Freemasonry in France After 1793

The role of Freemasonry has been exposed in detail and in a complete manner by several writers such as Deschamps, Delassus, Copin-Albancelli, etc., and it is from them that we shall take the following brief summary.

By wishing to go too fast, Freemasonry miscarried. The excesses of the Terror brought about a violent reaction of the country. Being unable to do better, Freemasonry resumed its philanthropic guise and respectful attitude to social order. It upheld Napoleon, who, moreover, served it by spreading the revolutionary spirit all over Europe. He proclaimed: "I have consecrated the revolution, I have instilled it into the laws" and again: "I have sown liberty broadcast where ever I have implanted my civil code." In a word he was for Europe what the revolution had been for France. But the secret societies turned against him when he showed a disposition to re-establish for his own benefit an hereditary, stable and conservative autocracy. The first excommunication of Freemasonry against Napoleon dates from 1809.

When the Empire fell, the hidden power could not oppose the wish of the whole nation and was obliged to submit to the return of the Bourbons. What masonry wanted, by one means or another, was to save the revolution by maintaining its spirit and keeping as many of its conquests as possible. The two important points for it were the separation of church and state and the suppression of absolute monarchy. The constitutional form of government was therefore implanted in France, and under it masonry had its chance.

Louis XVIII, said the secretary of the Grand Orient de France Bazot, gave the charter, that is constitutional government. That principle protects us.

Having thus met the most pressing need, the hidden power resumed its work and carried on invisibly a relentless campaign against the Restoration which was becoming too strong and was making the people too contented:

It must be centuries, perhaps, before most peoples of Europe can reach the degree ot happiness which France enjoyed under Charles X.

Said Stendhal—Masonry participated in the revolution of 1830.

"Do not believe, said a high mason, the elder M. Dupin of the lodge Trinosophes, that three days have done everything. If the revolution has been so prompt and sudden, if we have made it in a few days, it is because we had a keystone ready to place, and because we have been able to substitute immediately a new and complete order of things for that which had just been destroyed.

I shall not enter into the masonic preparation of the revolution of 1848, as Eckert, Deschamps, Delassus. Copin-Albancelli have devoted several chapters to the subject.

At that time the emancipation of the Jews, begun by the revolution of 1789 spread to the rest of Europe. Troubles broke out almost everywhere in Europe in a simultaneous manner which cannot easily be explained without an international direction. In France on the 6th of March 1848 the provisional government, of which 9 out of 11 members were masons, received an official deputation from the lodges with all the panoply of masonic insignia.

"They saluted the triumph of their principles and congratulated themselves for being able to say that the whole country has received masonic consecration through the members of the government. Forty thousand masons, distributed in more than five hundred workshops, forming between I them but a single heart and mind, were promising their support to achieve the work already begun."

In spite of the pressure of this essentially masonic government the elected national Assembly was patriotic; it refused to obey the guiding lines laid down for it beforehand by the hidden power. The latter without hesitation then turned to a man whom it knew to be its own and Napoleon III ascended the throne.

The Emperor showed that he was indeed the man of the revolution, believing that it was his mission to root it in France and to introduce it everywhere in Europe.

Masonry upheld it as long as it believed that it could count on his obedience. Then the support was withdrawn in proportion as Napoleon tried to lean on France itself in order to regain his independence.

"Napoleon III was a strange monarch such as one does not often meet in history, nor even among usurpers and upstarts. The latter try generally to make people forget their origins, while he seemed to glory in his, and to have been placed on the throne with the sole object of destroying monarchies, his own finally included . . . This Empire might have been taken for a lay republic, and it was, in spite of its deceptive brilliancy, a system of democracy and of free-thought.

The disaster of 1870 hastened events and masonry was obliged to intervene sooner than it would have desired. Renewing the attempt of 1789 it sustained the commune. On the 26th April 1871, fifty five lodges, more than ten thousands masons, led by their dignitaries, wearing their insignias, went in procession to the ramparts to place banners there to the number of sixty two. At the Hotel de Ville, the mason Tiriforque in saluting the revolutionary power said to the rioters: "The commune is the greatest revolution which the world has been given to behold."

When the Commune was over, the secret societies which had not been able to prevent the election of an assembly with a monarchist majority planned together all over Europe in order to oppose the accession to the throne of the comte de Chambord who represented stable power in legitimacy, heredity and authority.

Freemasonry after having gained as much as it could from the different governments which succeeded each other from 1789 finally reached the form of government which suited it best: that is the Republic under which it is easy for it to seize control.

From that time one France has been rolling downwards. The Third republic has mostly applied the laws elaborated by Freemasonry destroying little by little what remained of the elements of social conservation. Taught by the events of 1789, 1830, 1848, and 1871 it goes slowly but surely. The monarchy having definitively been brought down, it is a question of overthrowing the other base of the old society, namely Catholicism. All the policy of the third republic has been concentrated on this point for fifty years.

Let us quote the words of Gambetta spoken at Romans in 1878:

"The clerical question, that is to say the question of the relations between church and slate, takes precedence and holds all other questions in suspense. It is in this question that the spirit of the past takes refuge and entrenches itself. I denounce the ever growing peril which the ultramontane spirit is creating for modern society, that spirit of the Vatican, of the Syllabus, which is only the exploitation of ignorance with a view to a general subjection."

The following quotation is from a speech by M. Viviani delivered from the tribune on 15th January 1901.

"We are entrusted with the preservation from all attack of the patrimony of the revolution . . . We come forward here bearing in our hands, over and above the republican traditions these French traditions attested by centuries of strife, during which, little by little, the laical spirit escaped from the clutches of religious society . . . We are not only face to face with the congregations but with the Catholic Church . . . Above this battle of a day, is it not true that we find once more that formidable conflict in which the spiritual power and the temporal power strive together for the sovereign prerogatives, trying by means of snatching consciences from each other, to keep to the last the guidance of humanity? But this is only a skirmish beside the battles of the past and of the future. The truth is that here is an encounter, according to the fine expression of M. de Mun in 1878, between society founded on the will of man and society founded on the will of God.

"The question is to know whether, in this battle, a law regarding association will be sufficient. The congregations of the church threaten you not only by their actions but also by the propagation of their faith . . .

" . . . Do not fear the battle offered to you; accept it. And if you find in front of you this divine religion which idealizes suffering by promises of future recompense, oppose it with the religion of humanity which also idealizes suffering by offering it, as recompense, the happiness of human generations."

At the Masonic convent of 1902 the speaker who made the closing speech said:

"This is the last phase of the struggle of the church and its congregations against our republican and laical society. This effort must be the last."

The destructive laws given out by the Third Republic would be too long to enumerate here; it is enough if everybody will honestly reflect upon them. If one examines the state of France one naturally comes to the conclusion that Freemasonry has known how to bring about, without violence, a state of things which is analogous in many points to that of Bolshevist Russia, but in a more disguised form.

How has it reached this result? The answer is that since 1871 and specially since 1881 none of the governments and cabinets which have succeeded one another has represented France. The republic, French in name, is nothing but a masonic republic, destructive of true French society and of the church.

In order to reach its aim Freemasonry has succeeded in making of our country a centre of revolutionary propaganda.

Freemasonry begins to unmask and everywhere proclaims its victory. As early as 1893 the Matin openly stated in one of its articles:

"We may affirm, without being overbold, that the majority of the laws which the French submit to—we speak of important political laws—have been examined by Freemasonry before appearing in the official gazette. The laws on primary education, on divorce, the military laws and among others the law obliging seminarians to do military service, went from the rue Cadet [headquarters of the Grand Orient] to the Palais Bourbon; and they came back inviolate and definitive."

In conclusion conies this shout of triumph:

"We are still all powerful, but on condition that we compose our aspirations in a simple formula. For ten years we have marched forward repeating: Clericalism is the enemy! We have everywhere schools without religious teaching, priests are reduced to silence and seminarians have to carry the soldier's pack. That is no ordinary result in a nation which calls itself the eldest daughter of the church."

The influence of Freemasonry in French politics was thus summarized by a well-known masonic writer:

"The advent of the Republic permitted Freemasonry to act outwardly and to take such a place in the State that its adversaries could say that France was not a republic but a Freemasonic State."

The socialist elections of 1924 were the triumph of Freemasonry.

"The 11th May 1924, the adversaries of Freemasonry marked the most complete defeat which they have perhaps ever suffered. This republican victory was characterized, from the masonic point of view, by the fact that there was elected to the chamber of deputies a considerable number of masons whose quality as such was notorious, while the heads of the anti-masonic organizations were ignominiously beaten, as, for example, general de Castelnau in the Aveyron, the Comte de Leusse in the Haut Rhin, M. Marcellot in the Haute-Marne, etc."

The result of these elections was that the interference of Freemasonry in parliamentary affairs and its domination on very many deputies and senators became stronger than ever during the Herriot socialist cabinet of 1921.

A. G. Michel has published a book: La dictature de la Franc-maconnerie sur la France (The Dictatorship of Freemasonry in France), showing on one side the decisions taken at various masonic congresses, and on the other the corresponding official realizations during the Herriot government.

1. —The lodges decreed the suppression of the embassy to the Vatican (among other sources, the official bulletin of the Grand Loge de France, January 1923, p. 39). Carried on the 24th October 1924.

2. — The lodges demand the application of the law on the congregations (among others, the official bulletin of the Grande Loge de France. Convent of 1922, p. 220). First ministerial declaration by Herriot, 17th June 1924

3. — The lodges demand the triumph of the idea of laicity (among others, Convent du Grand Orient, 1923, p. 220). First ministerial declaration by Herriot 17th June 1924.

4. — The lodges demand a full and complete amnesty for condemned persons and traitors, notably Marty, Sadoul, Caillaux, Malvy, Goldsky, etc. (among others, great meeting at the headquarters of the Grand Orient, rue Cadet, 31st January 1923. — Bulletin hebdomadaire, n. 339, 1923, p. 13). Voted by the chamber, 15th July 1924.

5. — The lodges desire the scrutin d'arrondissement (district election) electoral system (among others, Grande Loge de France, 1922, p. 287). Voted by the senate the 23rd August 1921.

6. — The lodges decree the introduction of the system of non-religious education into Alsace-Lorraine in spite of previous promises (among others. Convent du Grand Orient de France, 1923, p. 205). Ministerial declaration by Herriot.

7. — The Lodges demand the establishment of the ecole unique and the monopoly of teaching (Convent du G. O. de France, 1923, p. 265-266). Ministerial declaration, 17th June 1924.

8. — The lodges wish to reopen relations with the Soviets (Bulletin officiel de la Grande Loge de France, October 1922, p. 286). Realized on 28th October 1924.

9. — The lodges wish to inaugurate an economic system preparing the way for socialism (Convent du G. O. de France, 1922, p. 223 and 334). See A. G. Michel for realizations.

10. The lodges are for the league of nations to make of it an international tool of Freemasonry. etc. The Herriot ministry was the domination of the Cartel de gauche.

"The cartel is a coalition, which has existed under various forms for thirty years, of the Radical-socialist party and the collectivist party S. F. I. O. [Section francaise de l'internationale ouvriere], an alliance concluded in the bosom of Freemasonry which is the real master of the republic since 1881.

"The radical branch of Freemasonry which has dominated, almost alone, for a long time, the great secret organization, has always specialized in the work of undoing Christianity in the country by means of anti-religious illuminism . . .

"As for the collectivist party of Blum, the second branch of Freemasonry, which tends to supersede the purely radical-socialist branch, its aims are known: it is not only an anti-religious party, but a party of class war and of social revolution, which wishes to destroy what it calls the capitalist system, that is the system of individual ownership, and to replace it by a collectivist or communist society in which the banks, the mines, the factories, the means of transport and the land would be exploited by the proletarian state.

"And this S. F. I. O. Party has sent to the present chamber 100 deputies who represent 1,700,000 votes of the 1928 elections. That is where we are.

"But each year which passes increases the danger. Each year which passes the laical school in the hands of a teaching staff, of which three quarters have been won over to the ideas of the extreme left, throws into public life a fresh contingent of young men who go to swell the revolutionary parties.

"Each year which passes a new batch of youths from the free-thinking State schools comes to increase the number of our syndicated civil servants, those who have already begun to Sovietize our public services.

"Each year which passes, another portion of the popular classes is prevailed upon by "l'Humanite" and the other revolutionary newspapers which can, as we ourselves did in the time of our revolutionary "illuminism" undermine with impunity the foundations of society, under the noses of the authorities.

"Finally each year which passes marks a lower birth rate."

This Summary of the part played by Freemasonry in France from 1789 to the present time is sufficient to enlighten us. We shall now examine the revolutionary action of masonry in different European countries. Being unable to give here a complete history of masonry in Europe we have chosen only a few of the most significant examples.