The system of the Illumines is not to embrace the dogmas of a sect, but to turn all errors to its advantage, to concentrate in itself everything that men have invented in the way of duplicity and imposture.
More than this, Illuminism was not only the a.s.semblage of all errors, of all ruses, of all subtleties of a theoretic kind, it was also an a.s.semblage of all practical methods for rousing men to action. For in the words of von Hammer on the a.s.sa.s.sins, that cannot be too often repeated:
Opinions are powerless so long as they only confuse the brain without arming the hand. Scepticism and free-thinking as long as they occupied only the minds of the indolent and philosophical have caused the ruin of no throne.... It is nothing to the ambitious man what people believe, but it is everything to know how he may turn them for the execution of his projects.
This was what Weishaupt so admirably understood; he knew how to take from every a.s.sociation, past and present, the portions he required and to weld them all into a working system of terrible efficiency--the disintegrating doctrines of the Gnostics and Manicheans, of the modern philosophers and Encyclopaedists, the methods of the Ismailis and the a.s.sa.s.sins, the discipline of the Jesuits and Templars, the organization and secrecy of the Freemasons, the philosophy of Machiavelli, the mystery of the Rosicrucians--he knew moreover, how to enlist the right elements in all existing a.s.sociations as well as isolated individuals and turn them to his purpose. So in the army of the Illuminati we find men of every shade of thought, from the poet Goethe[602] to the meanest intriguer--lofty idealists, social reformers, visionaries, and at the same time the ambitious, the rancorous, and the disgruntled, men swayed by l.u.s.t or embittered by grievances, all these differing in their aims yet by Weishaupt"s admirable system of watertight compartments precluded from a knowledge of these differences and all marching, unconsciously or not, towards the same goal.
Although this was not the invention of Weishaupt but had been foreshadowed many centuries earlier in the East, it was Weishaupt, so far as we know, who reduced it to a working system for the West--a system which has been adhered to by succeeding groups of world-revolutionaries up to the present day. It is for this reason that I have quoted at length the writings of the Illuminati--all the ruses, all the hypocrisy, all the subtle methods of camouflage which characterized the Order will be found again in the insidious propaganda both of the modern secret societies and the open revolutionary organizations whose object is to subvert all order, all morality, and all religion.
I maintain, therefore, with greater conviction than ever the importance of Illuminism in the history of world-revolution. But for this co-ordination of methods the philosophers and Encyclopaedists might have gone on for ever inveighing against thrones and altars, the Martinistes evoking spirits, the magicians weaving spells, the Freemasons declaiming on universal brotherhood--none of these would have "armed the hand" and driven the infuriated mobs into the streets of Paris; it was not until the emissaries of Weishaupt formed an alliance with the Orleaniste leaders that vague subversive theory became active revolution.
10
THE CLIMAX
The first Masonic body with which the Illuminati formed an alliance was the Stricte Observance, to which the Illuminati Knigge and Bode both belonged. Cagliostro had also been initiated into the Stricte Observance near Frankfurt and was now employed as agent of the combined order.
According to his own confession his mission "was to work so as to turn Freemasonry in the direction of Weishaupt"s projects"; and the funds he drew upon were those of the Illuminati.[603] Cagliostro also formed a link with the Martinistes, whose doctrines, though derided by Weishaupt, were useful to his plan in attracting by their mystical character those who would have been repelled by the cynicism of the Illuminati.
According to Barruel, it was the Martinistes who--following in the footsteps of the Rosicrucians--had suggested to Weishaupt the device of presenting Christ as an "Illuminatus" which had led to such triumphant results amongst the Protestant clergy.
But if Weishaupt made use of the various masonic a.s.sociations, they on their account found in him a valuable ally. The fact is that by this time both French and German Freemasons were very much at sea with regard to the whole subject of Masonry and needed someone to give a point to their deliberations. Thus at the Congress of Wilhelmsbad convened on July 16, 1782, and attended by representatives of masonic bodies from all over the world, the first question propounded by the Grand Master of the Templars (i.e. the Stricte Observance) was: "_What is the real object of the Order and its true origin_?" So, says Mirabeau in relating this incident, "this same Grand Master and all his a.s.sistants had worked for more than twenty years with incredible ardour at a thing of which they knew neither the real object nor the origin."[604]
Two years later the Freemasons of France do not appear to have been any less in the dark on this matter, for we find them writing to General Rainsford, one of the English Masons who had been present at the Congress of Wilhelmsbad, as follows:
Since you say that Masonry has never experienced any variation in its aim, do you then know with certainty what this unique object is? Is it useful for the happiness of mankind?... Tell us if it is of an historical, political, hermetical, or scientific nature?...
Moral, social, or religious?... Are the traditions oral or written?[605]
But Weishaupt had a very definite object in view, which was to gain control of all Freemasonry, and though he himself was not present at the Congress, his coadjutor Knigge, who had been travelling about Germany proclaiming himself the reformer of Freemasonry, presented himself at Wilhelmsbad, armed with full authority from Weishaupt, and succeeded in enrolling a number of magistrates, savants, ecclesiastics, and ministers of state as Illuminati and in allying himself with the deputies of Saint-Martin and Willermoz. Vanquished by this powerful rival, the Stricte Observance ceased temporarily to exist and Illuminism was left in possession of the field.
On February 15, 1785, a further congress took place in Paris, convened this time by the Philalethes, at which the Illuminati Bode (alias Amelius) and the Baron de Busche (alias Bayard) were present, also--it has been stated--the "magician" Cagliostro, the magnetiser Mesmer, the Cabalist Duchanteau, and of course the leaders of the Philalethes, Savalette de Langes, who was elected President, the Marquis de Chefdebien, and a number of German members of the same Order. This congress led to no very practical results, and a further and more secret one was convened in the following year at Frankfurt, where a Grand Lodge had been established in 1783. It was here that the deaths of Louis XVI and Gustavus III of Sweden are said to have been decreed.
But already in this same year of 1785 the first act of the revolutionary drama had been played out. The famous "Affair of the Necklace" can never be understood in the pages of official history; only an examination of the mechanism provided by the secret societies can explain that extraordinary episode, which, in the opinion of Napoleon, contributed more than any other cause to the explosion of 1789. In its double attack on Church and Monarchy the Affair of the Necklace fulfilled the purpose of both Frederick the Great and of the Illuminati. Cagliostro, we know, received both money and instructions from the Order for carrying out the plot, and after it had ended in his own and the Cardinal de Rohan"s exoneration and exile, we find him embarking on fresh secret-society work in London, where he arrived in November of the same year.
Announcing himself as the Count Sutkowski, member of a society at Avignon, he "visited the Swedenborgians at their Theosophical Society meeting in rooms in the Middle Temple and displayed minute acquaintance with their doctrines, whilst claiming a superior knowledge."[606]
According to a generally received opinion, Cagliostro was the author of a mysterious proclamation which appeared at this moment in the _Morning Herald_ in the cypher of the Rose-Croix.[607]
But in the year before these events an extraordinary thing had happened.
An evangelist preacher and Illuminatus named Lanze had been sent in July 1785 as an emissary of the Illuminati to Silesia, but on his journey he was struck down by lightning. The instructions of the Order were found on him, and as a result its intrigues were conclusively revealed to the Government of Bavaria.[608] A searching enquiry followed, the houses of Zwack and Ba.s.sus were raided, and it was then that the doc.u.ments and other incriminating evidence referred to in the preceding chapter of this book were seized and made public under the name of _The Original Writings of the Order of the Illuminati_ (1787). But before this the evidence of four ex-Illuminati, professors of Munich, was published in two separate volumes.[609]
The diabolical nature of Illuminism now remained no longer a matter of doubt, and the Order was officially suppressed. The opponents of Barruel and Robison therefore declare that Illuminism came finally to an end. We shall see later by doc.u.mentary evidence that it never ceased to exist, and that twenty-five years later not only the Illuminati but Weishaupt himself were still as active as ever behind the scenes in Freemasonry.
But for the present we must follow its course from the moment of its apparent extinction in 1786. This course can be traced not only through the "German Union," which is believed to have been a reorganization of the original Illuminati, but through the secret societies of France.
Illuminism in reality is less an Order than a principle, and a principle which can work better under cover of something else. Weishaupt himself had laid down the precept that the work of Illuminism could best be conducted "under other names and other occupations," and henceforth we shall always find it carried on by this skilful system of camouflage.
The first cover adopted was the lodge of the "Amis Reunis" in Paris, with which, as we have already seen, the Illuminati had established relations. But now in 1787 a definite alliance was effected by the aforementioned Illuminati, Bode and Busche, who in response to an invitation from the secret committee of the lodge arrived in Paris in February of this year. Here they found the old Illuminatus Mirabeau--who with Talleyrand had been largely instrumental in summoning these German Brothers--and, according to Gustave Bord,[610] two important members of the Stricte Observance, the Marquis de Chefdebien d"Armisson (_Eques a Capite Galeato_) and an Austrian, the Comte Leopold de Kollowrath-Krakowski (_Eques ab Aquila Fulgente_) who also belonged to Weishaupt"s Order of Illuminati in which he bore the pseudonym of Numenius.
It is important here to recognize the peculiar part played by the Lodge of the _Amis Reunis_. Whilst the _Loge des Neuf Soeurs_ was largely composed of middle-cla.s.s revolutionaries such as Brissot, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Champfort, and the _Loge de la Candeur_ of aristocratic revolutionaries--Lafayette as well as the Orleanistes, the Marquis de Sillery, the Duc d"Aiguillon, the Marquis de Custine, and the Lameths--_the Loge du Contrat Social_ was mainly composed of honest visionaries who entertained no revolutionary projects but, according to Barruel, were strongly Royalist. The role of the "Amis Reunis" was to collect together the subversives from all other lodges--Philalethes, Rose-Croix, members of the _Loge des Neuf Sours_ and of the _Loge de la Candeur_ and of the most secret committees of the Grand Orient, as well as deputies from the _Illumines_ in the provinces. Here, then, at the lodge in the Rue de la Sordiere, under the direction of Savalette de Langes, were to be found the disciples of Weishaupt, of Swedenborg, and of Saint-Martin, as well as the practical makers of revolution--the agitators and demagogues of 1789.
The influence of German Illuminism on all these heterogeneous elements was enormous. From this moment, says a further Bavarian report of the matter, a complete change took place in the Order of the "Amis Reunis."
Hitherto only vaguely subversive, the Chevaliers Bienfaisants became the Chevaliers Malfaisants, the Amis Reunis became the Ennemis Reunis. The arrival of the two Germans, Bode and Busche, gave the finishing touch to the conspiracy. "The avowed object of their journey was to obtain information about magnetism, which was just then making a great stir,"
but in reality, "taken up with the gigantic plan of their Order," their real aim was to make proselytes. It will be seen that the following pa.s.sage exactly confirms the account given by Barruel:
As the Lodge of the _Amis Reunis_ collected together everything that could be found out from all other masonic systems in the world, so the way was soon paved there for Illuminism. It was also not long before this lodge together with all those that depended on it was impregnated with Illuminism. The former system of all these was as if wiped out, so that from this time onwards the framework of the Philalethes quite disappeared and in the place of the former Cabalistic-magical extravagance [_Schwarmerei_] came in the philosophical-political.[611]
It was therefore not Martinism, Cabalism, or Freemasonry that in themselves provided the real revolutionary force. Many non-illuminized Freemasons, as Barruel himself declares, remained loyal to the throne and altar, and as soon as the monarchy was seen to be in danger the Royalist Brothers of the _Contrat Social_ boldly summoned the lodges to coalesce in defence of King and Const.i.tution; even some of the upper Masons, who in the degree of Knight Kadosch had sworn hatred to the Pope and Bourbon monarchy, rallied likewise to the royal cause. "The French spirit triumphed over the masonic spirit in the greater number of the Brothers. Opinions as well as hearts were still for the King." It needed the devastating doctrines of Weishaupt to undermine this spirit and to turn the "degrees of vengeance" from vain ceremonial into terrible fact.
If, then, it is said that the Revolution was prepared in the lodges of Freemasons--and many French Masons have boasted of the fact--let it always be added that it was _Illuminized Freemasonry_ that made the Revolution, and that the Masons who acclaim it are illuminized Masons, inheritors of the same tradition introduced into the lodges of France in 1787 by the disciples of Weishaupt, "patriarch of the Jacobins."
Many of the Freemasons of France in 1787 were thus not conscious allies of the Illuminati. According to Cadet de Ga.s.sicourt, there were in all the lodges only twenty-seven real initiates; the rest were largely dupes who knew little or nothing of the source whence the fresh influence among them derived. The amazing feature of the whole situation is that the most enthusiastic supporters of the movement were men belonging to the upper cla.s.ses and even to the royal families of Europe. A contemporary relates that no less than thirty princes--reigning and non-reigning--had taken under their protection a confederation from which they stood to lose everything and had become so imbued by its principles that they were inaccessible to reason.[612] Intoxicated by the flattery lavished on them by the priests of Illuminism, they adopted a religion of which they understood nothing. Weishaupt, of course, had taken care that none of these royal dupes should be initiated into the real aims of the Order, and at first adhered to the original plan of excluding them altogether; but the value of their co-operation soon became apparent and by a supreme irony it was with a Grand Duke that he himself took refuge.
But if the great majority of princes and n.o.bles were stricken with blindness at this crisis, a few far-seeing spirits recognized the danger and warned the world of the impending disaster. In 1787 Cardinal Caprara, Apostolic Nuncio at Vienna, addressed a confidential memoir to the Pope, in which he pointed out that the activities carried on in Germany by the different sects of Illumines, of Perfectibilists, of Freemasons, etc., were increasing.
The danger is approaching, for from all these senseless dreams of Illuminism, of Swedenborgianism, or of Freemasonry a frightful reality will emerge. Visionaries have their time; the revolution they forebode will have its time also.[613]
A more amazing prophecy, however, was the _Essai sur la Secte des Illumines_, by the Marquis de Luchet,[614] a Liberal n.o.ble who played some part in the revolutionary movement, yet who nevertheless realized the dangers of Illuminism. Thus, as early as 1789, before the Revolution had really developed, de Luchet uttered these words of warning:
Deluded people ... learn that there exists a conspiracy in favour of despotism against liberty, of incapacity against talent, of vice against virtue, of ignorance against enlightenment.... This society aims at governing the world.... Its object is universal domination.
This plan may seem extraordinary, incredible--yes, but not chimerical ... no such calamity has ever yet afflicted the world.
De Luchet then goes on to foretell precisely the events that were to take place three and four years later; he describes the position of a king who has to recognize masters above himself and to authorize their "abominable regime," to become the plaything of an ambitious and fanatical horde which has taken possession of his will.
See him condemned to serve the pa.s.sions of all that surround him ... to raise degraded men to power, to prost.i.tute his judgement by choices that dishonour his prudence....
All this was exactly fulfilled during the reign of the Girondin ministry of 1792. The campaign of destruction carried out in the summer of 1793 is thus foretold:
We do not mean to say that the country where the Illumines reign will cease to exist, but it will fall into such a degree of humiliation that it will no longer count in politics, that the population will diminish, that the inhabitants who resist the inclination to pa.s.s into a foreign land will no longer enjoy the happiness of consideration, nor the charms of society, nor the gifts of commerce.
And de Luchet ends with this despairing appeal to the powers of Europe:
Masters of the world, cast your eyes on a desolated mult.i.tude, listen to their cries, their tears, their hopes. A mother asks you to restore her son, a wife her husband, your cities for the fine arts that have fled from them, the country for citizens, the fields for cultivators, religion for forms of worship, and Nature for beings of which she is worthy.
Five years after these words were written the countryside of France was desolate, art and commerce were destroyed, and women following the tumbril that carried Fouquier-Tinville to the guillotine cried out: "Give me back my brother, my son, my husband!" So was this amazing prophecy fulfilled. Yet not one word has history to say on the subject!
The warning of de Luchet has fallen on deaf ears amongst posterity as amongst the men of his own day.
De Luchet himself recognizes the obstacle to his obtaining a hearing: there are too many "pa.s.sions interested in supporting the system of the Illumines," too many deluded rulers imagining themselves enlightened ready to precipitate their people into the abyss, whilst "the heads of the Order will never relinquish the authority they have acquired nor the treasure at their disposal." In vain de Luchet appeals to the Freemasons to save their Order from the invading sect. "Would it not be possible,"
he asks, "to direct the Freemasons themselves against the Illumines by showing them that whilst they are working to maintain harmony in society, those others are everywhere sowing seeds of discord" and preparing the ultimate destruction of their Order? So far it is not too late; if only men will believe in the danger it may be averted: "from the moment they are convinced, the necessary blow is dealt to the sect."
Otherwise de Luchet prophesies "a series of calamities of which the end is lost in the darkness of time, ... a subterranean fire smouldering eternally and breaking forth periodically in violent and devastating explosions." What words could better describe the history of the last 150 years?
The _Essai sur la Sects des Illumines_ is one of the most extraordinary doc.u.ments of history and at the same time one of the most mysterious.
Why it should have been written by the Marquis de Luchet, who is said to have collaborated with Mirabeau in the _Galerie de Portraits_ published in the following year, why it should have been appended to Mirabeau"s _Histoire Secrete de la Cour de Berlin_, and accordingly attributed to Mirabeau himself, why Barruel should have denounced it as dust thrown in the eyes of the public, although it entirely corroborated his own point of view, are questions to which I can find no reply. That is was written seriously and in all good faith it is impossible to doubt; whilst the fact that it appeared before, instead of after, the events described, renders it even more valuable evidence of the reality of the conspiracy than Barruel"s own admirable work. What Barruel saw, de Luchet foresaw with equal clearness. As to the role of Mirabeau at this crisis, we can only hazard an explanation on the score of his habitual inconsistency.
At one moment he was seeking interviews with the King"s ministers in order to warn them of the coming danger, at the next he was energetically stirring up insurrection. It is therefore not impossible that he may have encouraged de Luchet"s exposure of the conspiracy, although meanwhile he himself had entered into the scheme of destruction. Indeed, according to a pamphlet published in 1791 ent.i.tled _Mysteres de la Conspiration_,[615] the whole plan of revolution was found amongst his papers. The editor of this _brochure_ explains that the doc.u.ment here made public, called _Croquis ou Projet de Revolution de Monsieur de Mirabeau_, was seized at the house of Madame Lejai, the wife of Mirabeau"s publisher, on October 6, 1789. Beginning with a diatribe against the French monarchy, the doc.u.ment goes on to say that "in order to triumph over this hydra-headed monster these are my ideas":
We must overthrow all order, suppress all laws, annul all power, and leave the people in anarchy. The laws we establish will not perhaps be in force at once, but at any rate, having given back the power to the people, they will resist for the sake of their liberty which they will believe they are preserving. We must caress their vanity, flatter their hopes, promise them happiness after our work has been in operation; we must elude their caprices and their systems at will, for the people as legislators are very dangerous, they only establish laws which coincide with their pa.s.sions, their want of knowledge would besides only give birth to abuses. But as the people are a lever which legislators can move at their will, we must necessarily use them as a support, and render hateful to them everything we wish to destroy and sow illusions in their path; we must also buy all the mercenary pens which propagate our methods and which will instruct the people concerning their enemies whom we attack. The clergy, being the most powerful through public opinion, can only be destroyed by ridiculing religion, rendering its ministers odious, and only representing them as hypocritical monsters, for Mahomet in order to establish his religion first defamed the paganism which the Arabs, the Sarmathes, and the Scythians professed. Libels must at every moment show fresh traces of hatred against the clergy. To exaggerate their riches, to make the sins of an individual appear to be common to all, to attribute to them all vices; calumny, murder, irreligion, sacrilege, all is permitted in times of revolution.
We must degrade the _n.o.blesse_ and attribute it to an odious origin, establish a germ of equality which can never exist but which will flatter the people; [we must] immolate the most obstinate, burn and destroy their property in order to intimidate the rest, so that if we cannot entirely destroy this prejudice we can weaken it and the people will avenge their vanity and their jealousy by all the excesses which will bring them to submission.