Chapter XII: Part I: The Past (10)

Now, as I have already shown, the theosophical ideas of the Cabala play no part in the system of Illuminism; the only trace of Cabalism to be found amongst the papers of the Order is a list of recipes for procuring abortion, for making aphrodisiacs, Aqua Toffana, pestilential vapours, etc., headed "Cabala Major."[594] It is possible, then, that the Illuminati may have learnt something of "venefic magic" and the use of certain natural substances from Jewish Cabalists; at the same time Jews appear to have been only in rare cases admitted to the Order. Everything indeed tends to prove that Weishaupt and his first coadjutors, Zwack and Massenhausen, were pure Germans. Nevertheless there is between the ideas of Weishaupt and of Lessing's "Falk" a distinct resemblance; both in the writings of the Illuminati and in Lessing's _Dialogues_ we find the same vein of irony with regard to Freemasonry, the same design that it should be replaced by a more effectual system,[595]the same denunciations of the existing social order and of bourgeois society, the same theory that "men should be self-governing," the same plan of obliterating all distinctions between nations, even the same simile of the bee-hive as applied to human life[596] which, as I have shown elsewhere, was later on adopted by the anarchist Proudhon. It may, however, legitimately be urged that these ideas were those of the inner masonic circle to which both Lessing and Weishaupt belonged, and that, though placed in the mouth of Falk, they were in no sense Judaic.

But Lessing was also the friend and admirer of Moses Mendelssohn, who has been suggested as one of Weishaupt's inspirers. Now, at first sight nothing seems more improbable than that an orthodox Jew such as Mendelssohn should have accorded any sympathy to the anarchic scheme of Weishaupt. Nevertheless, certain of Weishaupt's doctrines are not incompatible with the principles of orthodox Judaism. Thus, for example, Weishaupt's theory--so strangely at variance with his denunciations of the family system--that as a result of Illuminism "the head of every family will be what Abraham was, the patriarch, the priest, and the unfettered lord of his family, and Reason will be the only code of Man,"[597] is essentially a Jewish conception.

It will be objected that the patriarchal system as conceived by orthodox Jews could by no means include the religion of Reason as advocated by Weishaupt. It must not, however, be forgotten that to the Jewish mind the human race presents a dual aspect, being divided into two distinct categories--the privileged race to whom the promises of God were made, and the great mass of humanity which remains outside the pale. Whilst strict adherence to the commands of the Talmud and the laws of Moses is expected of the former, the most indefinite of religious creeds suffices for the nations excluded from the privileges that Jewish birth confers. It was thus that Moses Mendelssohn wrote to the pastor Lavater, who had sought to win him over to Christianity:

Pursuant to the principles of my religion, I am not to seek to
convert anyone who is not born according to our laws. This
proneness to conversion, the origin of which some would fain tack
on to the Jewish religion, is, nevertheless, diametrically opposed
to it. Our rabbis unanimously teach that the written and oral laws
which form conjointly our revealed religion are obligatory on our
nation only. "Moses commanded us a law, even the inheritance of the
congregation of Jacob." We believe that all other nations of the
earth have been directed by God to adhere to the laws of nature,
and to the religion of the patriarchs. Those who regulate their
lives according to the precepts of this _religion of nature and of
reason_[598] are called virtuous men of other nations and are the
children of eternal salvation.[599] Our rabbis are so remote from
Proselytomania, that they enjoin us to dissuade, by forcible
remonstrances, everyone who comes forward to be converted. (The
Talmud says ... "proselytes are annoying to Israel like a
scab.")[600]

But was not this "religion of nature and of reason" the precise conception of Weishaupt?

Whether, then, Weishaupt was directly inspired by Mendelssohn or any other Jew must remain for the present an open question. But the Jewish connexions of certain other Illuminati cannot be disputed. The most important of these was Mirabeau, who arrived in Berlin just after the death of Mendelssohn and was welcomed by his disciples in the Jewish salon of Henrietta Herz. It was these Jews, "ardent supporters of the French Revolution"[601] at its outset, who prevailed on Mirabeau to write his great apology for their race under the form of a panegyric of Mendelssohn.

To sum up, I do not so far see in Illuminism a Jewish conspiracy to destroy Christianity, but rather a movement finding its principal dynamic force in the ancient spirit of revolt against the existing social and moral order, aided and abetted perhaps by Jews who saw in it a system that might be turned to their own advantage. Meanwhile, Illuminism made use of every other movement that could serve its purpose. As the contemporary de Luchet has expressed it:

The system of the Illuminés 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 assemblage of all errors, of all ruses, of all subtleties of a theoretic kind, it was also an assemblage of all practical methods for rousing men to action. For in the words of von Hammer on the Assassins, 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 association, 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 Encyclopædists, the methods of the Ismailis and the Assassins, 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 associations 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 lust 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 Encyclopædists 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 Orléaniste 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 associations, 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 assistants 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 Philalèthes, 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 Philalèthes, 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 Bassus were raided, and it was then that the documents 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 documentary 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 Réunis" 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 Réunis_. Whilst the _Loge des Neuf Soeurs_ was largely composed of middle-class revolutionaries such as Brissot, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Champfort, and the _Loge de la Candeur_ of aristocratic revolutionaries--Lafayette as well as the Orléanistes, 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 rôle of the "Amis Réunis" was to collect together the subversives from all other lodges--Philalèthes, 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 _Illuminés_ in the provinces. Here, then, at the lodge in the Rue de la Sordière, 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 Réunis." Hitherto only vaguely subversive, the Chevaliers Bienfaisants became the Chevaliers Malfaisants, the Amis Réunis became the Ennemis Réunis. 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 passage exactly confirms the account given by Barruel:

As the Lodge of the _Amis Réunis_ 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 Philalèthes quite disappeared and in the place of the former
Cabalistic-magical extravagance [_Schwärmerei_] 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 Constitution; 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 Gassicourt, 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 classes 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 nobles 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 Illuminés, 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 Illuminés_, by the Marquis de Luchet,[614] a Liberal noble 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 régime," to become the plaything of an ambitious and fanatical horde which has taken possession of his will.

See him condemned to serve the passions of all that surround him
... to raise degraded men to power, to prostitute 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 Illuminés 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 pass 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 multitude,
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 "passions interested in supporting the system of the Illuminés," 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 Illuminés 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 Illuminés_ is one of the most extraordinary documents 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 Secrète 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 rôle 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 entitled _Mystères de la Conspiration_,[615] the whole plan of revolution was found amongst his papers. The editor of this _brochure_ explains that the document here made public, called _Croquis ou Projet de Révolution 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 document 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 passions, 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 _noblesse_ 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.

After describing how the soldiers are to be seduced from their allegiance, and the magistrates represented to the people as despots, "since the people, brutal and ignorant, only see the evil and never the good of things," the writer explains they must be given only limited power in the municipalities.

Let us beware above all of giving them too much force; their
despotism is too dangerous, we must flatter the people by
gratuitous justice, promise them a great diminution in taxes and a
more equal division, more extension in fortunes, and less
humiliation. These phantasies [_vertiges_] will fanaticise the
people, who will flatten out all resistance. What matter the
victims and their numbers? spoliations, destructions, burnings, and
all the necessary effects of a revolution? nothing must be sacred
and we can say with Machiavelli: "What matter the means as long as
one arrives at the end?"

Were all these the ideas of Mirabeau, or were they, like the other document of the Illuminati found amongst his papers, the programme of a conspiracy? I incline to the latter theory. The plan of campaign was, at any rate, the one followed out by the conspirators, as Chamfort, the friend and confidant of Mirabeau, admitted in his conversation with Marmontel:

The nation is a great herd that only thinks of browsing, and with
good sheepdogs the shepherds can lead it as they please.... Money
and the hope of plunder are all-powerful with the people....
Mirabeau cheerfully asserts that with 100 louis one can make quite
a good riot.[616]

Another contemporary thus describes the methods of the leaders:

Mirabeau, in the exuberance of an orgy, cried one day: "That
_canaille_ well deserves to have us for legislators!" These
professions of faith, as we see, are not at all democratic; the
sect uses the populace as revolution fodder [_chair à révolution_],
as prime material for brigandage, after which it seizes the gold
and abandons generations to torture. It is veritably the code of
hell.[617]

It is this "code of hell" set forth in the "Projet de Révolution" that we shall find repeated in succeeding documents throughout the last hundred years--in the correspondence of the "Alta Vendita," in the _Dialogues aux Enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu_ by Maurice Joly, in the Revolutionary Catechism of Bakunin, in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and in the writings of the Russian Bolsheviks to-day.

Whatever doubts may be cast on the authenticity of any of these documents, the indisputable fact thus remains that as early as 1789 this Machiavellian plan of engineering revolution and using the people as a lever for raising a tyrannical minority to power, had been formulated; further, that the methods described in this earliest "Protocol" have been carried out according to plan from that day to this. And in every outbreak of the social revolution the authors of the movement have been known to be connected with secret societies.

It was Adrien Duport, author of the "Great Fear" that spread over France on July 22, 1789, Duport, the inner initiate of the secret societies, "holding in his hands all the threads of the masonic conspiracy," who on May 21, 1790, set forth before the Committee of Propaganda the vast scheme of destruction.

M. de Mirabeau has well established the fact that the fortunate
revolution which has taken place in France must and will be for all
the peoples of Europe the awakening of liberty and for Kings the
sleep of death.

But Duport goes on to explain that whilst Mirabeau thinks it advisable at present not to concern themselves with anything outside France, he himself believes that the triumph of the French Revolution must lead inevitably to "the ruin of all thrones ... Therefore we must hasten among our neighbours the same revolution that is going on in France."[618]

The plan of illuminized Freemasonry was thus nothing less than world-revolution.

It is necessary here to reply to a critic who suggested that in emphasizing the rôle of the secret societies in _World Revolution_ I had abandoned my former thesis of the Orléaniste conspiracy. I wish therefore to state that I do not retract one word I wrote in _The French Revolution_ on the Orléaniste conspiracy, I merely supply a further explanation of its efficiency by enlarging on the aid it received from the party I referred to as the Subversives--outcome of the masonic lodges. It was because the Orléanistes held the whole masonic organization at their disposal that they were able to carry out their plans with such extraordinary skill and thoroughness, and because they had at their back men bent solely on destruction that they could enlist a following which would not have rallied to a mere scheme of usurpation. Even Montjoie, who saw in the Revolution principally the work of the Duc d'Orléans, indicates in a very curious passage of a later work the existence of the still darker intrigue behind the conspiracy he had spent his energies in unveiling:

I will not examine whether this wicked prince, thinking he was
acting in his personal interests, was not moved by that invisible
hand which seems to have created all the events of our revolution
in order to lead us towards a goal that we do not see at present,
but which I think we shall see before long.[619]

Unfortunately, after this mysterious utterance Montjoie never again returns to the subject.

At the beginning of the Revolution, Orléanism and Freemasonry thus formed a united body. According to Lombard de Langres:

France in 1789 counted more than 2,000 lodges affiliated to the
Grand Orient; the number of adepts was more than 100,000. The first
events of 1789 were only Masonry in action. All the revolutionaries
of the Constituent Assembly were initiated into the third degree.
We place in this class the Duc d'Orléans, Valence, Syllery, Laclos,
Sièyes, Pétion, Menou, Biron, Montesquieu, Fauchet, Condorcet,
Lafayette, Mirabeau, Garat, Rabaud, Dubois-Crancé, Thiébaud,
Larochefoucauld, and others.[620]

Amongst these others were not only the Brissotins, who formed the nucleus of the Girondin party, but the men of the Terror--Marat, Robespierre, Danton, and Desmoulins.

It was these fiercer elements, true disciples of the Illuminati, who were to sweep away the visionary Masons dreaming of equality and brotherhood. Following the precedent set by Weishaupt, classical pseudonyms were adopted by these leaders of the Jacobins, thus Chaumette was known as Anaxagoras, Clootz as Anacharsis, Danton as Horace, Lacroix as Publicola, and Ronsin as Scaevola[621]; again, after the manner of the Illuminati, the names of towns were changed and a revolutionary calendar was adopted. The red cap and loose hair affected by the Jacobins appear also to have been foreshadowed in the lodges of the Illuminati.[622]

Yet faithfully as the Terrorists carried out the plan of the Illuminati, it would seem that they themselves were not initiated into the innermost secrets of the conspiracy. Behind the Convention, behind the clubs, behind the Revolutionary Tribunal, there existed, says Lombard de Langres, that "most secret convention [_convention sécrétissime_] which directed everything after May 31, an occult and terrible power of which the other Convention became the slave and which was composed of the prime initiates of Illuminism. This power was above Robespierre and the committees of the government, ... it was this occult power which appropriated to itself the treasures of the nation and distributed them to the brothers and friends who had helped on the great work."[623]

What was the aim of this occult power? Was it merely the plan of destruction that had originated in the brain of a Bavarian professor twenty years earlier, or was it something far older, a live and terrible force that had lain dormant through the centuries, that Weishaupt and his allies had not created but only loosed upon the world? The Reign of Terror, like the outbreak of Satanism in the Middle Ages, can be explained by no material causes--the orgy of hatred, lust, and cruelty directed not only against the rich but still more against the poor and defenceless, the destruction of science, art, and beauty, the desecration of the churches, the organized campaign against all that was noble, all that was sacred, all that humanity holds dear, what was this but Satanism?

In desecrating the churches and stamping on the crucifixes the Jacobins had in fact followed the precise formula of black magic: "For the purpose of infernal evocation ... it is requisite ... to profane the ceremonies of the religion to which one belongs and to trample its holiest symbols under foot."[624] It was this that formed the prelude to the "Great Terror," when, to those who lived through it, it seemed that France lay under the sway of the powers of darkness.

So in the "great shipwreck of civilization," as a contemporary has described it, the projects of the Cabalists, the Gnostics, and the secret societies which for nearly eighteen centuries had sapped the foundations of Christianity found their fulfilment. Do we not detect an echo of the Toledot Yeshu in the blasphemies of the Marquis de Sade concerning "the Jewish slave" and "the adulterous woman, the courtesan of Galilee?" And in the imprecations of Marat's worshippers, "Christ was a false prophet!" a repetition of the secret doctrine attributed to the Templars: "Jesus is not the true God; He is a false prophet; He was not crucified for the salvation of humanity, but for His own misdeeds"? Are these resemblances accidental, or are they the outcome of a continuous plot against the Christian faith?

What, then, was the rôle of Jews in the Revolution? In this connexion it is necessary to understand the situation of the Jews in France at this period.

After the decree of banishment issued by Charles VI in 1394, Jewry, as a body, had ceased to exist; but towards the end of the fifteenth century a certain number of Jews, driven out of Spain and Portugal, were allowed to settle in Bordeaux. These Spanish and Portuguese Jews, known as _Sephardim_, appeared to acquiesce in the Christian religion and were not officially regarded as Jews, but enjoyed considerable privileges conferred on them by Henri II. It was not until the beginning of the eighteenth century, during the Regency, that Jews began to reappear in Paris. Meanwhile, the annexation of Alsace at the end of the previous century had added to the population of France the German Jews of that province known as the _Ashkenazim_.

It is important to distinguish between these two races of Jews in discussing the question of Jewish emancipation at the time of the Revolution. For whilst the Sephardim had shown themselves good citizens and were therefore subject to no persecutions, the Ashkenazim by their extortionate usury and oppressions had made themselves detested by the people, so that rigorous laws were enforced to restrain their rapacity. The discussions that raged in the National Assembly on the subject of the Jewish question related therefore mainly to the Jews of Alsace. Already, in 1784, the Jews of Bordeaux had been accorded further concessions by Louis XVI; in 1776 all Portuguese Jews had been given religious liberty and the permission to inhabit all parts of the kingdom. The decree of January 28, 1790, conferring on the Jews of Bordeaux the rights of French citizens, put the finishing touch to this scheme of liberation. But the proposal to extend this privilege to the Jews of Alsace evoked a storm of controversy in the Assembly and also violent insurrections amongst the Alsatian peasants. It was thus on behalf of the people that several deputies protested against the decree. "The Jews," said the Abbé Maury, "have traversed seventeen centuries without mingling with other nations. They have never done anything but trade with money, they have been the scourge of agricultural provinces, not one of them has known how to ennoble his hands by guiding the plough." And he went on to point out that the Jews "must not be persecuted, they must be protected as individuals and not as Frenchmen, since they cannot be citizens.... Whatever you do, they will always remain foreigners in our midst."

Monseigneur de la Fare, Bishop of Nancy, adopted the same line of argument:

They must be accorded protection, safety, liberty; but should we
admit into the family a tribe that is foreign to it, that turns its
eyes unceasingly towards a common country, that aspires to abandon
the land that bears it?... My _cahier_ orders me to protest against
the motion that has been made to you. The interest of the Jews
themselves necessitates this protest. The people have a horror of
them; they are often in Alsace the victims of popular risings.[625]

In all this, as will be seen, there is no question of persecution, but of precautions against a race that wilfully isolates itself from the rest of the community in order to pursue its own interests and advantages. The Jews of Bordeaux indeed recognized the odium that the German Jews were calculated to bring on the Jewish cause, and in an address to the Assembly on January 22, 1790, dissociated themselves from the aggressive claims of the Ashkenazim:

We dare to believe that our condition in France would not to-day be
open to discussion if certain demands of the Jews of Alsace,
Lorraine, and the Trois Evêchés [i.e. Metz, Toul, and Verdun] had
not caused a confusion of ideas which appears to reflect on us. We
do not yet know exactly what these demands are, but to judge by the
public papers they appear to be rather extraordinary since these
Jews aspire to live in France under a special régime, to have laws
peculiar to themselves, and to constitute a class of citizens
separated from all the others.

As for us, our condition in France has long since been settled. We
have been naturalized French since 1550; we possess all kinds of
properties, and we enjoy the unlimited right to acquire estates. We
have neither laws, tribunals, nor officers of our own[626]

In adopting this attitude the Sephardim created a precedent which, if it had been followed henceforth consistently by their co-religionists, might have gone far to allay prejudice against the Jewish race. It was the solidarity generally presented by the Jews towards the rest of the community which excited alarm in the minds of French citizens. Thirty years earlier the merchants of Paris, in a petition against the admission of the Jews to their corporations, indicated by an admirable simile the danger this solidarity offered to free commerce.

The French merchant carries on his commerce alone; each commercial
house is in a way isolated, whilst the Jews are particles of
quicksilver, which at the least slant run together into a
block.[627]

But in spite of all protests, the decree emancipating the Jews of Alsace was passed in September 1791, and hymns of praise were sung in the synagogues.

What part was actually played by the Jews in the tumults of the Revolution it is impossible to determine, for the reason that they are seldom designated as such in the writings of contemporaries. On this point Jewish writers appear to be better informed than the rest of the world, for Monsieur Léon Kahn in his panegyric on the part played by his co-religionists in the Revolution[628] finds Jews where even Drumont failed to detect them. Thus we read that it was a Jew, Rosenthal, who headed the legion known by his name, which was sent against La Vendée but took to flight,[629] and which was the subject of complaint when employed to guard the Royal Family at the Temple[630]; that amongst those who worked most energetically to deprive the clergy of their goods was a Jewish ex-old-clothes seller, Zalkind Hourwitz; that it was a Jew named Lang who murdered three out of the five Swiss guards at the foot of the staircase in the Tuileries on August 10[631]; that Jews were implicated in the theft of the crown jewels on September 16, 1792, and one named Lyre was executed in consequence; that it was Clootz and the Jew Pereyra, and not, as I had stated, Hébert, Chaumette, and Momoro, who went to the Archbishop Gobel in November 1793 and induced him by means of threats to abjure the Christian faith.[632]

All these facts were unknown to me when I wrote my account of these events; it will be seen then that, far from exaggerating the rôle of the Jews in _The French Revolution_, I very much underrated it. Indeed the question of their complicity had not occurred to me at all when I wrote this book, and the only Jew to whom I referred was Ephraïm--sent to France by the Illuminati Frederick William II and Bischoffswerder--whom M. Kahn indicates as playing an even more important part than I had assigned to him.

But illuminating as these incidents may be, it is yet open to question whether they prove any concerted attempt on the part of the Jews to bring about the overthrow of the French monarchy and the Catholic religion. It is true, nevertheless, that they themselves boasted of their revolutionary ardour. In an address presenting their claims before the National Assembly in 1789, they declare:

Regenerators of the French Empire, you would not wish that we
should cease to be citizens, since for already six months we have
assiduously performed all duties as such, and the recompense for
the zeal we have shown in accelerating the revolution will not be
to condemn us to participate in none of its advantages now that it
has been consummated.... Nosseigneurs, we are all very good
citizens, and in this memorable revolution we dare to say that
there is not one of us who has not proved himself.[633]

In all these activities, however, religious feeling appears to have played an entirely subordinate part; the Jews, as has been said, were free before the Revolution to carry on the rites of their faith. And when the great anti-religious campaign began, many of them entered whole-heartedly into the attack on all religious faiths, their own included. Thus on the 21st Brumaire, whilst the Feasts of Reason were taking place in the churches of Paris, we find "a deputation of Israelites" presenting themselves at the National Assembly and "depositing on the bosom of the Mountain the ornaments of which they had stripped a little temple they had in the Faubourg Saint-Germain." At the same moment--

A revolutionary committee of the Réunion brings to the general
council crosses, suns, chalices, copes, and quantities of other
ornaments of worship, and a member of this committee observes that
several of these effects belong to individuals of the Jewish race.
A minister of the religion of Moses, Abraham, and Jacob asks in the
name of his co-religionists that the said effects should not be
regarded as belonging to such and such a sect, ... this citizen is
named Benjamin Jacob.... Another member of the same committee pays
homage to the patriotic zeal of the citizens heretofore Jews, ...
almost all have forestalled the wish of the revolutionary committee
by themselves bringing their reliquaries and ornaments, amongst
others the famous cope said to have belonged to Moses.[634]

On the 20th Frimaire at "the Temple of Liberty," formerly the church of the Benedictines, "the citizen Alexandre Lambert _fils_, a Jew brought up in the prejudices of the Jewish religion," uttered a violent harangue against all religions:

I will prove to you, citizens, that all forms of worship are
impostures equally degrading to man and to divinities; I will not
prove it by philosophy, I do not know it, but only by the light of
reason.

After denouncing the iniquities of both the Catholic and Protestant faiths, Lambert demonstrates "the absurdities of the Jewish religion, of this domineering religion"; he thunders against Moses "governing a simple and agrarian people like all clever impostors," against "the servile respect of the Jews for their kings ... the ablutions of women," etc. Finally he declares:

The bad faith, citizens, of which the Jewish nation is accused does
not come from themselves but from their priests. Their religion,
which would allow them only to lend to those of their nation at 5
per cent., tells them to take all they can from Catholics; it is
even hallowed as a custom in our morning prayers to solicit God's
help in catching out a Christian. There is more, citizens, and it
is the climax of abomination: if any mistake is made in commerce
between Jews, they are ordered to make reparation; but if on 100
louis a Christian should have paid 25 too much, one is not bound to
return them to him. What an abomination! What a horror! And where
does that all come from but from the Rabbis? Who have excited
proscriptions against us? Our priests! Ah, citizens, more than
anything in the world we must abjure a religion which, ... by
subjecting us to irksome and servile practices, makes it impossible
for us to be good citizens.[635]

The encouragement accorded by the Jews to the French Revolution appears thus to have been prompted not by religious fanaticism but by a desire for national advantage. That they gained immensely by the overthrow of the Old Order is undeniable, for apart from the legislation passed on their behalf in the National Assembly, the disorder of the finances in 1796 was such that, as M. Leon Kahn tells us, a contemporary journal enquired: "Has the Revolution then been only a financial scheme? a speculation of bankers?"[636] We know from Prudhomme to what race the financiers who principally profited by this disorder belonged.[637]

But if the rôle 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 reasserted 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 Sincères_, 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 assigned 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 Orléanistes 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'Orléans 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 document verbatim: