The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu[1] (in the original French, Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu ou la politique de Machiavel au XIXe siècle) is a political satire written by French attorney Maurice Joly (initially released anonymously in Bruxelles, Belgium, under the generic label of "a contemporary") in protest against the regime of Napoleon III (a.k.a.

Small portions were translated in 1967 as an appendix to Norman Cohn's Warrant for Genocide, which identifies it as the main source of the later Protocols of the Elders of Zion, though The Dialogue itself makes no mention of Jews.

[2] The piece uses the literary device of a dialogue of the dead, invented by ancient Roman writer Lucian and introduced into the French belles-lettres by Bernard de Fontenelle in the 18th century.

Machiavelli claims that he "... wouldn't even need twenty years to transform utterly the most indomitable European character and render it as a docile under tyranny as the debased people of Asia".

[1] The book was published anonymously (par un contemporain, by a contemporary) in Brussels in 1864[5] and smuggled into France for distribution, but the print run was seized by the police immediately upon crossing the border.