 New controversies over the Encyclopédie occurred in 1757, although the return of unrest had little overtly to do with philosophie. The trigger was an attempt on King Louis XV’s life by a house servant named Damiens, who stabbed the king with a small penknife. The act of regicide itself was less significant for the Encyclopédie than the perceived motivation for the crime, for authorities began to link Damiens’s purported madness to the unchecked spread of subversive philosophie. Provoked by these public fears, French authorities issued new edicts cracking down on allegedly subversive books, and new works critical of the Encyclopédie also appeared, generating the idea of an “Encyclopedist party” organized for the purpose of attacking morality, religion and government. When Volume VII appeared soon after Damiens’s attack, the tinder was therefore set for a new eruption of controversy.