The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies Read online

  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.

  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.

  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 today.

  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.”

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

  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.

  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 ; 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.

  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.”

  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.” 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?

  We shall now see that not only the Illuminati but Weishaupt himself still continued to intrigue long after the French Revolution had ended.

  Directly the Reign of Terror was over, the masonic lodges, which during the Revolution had been replaced by the clubs, began to reopen, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century were in a more flourishing condition than ever before. “It was the most brilliant epoch of Masonry,” wrote the Freemason Bazot in his History of Freemasonry. Nearly 1,200 lodges existed in France under the Empire; generals, magistrates, artists, savants, and notabilities in every line were initiated into the Order. The most eminent of these was Prince Cambacérès, pro Grand Master of the Grand Orient.

  It is in the midst of this period that we find Weishaupt once more at work behind the scenes of Freemasonry. Thus in the remarkable Masonic correspondence published by M. Benjamin Fabre in his “Eques a Capite Galeato” – of which, as has already been pointed out, the authenticity is admitted by eminent British Freemasons – a letter is reproduced from Pyron, representative in Paris of the Grand Orient of Italy, to the Marquis de Chefdebien, dated September 9, 1808, in which it is stated that “a member of the sect of Bav.” has asked for information on a certain point of ritual.

  On December 29, 1808, Pyron writes again: “By the words ‘sect of B… .’ I meant W… .”; and on December 3, 1809, puts the matter quite plainly: “The other word remaining at the end of my pen refers enigmatically to Weis-pt.” So, as M. Fabre points out:

  There is no longer any doubt that it is a question here of Weishaupt, and yet one observes that his name is not yet written in all its letters. It must be admitted here that Pyron took great precautions when it was a matter of Weishaupt! And one is led to ask what could be the extraordinary importance of the rôle played at this moment in the Freemasonry of the First Empire by this Weishaupt, who was supposed to have been outside the Masonic movement since Illuminism was brought to trial in 1786!

  But the Marquis de Chefdebien entertained no illusions about Weishaupt, whose intrigues he had always opposed, and in a letter dated May 12, 1806, to the Freemason Roettiers, who had referred to the danger of isolated masonic lodges, he asks:

  In good faith, very reverend brother, is it in isolated lodges that the atrocious conspiracy of Philippe [the Duc d’Orléans] and Robespierre was formed? Is it from isolated lodges that those prominent men came forth, who, assembled at the Hôtel de Ville, stirred up revolt, devastation, assassination? And is it not in the lodges bound together, co- and sub-ordinated, that the monster Weishaupt established his tests and had his horrible principles prepared?

  If, then, as M. Gustave Bord asserts, the Marquis de Chefdebien had himself belonged to the Illuminati before the Revolution, here is indeed Illuminist evidence in support of Barruel! Yet disillusioned as the “Eques a Capite Galeato” appears to have been with regard to Illuminism, he still retained his allegiance to Freemasonry. This would tend to prove that, however subversive the doctrines of the Grand Orient may have been – and indeed undoubtedly were – it was not Freemasonry itself but Illuminism which organized the movement of which the French Revolution was the first manifestation. As Monsignor Dillon has expressed it:

  Had Weishaupt not lived, Masonry might have ceased to be a power after the reaction consequent on the French Revolution. He gave it a form and character which caused it to outlive that reaction, to energize to the present day, and which will cause it to advance until its final conflict with Christianity must determine whether Christ or Satan shall reign on this earth to the end.

  If to the word Masonry we add Grand Orient – that is to say, the Masonry not of Great Britain, but of the Continent – we shall be still nearer to the truth.

  In the early part of the nineteenth century Illuminism was thus as much alive as ever. Joseph de Maistre, writing at this period, constantly refers to the danger it presents to Europe. Is it not also to Illuminism that a mysterious passage in a recent work of M. Lenôtre refers? In the course of conversation with the friends of the false Dauphin Hervagault, Monsignor de Savine is said to have “made allusions in prudent and almost terrified terms to some international sect … a power superior to all others … which has arms and eyes everywhere and which governs Europe today.”

  When in “World Revolution” I asserted that during the period that Napoleon held the reins of power the devastating fire of Illuminism was temporarily extinguished, I wrote without knowledge of some important documents which prove that Illuminism continued without break from the date of its foundation all through the period of the Empire. So far, then, from overstating the case by saying that Illuminism did not cease in 1786, I understated it by suggesting that it ceased even for this brief interval. The documents in which this evidence is to be found are referred to by Lombard de Langres, who, writing in 1820, observes that the Jacobins were invisible from the 18th Brumaire until 1813, and goes on to say:

  Here the sect disappears; we find to guide us during this period only uncertain notions, scattered fragments; the plots of Illuminism lie buried in the boxes of the Imperial police.

  But the contents of these boxes no longer lie buried; transported to the Archives Nationales, the documents in which the intrigues of Illuminism are laid bare have at last been given to the public. Here there can be no question of imaginative abbés, Scotch professors, or American divines conjuring up a bogey to alarm the world; these dry official reports prepared for the vigilant eye of the Emperor, never intended and never used for publication, relate calmly and dispassionately what the writers have themselves heard and observed concerning the danger that Illuminism presents to all forms of settled government.

  The author of the most detailed report is one François Charles de Berckheim, special commissioner of police at Mayence towards the end of the Empire, who as a Freemason is naturally not disposed to prejudice against secret societies. In October 1810 he writes, however, that his attention has been drawn to the Illuminati by a pamphlet which has just fallen into his hands, namely the “Essai sur la Secte des Illuminés”, which, like many contemporaries, he attributes originally to Mirabeau. He then goes on to ask whether the sect still exists, and if so whether it is indeed “an association of frightful scoundrels who aim, as Mirabeau assures us, at the overthrow of all law and all morality, at replacing virtue by crime in every act of human life.” Further, he asks whether both sects of “Illuminés” have now combined in one and what are their present projects. Conversations with other F
reemasons further increase Berckheim’s anxiety on the subject; one of the best informed observes to him: “I know a great deal, enough at any rate to be convinced that the ‘Illuminés’ have vowed the overthrow of monarchic governments and of all authority on the same basis.”