An alliance was speedily consummated,[572] and a fresh torrent of declamation and calumnies, all directed against the altar and the throne, began to pour through these newly discovered subterranean channels.[573] The _Grand Orient_ constituted a central committee which as early as 1776 instructed the deputies of the lodges throughout France to prepare the brethren for insurrection.[574] Condorcet and Sieyès placed themselves at the head of another lodge, to which the Propaganda was to be traced.[575] In addition, a secret association bearing the title _Amis des Noirs_ created a _regulating committee_, composed of such men as Condorcet, the elder Mirabeau, Sieyès, Brissot, Carra, the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, Clavière, Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau, Valade, La Fayette, and Bergasse.[576] This _regulating committee_ was also in intimate correspondence with the French lodges of Freemasonry. Thus a powerful secret organization was at hand, composed of not less than six hundred thousand members all told, at least five hundred thousand of whom could be fully counted upon to do the bidding of the conspirators, “all zealous for the Revolution, all ready to rise at the first signal and to impart the shock to all other classes of the people.”[577] However, all these machinations might have come to naught had it not been for the encouragement and direction supplied by the Illuminati. In the latter Barruel saw the apotheosis of infamy and corruption.[578] With diabolical ingenuity the chiefs of the Illuminati succeeded in evolving an organization which put into the hands of the conspirators, _i. e._, the philosophers and Freemasons, the very instrument they needed to give full effect to their plans. The superiority of that organization was to be seen in its principles of general subordination and the gradation of superiors, in the minute instructions given to adepts and officers covering every conceivable responsibility and suggesting infinite opportunities to promote the order’s welfare, and in the absolute power of its _general_.[579] Thus was built up a hierarchy of savants, an association held under a most rigid discipline, a formidable machine capable of employing its maximum power as its governing hand might direct.[580] With the close of the third volume Barruel considers that he has been able to present a “complete academy of Conspirators.”[581]