Chapter XI: Freemasonry After the Fall of Napoleon

It would be very interesting, if we had time, to enter into the many intrigues of that very same body of Illuminati who had planned and executed the Revolution, and had then created successively the Directory, the Consulate, and the Empire in France, as they now _posed_ in a new capacity as friends to the return of Monarchy in Europe generally. This they did for the purposes of the Freemasons, and in order to keep the power they wielded so long in their own hands, and in the hands of their party. Now, I wish you to note, that Weishaupt, the father of the Illuminati, and the fanatical and deep director of all its operations, was even then living in power and security at Coburg-Gotha, and that his wily confederates were ministers in every Court of Europe. Then, as now, the invincible determination with which they secreted their quality from the eyes of monarchs as well as of the general public, enabled them to _pose_ in any character or capacity without fear of being detected as Freemasons, or at least as Illuminati. Since the reign of Frederick the Great, they filled the Court of Berlin. Many minor German Princes continued to be Freemasons. The Duke of Brunswick was the central figure in the first Masonic conspiracy, and though, with the hypocrisy common to the sect, he issued a declaration highly condemnatory of his fellows, it is generally believed that he remained to the end attached to the “regeneration of humanity” in the interests of Atheism. The Court of Vienna was more or less Masonic since the reign of the wretched Joseph II. Alexander of Russia was educated by La Harpe, a Freemason, and at the very period when called upon to play a principal part in the celebrated “Holy Alliance,” he was under the hidden guidance of others of the Illuminati. Fessler, an apostate Austrian religious, the Councillor of Joseph II., after having abjured Christianity, remained, while professing a respect for religion, its most determined enemy. He founded what is known as the Tugenbund, a society by which German Freemasonry put on a certain Christian covering, in order more securely to outlive the reaction against Atheism, and to de-Christianize the world again at a better opportunity. The Tugenbund refused to receive Jews, and devised many other means to deceive Christians to become substantially Freemasons without incurring Church censures or going against ideas then adverse to the old Freemasonry, which, nevertheless, continued to exist as satanic as ever under Christian devices.

In France, the Illuminati of the schools of Wilhelmsbad and Lyons continued their machinations without much change of front, though they covered themselves with that impenetrable secrecy which the sect has found so convenient for disarming public suspicion while pursuing its aims. Possessing means of deceiving the outside world, and capable of using every kind of hypocrisy and _ruse_, the Freemasons of both France and Germany plotted at this period with more secure secrecy and success than ever. There is nothing which Freemasonry dreads more than light. It is the one thing it cannot stand. Therefore, it has always taken care to provide itself with adepts and allies able to disarm public suspicion in its regard. Should outsiders endeavour to find out its real character and aims, it takes refuge at once under the semblance of puerility, of harmless amusement, of beneficence, or even of half-witted simplicity. It is content to be laughed at, in order not to be found out. But it is for all its puerility, the same dangerous foe to Christianity, law, legitimacy, and order, which it proved itself to be before and during the first French Revolution, and which it will continue to be until the world has universal reason to know the depth, the malignity, and the extent of its remorseless designs.[12]

At the period of the reaction against Bonaparte it seems to have taken long and wise counsel. When Talleyrand found that Weishaupt and the inner Masonry no longer approved of Napoleon’s autocracy, he managed very adroitly that the Emperor should grow cold with him. He was thus free to take adverse measures against his master, and to prepare himself for the coming change. The whole following of Bonaparte recruited from the Illuminati were ready to betray him. They could compass the fall of the tyrant, but the difficulty for them was to find one suitable to put in his place. It was decreed in their highest council that whosoever should come upon the throne of France, should be as far removed as possible from being a friend to Catholicity or to any principle sustaining true religion. They therefore determined that, if at all possible, no member of the ancient House should reign; and as soon as the allied sovereigns who were for the most part non-Catholic, had crushed Napoleon, these French Masons demanded the Protestant and Masonic King of Holland for King in France. This failing, they contrived by Masonic arts to obtain the first places in the Provisional Government which succeeded Napoleon. They endeavoured to make the most of the inevitable, and to rule the incoming Louis XVIII., in the interests of their sect, and to the detriment of the Church and of Christianity.

Notwithstanding the fact that they had shown open hostility to himself and to his house, Louis XVIII., strange to say, favoured the Illuminati. Talleyrand was made minister, and the other advanced Freemasons of the Empire—Seyies, Cambaceres, Fouché, and the rest—obtained place and power. These men at once applied themselves to subvert the sentiment of reaction in favour of the monarchy and of religion. Soon, Louis XVIII. gave the world the sad spectacle of a man prepared at their bidding to cut his own throat. He dissolved a Parliament of ultra loyalists because they were too loyal to him. The Freemasons took care that his next Parliament should be full of its own creatures. They also wrung from the King, under the plea of freedom of the press, permission to deluge the country anew with the infidel and immoral publications of Voltaire and his confederates, and with newspapers and periodicals, which proved disastrous to his house, to royalty, and to Christianity, in France. These led before long to the attempt upon the life of the Duke of Berry, to the revolution against Charles X., to the elevation of the son of the Grand Master, Egalité, as Constitutional King, and to all the revolutionary results that have since distracted and disgraced unfortunate France. But much as Freemasonry effected in that country, it was not there but in peaceful Italy that its illuminated machinations produced the worst and most wide-spread fruits of death. We shall see this by a brief review of the Freemasonry which formed the