeuf correctly said Wester-man was an “immoral being.”40 This murderous plan to exterminate “brigands” (and not simply counter-revolutionar-ies) came direct from the legislature — the Convention —which decreed, Babeuf notes, in October 1793: “It is neces-sary that all the brigands in the Vendée are exterminated

36.Babeuf: 1794 at 29.37.Babeuf: 1794 at 29-30.38.Babeuf: 1794 at 31.39.Babeuf: 1794 at 54, quoting Campagne de Westerman.40.Babeuf: 1794 at 55.



before the end of October.”41 It was not a plan of arrest or pacfiication of one’s neighbors caught in a political disagree-ment. It was a “plan of total destruction,” Babeuf lamented.42

The purpose of such extreme action cannot be explained as merely necessary to stop counter-revolution. It too obviously sowed the seeds of revolt from all quarters, including patriots who otherwise would support the Revolu-tion.

Babeuf said what further proved this goal of depopu-lation was the investigation by Lequinio, a patriot legislative deputy from the Department of Morbihan. After Robespierre was toppled in July 1794, Lequinio took depositions as part of a military commission to unravel this horror in the Vendée. His findings were published in his book Guerre de la Vendée et des Chouans (Paris: Pougin, 1794). It proved again and again that this was not a war merely to stop counter-revolu-tion, but had a nefarious systematic excessive plan of exter-mination of patriots and nonpatriots. Entire towns controlled by patriots were mercillesly exterminated.43 As Babeuf quoted Lequinio, he reported: a “disarmament was imposed without distinction upon the common patriots who had themselves performed with courage and constancy in the war against rebels....”44 Lequinio furthe relayed that “the patriot

41.Babeuf: 1794 at 74 n (“Il faut que TOUS les brigands de la Vendée, soient exterminés avant la fin d’octobre.”) This indeed was the legisla-ture’s decree of October 1, 1793, addressed to the “Soldiers of liberty!” (Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de France sous le règne de Napoléon (12th edition) (Paris: Bossange, 1830) Vol. V at 238.)

42.Babeuf: 1794 at 76 n.2.43.Lequinio pointed out that “entire cities were emolated.” (Lequinio,

Guerre, etc., supra, at 137.) In one example, Lequinio tells the story of a town of “50,000 good patriots” which had “resisted brigantine oppression” and had “understood the brothers in arms had come to help the patriots avenge all the evil they had suffered, and they pre-pared a civic and fraternal banquet” but their expectations were crushed. “The column arrived...and they buried the city as a cemetary, and used their bayonets on one after the other.” (Id., at 137.)



troops were not employed by any means to make anyone love the party that they were defending, with an eye to gain over the majority of the people, but rather were employed in the opposite manner, making it easier to gain people to com-bat them.”45 Babeuf said this proved that there was no plan simply to destroy counter-revolution. Rather, there was a plan to act well in excess of such exigency, which Babeuf says proves this was part of a larger scheme of a plan of depopula-tion.

The Numbers Killed As Part Of A Plan of Depopulation

The numbers sacrificed in the end to solve the social necessity of equal distrubtion of goods, Babeuf said, was one million out of a nation of twenty-five million. This includes the killings in the Vendée as well as all other internal deaths by execution.46

Babeuf’s Complaint Was Not The Ideology But The Means

Babeuf explained that there was a wiser alternative to deal with food resources than to kill off excess population. In that case, Babeuf said one could equalize possessions to over-come deprivation. This quote is important for it proves Babeuf was attacking Robespierre for his use of terror, but

44.Babeuf: 1794 at 77 quoting Guerre de la Vendée et des Chouans. This work is available too at Gallica free in PDF.

45.Babeuf: 1794 at 77 quoting Guerre de la Vendée et des Chouans.46.Bronislaw Baczko & Michel Petheram, Ending the Terror (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1994) at 183 (quoting Babeuf, Du sys-teme de depopulation (1795).) Some historians now claim Babeuf had employed a “demented conspiracy theory” and “his book was rightly ignored at the time.” (David Avrom Bell, The First Total War (N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin, 2007) at 158.) Yet, this is utterly untrue, as the gov-ernment in France the same year — 1794 — came out with the official records which firmly established the Plan of Depopulation. See “The Official Government Investigation of 1794” on page 21 et seq. Others snipe at Babeuf’s Depopulation book as “proof of his mediocre talent.” (Cassagnac, supra, II at 146).



Babeuf agreed with the idea of equalizing property even at this juncture. The ideology the same. The morality of Robe-spierre was as far as night is from day (i.e., Babeuf’s princi-pled rejection of mass murder). Babeuf said:

I disapproved of all, and I believe this to be in unison with many of the world. I reprove one particular point in their system. I do not believe with them that the production of French soil has ever been lower in proportion to the needs of all its inhabitants. Men have in this chapter of extermination prejudged the matter. This [prejudice] was given to all by none other than the haughtiness of Robespi-erre. In the case where it is well recognized that the livelihood of a nation in point would be insufficient to fill the appetite of all its members, I believe that the simple laws of nature require, instead of depopulation, dep-rivation of part of each member to comply with equality, in the usual proportion, the needs of all. I am aware that Plato, Mably, Montesquieu and others have spoken of the possibility of a population exceeding the extent that the territory is capable of supporting. None of them had the audacity to insinuate massa-cring a portion to eliminate the surcharge [on the land]....This material, without doubt unhappily, the genius of Robespierre too badly thought out and weighed.47

47.Babeuf: 1794 at 34-35 note; see also Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, La question de la population (Paris: Alcan, 1913) at 35.



Babeuf Saw The Danger To Liberty of Socialist Controls

At this juncture of 1794, Babeuf recognized that mak-ing the government serve as owner of private businesses led to tyranny, i.e., he saw ahead that modern socialism was dan-gerous to liberty. Babeuf said the aim of Robespierre was “to destroy the power of proprietors, and thus prevent the mass of citizens to [escape] their dependence,” “having nothing else at his disposal other than to render all proprietors under the hands of government.”48

Corroborating Proof of Babeuf’s Claims

Of what Babeuf declared, there was abundant con-firming evidence, some of which we already touched upon, e.g., Yorke’s revelation, the Jacobin debate on depopulation in the Strasbourg club, etc. Moreover, in 1794, the new gov-ernment set up a legislative committee that published all the writings that proved the Plan of Depopulation.49

However, there was also contemporaneous decrees and letters that corroborated Babeuf. Before Robespierre’s fall in July 1794, the legislature on August 1, 1793 passed a law prescribing a policy of total destruction — terre brûlée50 — for all regions of France in revolt. No living person in the region was to be left alive. Why such extremity unless a pol-icy of depopulation was being carried out?

Another example was that Lyon was in revolt, but it was not merely to be suppressed. It was to be wiped out. Col-lot d’Herbois wrote Couthon:

I already talked to Robespierre; you should consult with him to finish the joint decree on

48.Babeuf: 1794 at 27.49.See “The Official Government Investigation of 1794” on page 21 et

seq.50.Kurt Jonassohn, Genocide and Gross Human Rights Violations in

Comparative Perspective (Rutgers, 1999) at 207.


A Footnote On History: Babeuf’s Supposedly Later Endorsement of Robespi-

the city, which can not continue to exist with-out danger. When the people are gone — it will be easy to make them disappear, then we can say with truth: Lyon is no more!51

A Footnote On History: Babeuf’s Supposedly Later Endorsement of Robespierre

While we are here to prove the Plan of Depopulation by Robespierre, there is an alleged later change in Babeuf which we need to clear up. In 1796, Babeuf was supposedly converted to see Robespierre as a hero. This is false, but let’s review this with some care.

Here are some of the alleged details:Babeuf clearly began in 1793-94 as an anti-Robespi-

errest. However, by late 1795 Babeuf was supposedly view-ing himself as “marching in Robespierre’s path.”52 Babeuf along with Buonarroti “represented themselves as [Robespi-erre’s] successors, bearing the standard that had been struck from his hands.”53 Socialist historian Bax summarizes this alleged transformation: “Babeuf’s late obsession in favor of

51.The original French is: “J’en ai déjà parlé à Robespierre ; concerte-toi avec lui, pour finir le décret concernant celte commune, qui ne peut subsister sans danger. La population licenciée, il sera facile de la faire disparaître, et de dire avec vérité : Lyon n’est plus!” (Adolphe Granier de Cassagnac, Histoire du directoire, supra, II at 147, citing Lettre de Collot-d’Herbois à Couthon, 12 frimaire an II — 2 décembre 1793 from Rapport de Saladin, au nom de la commission des Vingt et un, at page 233.)

52.Robert Roswell Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution (Princ-eton University Press, 1964) at 238.

53.Palmer, id., at 238.



Robespierre, which went so far as to proclaim him the prota-ganist of his own ideas” represented a “change of view” that “is indeed remarkable.”54

This is exaggeration. What Babeuf said, as Bax admits, is nothing of the sort. All Babeuf meant was that as long as Robespierre was upholding the Constitution of 1793, he was a patriot. When he turned tyrannical, he was a crimi-nal. Specifically, Bax quotes Babeuf in about 1795 as recog-nizing there were “two persons” in this Robespierre — one the “sincere patriot, a friend of just principles down to 1793, and Robespierre the ambitious tyrant, and the worst of crimi-nals of that epoch.”55 In this period, there was no inconsis-tency in how Babeuf viewed Robespierre, contrary to the wishes of those who admire Robespierre.

Instead, from the time Robespierre fell in July 1794, until Babeuf’s arrest in 1796, Babeuf always believed, as he wrote in his journal, that “the fall of tyrants shall render to us our eternal rights, and liberty shall step forth in the full glory of its power from the tomb of the dictator [i.e., Robespi-erre].”56

Then from the wrong premise fostered that Babeuf switched into an admirer of Robespierre, several historians claim Babeuf now endorsed terror and depopulation tactics. Babeuf now supposedly accepted the theory that there is a war between rich and poor, and that Robespierre was not the agressor in this war by yielding terror. The rich had started this war long ago by robbing the poor, and, Palmer says it was “perpetual until the general acceptance of [Babeuf’s] own

54.Ernest Belfort Bax, The Last Episode of the French Revolution Being A History of Gracchus Babeuf and the Conspiracy of Equals (London: Grant Richards, 1911) at 258.

55.Bax, History of Babeuf and the Conspiracy of Equals, supra, at 74.56.Bax, History of Babeuf and the Conspiracy of Equals, supra, at 72.


The Official Government Investigation of 1794

doctrines.”57 This effort by pro-Robespierre historians to make Babeuf a supporter of Robespierrists’ class warfare the-ories is just propaganda masquerading as history.

The height of absurdity are those who claim that Babeuf went so far as to seek in his revolution of 1796 to depopulate France to effectuate communism: “Babeuf intended to bring about depopulation by the mass killing of the nobility and of the royalists.”58 “Babeuf uses arguments similar to those that will later be used by the Russian revolu-tionary communists.”59

This is utter nonsense.I have now studied the Conspiracy of Equals, and

these claims are evidently looking-back efforts of agenda-wielding historians who want to see something not there so as to endorse something they believe in today.


Courtois, a “regicide member of the Convention, was charged with the examination of the papers of Robespierre after [Robespierre’s] fall” and drew up a report in 1794.60 This report was to serve the Convention which had formed a committee to investigate Robespierre’s activities. This Com-mittee had appointed Courtois, one of their members, to make a report. This report was initially published under the title The Papers of Robespierre with a preface by Courtois which served as his report.61

57.Palmer, id., at 240.58. Jan Kucharzewski, The origins of modern Russia (Polish Institute of

Arts and Sciences in America, 1948) at 462.59.Kucharzewski, id., at 462.



Despite Courtois self-evident love for the Revolution, in his official report of 1794 to the Convention, he expressed the Convention’s rationale for publishing Robespierre’s secret plans, including the plan at depopulation.

The report was to expose Robespierre as a tyrant, and that his plan at exchanging millions of lives to found a utopia on French soil deserved execration. The fact of this depopula-tion plan should prove that Robespierre was nothing more than just another species of tyrant. In the following quote, Courtois summarizes the plan set forth in Robespierre’s papers to annihilate twelve to fifteen millions of the French people to effectuate a better society:

[Page 6] Finally, these men who, in order to bring us the happiness of Sparta, wanted to “destroy”62 twelve or fifteen millions of French, and hoped, after this revolutionary

60.John Edward Courtenay Bodley, France (London: MacMillan, 1907) at 73 fn. 1. Courtois, a relative of Danton and a legislative deputy in alliance with Danton, ended up being given official custody of all of Robespierre’s papers in 1794 and this never changed for many years thereafter. Bodley mentions that Napoleon was anxious to retrieve his letters to Robespierre in Courtois’s custody. Barras admits this, agree-ing that Napoleon had them destroyed. Barras wrote: “This Courtois was in the habit of showing us daily letters found among Robespierre’s papers. He preserved only those having reference to his secret opin-ions. Those of Bonaparte were, at the request of myself and Freron, burned, although their contents were nothing if not most patriotic.” Memoirs of Barras, Member of the Directorate (trans. C.E. Roche)(N.Y.: Harper’s 1895) Vol. I at 408.

As a result of Courtois’ cooperation with Napoleon and Barras, Bodley notes that “Courtois was exiled after the Restoration, but M. Decazes, the favourite and minister of Louis XVIII., was sent after him, just before his death in 1816, and got from him twenty letters written by the future King to Robespierre.” (Bodley, id., at 73 n. 1.)

The Courtois papers of Robespierre’s writings/letters passed to M. Cen-sier, a notary of Paris, and then to M. France, who published them in 1841. See The Principal Speeches of the Statesmen and Orators of the French Revolution 1789-1795 (ed. H. Morse Stephens) (Oxford: Clar-endon Press, 1892) Vol. II at 559.



transpiration, that we would distribute to each a plow and some heathland clearing, to save us from the dangers to the happiness of Per-sepolis.63

The law has struck down the tyrant and some of his accomplices, and this is not to disturb the peace of their tombs....I just give you the tribute of my vigils and the result of my work.

In forming a committee to research and review the papers of the conspirators, in order to make the report which the committee asked me to provide, the National Convention wanted to show the people from whom it takes its power [Page 7] how she has been faithful to use it to strike at the sacrilegious thieves of its sover-eignty, even when she could not raise the cor-ner of the veil that covered the increased evidence of their crimes.

She wanted all to know by what degree Robe-spierre had raised himself to the point of tyr-anny, that to pursue the passage of all his other ambitions they discovered the plans of a con-spiracy [by Robespierre] and all his secret sons, which had been so long hidden under the veil of a hypocritical double standard....

61.William Smyth, Lectures on History on the French Revolution (Lon-don: 1840) Vol. III at 169.

62.Courtois footnotes here: “Expression of Collot d’Herbois.”63. The original French of Courtois’ text was: “ces hommes enfin, qui,

pour nous amener au bonheur de Sparte, voulaient “anéantir” douze ou quinze millions de Français, et espéraient bien, après cette transpira-tion révolutionnaire, nous distribuer à chacun une charrue et quelques landes à défricher, pour nous sauver des dangers du bonheur de Persép-olis.”



The Convention wanted the friends of freedom and the people to come here to draw strong les-sons from these faithful lessons where the con-spirators have given a portrait of themselves, yet without seeking to find guilty any new per-sons, but only wanting to ensure that the trai-tors had not been able to leave their confidential secrets only to the heirs of their hypocrisy and their dark fury. The goal, in short, of the Convention, is only that the world would learn that the life of Robespierre, in writing, so to speak, by his own hand, and in his own papers and those of his agents or his accomplices — who so amazed the world by the greatness of his success more than the speed of his fall — demonstrates him to be a monster — and just another kind of tyrant....

This report is for the sole purpose to serve the love of my country, its freedom, and its happi-ness, which supported me in my work....64

More EvidenceNesta Webster similarly assembled over twenty other

witnesses who mention personal knowledge of the Robespi-erre plan of depopulation by mass murder.65

64.Papiers inédits trouvés chez Robespierre, Saint-Just, Payan, etc Supprimés ou Omis Par Courtois, Précédés du Rapport de ce Député a la Convention National (ed. Courtois)(Paris: Badouin, 1828) Vol. I at 6. The 1828 edition was published by Berville St. Albin.

Courtois’ introduction reveals a strong love for the Revolution. It must be realized that many later defended Robespierre, and tried to smear Courtois as one of the “profligate and debauched demagogues [who] overthrew Robespierre....” (Percy St. John, “Maximilian Robespierre,” The Mirror Monthly Magazine (Jan. 1848) at 2.)

65.Nesta Webster, The French Revolution, supra, at 426-28.


More Evidence

St. Just, a colleague of Robespierre, said the revolu-tion was not safe as long as a single opponent was left alive.66 Yet, he re-wrote laws so that no proof was required that one opposed the Revolution. Soon many who had supported the Revolution were swept into prison and into common graves. The real reason for dispensing with evidence was not expedi-ency. It reflected Robespierre’s resolve to kill as many people as quickly as possible to allay social problems of hunger and unemployment to restore a simpler way-of-life. They were amoral social engineers, aiming to realize Rousseau’s fantasy by hook or by crook.

Was this depopulation effort the first modern holo-caust? Friedrich Gentz in 1800 was a state minister for Prus-sia. In 1800, he described the plan in such terms:

The well-known saying, that Robespierre meant to reduce the population of France by one half, had its foundation in the lively sense of the impossibility of satisfying the hitherto insatiable revolution, with anything less, than such a hecatomb.67

Yet, many historians avoid any mention of this planned holocaust for France. Unfortunately, there were no photos or moving pictures to bring home the reality of this horrible plan. Yet, it was no less real.

The depopulation plan emerged in several distinct acts:• The devastation of the Vendée in 1793-1794, including the

deaths of between 100,000 and 500,000 in the region;• The decrees to wipe out Lyon, Marseilles, and Toulon, along

with the devastation that followed;

66.J.L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (N.Y.: W.W. Norton, 1970) at 82, 83.

67. Friedrich Gentz, The French and American Revolutions Compared (1800)(Trans. John Quincy Adams) (Houston: St. Thomas Press, 1975) at 66.



• The extermination of various religious groups at Strasbourg, including the Jews;

• The total depopulation death toll of 1,025,711 from all causes (war and terror). It was compiled by Prudhomme in 1797 from a painstaking study of the official dispatches and census records;68

• The 500,000 persons in prison for capital offenses at the time Robespierre’s regime collapsed.69

Brutality in the Rhineland With Same Depopulation Strategy In Mind

This plan also emerged in the unusual brutality in the Rhineland, such as at Mainz/Mayence. As already noted, the Rhinelanders generally refused to collaborate with the French invaders who came brutalizing them and desecrating their churches. The occupiers then applied what amounted to noth-ing less than an extirpation campaign against the entire cul-ture of the German-speaking Rhinelanders. Heavy taxes were not enough for the Robespierrist Regime. The Rhinelanders could not pay for their own occupation by turning over a rea-sonable proportion of their grain, leaving themselves enough to eat. No, the Jacobin army commanders followed orders from the Committee of Public Safety to take all food, all

68.L.M. Prudhomme, Histoire générale et impartiale des erreurs, des fautes et des crimes commis pendant la Révolution française (10 vols.) (Paris: 1797), Appendices. Prudhomme believed this speedy death-toll in just twenty-two months of Jacobin rule bespeaks the depopulation plan at the Jacobins.

69.Greer concedes that “it seems probable that at least a half a million person were incarcerated between March, 1793 and August, 1794.” Greer, The Incidence of the Terror, supra, at 27. He does not explain, but the reason for the estimate was because the new authorities released that many from prison. See Taine, The French Revolution, supra, at III, 294 and n. 3 (estimates 400,000).


More Evidence

resources, and all possessions from the Rhinelanders. The Committee obviously knew this would leave the Rhineland-ers in a state of starvation. If such a plan was good enough for native Frenchmen, the Jacobins could export the same exter-mination campaign in the Rhineland.

The Committee in fact specifically ordered the Jacobin armies to “export devastation” or else they would be allowing the same fate (running out of food) to occur inside France.70 Told that their families back home depended on then acting as extreme ravagers, the troops took all the Rhine-landers’ cattle and horses. Because of resistance, the French commanders often obtained them by taking hostages of fam-ily members and by putting soldiers into people’s homes (called billeting) until the requisition orders were complied with.71

The devastation of the people of the Rhine naturally caused mass starvation. Its effects emerged in early 1794. Numerous reports went to Paris advising the CPS that mas-sive destitution was afflicting this once affluent region. Death rates soared in 1794-1795 in the Rhineland. The Jacobin army referred to the massive deaths as the La Mortalité—The

70.Blanning documents these horrors in his work The French Revolution in Germany, supra, at 65, 72 75, 77, 87-93, 96, 97, 98, 184, 256, 304. One of the plainest examples was a letter from the CPS — two weeks before the Robespierre-led Jacobins were toppled in 1794 — to the army of the Moselle and Rhine. It said they were to find their supplies at Trier, a conquered city. “Trier ought to be full of supplies of every kind; and there will be even more after the harvest... collect foodstuffs, arms, items fit for consumption by our armies; seize from the enemy all their resources, all their means of existence; it is a great misfor-tune that we are obliged to engage in devastation; but it is much better to export destruction abroad than to have to suffer it on one's own terri-tory.” (A. Aulard, Recueil des actes du comité de Salut public, avec la correspondence officielle des représentants en mission et le registre du Conseil exécutif provisoire (30 vols). (Paris: 1933-1955) Vol. XV at 85, quoted in Blanning, The French Revolution, supra, at 72.)

71.Blanning, The French Revolution in Germany, supra, at 102-03, 107-08, 113-117.



Mortality Problem. The starvation was exacerbated by the Jacobins destroying the charitable institutions that sustained people in time of crisis, like the church.72

What explains the Robespierre-led Jacobin policy to “export devastation” to the Rhineland in 1794? It was not simply racist or nationalist. It was an example of the Plan of Depopulation taken one step further. If deaths of Frenchmen could alleviate the hunger problem in France, the deaths of Rhinelanders likewise could alleviate the hunger problem not only in the Rhineland but also in France. No morality weighed on the conscience of Robespierre’s Committee of Public Safety in this action. They willfully used extortion, theft, hostage-taking, and force to take the very necessities of life from the Rhinelanders. They evidently found Machiavelli a more compelling teacher than Christ.73

Also, the numbers killed or arrested in 22 months of Jacobin rule are consistent with a plan of depopulation. L. Prudhomme, in an exhaustive ten volume study, assembled the totals of those killed during the Terror of 1793-1794. Excluding Paris, the Terror drowned, guillotined, shot or starved at least 300,000 victims throughout France. This includes over 100,000 in the Vendée region alone.74 When the Robespierre-led Jacobins fell, 500,000 were languishing

72.Blanning, The French Revolution in Germany, supra, at 163.73.Machiavelli shamelessly advocated this system in his book The Prince

(1537). He said the Spartans failed to hold onto territory when they led the people of conquered territory enjoy relative liberty. “So they were compelled to lay waste many cities in that province in order to keep it, because in truth there is no sure method of holding them except in despoiling them. And whoever becomes the ruler of a free city and does not destroy it, can expect to be destroyed by it.” See Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (N.Y.: New American Library, 1980) at 46. No wonder The Prince is known to have been the bedside reading for three modern murderous tyrants—Hitler, Lenin and Stalin. Id., Intro-duction by Christian Gauss, at 8.


More Evidence

in prison waiting to be killed. Had the Robespierre-led Jacobins not been toppled, the Terror would have taken at least 800,000 of the 24 million citizens of the France.

Prudhomme, a Cordelier-Dantonist supporter and edi-tor of the Cordelier journal Révolutions de Paris et Brabant, became revulsed by the terror. In 1797, he said the average French citizen had no idea that mass murder was afoot or how far it was intended to go:

How could the people have suspected the sys-tem of universal depopulation? Until then it had not been heard of in history. This great doctrine, however, was not chimerical, it existed, it was visible. The leaders of opinion wished to reign over deserts.75

What we might suspect is hyperbole by Prudhomme is sadly a fact. Robespierre had been inspired by Enlighten-ment dreams of a state of nature, but no one prior to Robespi-erre ever imagined mass murder as a means of restoring the primeval world of nomads so one could rule over deserts.

For some inexplicable reason, historians enamored with the Revolution never mention the depopulation plan which is factually so well-established. However, no serious historian can any longer ignore it. The Robespierre-led Jacobins expressed the plan in the pages of the Strasbourg society’s public journal in 1794, as we quoted at the begin-ning. The closest sympathizers with Robespierre, such as David, betrayed his dark plan. The Convention in 1794 offi-cially reported on this plan, making it public knowledge.

74. L.M. Prudhomme, Histoire générale et impartiale des erreurs, des fautes et des crimes commis pendant la Révolution française (Paris: 1797) (10 vols.), Vol. VI, Table VI. He based this on the archives of government during the Robespierre-led Jacobin period. Prudhomme also compared census figures for various cities before and after the Terror.

75.Prudhomme, Crimes de la Révolution, supra, Vol. I at xxiii.



Robespierre thus was one of the worst mass murder-ers of all time, in league with Pol Pot and others of such ilk. It served his revolutionary ambition. He became a monster and a tyrant. Yet, it was his own concoction, and was done as an enemy opposed to the more moderate Illuminist position that murder of innocents only makes more enemies of those who remain. Robespierre rebelled at this idea. He wanted to win the argument by proving that if you killed almost everyone, then there would be no brothers, sisters, or family members left to worry about seeking revenge. Hence, the Terror, as exercised by Robespierre, became a desperate conception of a madman who would not back down. Robespierre refused to let any sympathy for humanity soften his heart. All those who defend him are defending a heartless monster. No end can ever justify the means of mass murder.

How This Relates To Malthus’s 1798 Defense of Deliberate Depopulation

The embarassment to Robespierre and the leftist movement by the Depopulation Plan is no doubt what inspired Malthus in 1798 — four years later — to defend the notion of deliberately spreading disease to keep down the population of the masses. On a certain fringe of the left there was a perverse need to defend Robespierre regardless of what crime he committed, including his depopulation programs. As a consequence, this led to the most perverse statement ever uttered in print by any human being — a statement by the famous Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) in his An Essay on the Principle of Population , book IV, chapter V (reprint of 182676 at page 49) — making cruelty and mass murder sound like a scientifically defensible idea:

76. See Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, Or, A View of Its Past and Present (1807).


How This Relates To Malthus’s 1798 Defense of Deliberate Depopulation

All the children born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to this level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the deaths of grown persons. It has appeared indeed clearly in the course of this work, that in all old states the marriages and births depend principally upon the deaths, and that there is no encouragement to early unions so powerful as a great mortality. To act consis-tently therefore, we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavouring to impede, the operations of nature in produc-ing this mortality; and if we dread the too fre-quent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage set-tlements in all marshy and unwholesome situ-ations. But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases; and those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders.77

Malthus thereby provided a swift answer to those who attacked Robespierre, coming only four years after the French government deliberately exposed Robespierre’s Plan of Depopulation. Malthus made it sound as if it were scientifi-cally plausible to defend mass murder. Ever since Malthus,

77.Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population (reprint of 1826) Book IV, Chapter V at 49, excerpted at http://www.econlib.org/library/Malthus/malPlong30.html (accessed 3/10/09).



depopulation programs and theory have dogged a certain seg-ment on the left, making those captured by its lure become wholly indifferent to mass murder if it were for a perceived good end. The truth is that from Malthus to Caldicot, these ideas are sheer madness, kicked up from the very depths of hell itself.

60 Plan of Depopulation

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