But if the role of the Jews in the Revolution remains obscure there can be no doubt of the part played by the secret societies in the revolt against all religion, all moral laws, and social order, which had been reduced to a system in the councils of the Illuminati.
It was this conspiracy that rea.s.serted itself in the Babouviste rising of 1796 which was directly inspired by the secret societies. After the death of Babeuf, his friend and inspirer Buonarotti with the aid of Marat"s brother founded a masonic lodge, the _Amis Sinceres_, which was affiliated to the _Philadelphes_, at Geneva, and as "Diacre Mobile" of the "Order of Sublime and Perfect Masons" created three new secret degrees, in which the device of the Rose-Croix I.N.R.I. was interpreted as signifying "Justum necare reges injustos."[638]
The part to be a.s.signed to each intrigue in preparing the world-movement of which the French Revolution was the first expression is a question on which no one can speak with certainty. But, as at the present moment, the composite nature of this movement must never be lost to sight.
Largely perhaps the work of Frederick the Great, it is probable that but for the Orleanistes the plot against the French monarchy might have come to nought; whilst again, but for his position at the head of illuminized Freemasonry it is doubtful whether the Duc d"Orleans could have commanded the forces of revolution. Further, how far the movement, which, like the modern Bolshevist conspiracy, appears to have had unlimited funds at its disposal, was financed by the Jews yet remains to be discovered. Hitherto only the first steps have been taken towards elucidating the truth about the French Revolution.
In the opinion of an early nineteenth-century writer the sect which engineered the French Revolution was absolutely international:
The authors of the Revolution are not more French than German, Italian, English, etc. They form a particular nation which took birth and has grown in the darkness, in the midst of all civilized nations, with the object of subjecting them to its domination.[639]
It is curious to find almost precisely the same idea expressed by the Duke of Brunswick, formerly the "Eques a Victoria" of the Stricte Observance, "Aaron" of the Illuminati, and Grand Master of German Freemasonry, who, whether because the Revolution had done its work in destroying the French monarchy and now threatened the security of Germany, or whether because he was genuinely disillusioned in the Orders to which he had belonged, issued a Manifesto to all the lodges in 1794, declaring that in view of the way in which Masonry had been penetrated by this great sect the whole Order must be temporarily suppressed. It is essential to quote a part of this important doc.u.ment verbatim:
Amidst the universal storm produced by the present revolutions in the political and moral world, at this period of supreme illumination and of profound blindness, it would be a crime against truth and humanity to leave any longer shrouded in a veil things that can provide the only key to past and future events, things that should show to thousands of men whether the path they have been made to follow is the path of folly or of wisdom. It has to do with you, VV. FF. of all degrees and of all secret systems. The curtain must at last be drawn aside, so that your blinded eyes may see that light you have ever sought in vain, but of which you have only caught a few deceptive rays....
We have raised our building under the wings of darkness; ... the darkness is dispelled, and a light more terrifying than darkness itself strikes suddenly on our sight. We see our edifice crumbling and covering the ground with ruins; we see destruction that our hands can no longer arrest. And that is why we send away the builders from their workshops. With a last blow of the hammer we overthrow the columns of salaries. We leave the temple deserted, and we bequeath it as a great work to posterity which shall raise it again on its ruins and bring it to completion.
Brunswick then goes on to explain what has brought about the ruin of the Order, namely, the infiltration of Freemasonry by secret conspirators:
A great sect arose which, taking for its motto the good and the happiness of man, worked in the darkness of the conspiracy to make the happiness of humanity a prey for itself. This sect is known to everyone: its brothers are known no less than its name. It is they who have undermined the foundations of the Order to the point of complete overthrow; it is by them that all humanity has been poisoned and led astray for several generations. The ferment that reigns amongst the peoples is their work. They founded the plans of their insatiable ambition on the political pride of nations. Their founders arranged to introduce this pride into the heads of the peoples. They began by casting odium on religion.... They invented the rights of man which it is impossible to discover even in the book of Nature, and they urged the people to wrest from their princes the recognition of these supposed rights. The plan they had formed for breaking all social ties and of destroying all order was revealed in all their speeches and acts. They deluged the world with a mult.i.tude of publications; they recruited apprentices of every rank and in every position; they deluded the most perspicacious men by falsely alleging different intentions. They sowed in the hearts of youth the seed of covetousness, and they excited it with the bait of the most insatiable pa.s.sions.
Indomitable pride, thirst of power, such were the only motives of this sect: their masters had nothing less in view than the thrones of the earth, and the government of the nations was to be directed by their nocturnal clubs.
This is what has been done and is still being done. But we notice that princes and people are unaware how and by what means this is being accomplished. That is why we say to them in all frankness: The misuse of our Order, the misunderstanding of our secret, has produced all the political and moral troubles with which the world is filled to-day. You who have been initiated, you must join yourselves with us in raising your voices, so as to teach peoples and princes that the sectarians, the apostates of our Order, have alone been and will be the authors of present and future revolutions. We must a.s.sure princes and peoples, on our honour and our duty, that our a.s.sociation is in no way guilty of these evils.
But in order that our attestations should have force and merit belief, we must make for princes and people a complete sacrifice; so as to cut out to the roots the abuse and error, we must from this moment dissolve the whole Order. This is why we destroy and annihilate it completely for the time; we will preserve the foundations for posterity, which will clear them when humanity, in better times, can derive some benefit from our holy alliance.[640]
Thus, in the opinion of the Grand Master of German Freemasonry, a secret sect working within Freemasonry had brought about the French Revolution and would be the cause of all future revolutions. We shall now pursue the course of this sect after the first upheaval had ended.
Three years after the Duke of Brunswick issued his Manifesto to the lodges, the books of Barruel, Robison, and others appeared, laying bare the whole conspiracy. It has been said that all these books "fell flat."[641] This is directly contrary to the truth. Barruel"s book went into no less than eight editions, and I have described elsewhere the alarm that his work and Robison"s excited in America. In England they led to the very tangible result that a law was pa.s.sed by the English Parliament in 1799 prohibiting all secret societies with the exception of Freemasonry.
It is evident, then, that the British Government recognized the continued existence of these a.s.sociations and the danger they presented to the world. This fact should be borne in mind when we are a.s.sured that Barruel and Robison had conjured up a bogey which met with no serious attention from responsible men. For the main purpose of Barruel"s book is to show that not only had Illuminism and Grand Orient Masonry contributed largely to the French Revolution, but that three years after that first explosion they were still as active as ever. This is the great point which the champions of the "bogey" theory are most anxious to refute. "The Bavarian Order of the Illuminati," wrote Mr. Waite, "was founded by Adam Weishaupt in 1776, and it was suppressed by the Elector of Bavaria in 1789.... Those who say that "it was continued in more secret forms" have never produced one item of real evidence."[642] Now, as we have seen, the Illuminati were not suppressed by the Elector of Bavaria in 1789, but in 1786--first error of Mr. Waite. But more extraordinary confusion of mind is displayed in his _Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry_, where, in a Masonic Chronology, he gives, this time under the date of 1784, "Suppression of the Illuminati," but under 1793: "J.J.C. Bode joined the Illuminati under Weishaupt." At a matter of fact, this was the year Bode died. These examples will serve to show the reliance that can be placed on Mr. Waite"s statement concerning the Illuminati.
We shall now see that not only the Illuminati but Weishaupt himself still continued to intrigue long after the French Revolution had ended.
Directly the Reign of Terror was over, the masonic lodges, which during the Revolution had been replaced by the clubs, began to reopen, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century were in a more flourishing condition than ever before. "It was the most brilliant epoch of Masonry," wrote the Freemason Bazot in his History of Freemasonry.
Nearly 1,200 lodges existed in France under the Empire; generals, magistrates, artists, savants, and notabilities in every line were initiated into the Order.[643] The most eminent of these was Prince Cambaceres, pro Grand Master of the Grand Orient.
It is in the midst of this period that we find Weishaupt once more at work behind the scenes of Freemasonry. Thus in the remarkable masonic correspondence published by M. Benjamin Fabre in his _Eques a Capite Galeato_--of which, as has already been pointed out, the authenticity is admitted by eminent British Freemasons--a letter is reproduced from Pyron, representative in Paris of the Grand Orient of Italy, to the Marquis de Chefdebien, dated September 9, 1808, in which it is stated that "a member of the sect of Bav." has asked for information on a certain point of ritual.
On December 29, 1808, Pyron writes again: "By the words "sect of B...."
I meant W...."; and on December 3, 1809, puts the matter quite plainly: "The other word remaining at the end of my pen refers enigmatically to Weis=pt."
So, as M. Fabre points out:
There is no longer any doubt that it is a question here of Weishaupt, and yet one observes that his name is not yet written in all its letters. It must be admitted here that Pyron took great precautions when it was a matter of Weishaupt! And one is led to ask what could be the extraordinary importance of the role played at this moment in the Freemasonry of the First Empire by this Weishaupt, who was supposed to have been outside the masonic movement since Illuminism was brought to trial in 1786![644]
But the Marquis de Chefdebien entertained no illusions about Weishaupt, whose intrigues he had always opposed, and in a letter dated May 12, 1806, to the Freemason Roettiers, who had referred to the danger of isolated masonic lodges, he asks:
In good faith, very reverend brother, is it in isolated lodges that the atrocious conspiracy of Philippe [the Duc d"Orleans] and Robespierre was formed? Is it from isolated lodges that those prominent men came forth, who, a.s.sembled at the Hotel de Ville, stirred up revolt, devastation, a.s.sa.s.sination? And is it not in the lodges bound together, co-and sub-ordinated, that the monster Weishaupt established his tests and had his horrible principles prepared?[645]
If, then, as M. Gustave Bord a.s.serts, the Marquis de Chefdebien had himself belonged to the Illuminati before the Revolution, here is indeed Illuminist evidence in support of Barruel! Yet disillusioned as the "Eques a Capite Galeato" appears to have been with regard to Illuminism, he still retained his allegiance to Freemasonry. This would tend to prove that, however subversive the doctrines of the Grand Orient may have been--and indeed undoubtedly were--it was not Freemasonry itself but Illuminism which organized the movement of which the French Revolution was the first manifestation. As Monsignor Dillon has expressed it:
Had Weishaupt not lived, Masonry might have ceased to be a power after the reaction consequent on the French Revolution. He gave it a form and character which caused it to outlive that reaction, to energize to the present day, and which will cause it to advance until its final conflict with Christianity must determine whether Christ or Satan shall reign on this earth to the end.[646]
If to the word Masonry we add Grand Orient--that is to say, the Masonry not of Great Britain, but of the Continent--we shall be still nearer to the truth.
In the early part of the nineteenth century Illuminism was thus as much alive as ever. Joseph de Maistre, writing at this period, constantly refers to the danger it presents to Europe. Is it not also to Illuminism that a mysterious pa.s.sage in a recent work of M. Lenotre refers? In the course of conversation with the friends of the false Dauphin Hervagault.
Monsignor de Savine is said to have "made allusions in prudent and almost terrified terms to some international sect ... a power superior to all others ... which has arms and eyes everywhere and which governs Europe to-day."[647]
When in _World Revolution_ I a.s.serted that during the period that Napoleon held the reins of power the devastating fire of Illuminism was temporarily extinguished, I wrote without knowledge of some important doc.u.ments which prove that Illuminism continued without break from the date of its foundation all through the period of the Empire. So far, then, from overstating the case by saying that Illuminism did not cease in 1786, I understated it by suggesting that it ceased even for this brief interval. The doc.u.ments in which this evidence is to be found are referred to by Lombard de Langres, who, writing in 1820, observes that the Jacobins were invisible from the 18th Brumaire until 1813, and goes on to say:
Here the sect disappears; we find to guide us during this period only uncertain notions, scattered fragments; the plots of Illuminism lie buried in the boxes of the Imperial police.
But the contents of these boxes no longer lie buried; transported to the Archives Nationales, the doc.u.ments in which the intrigues of Illuminism are laid bare have at last been given to the public. Here there can be no question of imaginative abbes, Scotch professors, or American divines conjuring up a bogey to alarm the world; these dry official reports prepared for the vigilant eye of the Emperor, never intended and never used for publication, relate calmly and dispa.s.sionately what the writers have themselves heard and observed concerning the danger that Illuminism presents to all forms of settled government.
The author of the most detailed report[648] is one Francois Charles de Berckheim, special commissioner of police at Mayence towards the end of the Empire, who as a Freemason is naturally not disposed to prejudice against secret societies. In October 1810 he writes, however, that his attention has been drawn to the Illuminati by a pamphlet which has just fallen into his hands, namely the _Essai sur la Secte des Illumines_, which, like many contemporaries, he attributes originally to Mirabeau.
He then goes on to ask whether the sect still exists, and if so whether it is indeed "an a.s.sociation of frightful scoundrels who aim, as Mirabeau a.s.sures us, at the overthrow of all law and all morality, at replacing virtue by crime in every act of human life." Further, he asks whether both sects of _Illumines_ have now combined in one and what are their present projects. Conversations with other Freemasons further increase Berckheim"s anxiety on the subject; one of the best informed observes to him: "I know a great deal, enough at any rate to be convinced that the _Illumines_ have vowed the overthrow of monarchic governments and of all authority on the same basis."
Berckheim thereupon sets out to make enquiries, with the result that he is able to state that the _Illumines_ have initiates all over Europe, that they have spared no efforts to introduce their principles into the lodges, and "to spread a doctrine subversive of all settled government ... under the pretext of the regeneration of social morality and the amelioration of the lot and condition of men by means of laws founded on principles and sentiments unknown hitherto and contained only in the heads of the leaders." "Illuminism," he declares, "is becoming a great and formidable power, and I fear, in my conscience, that kings and peoples will have much to suffer from it unless foresight and prudence break its frightful mechanism [_ses affreux restorts_]."
Two years later, on January 16, 1813, Berckheim writes again to the Minister of Police:
Monseigneur, they write to me from Heidelberg ... that a great number of initiates into the mysteries of Illuminism are to be found there.
These gentlemen wear as a sign of recognition a gold ring on the third finger of the left hand; on the back of this ring there is a little rose, in the middle of this rose is an almost imperceptible dint; by pressing this with the point of a pin one touches a spring, by this means the two gold circles are detached. On the inside of the first of these circles is the device: "Be German as you ought to be"; on the inside of the second of these circles are engraved the words "Pro Patria."
Subversive as the ideas of the Illuminati might be, they were therefore not subversive of German patriotism. We shall find this apparent paradox running all through the Illuminist movement to the present day.
In 1814 Berckheim drew up his great report on the secret societies of Germany, which is of so much importance in throwing a light on the workings of the modern revolutionary movement, that extracts must be given here at length.[649] His testimony gains greater weight from the vagueness he displays on the origins of Illuminism and the role it had played before the French Revolution; it is evident, therefore, that he had not taken his ideas from Robison or Barruel--to whom he never once refers--but from information gleaned on the spot in Germany. The opening paragraphs finally refute the fallacy concerning the extinction of the sect in 1786.
The oldest and most dangerous a.s.sociation is that which is generally known under the denomination of the _Illumines_ and of which the foundation goes back towards the middle of the last century.
Bavaria was its cradle; it is said that it had for founders several chiefs of the Order of the Jesuits; but this opinion, advanced perhaps at random, is founded only on uncertain premises; in any case, in a short time it made rapid progress, and the Bavarian Government recognized the necessity of employing methods of repression against it and even of driving away several of the princ.i.p.al sectaries.
But it could not eradicate the germ of the evil. The _Illumines_ who remained in Bavaria, obliged to wrap themselves in darkness so as to escape the eye of authority, became only the more formidable: the rigorous measures of which they were the object, adorned by the t.i.tle of persecution, gained them new proselytes, whilst the banished members went to carry the principles of the a.s.sociation into other States.
Thus in a few years Illuminism multiplied its hotbeds all through the south of Germany, and as a consequence in Saxony, in Prussia, in Sweden, and even in Russia.
The reveries of the Pietists have long been confounded with those of the Illumines. This error may arise from the denomination of the sect, which at first suggests the idea of a purely religious fanaticism and of mystic forms which it was obliged to take at its birth in order to conceal its principles and projects; but the a.s.sociation always had a political tendency. If it still retains some mystic traits, it is in order to support itself at need by the power of religious fanaticism, and we shall see in what follows how well it knows to turn this to account.
The doctrine of Illuminism is subversive of every kind of monarchy; unlimited liberty, absolute levelling down, such is the fundamental dogma of the sect; to break the ties that bind the Sovereign to the citizen of a state, that is the object of all its efforts.
No doubt some of the princ.i.p.al chiefs, amongst whom are numbered men distinguished for their fortune, their birth, and the dignities with which they are invested, are not the dupes of these demagogic dreams: they hope to find in the popular emotions they stir up the means of seizing the reigns of power, or at any rate of increasing their wealth and their credit; but the crowd of adepts believe in it religiously, and, in order to reach the goal shown to them, they maintain incessantly a hostile att.i.tude towards sovereigns.
Thus the _Illumines_ hailed with enthusiasm the ideas that prevailed in France from 1789 to 1804. Perhaps they were not foreign to the intrigues which prepared the explosions of 1789 and the following years; but if they did not take an active part in these manoeuvres, it is at least beyond doubt that they openly applauded the systems which resulted from them; that the Republican armies when they penetrated into Germany found in these sectarians auxiliaries the more dangerous for the sovereigns of the invaded states in that they inspired no distrust, and we can say with a.s.surance that more than one general of the Republic owed a part of its success to his understanding with the _Illumines_.
It would be a mistake if one confounded Illuminism with Freemasonry. These two a.s.sociations, in spite of the points of resemblance they may possess in the mystery with which they surround themselves, in the tests that precede initiation, and in other matters of form, are absolutely distinct and have no kind of connexion with each other. The lodges of the Scottish Rite number, it is true, a few _Illumines_ amongst the Masons of the higher degrees, but these adepts are very careful not to be known as such to their brothers in Masonry or to manifest ideas that would betray their secret.
Berckheim then goes on to describe the subtle methods by which the Illuminati now maintain their existence; learning wisdom from the events of 1786, their organization is carried on invisibly, so as to defy the eye of authority: