As a young man, he produced German and English translations of the works of Jean le Rond d'Alembert, which financially supported him until his death.
Initiated into freemasonry in 1786 during a stay in England, he wrote two books on the subject, the "Jesuits Expelled from Masonry", and "Dagger Shattered by the Masons", both in 1788, in which he accuses the Jesuits of having introduced into the symbolic degrees of freemasonry, the myths of the Templars and their doctrine of revenge, based on the "crime" of their destruction, and the four vows of the Templars included in their higher degrees.
Earlier, in 1787, the leading Bavarian illuminist and freemason, Johann Joachim Christoph Bode, is said to have converted the German-speaking Bonneville to a faith that combined esoteric symbolism with radical ideas of popular sovereignty bordering on direct democracy.
On 13 October 1790, he founded, with Claude Fauchet, the Society of the Friends of Truth (also known as the Amis de la Verité or the Social Club), whose purpose was to rally the human race to "the doctrine of love, which is the religion of happiness."
In a famous letter, Nicolas de Bonneville demanded freedom of the press, the abolition of Catholic worship, and the communal ownership of land.
Nonetheless, the newspaper became one of the most sophisticated instruments of the Cordeliers Club, and it remained so until the cessation of its publication in the aftermath of the massacre on the Champ de Mars, 17 July 1791.
Hostile to the wantonly bloody violence of the Revolution, his denunciation of the massacres of September 1792 in "The Chronicle of the Month", earned him the wrath of Marat, who denounced him as an aristocrat.
Bonneville's generous act, earning him a portrayal by Charles Nodier as "a frequent host of all the unfortunate of all parties", aroused the suspicions of authorities.
He was later jailed for comparing Napoleon Bonaparte to Oliver Cromwell, in The Well Informed of 19 Brumaire Year VIII (November 1800), and, although he was freed quickly enough, he found his presses had been confiscated.