CHAPTER XIV
FREEMASONRY IN THE 18TH CENTURY - THE JACOBINS
It is from the convent of Wilhelmsbad that the progress of the Bavarian sect which was to give the definitive impetus to the Revolution dates. “After the historical work of recent years,” says Mgr Freppel (1), “it is no longer permissible to ignore the perfect identity of the formulas of 1789 with the plans developed in the sect of the enlightened, of which Weishaupt and Knigg were the promoters. , and very particularly at the general congress of Masonic lodges held in Wilhelmsbad in We cannot forget, moreover, with what eagerness rushed to Paris, to take an active part in all the events, the Swiss Pache, the Englishman Payne, the Prussian Clootz, the Spaniard Guzman, the Neufchâtelois Abarat, the American Foumier, the Austrian Prey, the Belgians Proly and Dubuisson, a prince of Hesse, Poles, Italians, Batavians, and defectors
1. The French Revolution (about the centenary of 1789), p. 34.
of all the countries whose services the Revolution accepted and made their fortune. » The Doge's deputies, after having received the baptism of Illuminism, return to their countries and work on Freemasonry everywhere in the direction that has been marked for them: in Austria, in France, in Italy, in Belgium, in Holland, in England!, Poland. “The contagion is so rapid that soon the universe will be filled with Illuminated Ones. » Their center is now in Frankfurt, at least as far as organizing revolutionary action is concerned. We will see what was resolved there against the Capetian dynasty, the summit of the European social order. Knigge established his headquarters there. From there, he extends from the East to the West and from the North to the South his conspiracies, he initiates into his mysteries, and he recruits this multitude of heads and arms which the sect needs for the revolutions it meditates. “On France,” says Barruel, “the sect has deeper designs. » In the plan of Weishaupt and Knigge, the French were to be the first to act, but the last to be instructed. We counted on their temperament. “We felt assured that their activity would not wait to break out until the hour had come when the whole of Europe would be in revolution to tear down the altars and the throne among them. » However, there were already a few followers there as early as 1782, those of the lodge deputies who had been admitted to secrecy during the Wilhelmsbad assembly. The two best known, and who were to have the most fatal action, were Diétrich (1), mayor of Strasbourg, and Mirabeau.
1. It was at his home that the Marseillaise was sung for the first time.
This one, charged with a mission in Prussia by the ministers of Louis XVI, became closely linked with Weishaupt and was initiated in Brunswick into the sect of the Illuminati, although he already belonged for a long time to other secret societies. Back in France, he enlightened Talleyrand and other colleagues of the Les Amis Réunis lodge (1). He also introduced the new mysteries into the lodge called the Philaletes. The leaders of the conspiracy were then mainly concerned with Germany. Mirabeau assured them that in France the ground was admirably prepared by Voltaire and the Encyclopédistes and that they could set to work with complete confidence. They therefore gave a mission to Bode, close advisor, to Weymar, whom they nicknamed Aurelius, and to this other student of Knigge, named Bayard in the sect, and who, by his real name, was Baron de Busche, a Hanoverian in the service from Holland. The circumstances could not have been more favorable for their propaganda. As Barruel says, “the disciples of Voltaire and Jean-Jacques had prepared in the lodges the reign of this equality and this freedom whose final mysteries became through Weishaupt those of impiety and the most absolute anarchy. “Equality and freedom,” he said, “are the essential rights that man, in his original and primitive perfection, receives from nature; the first attack on this equality was brought by property;
1. In 1776, writes Henri Martin, the young Mirabeau had drawn up a plan of reforms, in which he proposed to the Masonic order to work with moderation; but with resolution and sustained activity, to gradually transform the world, to undermine despotism, to pursue civil, economic, religious emancipation, the full conquest of individual freedom. (History of France, t. XVI, p. 435.) 1. Barruel, III, 24.
the first attack on freedom was carried out by political societies or governments; the only supports of property and governments are religious and civil laws: therefore, to restore man to his primitive rights of equality and freedom, it is necessary to begin by destroying all religion, all civil society and end with the abolition of all property (1). In these same speeches, Weishaupt outlined for initiates this line of conduct to achieve the annihilation of property, civil society and religion, the goal of his institution. “The great art of making any Revolution infallible is to enlighten the people. To enlighten them is to gradually lead public opinion to the desire for the changes which are the object of the planned Revolution. » When the object of this wish cannot come to light, without exposing the person who conceived it to public vindictiveness, it is in the privacy of secret societies that we must know how to propagate opinion. » When the object of this wish is a universal Revolution, all the members of these societies tending to the same goal, supporting each other, must seek to dominate invisibly and without the appearance of violent means, not over the most important part. most eminent or least distinguished of a single people, but on men of every state, of every nation, of every religion. To breathe the same spirit everywhere, in the greatest silence and with all possible activity, to direct all men scattered on the surface of the earth towards the same object. » This is what the domain of secret dictations is established on, what the empire of Illuminism must focus on. » This empire, once established by the union and the multitude of followers, that force succeeds the invisible empire; tie the hands of all those who resist, subjugate, stifle wickedness in its seeds, that is to say all that remains of men whom you have not been able to convince” (1). Thus instructed by the delegates of the Luminisin, the lodges, or at least the back lodges, set to work and began by organizing themselves more strongly. A “Report to the Plenary Meeting of the Respectable Lodges Peace and Union and Free Conscience in the Orient of Nantes, Monday April 23, 1883” was
1. Instructions given to those who receive the rank of Epopte or enlightened priest for the leadership of the Illuminated Ones of lower order. “It is to practice our work that you are called today. Observe others day and night; train them, help them, monitor them; revive the courage of the pusillanimous, the activity and zeal of the lukewarm; preach and teach the ignorant; raise those who fall, strengthen those who falter, repress the ardor of the rash, prevent disunity, hide faults and weaknesses, prevent imprudence and betrayal, finally maintain subordination towards superiors, the love of the Brothers between them, such and even greater are the duties that we impose on you... Help each other, support each other; increase your number. Did you become numerous at some point? Have you strengthened yourselves by your union? Do not hesitate any longer; begin to make yourselves powerful and formidable to the wicked (that is, to those who resist our plans). By this alone that there are enough of you able to talk about force and you speak to me about it, by this alone, the medians, the profane begin to tremble. To avoid succumbing to numbers, many become good (like us) on their own and do harm under our flags. Soon you will be strong enough to tie the hands of others, to subjugate them. » Barruel, III, p. 171, 199.
printed in a brochure under this title: The Role of Freemasonry in the 18th Century. On page 8, we read that the foundation (in 1772) of the Grand Orient de France, which was a concentration of French Masonic troops hitherto dispersed, gave “considerable strength to Freemasonry. » “It took its full development (continues the Report), so much so that in 1789 it had no fewer than 700 Lodges in France and its colonies, without counting a large number of Chapters and Areopagus. It was from 1772 to 1789 that she developed the great Revolution which was to change the face of the world... » It was then that the Freemasons popularized the ideas that they had drawn from their Lodges... » What men came out of these Lodges, where human thought bubbled! Sieyès (L.:. n^ 22), the two Lameths, Lafayette (L.:. La Candeur), Bailly, Rrissot, Camille Desmoulins, Condorcet, Danton, (L., The two Sisters).. Hébert, Robespierre and so many others!... (Rapp..., p. 8). The Grand Orient was from then on what it is today the great Masonic Parliament of all the lodges of the kingdom which sent their deputies there. The table of his correspondence shows us, in the year 1787, no less than 282 towns each having regular lodges under his direction. In Paris alone, there were then 81; there were 16 in Lyon, 7 in Bordeaux, 5 in Nantes, 6 in Marseille, 10 in Montpellier, 10 in Toulouse, and almost in each city a number proportionate to the population (1).
1. Mr. Gustave Bord was able to find 154 Parisian lodges, 322 provincial loses and 21 regimental loses.
We know the lodges of Savoy, Switzerland, Belgium, Prussia, Russia, and Spain received from the same center the instructions necessary for their cooperation. In this same year 1787, there were, says Deschamps, according to very reliable historical sources, 703 lodges in France, 627 in Germany, 525 in England, 284 in Scotland, 227 in Ireland, 192 in Denmark, 79 in Holland, 72 in Switzerland, 69 in Sweden, 145 in Russia, 9 in Turkey, 85 in North America, 120 in the overseas possessions of European states. The words of Louis Blanc are only too true: “On the eve of the French Revolution, Freemasonry found itself having taken on an immense development; spread throughout Europe, it presented everywhere the image of a society founded on principles contrary to those of civil society. » .Under the Grand Orient, the Lodge of Reunited Friends was responsible for foreign correspondence. His Venerable was Savalette de Lange, responsible for guarding the royal treasure, therefore honored with all the confidence of the sovereign, which did not prevent him from being the man of all lodges, of all mysteries and of all conspiracies. He had made his lodge the place of pleasure for the aristocracy. While concerts and balls kept the F.:. and the S.:. of high rank, he retired to a sanctuary where one was only admitted after having sworn hatred to all religions and to all kings. There were the archives of the that the Revolution was only possible thanks to the sudden dissolution of the royal army: however, to carefully read the composition of the 21 Regimental Lodges, one is easily convinced that nothing was — in 1771 — more probable than this dissolution. Masonry was installed in the army from the beginning by the Irish regiments; it invades the national troops; she inevitably caused indiscipline, secret correspondence, there the mysterious councils were held. “There were,” says Barruel, “caves less known and even more formidable. There they evoked spirits and questioned the dead, or, as in the Ermonville lodge, they indulged in the most horrible dissolution of morals. » For Masonry to move from doctrinal propaganda and moral influence to political action, work of organization and concentration of all obediences was necessary. It was done, and the Duke of Chartres, later Philippe-Egalité, was the pivot. This prince was ideally suited to be the leader of the conspirators and serve as their aegis. “He had to be powerful,” said Barruel, “to support all the crimes they had to commit; it had to be atrocious, so that he would not be alarmed by the number of victims that all these crimes would cause. He needed not Cromwel's genius, but all his vices. He wanted to reign. But, like the devil, who wants at least ruins if he cannot exalt himself, Philip had sworn to sit on the throne, even if he found himself crushed by his fall (1). » Louis XVI had been warned,
1. Mr. Stéphane Pol published, in 1900, an unpublished manuscript by Elizabeth Duplay, widow of the conventional Le Bas. In the Scattered Notes, we read: “Robespierre had a terrible impression of the vote (for the death of Louis XVI) of the Duke of Orléans: “What! he said, when he could recuse himself so easily. » Citizen Le Bas adds: “This deeply immoral man and so eager to become king, had spread the majority of his fortune to achieve his goal: the Mirabeaus, the Dantons, the Camille Desmoulins, the Collot-d’Herbois , the Billaud-Varennes and so many others as despicable as him had taken part in his corrupting prodigalities.” When Louis XVI died, seeing that he had been played, he sent his resignation to Freemasonry in a letter full of bitterness.
he remained in a security the illusion of which he only recognized on his return from Varennes. "I wouldn't have believed it, eleven years ago! Everything I see today was announced to me (1). » Philippe was already Grand Master of the Scottish corps, the most considerable of the time, when, in 1772, he joined to this Grand Master that of the Grand Orient. His conspirators then brought him the English Mother Lodge of France. Two years later, the Grand Orient regularly affiliated the Lodges of adoption and thus brought them under the same management. The following year, the General Grand Chapter of France also joined the Grand Orient. Finally, in 1781, a solemn treaty was concluded between the Grand Orient and the Mother Lodge of the Scottish Rite. Concentration thus made, we prepared ourselves for action. At the end of the Wilhelmsbad convent, Knigge founded the Eclectics group in Frankfurt. This group had only four years of existence when it was found numerous enough and widespread enough abroad to convene a general assembly.
1. History of the Revolution, t. II, p. 74 to 81.
Since Varennes appears here under our pen, let us recall that when the German armies were marching on Paris, the king of Prussia stopped his troops at Varennes and there, having at his side Bismarck and Moltke, the two geniuses of later victory, he gathered the principal officers around him and addressed them with these words: “You know where we are and what attack was committed there eighty years ago. It is from here that all the misfortunes that have befallen France have started. When a nation treats its king this way, the hand of God is heavy on it. » Sometime later, King William, proclaimed German Emperor, as a result of the victory, himself recalled the incident to Cardinal de Bonnechose and commented on it in such a way as to make it a lesson for France. (Life of Cardinal de Bonnechose, by Mgr Besson, t. II, p. 1460)
1. It was at the great theater of Stockholm that Gustave III was assassinated by four lords of his court . The murderers spread the rumor that the king had been struck by a French revolutionary But soon they were discovered. Gustave had only been injured, but on the fourteenth day he died of poisoning, declared the doctor Dalherg. his brother's arrival to power were prepared for a long time by the lodges, as evidenced by the papers of the Duke of Sudermania, as well as the minutes which he had drawn up and which he initialed following the sessions of Masonic magnetism which he had witnessed in 1783. Masonry had taken nine years to find five thugs in Sweden to assassinate Gustave at the Grand Eclectic Lodge.
There, the assassination of Louis XVI and the King of Sweden was resolved (1). The fact is incontestable today: testimonies abound. First that of Mirabeau who, at the opening of the States-General, said, pointing to the king: “Here is the victim”; then that of Count Haugwitz, minister of Prussia, at the congress of Verona, where he accompanied his sovereign, in 1822. He read a memoir there which he could have entitled "my confession". He said that not only had he been a Freemason, but that he was charged with the superior direction of Masonic meetings in various countries. “It was in 1777 that I took charge of the management of the Lodges of Prussia, Poland and Russia. » There I acquired the firm conviction that everything that had happened in France since 1788, the French Revolution, finally, including the assassination of the King with all its horrors, had not only been decided at that time, but that everything had been prepared by meetings, instructions, oaths and signals which left no doubt about the intelligence which prepared and conducted everything. » “Let those who know my heart and my intelligence judge of the impression these discoveries made on me (1). » In 1875, on April 7, Cardinal Mathieu, Archbishop of Besançon, wrote a letter to one of his friends which was communicated to Mr. Léon Pages and published by him. We read: “There was an assembly of Freemasons in Frankfurt in 1784, where two notable men from Besançon were summoned, Mr. de Raymond, postal inspector, and Mr. Marie de Bouleguey, president of Parliament. In this meeting, the murder of the King of Sweden and that of Louis XVI were resolved.,. The last survivor (of the two) said it to Mr. Bourgon (Honorary President of the Court) who left a great reputation for probity, uprightness and firmness among us. I knew him a lot and for a long time, because I have been in Besançon for forty-two years and he died quite recently. He often recounted the fact to me and others. » Mgr Besson, then vicar general of Cardinal Mathieu and since then bishop of Nîmes, completed this revelation in these terms: “I can confirm the cardinal's letter with details which are not without interest and which were often told to me in Besançon , not only by Mr. President Bourgon, but by Mr. Weiss, city librarian, member of the Institute and the main author of the Universal Biography, published under the name of Michaud. Mr. Bourgon and Mr. Weiss were good men in the full force of the word. M. de Raymond
1. The writing of this statesman was published for the first time in Berlin in 1840, in the work titled. Dorrev's 'Denkscrifften und Briefen zur charackteristik der wet und Utteratur. (T. IV, p. 211 and 221.) The above quotation is taken from History and Documents on Freemasonry, by Dr. Eckert.
lived until 1839. It was he who revealed to them the secret of the lodges on the condemnation of Louis XVI, at an age when all we owe to the world is the truth. Mr. Weiss and Mr. President Bourgon also cited the confessions of Baron Jean Debry, prefect of Doubs, on this subject. Freemason, conventional and regicide, this character, whom events had enlightened, played an honorable role in Besançon in the twelve years he spent there from 1801 to 1814. » But here is what will finally convince. In the first days of March 1898, Father Abel, a Jesuit of great renown in Austria, in one of his conferences for men given in Vienna on the occasion of Lent, said: “In 1784, there was in Frankfurt a extraordinary meeting of the Grand Eclectic Lodge. One of the members put to the vote the death sentence of Louis XVI, king of France, and of Gustavus, king of Sweden. This man's name was Abel. He was my grandfather. » A Jewish newspaper, La nouvelle Presse libre, having reproached the speaker for having thus discredited his family, Father Abel said at the following conference: “My father, in dying, marked me, as his last wish, that I would apply myself to repairing the harm that he and our parents had done. If I had not had to carry out this prescription of my father's will, dated July 31, 1870, I would not speak as I do (1). »
1. Father Abel is the son of the famous minister of Bavaria whose career deserves to be remembered in two words. Initially liberal, agent of the Prusso-Masonic party in Bavaria, and therefore faithful to the tradition of his father, the Freemason of 1784, Minister Abel converted following the death of his wife, and became what the Prussians call a clerical, an ultramontane, because it is from Prussia that these two words came, immediately adopted by our lodges. Abel was overthrown in 1847 by the dancer Lola Montez. The king wanted to make her a countess, and this required an act of native status, which the minister refused to sign. He was dismissed and replaced by Maurer, the first Protestant minister in Bavaria. His first act was the signing of the requested document.
Mr. Gustave Bord believes that the death of the king was only decided after Varennes. He is undoubtedly unaware of this declaration by Father Abel which was published in the Austrian newspapers at the time it was made, that is to say on the date marked above. Once the death of the king had been decided, it was necessary to find the means to carry it out and, for this, to find an assembly composed of men capable of committing this crime. MM. Augustin Cochin and Charles Charpentier, in a study published on November 1 and 16, 1904 in the Revue Y Action française, showed how the 1789 electoral campaign was conducted in Burgundy. From this study and several others similar to it, they arrived at this conclusion, verified by all their research, that in the state of dissolution into which all the ancient independent bodies, provinces, orders or corporations had fallen, it was easy for a organized party to seize opinion and direct it without owing anything either to the number of its affiliates or to the talent of its leaders. They show this organization existing and active through archival documents (1).
1. In 1888, Mr. Auguste Carion published in Lyon (Librairie Vitte) this brochure: The Truth about the Ancien Régime and the Revolution. There we find this passage which fits into the order of ideas developed by MM. Charpentier and Cochin: There are in certain notebooks (of the grievances of the Third Estate in 1789), writes Mr. Carion, proposals in which the revolutionary spirit shines through. M. Maine gives the explanation of this fact. Lawyers, prosecutors, notaries from small towns had written grievances of their own which were quite considerable and without neighborly relations, had the same ideas, at the same time as two writers, to express them in the same terms and with the same writing. In addition, the author of the two pieces had left blanks so that the name of the village, that of the deputies who would be appointed, as well as the date of the day on which the community would meet to sign its notebook and choose its agent... (La Bigorre, p. 12, 13). In the Hautes-Pyrénées, eight or ten neighboring villages sometimes submitted the same notebook written on the same paper with the same handwriting, whereas for other groups of localities, the peasants limited themselves to copying general formulas that had been given to them. (La Bigorre, p. 15 to 21). It was the same, moreover, forty leagues from Bigorre, in Armnac, where a report dated May 29, 1789, emanated from the Marquis de Fodoas.,who governed this region, tells us that "... On a single draft, (the lawyers, prosecutors and notaries of small towns) made, for all the communes, similar copies, which they sold at a high price to the councils of each parish the country. » (Quoted by M. Ricaut, La Bigorre, p. 21.)
By studying them closely, noting the names and dates, they manage to “follow” the masons, to find their traces in a series of procedures which, taken separately, have nothing striking, but which, overall views, reveal an ingenious system and a mysterious understanding. When we compare the results of this work in two different and distant provinces, the impression becomes striking. André Chénier, who had been an enthusiastic follower of the ideas which produced the Revolution, which himself led him to the scaffold, had seen it well when he said: “These Societies, all holding hands, form a sort of electric chain around France. At the same moment, in every corner of the empire, they are agitating together, uttering the same cries, making the same movements. » As the opening of the States General approaches, the secret societies redouble their activity to discredit the royal family and undermine the government's notebooks at the chief town of the bailiwick, without even having assembled the community to read them to them. (See Taine, the Ancien Régime, p. 5109.) (The Truth about Vanc. Diet, Carion, p. 68.) ML Ricaud in a considerable book: Bigorre and the Hautes-Pyrénées during the 11th Revolution. (Paris, Honoré "Champion bookstore, and Tarbes, Croharé bookstore, 1894), makes the same observation for the Pyrenees region. Examining the 260 notebooks of grievances from the Third Estate which are preserved in the Archives of the department of Hautes-Pyrénées, M Ricaud researched how each commune had written its own, and he found that these notebooks were in no way written by the communes. Here, he says, are the notebooks of Argelès-Bagnères and Bonnemazon. At this moment, we notice that neither was composed in the village whose grievances it expresses. Both, in fact, are conceived in the same terms and written almost entirely by the same hand. This indicates a common origin; because it is impossible for these two villages, separated by a difference, to lie. Thanks to the followers spread everywhere,* the slogans are transmitted, the legends circulate. , the agitation spreads, the troubles break out: everything is done without any organization appearing. It's a movement, it's a revolution that seems spontaneous. However, followers placed at court put to rest the royal distrust, some knowing what they are doing, others not realizing it, like the Princess de Lamballe near the Queen. Then came the “matter” of the necklace. Today we know what an “affair” is, by whom it is set up and what it produces, Dreyfus taught us. There were then several: the Jesuit affair, the Calas affair, the La Chalotais affair and above all, that of the Queen's necklace, set up by the Jew Cagliostro. Philosophers and Freemasons, after having launched them, published pamphlets to excite class jealousies and awaken passions. At the same time Turgot and Necker were imposed on the King, the provincial Assemblies and the Parliament obeyed secret committees. The preparatory movement for the Revolution extended further. “Elusive informers,” says Louis Blanc, “circulated from one place to another, as if by an electric wire, the secrets stolen from courts, colleges, chancelleries, tribunals, consistories. We saw certain unknown travelers staying in the cities, whose presence, purpose, fortune, were all problems. » It shows Cagliostro fulfilling the role of traveling salesman of Freemasonry in France and Italy, Poland and Russia. In 1787 a new change took place in French masonry, a new grade was introduced into the lodges. The F. of Paris hastened to communicate it to the F.-, of the provinces. “I have before my eyes,” said Barruel, “the Memoir of an F.-, who received the code of this new grade in a lodge more than eighty leagues from Paris. » The resolutions taken in the Grand Orient were sent to all the provinces to the address of the Venerables of each lodge. The instructions were accompanied by a letter which read: 'As soon as you have received the enclosed packet, you will acknowledge receipt.' You will add to this the oath to faithfully and punctually execute all orders that arrive to you in the same form, without bothering to know from which hand they go or how they reach you. If you refuse this oath or if you fail to do so, you will be considered as having violated the one you made when you entered the Order of the F.:. Remember Aqua Tophana; remember the daggers that await traitors (1). » The regulating club could count on at least five hundred thousand Freemasons, full of ardor for the Revolution, spread throughout all parts of France, all of them; ready to rise at the first signal of insurrection and capable of drawing with them, through the violence of a first impulse, the majority of the people. We then saw what we see happening again today: Freemasonry needed a prodigious number of hands to carry out its designs; and this is why she, who until then had only admitted men with a certain situation into her home, then called the dregs of the people there. Even in the villages, the peasants came to hear about equality and freedom and to talk about human rights. For these people, the words freedom and equality did not need initiations from the back rooms to be understood, and it was easy for the leaders to impress on them with these words alone all the revolutionary movements that we wanted to produce. At the same time, the Duke of Orléans appealed to the lodges and brought the Gardes-Françaises into the sect. Nothing is done without money, and revolutions less than everything else. The steering committee, chaired by Sieyès, and which included among others Condorcet, Barnave, Mirabeau, Pétion, Robespierre, Grégoire, was not missing
1. Barruel, II, p. 476.
to raise and amass funds for the great enterprise. Ouudat, in a book published in 1797, says: “This was done by the Freemasons that a general correspondence was established and the funds necessary for the party (of the Revolution) were raised. These levies under the name of Freemasonic remunerations took place in all the countries of Europe and served, without all the Brothers foreseeing it, to fuel the French Revolution. With these funds, the party maintained emissaries from one end of the kingdom to the other and, in Paris, residents; he threw candidates into the arts and crafts corporations, he bribed agents and spies, released preachers and assassins. It was in Nîmes that the treasure was, it was there that all the channels ended which, responding to the various haunts of the Calvinists, brought and distributed the contributions, and with a pull of the lever, set all their machines in motion. . This money was used to bribe emissaries throughout France to lead the Balliagère assemblies. It served to put the people under arms.” (The True Authors of the French Revolution, p. 451-456). Mirabeau, in his book The Prussian Monarchy (1), published before the events in which he himself was one of the major actors, speaks of it as follows: “Masonry in general, and especially the branch of the Templars, produced IMMENSE sums annually through the costs of receptions and contributions of all kinds: a part was used for administrative expenses, but another VERY CONSIDERABLE flowed into a general fund, the use of which no one, except the first of the brothers, knew. »
1. Volume VI. p. 57
Same information is given to us by The secret papers found with Cardinal de Bernis. Deschamps cites one of these documents belonging to the propaganda club annexed to the steering committee of the Philalèthes which had the mission not only to cooperate in the French Revolution, but to work to introduce it to the other peoples of Europe. We see that, on March 23, 1790, there were 1,500,000 francs in the cash, including the Duke of. Orléans had provided 400,000 francs; the surplus had been given by other members at their reception. Other clubs or lodges had other resources in 1790, twenty million pounds. cash; according to reports there must have been ten million more there before the end of 1791. When Cagliostro was arrested in Rome by the pontifical police in September 1789, he confessed that the masonry had a large quantity of scattered money in the banks of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, London, Geneva, Venice, that he, Cagliostro, had received six hundred louis in cash, the day before his departure for Frankfurt (1). Everything being thus prepared, the day of the insurrection was set for July 14, 1789. The Freemasons, now back in power, know well why they chose July 14, in preference to other dates for the celebration. national. “The Third Republic chose this anniversary, says Mr. Gustave Bord, because it is only the political representation of Freemasonry, and because the storming of the Bastille, despite all the romantic legends, was …
1. Deschamps, II, p. 126.
the result of a vast Masonic conspiracy…” (1) The details, of absolute precision, which Mr. Bord gives, leave no room for doubt, lend themselves to no equivocalness. It was first the army that was hired for the plot through the Military Lodges. We addressed the Lodge of Three United Brothers, which successively had as venerable: Minette de Saint-Martin, exempt from bodyguards; Schmidt, naval clerk; Chauvet, war clerk; Desbarodières, cavalry captain. In another Lodge of the time, also military, Le Patriotisme, we find Vauchelles, principal artillery clerk, and Mathieu de l'Epidor, general secretary of the bodyguards. The French Guards, whose defection will ensure the success of the day, have their Lodge: The Friends of Glory; the non-commissioned officers even have their special Lodge, the venerable of which is Beyssac, sergeant: it is the Union of Good Frenchmen, at the O. *. from Paris. Masonry had, moreover, infiltrated all branches of the administration, no less believed in the army. She ran the Post Office. by the superintendent of Ogny, of the chapter of Amis Réunis; Les Messageries, by Chignard; the King's Finances, by Savalète de Lange. Latouche, Chaumont, Pelletier de Lépine, Gillet de la Croix, represented the Duke of Orléans and his supporters; Perronnet brought the contingent of bridges and roads; Boucault, waters and forests; Méry d'Arcy, the East India Company; Lalande recruited the scientists; Roettiers de Montaleau, friend of Cagliostro and very closely involved in the purely Masonic affair of the Necklace, had behind him the employees of the Mints. Most of the surgeons, doctors, lawyers and concierges of the royal buildings were affiliated with the Lodges. The city government was populated by Masons. The “Widow” was represented there by police lieutenant Thiroux de Crosne, by Ethis de Corny, king’s prosecutor, and by Veytard, chief clerk. The provost of merchants, Flesselles, was also a Mason, but a lukewarm and timid Mason, who showed little enthusiasm for the plot. To protect against an untimely defection or even a possible betrayal, they decided to massacre him... In the insurrectional committee, we still see the Marquis de la Salle, of the Lodge Les Deux Soeurs; Deleutre, of the Social Contract; Quatremière, of the Heradom Lodge; Jamin, of Constant Truth; Osselin, of Perfect Contentment. The Bastille falls (1). The couriers who carry the news to the provinces return saying that they everywhere saw villages and towns in insurrection. The barriers in Paris are burned. On July 13, at eleven o'clock in the morning, the conspirators met in the church of Petit-Saint-Antoine. Agenda: dismissal of troops; organization of the bourgeois militia. The session is chaired by Dufour, lawyer officer of the Grand Orient, and by Villeneuve, deputy of the Lodge of Moderation. The next day, when everything was already ready for the attack, the insurrectional committee sent four deputations to the governor to urge him to open his doors and surrender. The first deputation is composed of Ethis de Corny, Mason; de Bellon, assistant major, Mason; of Billeford, Gunnery Sergeant, Mason. In the third deputation, we find Abbot Fauchet, and Chignard, Mason; in the fourth, Poupart de Beaubourg, Mason; de Milly, Mason; Jamin, Mason. It was still Masons who commanded the attack against the Bastille, and among them, Moreton de Chabrillan, of the La Candeur Lodge. Once the fortress was taken, the Committee which informed the National Assembly of this popular exploit was composed, among others, of Garran de Coulon, Mason, de la Feutrié, Mason; de Morillon, Mason. In the deputation which receives the delegation from the National Assembly, there is Deleutre, Mason. The member of the national assembly who will be responsible for entering into negotiations with the Insurrectional Committee is called Herwyn, and he is also a Mason, as if by chance. Finally, when the Commune officially occupied the Bastille, it was the Chevalier de Laizer who installed it; he is an officer of the G.: . O. :., venerable of the Future of the Friends of Glory, and deputy of the Military Union, of Valognes... 1. Proof that the French Revolution was organized by a cosmopolitan association: Auguste Vaquerie wrote in the Rappel of 27 Messidor year 102 , in other words, July 15, 1794, an article ended with these words: “Master of the Bastille, the people demolished it, and it seemed as if a weight was lifted from the chest of the world. It was not only France that breathed. In London, there was a banquet where Sheridan drank “to the destruction of the Bastille, to the Revolution. » » The storming of the Bastille was given as a subject for competitions in English Universities. » Italy acclaimed him through the mouth of Alfiéri. » In Saint Petersburg, people hugged each other in the streets and cried with joy. » It is because in fact all people were interested in the deliverance of the fraternal people who do not work for themselves alone and who, when they make a declaration of rights, declare, not the rights of the French, but the rights of the man” M. de Ségur who was then in Saint Petersburg wrote in his Memoirs: “Although the Revolution was certainly not threatening for anyone in Saint Petersburg, I cannot express the enthusiasm which excited among the merchants, the bourgeois and the young people of a higher class, the fall of this state prison and the first triumph of a stormy freedom. French, Russians, English, Danes, Germans, Dutch congratulated each other as if they had been freed from a chain that weighed on them. Everyone felt that a new dawn was dawning.”
In the provinces the castles are burned. The dreaded lantern game has begun; heads were carried on pikes; the monarch was besieged in his palace, his guards were immolated; he himself is taken captive to his capital. Then begins the Reign of Terror, organized to give the sect complete freedom to carry out its sinister plans. It was inaugurated towards the end of July 1789, in different parts of France, said Mr. Frantz Funck-Brentano (1), from East to West, and from North to South, suddenly spread a strange terror, crazy terror. The inhabitants of the fields took refuge in the towns, the gates of which were then closed in great haste. The men gathered in arms on the boulevards; they were, people shouted, the brigands. In certain localities, a messenger arrived,
1. The Social Reform, issue of November 1, 1904, p. 670-672.
wild-eyed, covered with dust, on a horse white with foam. The bandits were over there on the hill, hiding in the woods. In two hours they would be in the city. (Mr. Frantz Funck-Brentano describes here what happened particularly in Auvergne, in Dauphiné, in Guyenne, etc.) The memory of this alarm remained very vile among the generations who knew it. “The great fear” was the name given to it in the century of France. In the South, we say “la grande pourasse”, “la grande paou”, “l’annada de la paou”. Elsewhere it was “Brigands’ Day” or “Mad Thursday”, “Black Friday”, depending on the day the panic broke out. In Vendée, the memory of the event remained under this name “the quarrels of the Madeleine”. Fear broke out there on the Madeleine Day on July 22. » The decree that the National Assembly published on August 10, 1789, notes in its preamble the generality and simultaneity of the panic. “The* alarms were sown in the different provinces,” said the Assembly, “at the same time and almost on the same day. » The documents collected by Mr. Frantz Funck-Brentano show that the “great fear” broke out in the following provinces: Ile-de-France, Normandy, Maine, Brittany (French-speaking), Anjou, Touraine, Orléanais, Nivernais, Bourbonnais, Poitou, Saintonge, Angoumois, Périgord, Limousin, Agenais, Guyenne et Gascogne, Languedoc, Provence, Dauphiné, Forez, Auvergne, Burgundy, Franche-Comté, Champagne, Lorraine, Alsace. » He adds that he does not know of any document reporting fear in Breton Brittany, Picardy, Artois and Flanders. However, I remember hearing about it from my mother. This panicky terror caused citizens to arm themselves. The national guard was formed. In less than fifteen days, three thousand men were regimented and adorned with national colors. The fear of bandits gave rise to real bandits who are now equipping themselves with the necessary weapons. “Popular thought,” says Mr. Frantz Funck-Brentano, “is perhaps not wrong in considering this event as the most important of the entire Revolution. Overnight, the French saw everything that had made them fall, centuries-old existence. Faced with this sudden nothingness, there was the “great fear” in simple souls, the great access of fever precursor of the terrible crisis which will shake the entire nation and to the depths of its bowels” (1).
1. In 1797 a book was published in Neufchâtel entitled: “The True Authors of the French Revolution, 1789”, by Sourdat. On page 453, it is said: “It was through the Freemasons that the alarm of the so-called brigands spread in the month of July 1789, on the same day, at the same time, throughout the kingdom; It was through the Freemasons that a general correspondence was established and the funds necessary for the party were raised. The magazine La Révolution française, June 1904, page 556, published on the great fear the testimonies of men who have a real cult for the Revolution: Mr. Marcel Bruneau, Inspector of the Academy, (Les Debuts de la Révolution, Cher and Indre, 1902): “The great fear became through its consequences one of the greatest events of the Revolution”. Mr. Georges Bussière, (Historical events of the Revolution in Périgord, t. III. The Bourgeois Revolution, The Spontaneous Revolution, p. 73, 74): “The great fear can be considered as one of the most considerable events of the Revolution ". Mr. Aulard: This great fear of July and August 1789 which is perhaps the most important event of the French Revolution. “Many historians have seen this as proof of a learned and complete organization of the revolutionary party, whose agents, in all parts of the territory, would have obeyed a slogan. (M. Pierre de Vitt. Fear in 1789. — The day of the brigands in Limousin, p. 7.)
Who was powerful enough to raise at the same time the same fear, through an immense extent of territory by the same processes, by the same lies? How can we explain such a movement, if not by the concerted action of a sect spread over all parts of the kingdom, in order to make possible the crimes it meditated? To accomplish them, a concert of heads and arms was required; To direct everyone, Mirabeau calls his F.: . conspired in the church of the monks known as the Jacobins; and soon all of Europe knew the leaders and actors of the Revolution only under the name of Jacobins. It alone designates all that is most violent in the conspiracy against God and against his Christ, against kings and against society. We do not have to give the story or even the table here, the aim of these chapters being solely to respond to the point thus formulated by Louis Blanc in his History of the Revolution. “It is important to introduce the reader into the mine that the revolutionaries, deep and active instruments of the Encyclopedists, dug then, under the thrones and under the altars. » In this cave we find all the characters who had the most active part in the political, social and religious upheaval of the end of the 18th century: Philippe-Egalité, Mirabeau, Dumouriez, La Fayette, Custine, the Lameth brothers, Dubois-Crancé, Roderer, Lepeiletier de Saint-Fargeau belong to the lodge of Candeur; Babeuf, Hébert, Lebon, Marat, Saint-Just, to that of the Reunited Friends; Bailîy, Barrère, Guillotin, Danton, Garât, Lacépède, Brissot, Camille Desmoulins, Pétion, Marat, Hébert, Coliot-d'IIerbois, Dom Gesle left the lodge of the Nine Sisters to whom had belonged to Voltaire, d'Alembert, Diderot and Helvétius. Sieyès was part of that of the Twenty-two, Robespierre was a Rosicrucian of the Chapter of Arras. It was Mirabeau who, on May 6, 1789, showed Louis XVI saying: “Here is the victim!” It was Sieyès who, on June 16, proclaimed that there could be no veto against assembly which would regenerate France. It was Guillotin who, on June 21, 1792, led the deputies into the Jeu de Paume room, and it was this other mason Bailly who improvised the oath of revolt. It was Camille Desmoulins who, on July 114, in the garden of the Palais-Royal, shouted to the crowd: “To arms!” » signal of the first murder and pillage. It was La Fayette who, on June 21, 1791, sent this other mason Pétion to Varennes to seize the fugitive king and who himself became jailer of the Tuileries. The same Pétion, mayor of Paris, delivered, on June 20, 1792, the royal family to the outrages of the drunken hordes of the suburbs. It was Roederer who, on August 10, after a new assault on the Tuileries, delivered the royal family to the Convention. It was Danton who organized the September massacres, while Marat had a well dug, rue de la Tombe-Issoire, to bury the corpses of the slain in the catacombs of Paris. It was Garât, a Freemason like all the others, who, the day before January 21, came to notify the martyr king of his death sentence without reprieve. And after the regicide, it was Robespierre who became grand master of the scaffold.
The project of Freemasonry was not limited to Jacobinizing France, but the entire universe: we have also seen illuminism carried simultaneously in all countries. The lodge established on rue Coq-Héron, presided over by the Duke of Rochefoucauld, had become especially that of the great masons and was concerned with European propaganda; this is where the greatest councils were held. The one who knew this establishment best is Mr. Girtaner. In his Memoirs on the French Revolution, he says: “The Propaganda club is very different from that of the Jacobins, although the two often mingle together. That of the Jacobins is the great driving force of the National Assembly. The one of Propaganda wants to be the driving force of the human race. The latter already existed in 1786; the leaders are the Duke of Rochefoucauld, Condorcet and Sieyès. The great object of the propagandist club is to establish a philosophical order, dominating the opinion of humankind. There are two kinds of members in this society, taxpayers and non-payers. The number of paying people is about five thousand; all others undertake to propagate the principles of society everywhere and to always strive for its object. » Their efforts were not fruitless. “Of all the phenomena of the Revolution,” says Barruel, “the most astonishing without doubt, and unfortunately also the most incontestable, is the rapidity of the conquests which have already brought about the revolution of such a large part of Europe, and who threaten to revolutionize the universe; it is the ease with which its armies displayed its tricolor flag and planted the tree of its equality and its disorganizing freedom in Savoy and Belgium, in Holland and on the banks of the Rhine, into Switzerland and beyond the Alps, Piedmont, Milanese and up to Rome itself. » Then, after having granted the valor of the French troops and the skill of its leaders the part due to them in these conquests, he adds: “The sect and its plots, its legions of secret emissaries outstripped its armies everywhere . The traitors were in the fortresses to open the gates, they were even in the armies of the enemy, in the councils of the princes to abort the plans. Its clubs, its newspapers, its apostles had arranged the populace and prepared the ways. » Barruel gives numerous proofs of this assertion. The sincere history of the conquests of the Republic and the Empire has confirmed it.
CHAPTER XIV
IN THE PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION
The plan indicated by the Humanists, developed by the Encyclopedists, definitively decided by the Illuminati and put into execution by the Jacobins was transmitted. Smothered in the blood of Terror and in the mud of the Directory, Freemasonry was unable to raise the Temple of Humanity on the ruins of the Church of France which it had overthrown. The Church rose again. Freemasonry did not give up its project. She returned to it from the first days of the empire. It enlarges the circle of its action from year to year; and at the present time, it is assured of succeeding this time, all the more surely since it knows what caused it to fail in the 18th century. Slowly and surely, this is the watchword that she imposed on her agents and on herself, which has been kept and which will, she thinks, finally give her what she has been pursuing for five hundred years. It wants to annihilate the entire existing order of things, religion, society and property, to replace it with the state of pure nature. She couldn't. The Empire was a reaction that the Restoration accentuated. We will see it under the governments that will succeed one another, working to overcome their good intentions and to paralyze their efforts in good, to inspire them and assist them in evil; then finally to seize power itself, and then openly pursue the realization of the designs that the encyclopedists, the freemasons and the enlightened had conceived. The reaction took place first in the religious order. Catholicism could not be entirely suppressed. His doctrine and his morality had never ceased to live in a multitude of hearts, and his cult was even practiced at the risk of life. When the one who had conceived the thought and who had given himself the power to re-establish a certain order in society, wanted to set to work, he understood that, to raise France from its ruins, it was necessary to begin with the restoration of worship. ' Portalis had shown this perfectly in the speech he delivered to the Legislative Body, in the session of 15 Germinal Year X. But what worship? No other belief would the Catholic cult have been accepted, no other would have been viable. Everyone felt it, and Napoleon better than any other. Now, Catholic worship could only be restored by the Pope: hence, the need to come to an understanding with him. Napoleon saw this, and immediately began the negotiations which were to lead to the Concordat of 1801. However, Freemasonry was still there and it in no way renounced its project of annihilating Catholicism and with it Christian civilization. We will therefore see her at work again, no longer with the impetuosity of 93, but discreetly, slowly and, she thought, more surely (1). From the very day of the conclusion of the Concordat - even if it was under Masonic inspiration? it is difficult to say (2) - the reservations began, and soon the revivals of the anti-Christian spirit. After a century of incessant work, this spirit has managed today to consolidate almost all the conquests that the Revolution had made, and which it had been forced to abandon under the pressure of the Catholic spirit. The restored Catholic religion should have been, as before, the religion of the State (3). It seems that this was how things presented themselves to Napoleon's mind during the first overtures he made to Pius VII
1. See for the history of the Church of France in the 19th century (1802-1900), the conferences given to Catholics by ML Bourguin. Two volumes in-12. P. Téqui, publisher, rue de Tournon, 29, Paris. 2. What is certain is that Talleyrand, Grégoire, Fouché, the constitutionalists, the old Jansenists who returned to the government councils, the revolutionaries of Bonaparte's court, the skeptics and the impious who besieged Malmaison, despairing to prevent the consul from dealing, concerted their efforts to distort the spirit and letter of the Concordat. 3. The religion of the State is the religion that the State does not impose on anyone, but which it practices on its own behalf. The Republic has a religion, atheism, and it imposes it on its subjects.
In the draft Concordat dated November 26, 1800, the French negotiators allowed the word “state religion” to slip through. » In Title IX, art. 1st, it was said: “Under the above conditions and given their acceptance by the Holy See, the French government declares that the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion is the religion of the State. » Bonaparte therefore wanted to restore the national cult as a public cult, as a cult of the State, while leaving individuals the freedom to practice another. And yet the first Consul soon defended himself; and all the efforts were useless, "those of Spina, those of Consaîvi, those of Pius VII himself, to make him return to the primitive project, so natural, so logical, which should impose itself on a mind as lucid as the Once again, we cannot say whether there was, near Napoleon, from that moment, an intervention of this Counter-church which we have seen as the depositary of Renaissance thought, and which, for four centuries, worked, with a perseverance that nothing discouraged, to make it triumph. What we know is what history has recorded, from the mouth of Cardinal Pacca, this exchange of words between Volney and Bonaparte, the day after. of the signing of the Concordat: "Is this what you promised? - Calm down. Religion in France has death in its stomach: you will judge in ten years." Jew of the 18th century, Guillaume Dohm, who must bring back the initial thought of the equality of religions. He was its instigator and teacher to the princes of the modern world. He was archivist to HM the King of Prussia and secretary in the department of foreign affairs when he wrote in 1781, his memoir On the political reform of the situation of the Jews, addressed and dedicated to all sovereigns . He displays the theory of the State indifferent to religion, neutral, atheist, and, what is more serious, dominator of all religions. “The great and noble job of government,” he said, “consists of mitigating the exclusive principles of all these different Catholic, Lutheran, Socinian, Mohammedan societies, so that they do not turn to the detriment of the great society. » That the government allows each of these small particular societies to have its own esprit de corps, to retain even its prejudices when they are not harmful; but that it strives to inspire in each of its members a greater attachment to the State; and he will have achieved the great goal that he should have in view, when the qualities of gentleman, peasant, scholar, artisan, Christian or Jew will all be subordinated to that of citizen. » This is indeed the Napoleonic idea: this program drawn up twenty years in advance, Napoleon wanted to carry it out. After long debates, he succeeded in introducing into the Concordat itself, and above all he deposited in the organic articles, with which he surreptitiously accompanied it, a germ which only asked to develop to become this other civil constitution of the clergy that Mr. Briand forged in the law of separation and which he hoped to make us accept. The Concordat reads: “The government of the Republic recognizes that the Catholic, apostolic and Roman religion is the religion of the great majority of the French people. » In these words there is only the recognition of a fact, a fact which might not have been at that time and which may change over time; not the recognition of the right which its divine origin gives to the Catholic Church, and that of the unique situation which this origin gives it. The Concordat, through this wording, recognized Protestantism and Judaism, based on the fraction of citizens who profess it, rights in the State similar to those of Catholicism. These similar rights soon became equal rights, and, currently, it is the Protestants and the Jews, who nevertheless always remain the small, very small number, who are in the privileged situation. The Pope, on May 12, 1801, wrote to the First Consul to express his pain at this demand: “We will not hide from you, and on the contrary we will make the resounding admission to you, how much joy we have experienced long live the first overtures made to us for the re-establishment of the Catholic religion in France; and the flattering hope that this religion would be reestablished in its ancient splendor as dominant, made me see with much pain the unpleasant article which, in the official project, was proposed as the basis of all the others. We cannot help but point out to you that, being constituted by God for the defense of this religion and its propagation, we cannot, by an article of a solemn convention, sanction its degradation... If the Catholic religion is that of the majority of French people, can you doubt that their wishes will be fulfilled by restoring it to its former glory? Will you be retained by the opposition of the few, over which the majority prevails to such a high degree? Because of them, will you deprive France and the public authority of the great advantages that the complete re-establishment of the Catholic religion would provide? » Nothing helped; and the Pope, to avoid a greater misfortune, had to go through the will of Bonaparte (1). The question was of capital importance. Mr. Emile Olivier exaggerates when he expresses the opinion that this article of the Concordat established the separation of Church and State, which is now being demanded, he says, as if it had not been done since. a century. Far from enshrining the principle of separation, the Concordat sanctions union in a new mode. It is true that the Catholic religion is no longer the religion of the State. But although less intimate, less advantageous for the Church than the old order of things, that which was replaced by the Concordat is not of another nature. It maintains links with the State, and obligatory links. The Concordat kept the principles intact, it did not consecrate separation, “the religious dogma of the French Revolution. » But the Revolution, which wants separation, which wants it everywhere, prepared it from then on in France as much as it was in it. States separated from the Church and the Roman Church deprived of temporal sovereignty, these are the two most constant concerns of French
1. In a communication brought to the Count of Chambord by Mr. de Vaussay, Cardinal Pie did not ask for the qualification of "state religion" for Catholicism, but this declaration: "The religion of fourteen centuries in the past and of thirty-five million citizens in the present, is the religion of the country and its institutions ". freemasonry, the double object of its most continual efforts. The Church, in order for it to be right, must first of all be without a point of support on earth. It is with this aim that efforts were made to lower Catholicism in France to the rank of any religion, to diminish its prestige and its strength, to humiliate the clergy and to paralyze it. He returns to France, but he no longer forms an Order in the State, he no longer has any rights as a body, he is nothing more than a collection of individuals who will soon be distinguished from others only for suffer more insults and more outrages. He's not even the owner anymore. We know to what extent property is necessary for independence; the clergy will no longer have them. His property, the most legitimate that was, will not be returned to him; He will be reduced to the condition of an employee, and we will not fail to cut off his food to remind him of his subjection. It is true that Article the Church of France. But we know by what clever tactics this freedom was restricted from day to day, then how pious foundations had to always be constituted as rents from the State, so that it would be easier to seize them at the moment. day of separation, and finally how the compositional indemnity was itself abolished. To the government, already responsible for providing the clergy with food and board, the Concordat further granted the choice of people to be elevated to ecclesiastical dignities: “The first Consul will appoint, in the three months which will follow the publication of the Apostolic Constitution, the archbishops and bishops who must govern the dioceses of the new circumscriptions. — Likewise, the First Consul will appoint the new bishops to the episcopal seats which will subsequently become vacant. The Apostolic See will give them canonical institution. The bishops will appoint parishes, and they will only choose people approved by the government. » At various times, rulers made it a duty of religion or public honesty to choose the most worthy; but, at other times, they went to take, out of bias, the incapable and even the unworthy. Napoleon gave the example. He imposed fifteen constitutional bishops on Cardinal Caprara. Later, he looked for ways to do without the canonical institution. For this he called a national Council; but he could not get what he wanted from it. It would no longer have been dependence or even enslavement for the clergy, it would have been schism. Alongside the secular clergy, there are regular clergy in the Church. The latter could find in its very constitution conditions of independence refused to the former. Also Bonaparte was careful not to let the religious Orders reconstitute themselves. The decree of June 22, 1804 pronounced the dissolution of the association of the Fathers of the Faith, and of all other congregations or associations formed under the pretext of religion and not authorized. ". Furthermore, he ruled that: “No congregation or association of men or women may be formed in the future under the pretext of religion, unless it has been formally authorized by an imperial decree. » Bonaparte also said and repeated that he did not want congregations, that this is unsafe, that there is nothing to fear let him restore the monks (1). However, he authorized the Vincentians and the priests of the foreign missions. “These religious,” he said, to the Council of State, “will be very useful to me in Asia, Africa and America. I will send them to gather information on the state of the country, they will be secret agents of diplomacy.” He also authorized the Brothers of the Christian Schools as cogs in the university machine. “The Grand Master of the University will refer to their internal statutes, admit them to the oath, provide them with special clothing and have their schools monitored. » (Decree of March 17, 1808, art. 109). The authorization granted to the Sisters of Charity falls within the same plan. “The Superior General will reside in Paris and will thus be under the control of the government. » He imposed his own mother, Mme Loetitia Bonaparte, as general. Mr. Hanon respectfully observed that the rule did not allow this. He was locked up in Fénestrelle prison. To return to the secular clergy, Bonaparte ensured that their recruitment was not easy; there must not be many priests. Thirty-seven thousand four hundred priests were established following the Concordat. Bonaparte declares that he is only obliged by this treaty to pay the priests, numbering three thousand four hundred. He nevertheless grants five hundred francs to twenty-four thousand serving priests. The ten thousand others, as well as all the vicars, will remain the responsibility of the communes, which generally are too poor or too taxed to be able to give them the means to live (1). Also Roederer, one of the presidents of the Council of State, says: “The ministers have not yet been able to obtain a fixed salary in any municipality. The peasants eagerly wanted their mass and their Sunday service as in the past, but paying for it is something else (2). » This was hardly encouraging for vocations. They are not enough to fill the voids that death multiplies among these old people returning from exile; nevertheless, bishops are obliged, before proceeding with an ordination, to send to Paris the list of those to whom they wish to confer holy Orders (3). Napoleon shortened it as he pleased. Mgr Montault, bishop of Angers, and Mgr Simon, bishop. of Grenoble, were only able, the first in seven years, the second in eight, to ordain only eighteen priests each. But there is more. Napoleon monitored and directed information seminars. "We must not abandon the task of training young priests to ignorance and fanaticism," he said.... We have three or four thousand priests or vicars, children of ignorance, and dangerous because of their fanaticism and their passions. We must prepare more enlightened successors for them, by establishing, under the name of seminaries, special schools which will be under the control of the authority. We will place at their head educated professors, devoted to the government and friends of tolerance.
1. The budget of the Catholic faith in 1802 was 1,258,197 francs. That of 1803 amounted to 1,4 million. The last regular budget of Catholic worship under the first empire very little exceeded 1,7 million. 2. Œuvres, III, 481. 3. Organic articles, 25. This provision was not introduced until 1810.
(1) They will not limit themselves to teaching theology: they will add a kind of philosophy and an honest worldliness (2). Bailly! We will see these ideas reappear later: to teach a certain philosophy in the seminaries, to introduce a certain worldliness and to prepare young priests to be friends of tolerance. Napoleon wanted to have a hand at the same time. on worship. In the negotiations which preceded the signing of the Concordat, the Pope demanded recognition of the freedom of religion and the public exercise of its worship. This exercise had been proscribed by the Revolution; was formally recognized in the Concordat that these tyrannical laws were repealed. This point gave rise to the most painful discussions. “Through unspeakable fatigue, suffering and anguish of all kinds,” says Consalvi, “the day finally arrived when it seemed that we were reaching the desired end. » He had recognized, in the first article of the convention, the freedom and publicity of Catholic worship. Just as he was about to sign, he noticed that a text that was completely different from that which had been agreed upon had been slipped into his pen. Everything had to start again. New discussions and negotiations. Consalvi, to this sentence: "The Catholic, apostolic, Roman religion will be freely exercised in France," wanted only these words to be added: "Its worship will be public." The French commissioners had orders to require this addition: “By conforming to the
1. This word reveals the Masonic inspiration. 2. Thibaiideau. P. 485.
police regulations.” Consalvi sensed a trap. He was not mistaken: this trap was the organic articles that the government held in reserve and which had never been mentioned during the negotiations. The Holy See solemnly protested against this extra-diplomatic act. Organic articles were maintained; they were presented as being one and the same with the Concordat. We know the abuse that was made of it during the 19th century. Police regulations have invaded everything, and it is given to the mayor of the humblest village to formulate them as he wishes. Soon public worship existed only as a memory. Not only any manifestation, but any external sign of religion will end up being prohibited under the fine pretext that we must not harm the conscience of MM. free thinkers. The Church cannot be entirely enslaved so long as the Pope is free; also there is nothing (pie Freemasonry will pursue with more perseverance than the abolition of the temporal Power of the Popes, necessary for its independence. Was it under his inspiration, or following the impulses of his own ambition that Napoleon He tried to make the Pope his vassal? He was still only General Bonaparte, commanding the army of Italy, when after the capitulation of Mantua he went to Bologna to do so, says M. Thiers, " the law of the Pope". From there, he wrote to Joubert: "I am to deal with this priesthood, and, for this time, Saint Peter will again save the capital by ceding to us its most beautiful States” The next day. , he wrote to the Directorate: “My opinion is that Rome, once deprived of Bologna, Ferrari, Romagna, and the thirty million that we take from it, can no longer exist: THIS MACHINE WILL BREAK BY ITSELF. In this letter is the first diplomatic emergence of the Napoleonic idea, which we will see pursued by Napoleon I, then by Napoleon III, idea identical to the Masonic idea. On September 22, upon hearing of the Pope's illness, he instructed his brother Joseph, "if the Pope were to die, to do everything possible to prevent another from being made and to spark a revolution." . “Mr. Thiers gives on this occasion the ultimate reason for everything that has been done for a century against the Papacy: "The Directory saw in the Pope the spiritual leader of the enemy party of the Revolution," that is to say of pagan civilization. This is why the Directory and its general wanted there to be no more Pope. In the Memorial of Saint Helena, Napoleon openly sets out this fundamental idea of masonry, and how he first thought of realizing it. Speaking of his proclamations to Muslims, he said: “It was charlatanism, but from the highest... See the consequences: I took Europe from the rear; the old civilization remained surrounded, and who would then have thought of worrying the course of the destiny of our France and the regeneration of the century? (1) » Annihilate the old civilization, Christian civilization, regenerate the century in a pagan way, and this through France, this is the word which penetrates to the depths of contemporary history. If Napoleon had these thoughts, one might ask, why did he reestablish Catholic worship in France? He explains it in his Memorial: “When I raise the altars,” he said, “when I protect the places
1. See also: Correspondence of Napoleon I published by order of Napoleon III, t. V, p. 185, 191, 211. 1. Memorial of Saint Helena, vol. V, p. 384, 388.
of religion as they deserve to be treated in any country, the Pope will do what I ask him; he will calm the spirits, gather them in his hand and place them in mine. » And elsewhere: “With Catholicism I achieved all my great results more surely... Internally, with us, the many absorbed the few (Protestants and Jews), and I promised myself to deal with the latter with such equality, that there will soon no longer be any need to know the difference. (In other words, I would succeed in making indifference reign in religious matters). Outside, Catholicism preserved the Pope for me, and with my influence and my strength in Italy, I did not despair sooner or later, by one means or another, of ending up having the direction of this Pope to myself, and from then, what influence, what leverage of opinion on the rest of the world! (1) » We will see Haute-Vente take up this idea and strive to bring it to fruition. On the imperial throne, Napoleon did not lose his point of view. We knew what he did to confuse true religion with heresies in the minds of the people, putting everything on the same level, what he did to gradually succeed in suppressing all external worship, in making clergy a body of functionaries, and even to do without the Pope for the canonical institution of bishops. All this could not be sustainable if we did not succeed in taking away the Pope's independence. Napoleon did his best. On February 13, 1806, he wrote to Pius VII; “Your Holiness is sovereign in Rome, but I am its emperor. » Two years later, General Miollis captured the Eternal City, and on June 10, Napoleon published a decree which united all the States of the Pope with the French Empire. On July 6, Pius VII was removed from the Quirinal, while the cardinals were interned in Paris or locked up in state prisons. Prisoner, too, the gentle old man suffered the double assault of violence and deceit to obtain the annulment of the Concordat of 1801, and to make him sign another one in which his jurisdiction over the Church was almost completely abandoned to France (1). In the Memorial of Saint Helena (2), Napoleon says that in thus destroying the temporal power of the Popes he had “many other views”. Speaking of the proposal he had made for another Concordat: “I had my goal,” he said, “and he did not know it”; and, after the signature had been torn from the weakness of an old man exhausted by strength and terror: “All my great views,” he exclaimed, “had come to fruition.” Saint Helena became narrower and harsher, Pius VII wrote to Cardinal Consalvi this admirably Christian letter: “The family of the Emperor Napoleon has made us aware, through Cardinal Fesch, that the climate of Saint Helena Hélène is mortifying and the poor exile is visibly wasting away. We learned such news with infinite pain, and you will undoubtedly share it with us because we must both remember that, after God, it is mainly to him that the reestablishment of religion is due. in the great kingdom of France. The pious and courageous initiative of 1801 has made us forget and forgive its subsequent wrongs for a long time. Savona and Fontainebleau are only errors of the mind and errors of human ambition. The Concordat was a Christianly and heroically saving act.” It would be an unparalleled joy in our hearts to have contributed to reducing Napoleon's tortures. He can no longer be a danger to anyone, we would like him not to be a source of remorse for anyone.”
2. T. IV, p. 208, et t. V, from page 391 to 401
“I was going to raise the Pope excessively, surround him with pomp and homage, I would have made him an idol, he would have remained close to me, - Paris would have become the capital of the Christian world, and I would have ruled the religious world as well as the political world.” The concordat followed by the organic articles and the imprisonment of Pius VII in Savona and Fontainebleau are the concordant fruits of this same thought. These acts follow one another, they are the partial and successive realization of the unique plan designed by the Revolution. The revolutionary doctrine proclaims the omnipotence of the State; it cannot admit the existence of an independent and superior spiritual power, such as the Church. How to bring it down? The State will begin to unite with the Church and use this union to enslave it; then when he believes she is weakened enough to no longer be able to live on her own, he will separate from her again, hoping that, deprived of his support, she will perish. Napoleon - these words and these actions prove it - wanted, by making the Concordat, to enslave the Church to his absolute power. When he thought the moment had come, he exhausted all the resources of cunning and violence to seize spiritual power, not even fearing, to achieve this, to secretly weaken the Pope with drinks of morphine. To be able to direct the religious world in the ways which were to bring about “the regeneration of the century it was no less necessary to seize the direction of minds than to reduce the Pope to the state of an idol. Napoleon understood this well. For this purpose, he wanted to suppress the religious press to reorganize it in his own way: “My intention,” he wrote to Fouché, minister of police, “is that the ecclesiastical newspapers cease to appear , and that they be united in a single newspaper, which will take care of all the subscribers. This journal to be used for the instruction of ecclesiastics will be called Journal des Cures. The editors will be appointed by the Cardinal-Archbishop of Paris. It was with the same thought that he established the University and gave it a monopoly on teaching. The F. *. Fontanes, future grand master of the University, questioned about the note from Mr. Champagny which concluded with the reconstitution of the Oratory, the Order of the Benedictines of Saint-Maur and the congregations of the Christian doctrine, replied what they say our masters of the day: “In teaching, as in all things, there must be unity of view and government. France needs a single University and the University of a single leader. » "That's it," replied the dictator, "you understand me. » And the F. *. Fourcroy brought to the Legislative Body, on May 6, 1806, a bill worded as follows: “Art 'I. — There shall be formed, under the name of the Imperial University, a body responsible EXCLUSIVELY for public teaching and education throughout the Empire. » In his work Public Instruction and the Revolution, Duruy praises Napoleon for having, through the institution of the University, saved the Revolution and the revolutionary spirit. “What a marvelous conception is this University of France with its grand master, its council, its general inspectors, its grades and its powerful hierarchy! what a stroke of genius to have understood that it was only a large secular corporation to compete for the younger generations with the debris of the old teaching corporations and especially with their minds! Before 18 Brumaire, we could already predict the moment when reaction would have regained in the field of intelligence all the ground lost since 1789. Serious danger and which tended to do nothing less than call into question, in the very near future, the principles of tolerance and equality whose conquest had been the goal of so much effort and which remained the excuse for so much excess... After having riveted the present to the Revolution by the Civil Code and the Concordat , he assured her future through education. Of all the services that "Napoleon rendered, I know of none more memorable than having wrested education from the worst enemies of the new regime and entrusting it to a body deeply imbued with modern ideas." , the thoughts and designs of Napoleon, he himself affirmed equivalently On the evening of the assassination of the Duke of Enghien, he said to his friends: “We want to destroy the Revolution. I will defend it, BECAUSE I AM HERE. REVOLUTION, ME, ME (1).”
1. The History of the Consulate and the Empire, by Tilliers, vol. V, p. 14.
Was Napoleon I in contact with Freemasonry? modern and contemporary history, published by the Society of the History of the Revolution, under the direction of Mr. Aulard, Mr. Georges Bourgin published a series of articles under this title: Contribution to the History of France masonry under the First Empire On page 45 of the fascicle of July 14, 1905, he makes this quote: “I told him (Napoleon) O'Méara, (Napoleon's English surgeon in Saint Helena). some questions about Freemasonry and asked him his opinion on them: “They helped in the Revolution and in recent times still to reduce the power of the Pope and the influence of the Clergy”. I expressed a desire to know if he had not encouraged the Freemasons. “A little,” he replied, “because the 1st Vapp was being fought.” Mr. Philippe Gonnart has just published a work on the origins of the Napoleonic legend where he studies “the historical work of Napoleon in Saint Helena. » He raises and claims to resolve this question: “Did Napoleon alter the truth and distort his ideas by representing himself as the continuation of the Revolution? » “Napoleon was right in repeating over and over again,” says M. Gonnard, “in the writings of Saint Helena that he had been the defender of the ideas of 1789 in France, as well as the defender of the principle of nationalities in Europe. What did he say that wasn't accurate when he called back? that in Vendémiaire, in Fructidor, in 1815, he opposed the “reaction” and that he saved the great truths of our revolution. » He spoke the truth when he proclaimed: “I consecrated the Revolution, I infused it into the laws”. He spoke the truth when he called himself “the Messiah” of the Revolution. In the Tales of the Captivity of Montholon he says: “I have sown freedom with both hands wherever I have established my civil code. » Napoleon III, faithfully interpreting this thought in his work: Les Idées napoléoniennes, gave his uncle this testimony: “The Revolution, dying but not vanquished, had bequeathed to Napoleon its last wishes. Enlighten the nations, she had to tell him, establish on solid foundations the main results of our efforts. Executes in breadth what I said to do in depth. BE FOR EUROPE WHERE I WAS FOR FRANCE. Napoleon accomplished this great mission to the end (1). » In fact, wherever Napoleon carried his weapons, he did what had been done in France. He established
1. Napoleonic Ideas, vol. I, p. 28-29. 214
equality of worship, certainly one of the main results pursued and obtained by the sect that made the Revolution. “There is a universal religion,” says the Bulletin du Grand-Orient (July 1856, p. 172), “which includes all the particular religions of the globe: it is this religion that we profess; it is this universal religion THAT THE GOVERNMENT PROFESES WHEN IT PROCLAIMS freedom of worship. » Pius VII was therefore not mistaken when he said in his Encyclical of March 22, 1808: “Under this equal protection of all religions, the most dangerous, most cunning persecution is hidden and disguised. It is possible to imagine against the Church of Jesus Christ, and unfortunately the best concerted to throw confusion and even destroy it, if it were possible that the force and the wiles of hell could prevail against it.” While establishing equality of worship wherever his arms carried him, Napoleon expelled religious people and sold ecclesiastical property; and to change the social order as well as the religious order, he imposed the forced sharing of inheritances, he abolished workers' corporations, he upset the provinces, he destroyed local liberties and overthrew national dynasties; in a word, he annihilated the old order of things to establish a new one, he endeavored to replace Christian civilization with a civilization of which revolutionary dogmas would have been the foundation and principle.
CHAPTER XVI
UNDER THE RESTORATION
The empire collapsed, France believed that only those who had made it could, after so many upheavals and so many ruins, raise it up and return it to its ways. She therefore turned her eyes towards the sons of S. Louis (1). Already, in 1799, his heart called them. Freemasonry would have liked, if the monarchical regime were to impose itself again, on us 1. An unsuspecting writer, Duvergier de Hauranne, recognized that “the Bourbons found no support in the monarchies of the continent”. The adversaries of the Restoration were forced to admit from the first moment that no movement was more national. Marshal Ney: “To spare the homeland the terrible evils of a civil war, all that remained for the French was to fully embrace the cause of their former kings.” The Carnot regicide: “No reasonable doubt could arise about the wish of the French nation in favor of the Bourbon dynasty”. La Fayette said that he was happy to see the return of the Bourbons “become a signal and a guarantee of happiness and public freedom” and he added that he was deeply united with this national satisfaction. And Guizot: “The more we prove that no general will, no great force, internal or external, called for and brought about the Restoration, the more we will shed light on the specific and intimate force of this superior necessity which determined the event.” Mirabeau had put forward the candidacy of the Duke of Brunswick and in 1791, Carro had proposed to the leader of the Jacobins the candidacy of the Duke of York, son of the King of England. But the sect felt so well that the wish of the nation called for the return of the Bourbons, and that one day or another this wish would become irresistible, that it wanted to take the lead and seize the movement in order to dominate it and direct. Two distinguished masons, generals Malet and Oudet, founders of the Philadelphes society in Besançon, began negotiations with Louis XVIII. They were preceded by Sieyès and those who, with him, prepared the dictatorship which was inaugurated by the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire. What Masonry1 wanted, by one means or another, was, while undergoing the necessary necessities, to save the Revolution, maintain its spirit and keep as much of its conquests as possible. The sect had this obtained from Napoleon through despotism; from Louis XVIII, she promised to obtain it through what she calls “liberty”. What Malet and Oudet had wanted to negotiate with Louis XVIII was what he suffered. fifteen years later, the establishment of the constitutional regime, of the parliamentary mechanism which would allow the war against the Church to continue. In 1799, Louis XVIII would have been able to free himself more easily from the Masonic extinction. He would have been freer to restore. the ancient national constitution stripped of its ahus The reestablishment of Catholic worship was necessary, as we have seen, to the point that Napoleon saw nothing more urgent than to negotiate with the Pope If Louis XVIII. Had Napoleon negotiated the Concordat, it would have been different. He took it well through the steps he took with the Holy See after the second Restoration, with the aim of improving that of Napoleon. had bequeathed; and, free, the Church of France, purified by martyrdom, rid of the stains of Jansenism, could have put the very Christian nation back on the paths of true civilization. The whole of Europe was upset. It was therefore to all of Europe, and not only to France, that it was necessary to give firm foundations. The sovereigns of Russia, Austria and Prussia wanted to do this, and made this famous convention between them which was called the “Holy Alliance”. “There is, in this affair,” wrote J. de Maistre, of Saint-Pétershourg, to Mr. Count de Vallaise, — a touching and respectable side which must be appreciated and venerated, independently of any question that may be raised. could raise on the spirit which Will dictate and WHO IS TODAY POWERFUL ENOUGH TO BE ORDERED BY THE SOVEREIGNERS. What was this spirit, in what, was it incarnated to have this power? a new communication to his king, says that this spirit was that of the Illuminated “It is this Illuminism (not that of Weishaupt, but that of Saint-Martin) which dictated the Paris convention, and especially the extraordinary sentences of the. article which resounded throughout Europe.. I am perfectly aware of the machines that these people used to approach the august author of the convention (the Emperor of Russia), and to 'take hold of his mind. Women entered it, as they enter everywhere..., If the mind which produced this piece had spoken clearly, we would read at the top: Convention by which such and such princes declare that all Christians do not are only a family professing the same religion, and that the different denominations which distinguish them mean nothing (1). » This universal religion, in which the sectarians therefore wanted to confuse all religions, they called transcendental Christianity, and conceived it as a pure religiosity or a religion without dogmas. This is what the Alliance-Israelite-Universale and Freemasonry continue to pursue today, although under other names. And today, as then, Freemasons and Jews use rulers and governments to achieve this. J. de Maistre had observed this for the previous century: “. It can be affirmed that, during the 18th century, the governments of Europe did almost nothing of note, which was not directed by the secret spirit towards an aim of which the sovereigns did not suspect. (2). » He observed this again at the start of the 19th century; and today it is easy for everyone who knows how to see to make the same observation with their own eyes.' Powerless to oppose the course of events, the secret societies therefore strove, during the Restoration, to direct them for their own benefit to prevent the social order based on faith from reestablishing itself in Europe, and especially in France. . What they had obtained through the “Holy Alliance” of the Emperor of Russia, the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia, they endeavored to obtain from the King of France. Without doubt, Louis XVIII, personally, was not a Catholic of the first caliber, he had drunk from the cup of his century; but he had royal sense, and if he had not been circumvented, if he had had the
1. J. de Maistre, Complete Works; t. XIII, 219-222. 2. J. de Maistre, Complete Works, vol. XIII, p. 339.
hands free, he would have, without a doubt, given France a more perfect and more solid Restoration. Among all the conquests of the Revolution, the one which was the most important in the eyes of the sect, the most useful to its designs, the most necessary to maintain, was the indifference of power towards religion. Also, what she feared most in the royalist restoration which, in 1799, was announced as imminent, was the reestablishment of the state religion; and what she strove above all to obtain when the Restoration took place was the maintenance of the equal protection of all religions which Napoleon had put into force (1). Another question 1. The Charter of 1814 was expressed in these terms: Art. 5. — Everyone professes their religion with equal freedom, and obtains the same protection for their worship. Art. 6. — However, the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion is the religion of the State. Art. 7. — The ministers of the Catholic and Roman religion and those of other Christian religions alone receive salaries from the royal treasury. The Sovereign Pontiff in a brief dated from Cesena complained to the Bishop of Troyes: “While we hoped,” said Pius VII, “that after such a happy political return the Catholic religion would not only be rid of all obstacles that it encountered in France and against which we had never ceased to protest, but still restored to its former splendor and dignity, we have seen that the constitution maintains a profound silence on this subject and that it does not even mention the Almighty God through whom kings reign and princes command. You will easily understand how painful it is for us to see... that this religion, which is that of the majority of French people, is not proclaimed the one that the laws and the government protect with their authority. Our pain increases when reading article 22, (of the constitutional plan adopted by the Senate in its session of April 6. The Senate, created by Bonaparte, was composed of Freemasons), which not only allows freedom of religion and conscience, but promises protection to this freedom and to the ministers of the various religions. You must not demonize yourself that she also had at heart, it was that of sovereignty. She wanted the king to reign, but she could not consent to him governing, to having effective and real authority in his hands. The Charter clearly declared that authority resided entirely in the person of the king, and that the Catholic religion was the religion of the State: article 6 testified to the intentions of the king, but these were only words contradicted by article 5 and by article 7. And just as the Constitution granted freedom of religion and freedom of the press, it restored the freedom of the forum, silent for ten years. Two enlightened masters, Talleyrand and Dallery, used the influences near Louis XVIII that J. de Maistre has just spoken about, to get the king to bring with him these plagues, as Gregory XVI calls them. Others acted close to Alexander, and it is on his invitation that mortal wound this article brings to the Catholic religion in France. Because as soon as we affirm the freedom of all religions without distinction, we confuse truth with error and we put the holy and immaculate wife of Christ, the holy and immaculate wife of Christ, on the same line as heretical sects and Jewish perfidy. Church outside of which there is no salvation. On the other hand, as soon as we promise favor and protection to heretical sects and their ministers, we not only tolerate and protect people, but also errors; Now this is what consists of this fatal and too deplorable heresy, which, according to the expression of S. Augustine, affirms that all heretics follow the right path and hold the truth: an affirmation so absurd that it seems incredible. We were also surprised and distressed by article 23, which grants freedom of the press; it is a great peril, the certain loss of morals and faith: if one could doubt it, the experience of times past there. would demonstrate; because it is by this means above all, it is certain, that the morals of the people were first perverted. peoples, then corrupted and destroyed their faith, and finally excited seditions, unrest and revolutions. Amid the great corruption that reigns, these same evils would be to be feared, if we granted to everyone what God forbid, the faculty of printing what he pleases. The peremptory statement that Louis XVIII made the declaration of Saint-Ouen gave the sect the guarantee of constitutional freedoms. It was at this very moment that the word liberal was created, intended to serve as a veil for the ideas and works of Freemasonry. However, the outpouring of love with which France welcomed its king, and the joy with which it went to the altars, raised fears that the precautions taken would become useless. The return of Napoleon was resolved, prepared, accomplished. In the first days of January 1910, the historian of Napoleon, Mr. Frédéric Masson, published the unpublished papers of Camille Gautier and Dumolin. They provided proof that the return from the island of Elba was a Masonic plot. In Grenoble and Dauphiné, the number of masons was considerable in 1789. In 1814, it increased with all the dismissed officers, who grouped together under the direction of Gautier (1).
1. Gautier, initiated into the “La Concorde” lodge, Orient of Livorno, became master there in 1802; he received, two years later, from the lodge “Les Amis de l’Honneur français”, Orient de Porto-Ferrajo, considerable dignities, which were completed, in the Orient of Ile-Rousse, by the knight prince of 'Aigle and the Pelican, perfect free mason of Heredon; on January 26, 1805 or 1807, in the East of Bastia, he was elevated, by the "Sovereign chapter of Rose Croix", to the dignity of prince and knight perfect free mason of Heredon, under the title of sovereign prince knight of Rose Croix, with full powers to convene lodges, hold the headquarters of assembled lodges, make and perfect masons up to the rank of knight of the Sword known as the Orient. Finally, on August 8, 1808, he received supreme powers from the Grand Orient of France which were confirmed, with the representative of the Grand Master, by the delegates of the Symbolic Grand Lodge, the Administrative Grand Lodge and the General Grand Chapter. He could not, in the chapter ranks, rise higher. Certainly, these Masonic honors could not fail to assure him, over all the regiments and all the cities where a regular lodge operated, uncontested supremacy. It was with the certainty of a base of operations in the middle of the mountains that Napoleon responded to the call made to him (1). It is therefore to Freemasonry that we owe the second invasion. The first was the conclusion of the Revolution that the sect had prepared, organized, perpetrated, and the third was the fruit of Napoleon III's policy faithful to the oaths he had sworn to it. After Waterloo the Freemasons, who were to reproach the Bourbons so much for having returned in the “vans from abroad” (2), solicited to Allies help
1. “May lovers of extraordinary adventures,” said Mr. Frédéric Masson, “have conceived in another way and told differently the return from the island of Elba; that they would have found the Emperor more poetic if he arrived in France without having warned anyone or prepared anything for his return; that they found the nation more moving, if it was only conquered by the appearance of Napoleon, that is possible; but the version that, for the first time, the unpublished papers of Camille Gautier and Dumoulin allowed me to give will appear, to anyone who reflects, both more probable and more worthy of the wisdom of the Emperor. 2. Until March 31, 1811, the allied sovereigns had continued to treat with Napoleon, and when the disappearance of the emperor seemed inevitable, they sought a political combination which excluded the Bourbons. The Czar especially did not want to hear about them. On the other hand, the testimonies of contemporaries least suspected of partiality, such as Carnot, Ney, Lafayefte, General Foy all establish that the unanimous wishes of the French were for a monarchical restoration, and the historians A. Sorel. L. Blanc, Guizot, Henry Houssaye, in his major work 1814.
all agreed that it was required by the national interest. Mr. Edmond Biré, whose knowledge and historical probity are universally known, wrote in Alfred Nettement his life and his works, pp. 267-279: “There was no bias among the Allies in 1814 in favor of the Bourbons; on the contrary, they had little benevolent dispositions towards the ancient dynasty, which had reigned over France for so long and held the first rank in Europe. They began the war without the restoration of monarchical principles having any effect on their willingness to give France a king other than the head of the house of Bourbon. Twice, a deputation of Freemasons went to the Allied camp to ask them to impose the kingship of a Dutchman, the Prince of Orange, or that of Louis-Philippe, whom they succeeded in enthroning later. The head of this embassy was Charles Teste (1). Louis XVIII, returning from Ghent, was at the gates of Paris on July 6, but the Masonic diplomacy which surrounded the allied kings only allowed him to enter his capital on the 8th, after he had dismissed those of his ministers who had followed him into exile, and that he had replaced them by men of the Revolution (2), the two apostates Talleyrand and Louis, with the regicide Fouché as minister of police (3). The constitutional regime was therefore implemented in their projects; they completed it without a flood; this combination presented itself to their thoughts. They intended to the end to treat with Napoleon; even after having given up dealing with him, they did not yet think of Louis XVIII
1. Eckert of Dresden, Protestant: Freemasonry, 1852, etc., t. II, pp. 162-172. — Vaulabelle, History of the two Restorations, t. V, chap. II and IV. 2. Rohrbacher, XXVIII, 194. 3. Fouché was imposed by Freemasonry. After the hundred days, M. de Vitroilles having gone to Arnouville to sound out the intentions of the coalition, Wellington said to him: “In all this there is a question of things, the tricolor cockade, and a question of person, Fouché. Mr. de Vitrolles having reminded the Duke that the tricolor cockade was the sign of revolt against the king and Fouché a regicide: “Well,” replied the English general, “we could perhaps abandon the question of things, but for that of person it is impossible …
