You don't think Voltaire had an influence on the American and French revolutions? and therefore on every other revolution. I would submit that many of the founding fathers read and liked Candide.
Candide? yeecchhhhh! Perhaps there were so few books of any kind that they had nothing worthy to read. I rank it in the pit with Thomas Mann's, The Magic Mountain. An equally lousy book. And yea, I suffered through both...