Europe's inner demons

The three-volume Histoire de l’Inquisition can be justly appreciated only against this background. Lamothe-Langon himself made high claims for the work: “For twenty years I collected valuable material. . brought together scattered documents… I venture to call it a truly Benedictine work…”⁽²⁴⁾ In reality, his preoccupations and methods had little in common with those of the patient historians of Saint-Maur. The Histoire appeared after a whole series of horrific novels with titles like

Tête de mort, on la Croix du cimetière de Saint-Aubin; les Mystères de la tour Saint-Jean, ou les Chevaliers du Temple; les Apparitions du château de Tarabel, ou le Protecteur invisible; le Monastère des frères noirs, ou Étendard de la mort

; la Vampire ou la Vierge de Hongrie. Moreover the very year 1829, which saw the publication of the Histoire, also saw the publication of no less than twenty other volumes by Lamothe-Langon! For such a man the labour of historical research was clearly out of the question.

It is easy enough to divine what inspiration lay behind this particular work. In a pamphlet which he wrote to smooth the way for his history, Lamothe-Langon mentions the Critical History of the Spanish Inquisition, by Giovanni Antonio Llorente.⁽²⁵⁾ This Italian work had been published in French translation in 1817-18, and by 1829 there had been three French, three German, two English, two Spanish and two Dutch translations. Nothing could be more natural than for Lamothe-Langon to try to imitate so successful a production. Only he failed; his history passed almost unnoticed, was never reprinted, and had no translations. Moreover when, from about 1880 onwards, French historians began serious work on the Inquisition in the south of France, they passed over Lamothe-Langon in silence, as unworthy of notice.

⁽²⁶⁾ And no doubt the book would have been altogether forgotten if Joseph Hansen— himself a most honourable and devoted archivist and historian — had not, in the simplicity of his heart, reprinted the supposed reports of witch-trials it contains.

Neither Hansen himself, nor the many historians who have followed in his footsteps, would have been so easily deceived if they had examined some of the works which Lamothe-Langon produced after the Histoire de l’Inquisition. For from that date onwards he turned out volume after volume of spurious memoirs, attributed either to figures famous in French history or else to individuals who had been close to such figures. Four of these memoirs, each in several volumes, appeared in the very same year as the Histoire: Mémoires historiques et anecdotiques du due de Richelieu, Mémoires de madame la comtesse du Barry

, Mémoires et souvenirs d’un pair de France and above all Mémoires d’uine femme de qualité, which achieved an international success. And thereafter, although Lamothe-Langon continued to write novels as before, this new genre became his principal and most profitable speciality: in all he produced twenty-four memoirs, totalling ninety volumes, in seventeen years.

For our present purpose the memoirs attributed to Napoleon and to Louis XVIII are particularly relevant, for they show that Lamothe-Langon did indeed possess all the skill and audacity required to fabricate and launch a historical myth. Not only are the Mémoires de Napoléon Bonaparte (1834) presented as the work of the emperor himself, but a projected continuation is announced in the following terms: ‘‘Here, without doubt, is the most important publication of the century. There need be no fear that anyone will confuse the great man’s authentic memoirs with the multitude of memoirs and recollections that are constantly appearing.... These most valuable memoirs were completed on the isle of Elba. Brought back to the Tuileries, they were left in the emperor’s study.... Later, they were placed in the hands of the same person to whom Louis XVIII had entrusted his own memoirs, about which nobody had ever raised any doubts.”⁽²⁷⁾ The reference is to the spurious memoirs of Louis XVIII, which were also the work of Lamothe-Langon.