[In his Mémoires pour sérvir à l’histoire du Jacobinisme, Augustin] Barruel traced the core ideas of the French Revolution back to the Manichaean concepts of ‘equality’ and ‘freedom’. He regarded Mani as a paternal father of Freemasonry and the Knights Templar as their precursors.
[…]
In his memoirs, [Père Fidèle de] Grivel also reported that Barruel had burnt two unfinished book manuscripts two days before his death, one of them a refutation of Kant’s philosophy. The other one was a history of ancient Jacobinism. Barruel had intended to prove that the revolutionary slogan ‘liberté, egalité’ had its origins in ancient Greece, from where it was passed on by the Manicheans to the Knights Templar, who in turn founded Freemasonry.
– ‘Freemasons, Illuminati and Jews: Conspiracy theories and the French Revolution’, in Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories (2020), pp. 557-64
This repression [against German Freemasonry in the XVIII century] underlines the fact that the late eighteenth century was obsessed with the idea of ‘unknown superiors’ in possession of powerful secrets. This was exacerbated by the development of various secret societies pretending to be in possession of knowledge. Among these, with regard to conspiracy theories, the Illuminati occupy the most prominent position.
– Ibid., p. 560
It should be noted that, although the Masonic lodges did not play a direct role in the events of 1789, some of its members were important to the course of the French Revolution [Ligou, D. (1989) La Franc-maçonnerie et la révolution française, 1789-1799, Paris: Chiron]. However, Masons can be found across the political spectrum in relation to the revolution, from avid supporters to staunch opponents [Roche, D. (1978) Le Siècle des Lumières en province: Académies et académiciens provinciaux, 1689-1789 2 vols, reprint, Paris & Den Haag: Mouton, 1989]. Beaurepaire has pointed out that some Masons even sympathised with anti-philosophical and conservative ideas [Beaurepaire, P.-Y. (2013) Franc-maçonnerie et sociabilité: les métamorphoses du lien social XVIIIème-XIXème siècle, Paris: Edimaf]. It should be noted, therefore, that, in view of the short-term events that led to the outbreak of the French Revolution, there is no evidence that there was anything like a Masonic plot. However, it remains unclear what influence Freemasonry had in terms of long-term developments.
– Ibid., p. 562