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