Napoleon and Freemasonry

The leader who arose out of the first French Revolution, and whose military and diplomatic fame is still fresh in the recollection of many of the present generation—that leader was Napoleon Bonaparte. In the days of his greatest prosperity, nothing was so distasteful to him as to be reminded of his Jacobin past. He then wished to pose as another Charlemagne or Rudolph of Hapsburg. He wished to be considered the friend of religion and of the Catholic religion in particular. He did something for the restoration of the Church in France, but it was as little as he could help. It, perhaps, prevented a more wholesome and complete reaction in favor of the true religious aspirations of the population. It was done grudgingly, parsimoniously, and meanly. And when it had been done, Napoleon did all he could to undo its benefits. He soon became the persecutor—the heartless, cruel, ungrateful persecutor of the Pontiff, and an opponent to the best interests of religion in France, and in every country which had the misfortune to fall under his sway.

The reason for all this was, that Napoleon had commenced his career as a Freemason, and a Freemason he remained in spirit and in effect to the end of his life. It is known that he owed his first elevation to the Jacobins and that his earliest patron was Robespierre. His first campaign in Italy was characterized by the utmost brutality which could gratify Masonic hatred for the Church. He suppressed the abodes of the consecrated servants of God, sacked churches, cathedrals, and sanctuaries, and reduced the Pope to the direst extremities. His language was the reflex of his acts and of his heart. His letters breathe everywhere the spirit of advanced Freemasonry, gloating over the wounds it had been able to inflict upon the Spouse of Christ.

Yet this adventurer has, with great adroitness, been able to pass with many, and especially in Ireland, as a good Catholic. Because he was the enemy of England, or rather that England led by the counsels of Pitt and Burke, constituted herself the implacable enemy of the Revolution of which he was the incarnation and continuation, many opposed to England for political reasons, regard Bonaparte as a kind of hero. No one can doubt the military genius of the man nor indeed his great general ability; but he was in all his acts what Freemasonry made him. He was mean, selfish, tyrannical, and cruel. He was reckless of blood. He could tolerate or use the Church while that suited his policy. But he had from the beginning to the very end of his career that thorough indifference to her welfare, and want of belief in her doctrines, which an early and life-long connection with the Illuminati inspired. Father Deschamps writes of him:—

"Napoleon Bonaparte was in effect an advanced Freemason, and his reign has been the most flourishing epoch of Freemasonry. During the reign of terror the Grand Orient ceased its activity. The moment Napoleon seized power the lodges were opened in every place."

I have said that the revolutionary rulers in France were all Illuminati—that is Freemasons of the most pronounced type—whose ultimate aim was the destruction of every existing religion and form of secular government, in order to found an atheistic, social republic, which would extend throughout the world and embrace all mankind. Freemasonry welcomes, as we have seen, the Mahommedan, the Indian, the Chinese, and the Buddhist, as well as the Christian and the Jew. It designs to conquer all, as a means of bringing all into the one level of Atheism and Communism. When, therefore, its Directory, in their desire to get rid of Napoleon, planned the expedition to Egypt and Asia, they meant the realization of a part of this program, as well as the removal of a troublesome rival. A universal monarchy is, in their idea, the most efficacious means for arriving at a universal republic. Once obtained, the dagger with which they removed Gustavus III of Sweden, or the guillotine by which they rid France of Louis XVI, can at any moment remove Caesar and call in Brutus. They are not the men to recoil before deeds of blood for the accomplishment of their purposes.

Now Napoleon, who was, as Father Deschamps informs us, a member of the lodge of the Templars, the extreme Illuminated lodge of Lyons, and had given proof of his fidelity to Masonry in Italy, was the very man to extend the rule of Republicanism throughout Asia. He appeared in Egypt with the same professions of hypocritical respect for the Koran, the Prophet, and Mahommedanism, as he afterwards made when it suited his policy for Catholicism. His address to the people of Egypt will prove this. It ran as follows, with true Masonic hypocrisy:—

"Cadis, Chieks, Imans, tell the people that we are the friends of true Mussulmen; that we respect more than the Mamelukes do, God, His Prophet, and the Alkoran. Is it not we who have destroyed the Pope, who wished that war should be made against the Mussulman? Is it not we who have destroyed the Knights of Malta, because these madmen thought that God willed them to make war upon the Mussulman? Is it not we who have been, in all ages the friends of the Grand Seigneur—may God fulfil his desires—and the enemy of his enemies. God is God, and Mahomet is his Prophet! Fear nothing above all for the religion of the Prophet, which I love."

The cool hypocrisy of this address is manifested by a proclamation he made on that occasion to his own soldiers. The same proclamation also shows the value we may place on his protestations of attachment to, and respect for, the usages of Christianity. The following is a translation of it:—

"Soldiers! the peoples with whom we are about to live are Mahommedan. The first article of their faith is this: 'There is no God but God, and Mahomet is his Prophet.' Do not contradict them. Act with them as you have acted with the Jews and with the Italians. Have the same respect for their Muftis and their Imans, as you have had for Rabbis and Bishops. Have for the ceremonies prescribed by the Alkoran, for the Mosques, the same tolerance you had for Convents, for Synagogues, and for the religion of Moses and of Jesus Christ."

We read in the correspondence of Napoleon I, published by order of Napoleon III (vol. v., pp. 185, 191, 241), what he thought of this proclamation at the very end of his career:—

"After all, it was not impossible that circumstances might have brought me to embrace Islam," he said at St. Helena. "Could it be thought that the Empire of the East, and perhaps the subjection of the whole of Asia, was not worth a turban and pantaloons, for it was reduced to so much solely. We would lose only our breeches and our hats. I say that the army, disposed as it was, would have lent itself to that project undoubtedly, and it saw in it nothing but a subject for laughter and pleasantry. Meanwhile, you see the consequences. I took Europe by a back stroke. The old civilization was beaten down, and who then thought to disturb the destinies of our France and the regeneration of the world? Who had dared to undertake it? Who could have accomplished it?"

Neither prosperity nor adversity changed Napoleon. He was a skeptic to the end. He said at St. Helena to Las Cases:

"Everything proclaims the existence of a God—that is not to be doubted—but all our religions are evidently the children of men.

"Why do these religions cry down one another, combat one another? Why has that been in all ages, and all places? It is because men are always men. It is because the Priests have always insinuated, slipped in lies and fraud everywhere.

"Nevertheless, from the moment that I had the power, I had been eager to re-establish religion. I used it as the base and the root. It was in my eyes the support of good morality, of true principles, of good manners.

"I am assuredly far from being an Atheist; but I cannot believe all that they teach me in spite of my reason, under penalty of being deceitful and hypocritical.

"To say whence I come, what I am, where I go, is above my ideas. And nevertheless all that is, I am the watch which exists and does not know itself.

"No doubt, my spirit of mere doubt was, in my quality of Emperor, a benefit for the people Otherwise how could I equally favor sects so contrary, if I had been dominated over by one alone? How could I preserve the independence of my thoughts and of my movements under the suggestions of a confessor who could govern me by means of the fear of hell.

"What an empire could not a wicked man, the most stupid of men, under that title of confessor, exercise over those who govern nations?

"I was so penetrated with these truths that I preserved myself well to act in such a manner, that, in as far as it lay in me, I would educate my son in the same religious lines in which I found myself."

Two months later the ex-Emperor said that from the age of thirteen he had lost all religious faith.

Thiers (Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire, iv. p. 14), says that when Napoleon intended to proclaim himself Emperor, he wished to give the Masons a pledge of his principles, and that he did this by killing the Duke d'Enghien. He said,

"They wish to destroy the Revolution in attacking it in my person. I will defend it, for I am the Revolution. I, myself—I, myself. They will so consider it from this day forward, for they will know of what we are capable."

A less brave but still more accomplished relative of his, Napoleon III, in his Idees Napoleoniennes, says:—

"The Revolution dying, but not vanquished, left to Napoleon the accomplishments of its last designs. Enlighten the nations it would have said to him. Place upon solid bases the principal result of our efforts. Execute in extent that which I have done in depth. Be for Europe what I have been for France. That grand mission Napoleon accomplished even to the end."

Alexander Dumas in the introduction to his Memoirs of Garibaldi tells us:—

"Illuminism and Freemasonry, these two great enemies of royalty, and the adopted device of both of which was L. P. D., lilia pedibus destrue, had a grand part in the French Revolution.

"Napoleon took Masonry under his protection. Joseph Napoleon was Grand Master of the Order, Joachim Murat second Master adjoint. The Empress Josephine being at Strasbourg, in 1805, presided over the fete for the adoption of the lodge of True Chevaliers of Paris. At the same time Eugene de Beauharnais was Venerable of the lodge of St. Eugene in Paris. Having come to Italy with the title of Viceroy, the Grand Orient of Milan named him Master and Sovereign Commander of the Supreme Council of the thirty-second grade, that is to say, accorded him the greatest honor which could be given him according to the Statutes of the Order. Bernadotte was a Mason. His son Oscar was Grand Master of the Swedish lodge. In the different lodges of Paris were successively initiated, Alexander, Duke of Wurtemburg; the Prince Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, even the Persian Ambassador, Askeri Khan. The President of the Senate, Count de Lacipede, presided over the Grand Orient of France, which had for officers of honor the Generals Kellerman, Messina, and Soult. Princes, Ministers, Marshals, Officers, Magistrates, all the men, in fine, remarkable for their glory or considerable by their position, ambitioned to be made Masons. The women even wished to have their lodges into which entered Mesdames de Vaudemont, de Carignan, de Gerardin, de Narbonne and many other ladies."

Frere Clavel, in his picturesque history of Freemasonry, says that —

"Of all these high personages the Prince Cambaceres was the one who most occupied himself with Masonry. He made it his duty to rally to Masonry all the men in France who were influential by their official position, by their talent, or by their fortune. The personal services which he rendered to many of the brethren, the eclat which he caused to be given to the lodges in bringing to their sittings by his example and invitations all those illustrious amongst the military and judicial professions and others, contributed powerfully to the fusion of parties and to the consolidation of the imperial throne. In effect under his brilliant and active administration the lodges multiplied ad infinitum. They were composed of the elect of French society. They became a point of reunion for the partisans of the existing and of passed regimes. They celebrated in them the feasts of the Emperor. They read in them the bulletins of his victories before they were made public by the press, and able men organized the enthusiasm which gradually took hold of all minds."

When Napoleon obtained power, it was we know principally by means of the Illuminated Freemason Talleyrand. By him and his confederates of the Illuminati, Napoleon was recalled from Egypt and placed in the way of its attainment. His brothers were—every one of them—deep in the secrets of the Sect. Its supreme hidden directory saw that a reaction had set in, which if not averted, would speedily lead to the return of the exiled Bourbons, and to the disgorgement of ill-gotten goods on the part of the revolutionists. As a lesser evil, therefore, and as a means of forwarding the unification of Europe which they had planned, by his conquests, they placed supreme power in the hands of Bonaparte and urged him on in his career, watching, at the same time, closely, their own opportunities for the development of the deadly designs of the Sect. Then, they obtained the first places in his Empire for themselves. They put as much mischief into the measures of relief given to conscience as they could. They established a fatal supremacy for secularism in the matter of education. They brought dissension between the Pope and the Emperor. They caused the second confiscation of the States of the Church. They caused and continued to the end, the imprisonment of Pius VII. They were at the bottom of every attack made by Napoleon while Emperor upon the rights of the Church, the freedom and independence of the Supreme Pontiff, and the well-being of religion.

But the chief mistake of Napoleon was the encouragement he gave to Freemasonry. It served his purpose admirably for a while, that is so long as he served the present and ultimate views of the conspiracy; for a conspiracy Masonry ever was and ever will be. Even if Cambaceres, Talleyrand, Fouche, and the old leaders of the Illuminati, whom he had taken into his confidence and richly rewarded, should be satisfied, there was a mass of others whom no reward could conciliate, and who, filled with the spirit of the Sect, were sure to be ever on the lookout for the means to advance the designs of Weishaupt and his inner circle.

That inner circle never ceased its action. It held the members of the Sect, whom it not only permitted but assisted to attain high worldly honors, completely in its power, and hence in absolute subjection. For them as well as for the humblest member of the secret conclave, the poisoned aqua tophona and the dagger were ready to do the work of certain death should they lack obedience to those depraved fanatics of one diabolical idea, who were found worthy to be selected by their fellow conspirators to occupy the highest place of infamy and secret power. These latter scattered secretly amidst the rank and file of the lodges, hundreds of Argus-eyed, skilled plotters, who kept the real power of inner or high Masonry in the hands of its hidden masters.

Masonry from this secret vantage ground ceaselessly conspired during the Empire. It assisted the conquest of the victor of Austerlitz and Jena; and if Deschamps, who quotes from the most reliable sources, is to be trusted, it actually did more for these victories than the great military leader himself. Through its instrumentality the resources of the enemies of Napoleon were never at hand, the designs of the Austrian and other generals opposed to him were thwarted, treason was rife in their camps, and information fatal to their designs was conveyed to the French commander. Masonry was then on his side, and as now the secret resources of the Order, its power of hidden influence and espionage were placed at the disposal of the cause it served.

But when Masonry had reason to fear that Napoleon's power might be perpetuated; when his alliance with the Imperial Family of Austria, and above all, when the consequence of that alliance, an heir to his throne, caused danger to the universal republic it could otherwise assure itself of at his death; when, too, he began to show a coldness for the sect, and sought means to prevent it from the propagandism of its diabolical aims, then it became his enemy, and his end was not far off.

Distracting councils prevailed in his cabinet. His opponents began to get information regarding his movements, which he had obtained previously of theirs. Members of the sect urged on his mad expedition to Moscow; his resources were paralyzed; and he was, in one word, sold by secret, invisible foes into the hands of his enemies. In Germany, Weishaupt and his party, still living on in dark intrigue, prepared secretly for his downfall. His generals were beaten in detail. He was betrayed, hoodwinked, and finally led to his deposition and ruin. He then received with a measure, pressed down and overflowing, and shaken together, the gratitude of the father of lies, incarnate in Freemasonry, in the Illuminati, and kindred Atheist secret societies. Banished to Elba he was permitted to return to France only in order to meet the fate of an outcast and a prisoner upon the rock of St. Helena, where he died abandoned and persecuted by the dark Sect which had used, abused, and betrayed him. So it has continued, as we shall see, to use, to abuse, and to betray every usurper or despot whom it lures into its toils.

[Footnote 1: Deschamps says that it was at this period that the order of the Templars (for Masonry is divided into any amount of rites which exercise one over the other a kind of influence in proportion to the members of the inner grades which they contain) was resuscitated in France. It publicly interred one of its members from the Church of St. Antoine. The funeral oration of Jacques Molay was publicly pronounced. Napoleon permitted this. The danger his permission created was foreseen, and M. de Maistre writes:—"A very remarkable phenomenon is that of the resuscitation of Freemasonry in Prance, so far, that a brother has been interred solemnly in Paris with all the attributes and ceremonies of the order. The Master who reigns in France does not leave it to be even suspected that such a thing can exist in France without his leave. Judging from his known character and from his ideas upon secret societies, how then can the thing be explained? Is he the Chief, or dupe, or perhaps the one and the other of a society which he thinks he knows, and which mocks him."]

[Footnote 2: Illustrating these remarks we have the comments of M. Bagot in his Cades des Franc-Mayans, p. 183:— "The Imperial Government took advantage of its omnipotence, to which so many men, so many institutions, yielded so complacently, in order to dominate over Masonry. The latter became neither afraid nor revolted. What did it desire in effect? To extend its empire—"It permitted itself to become subject to despotism in order to become sovereign." This gives us the whole reason why Masonry first permitted Napoleon to rule, then to reign, then to conquer, and finally to fall.]