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Queen Elizabeth with her rainbow and eyes of spies. Most notably, John Dee, the first 007.

“The Tea Party, I always say, is more like the American Revolution, and Occupy Wall Street is more the French Revolution.” -Rand Paul

By: Jay

There are two major strands of the revolutionary tradition (or what we might call revlutionism) when viewed from the perspective of association with secret societies.  Both are inheritors of the Enlightenment and both were connected with the French and American Revolutions.  There is the laissez-faire capitalist tradition we see exemplified in characters like Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and on the other end is the Jacobin tradition of ‘Illuminism’ from characters like Robespierre, Marat, Danton and the other radicals of France.  This account is fairly well-known: in the lecture from Zbigniew Brzezinski I posted, he referenced this same dual trend in revolutionary thought.   I don’t mean to oversimplify: I recognize there are a whole host of varying shades of so-called “rebels” of all flavors – women’s rights activists (feminists), anarcho-Marxists, anarcho-capitalists, etc.  What I am proposing that many are not aware of is that there are deeper currents of occult and secret society-linked systems of thought that undergird the revolutionary faith.

Both of these revolutionary traditions draw energy from Freemasonry, which is commonly divided into British and Continental.  The British strand that influenced much of the American tradition retained a notion of theism and some connection with monarchy and aristocracy.  This explains why the Queen of England is the royal patron of Masonry, with the Duke of Kent and others having well-known masonic positions of power.  Similarly in America, the masonic tradition has tended to be connected to the upper class of white males, generally excluding women (except for women’s associations) and having racialist views.  One may inquire as to whether many of these people are actual practitioners of the craft, but regardless, the institution is thus very useful from a geo-political perspective.

That said, the British masonic tradition views the Continental, or Grand Orient tradition of masonry as “irregular,” like a black lodge.  The confusion would therefore arise from the desire of the Crown to have spies and infiltrators in all different branches of masonry, as well as attempting to run many of the cultic societies.  Keep in mind that from the geo-political view, the name of the great game is full spectrum dominance more than it is adherence to a particular ideology.  Ideologies are something trafficked in by those at the top, than something devoutly believed.  This idea can be seen extending all the way back to ancient Greece, for example, where Plato spoke of leaders in the Republic viewing religion as a kind of noble lie necessary for civil maintenance.  This trend in British espionage goes all the way back to Elizabeth, who was pictured in paintings with eyes covering her garment – symbolizing her spies sent all throughout Europe.

What is of particular relevance from the Grand Orient tradition is that this is the modern origin of socialism, communism and egalitarianism.  The Grand Orient tradition of France in particular is a direct line back to the French Revolution, which has direct descent to the Bavarian tradition of Illuminism from the famed Adam Weishaupt.  The French Revolutionaries sought through a direct and immediate reign of ”red terror” to depose the monarchy and all religion with the establishment of an atheistic, secular republic based on the supposed dignity of bare humanism.  It is from the French Revolutionaries that the famous “Declaration of the Rights of Man” arises.  A modern example would be the United Nations’ supported Secular Humanist Manifesto I and II.  The French Revolutionaries were far more radical in their Jacobinism than many American fathers desired, but Jefferson, the American minister to France, was apparently a fan of the French experiment:

“The experiment failed completely, and would have brought on the reestablishment   of despotism had it been pursued. The Jacobins saw this, and that the expunging   that officer was of absolute necessity, and the Nation was with them in opinion,   for however they might have been formerly for the constitution framed by the   first assembly, they were come over from their hope in it, and were now generally   Jacobins. In the struggle which was necessary, many guilty persons fell without   the forms of trial, and with them some innocent. These I deplore as much as   any body, and shall deplore some of them to the day of my death. But I deplore   them as I should have done had they fallen in battle. It was necessary to use   the arm of the people, a machine not quite so blind as balls and bombs, but   blind to a certain degree. A few of their cordial friends met at their hands,   the fate of enemies. But time and truth will rescue and embalm their memories,   while their posterity will be enjoying that very liberty for which they would   never have hesitated to offer up their lives. The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with   so little innocent blood? My own affections have been deeply wounded by some   of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed, I would   have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and an Eve left in   every country, and left free, it would be better than as it now is. I have expressed   to you my sentiments, because they are really those of 99 in an hundred of our   citizens. The universal feasts, and rejoicings which have lately been had on   account of the successes of the French shewed the genuine effusions of their   hearts. You have been wounded by the sufferings of your friends, and have by   this circumstance been hurried into a temper of mind which would be extremely   disrelished if known to your countrymen. The reserve of the Pres. of the   U.S. had never permitted me to discover the light in which he viewed it,   and as I was more anxious that you should satisfy him than me, I had still avoided   explanations with you on the subject. But your [letter] 113 induced him to break   silence and to notice the extreme acrimony of your expressions. He added that   he had been informed the sentiments you expressed in your conversations   were equally offensive to our allies, and that you should consider yourself   as the representative of your country and that what you say, might be imputed   to your constituents. He desired me therefore to write to you on this subject.   He added that he considered France as the sheet anchor of this country and   its friendship as a first object. There are in the U.S. some characters   of opposite principles; some of them are high in office, others possessing great   wealth, and all of them hostile to France and fondly looking to England as the   staff of their hope. These I named to you on a former occasion. Their prospects   have certainly not brightened. Excepting them, this country is entirely republican,   friends to the constitution, anxious to preserve it and to have it administered   according to it’s [sic] own republican principles. The little party above   mentioned have espoused it only as a stepping stone to monarchy, and have endeavored   to approximate it to that in it’s [sic] administration, in order to render   it’s [sic] final transition more easy. The successes of republicanism   in France have given the coup de grace to their prospects, and I hope to their   projects.—I have developed to you faithfully the sentiments of your country,   that you may govern yourself accordingly. I know your republicanism to be pure,   and that it is no decay of that which has embittered you against it’s[sic]   votaries in France, but too great a sensibility at the partial evil by which   it’s object has been accomplished there.”

I wonder how many “good American patriots” are aware of the extent to which Jefferson was a radical.  The so-called Tea Party crowd often cite Jefferson in quote-mining exercises looking for proofs of capitalism, slavery, and whatever else they want to use, but Jefferson, as all traditionalists and conservatives know, was a radical at heart.  His “god” was ”liberty,” just as the god of the revolutionaries was liberty. His theology was purely deistic: how any religionist would think he works as an example of good ole American hometown religion is beyond me.  But then again, good ole hometown American religion basically is civic deism.  The American experiment is therefore closely linked to the French, but with a more sober, capitalist and racial tradition.  This explains why Washington was a Mason, yet hesitant about the activities of the Jacobin Illuminists spreading to America. He wrote:

“It was not my intention to doubt that, the Doctrines of the Illuminati, and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more truly satisfied of this fact than I am.

The idea that I meant to convey, was, that I did not believe that the Lodges of Free Masons in this Country had, asSocieties, endeavoured to propagate the diabolical tenets of the first, or pernicious principles of the latter (if they are susceptible of separation). That Individuals of them may have done it, or that the founder, or instrument employed to found, the Democratic Societies in the United States, may have had these objects; and actually had a separation of the People from their Government in view, is too evident to be questioned.”

By contrast, the tradition of Continental or Grand Orient Masonry that spread from France to Italy, Germany, Prussia, and eventually Moscow, is one of the secret forces behind world communism.  Monsignor George Dillon, James Billington and John Daniel have written works analyzing these divisions and trends that I recommend.  One clear sample of evidence for this claim is the cached site of the Grand Orient of France, which reads as follows (notice the claims of “liberty, equality, fraternity” – the rallying cry of the French Revolutionaries:

“Lafayette received a sword from George Washington in honor of the part played by French Freemasons in the American War of Independence.
In this way, the preparation of the ideas of Liberty and Equality in the Masonic Lodges contributed to the great reforms of the French Revolution.

And this is how answers to a question which was studied in the Lodges of the Grand Orient de France before the war would be highly instrumental in setting up the French welfare system.  But these are just a few examples, for in the past three centuries the history of French Freemasonry has been that of France and of its great social victories in the humanist context in which it has placed itself.

Whether it be the abolition of slavery with Victor Schoelcher, the setting up compulsory, nondenominational state school with Jules Ferry, more recently the work of Arthur Groussier with industrial tribunals, the protection of women and children in work, then the shortening of the working week, paid leave etc… these are some of the problems studied in the Masonic Lodges of the Grand Orient de France and made the law of the Republic by the enlightened men who for their time were at the cutting edge of progress.

The Grand Orient de France lives in its century and takes the lead in the emancipatory battles of its time.

Whereas in other forms of Masonry – particularly those which are the direct descendants of English Masonry and have retained their dogmas – a member must be a practising believer, the Grand Orient de France as an institution, is a society which practises Absolute Freedom of Conscience that is to say it leaves its members free to believe in a revealed truth whatever it may be or to be totally agnostic. Thus in the Masonic Lodges we find believers of all faiths together with atheists, agnostics and freethinkers. This is the meaning of the freedom of conscience which the Grand Orient de France defends when it defends secularism in all the activities of the state and not only in education which it wants to see remain free, nondenominational and compulsory for all. This new concept of Freemasonry – of Absolute Freedom of Conscience which was born on the ” Convent ” (Annual General Meeting) of 1877 and whose gave birth to a new form of practise in Freemasonry which is called Liberal Freemasonry. This form is fast developing in all the countries of the world where men aspire no longer to be the slaves of dogmas and enforced beliefs and want to change the societies in which they live, preparing a better and more enlightened future for tomorrow.”

Mandatory secular state schooling, state welfare, egalitarianism, abolition, women’s rights, the secular Republic, atheism, so-called ‘free-thinking,’ relativism, socialism and communism, etc., all founding principles of the modernist hell we experience today can be traced here.  There’s only one problem here: what if men aren’t all radically equal?  Clearly the end result of this philosophy is pure Marxism.  In cultural and social Marxism, all differentiation, hierarchy and difference are somehow metaphysically “bad,” and must be stamped out.  But man cannot live in rebellion against nature, and since Marx was so often taken with the idea of man being alienated from nature, how ironic it is that this Grand Orient tradition, which Karl Marx and Antonio Gramsci draw directly from, is so anti-natural.  In fact, it is a war on nature, God and all things healthy.  That is what bleary-eyed revolutionary idealists never understand.  I’m reminded of the great quote from Spengler: “There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money – and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact.”

What can we conclude from this?  Continental or Grand Orient masonry is still very much a powerful force in the world, and is still associated with communist and socialist trends, as well as with feminism and Marxism.  It has been at work in the South American and Mexicans revolutions, as well as in Europe and Africa.  The Jacobin socialist Illuminists are still at work in America, too.  They are the force behind radical egalitarianism that is destroying everything, including its fellow tradition, capitalist revolutionism.  The foolish and moronic masses have no idea how bad it is going to get when the communist-socialists have their way and dismantle the western traditions of cohesion.  God is the author of distinction and differentiation.  Some things are holy, some are not. Some men are evil, some are good.  Radical egalitarianism as a philosophy ends up destroying everything for the sake of the false trinity, “liberty, equality, fraternity.”  From the geo-political perspective, this is partly at work in the modern machinations we see attempting to blackmail both the Vatican and the British Crown.  The question we must ask is, do we really want to see complete victory and exaltation of the worst?  Andrew Wilkow put it well when he said we don’t raise the smaller trees in the forest by cutting down the taller.

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ABU DHABI — A defector has exposed the Muslim Brotherhood’s campaign

to dominate the Gulf.

Tharwat Al Kherbawy told a conference in Abu Dhabi that the Brotherhood,

with headquarters in Egypt, was infiltrating Western and Arab states by
recruiting their Muslim citizens. Al Kherbawy said the Brotherhood
established secret societies in more than 80 countries, with recruits
pledged to violence.

Tharwat Al Kherbawy: “They are taught to regard the movement as their home and that standing to the national anthem of their country is polytheism.”

“So these novices are raised on obedience and allegiance to the supreme guide, accepting no criticism of him or his actions,” Al Kherbawy told the conference, entitled “Challenges and Threats posed by the Muslim Brotherhood to UAE and Countries of the Region.”

“They are taught to regard the movement as their home and that standing to the national anthem of their country is polytheism.”

In an address to a conference on Feb. 24, Al Kherbawy said the Brotherhood has rejected loyalty to any host country. He cited the refusal of new Brotherhood parliamentarians to stand during the playing of the Egyptian national anthem in 2011. Instead, the Islamist deputies stood during the United States anthem when they later met the American ambassador in Cairo.

Al Kherbawy said the Brotherhood recruits teenagers in a ceremony in
which they kneel before a masked member and take a vow over a gun and Koran. He said the recruit, whose progress is monitored, is warned that any violation of orders means death. The movement has been cautious in promoting
members in an effort to protect the Brotherhood from infiltration by
intelligence services.

In late 2012, the UAE reported the arrest of 94 suspected Brotherhood
members accused of trying to overthrow the Gulf Cooperation Council state.
Officials said the Brotherhood marked a leading threat to the UAE as well as
such neighboring states as Kuwait.

“It does not believe in the sovereignty of the state,” UAE Foreign
Minister Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan said.

Al Kherbawy said the Brotherhood presence in any country consists of
three units. They included a unit comprised of local residents, a secret
Egyptian cell, and what Al Kherbawy termed an international group that
reports to superiors in the American city of New York.

“For Emirati members of the Muslim Brotherhood, it is a proxy allegiance
oath, whereby these members swear allegiance before another veteran leader
in the UAE, who in turn swears allegiance before the supreme guide in
Cairo,” Al Kherbawy told the conference, organized by the Al Mezmaah Studies and
Research Center at Zayed University.

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Order of Misraïm

Two of the six lodges during the Restoration that were openly hostile toward the Bourbons, were “Les Trinosophes” and “Les Sectateurs de Zoroastre.” The first was formed in 1815 by Jean-Marie Ragon de Bettignies (1781-1866), holder of a multitude of higher degrees and subsequently a prolific masonic writer; he was a member of l’Ordre de Misraïm, but had to renounce membership for the lodge to be recognized by the Grand Orient (Songhurst 101). (To this day, the rites of Memphis-Misraïm are considered fringe or clandestine and not officially acknowledged by most Grand Lodges.) The second, however, “Les Sectateurs de Zoroastre” [Zoroaster Cultists] was indeed a fully-fledged lodge of the Order of Misraïm, and directly tied to the rite’s founders — the Bédarride brothers (Clavel 259-61).

In brief: the precise origin of the rite is obscure. However it is acknowledged that the first Egyptian themed lodges—the Hebrew name for Egypt is Mizraim—were established in Italy, probably by Cagliostro himself in 1784 or 1788, prior to his incarceration by the Inquisition. In short order, the rituals were elaborated and expanded upon, and exported to France in 1814, by the brothers Michel, Joseph, and Marc Bédarride from Naples. These are in turn connected with another Egyptian-flavoured “Disciples of Memphis,” founded at about the same time and general area, by Gabriel-Matthieu Marconis, but ceasing activity because of its similarity with Misraïm, only to later emerge again in 1838 under the leadership of Marconis’ son, Jacques-Étienne Marconis de Nègre (1795-1868). Finally, the rites were officially reconciled and merged into the Primitive Rite of Memphis-Misraïm in 1881/82, the revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882) as its “Grand Hierophant” (GLFM “Histoire”; Galtier 1989: 125; Hanegraaff 329, 768). Both Misraïm and Memphis contain 90+ degrees of rituals replete with pseudo-Egyptian themes, Alchemy, Hermeticism, the Kabbalah, as well as cribbing directly from the founding myths of the Golden and Rosy Cross of Germany, enunciated in the mid-18th-century.

The French authorities immediately began to monitor its lodges, particularly because of its Italian origin, suspected alliance with the Carbonari and recruiting within the military. The fact that the Bédarrides were Jewish, including at least one Rabbi in its inner circle (GLFM “Histoire”) must have added to the suspicion. Perhaps the authorities were also privy to an 1818 Austrian police report about a “Société Secrète Egyptienne,” established in Alexandria and Cairo. Its “Grand-Cophte” was Bernardino Drovetti (1776-1852), the Napoleonic consul to Egypt. Utilizing masonic lodges, according to the report, its purpose was to meddle in the politics in Italy and the Ionian Islands. Agents and emissaries of the secret society were said to be stationed in the islands and ports of the Mediterranean Sea (Galtier 2006).

As recounted by Spitzer:

[T]he police archives are filled with reports on the Egyptian rite of the Misraïm, an offshoot of masonry which enjoyed considerable success with the ninety grades its hierarchy could boast in competition with the mere thirty-three of the Scottish rite. The orthodox Grand Orient finally denounced this new rite to the government which shut it down in 1822, concluding after painstaking investigations that it was a pernicious but unrevolutionary enterprise invented to line the pocket of its founders (56).

In regards to it being an “unrevolutionary enterprise,” however, one police inspector concluded otherwise.

Peg-leg-Duplay (jambe de bois) they called him. In 1792, at the age of eighteen, Simon Duplay (1774-1827) had lost his leg while a volunteer at the battle of Valmy. Maurice Duplay (1736-1820), the landlord of Robespierre, was his uncle. Fond of the young Simon, Robespierre employed him as a secretary for a time. Maurice was a Jacobin too, and his hospitable household was just doors away from the Jacobin club; the home of the Duplays became an extended family for Robespierre and he was happy living there until his death. Since Buonarroti was a friend of the Duplays, and visited there on occasion, it was certainly during this time that Simon had become acquainted with him (Scurr 171-2, 194).

After Robespierre’s fall and execution, most of the Duplay family were arrested — Maurice, his wife Françoise, daughters Élisabeth and Éléonore, son Jacques and nephew Simon. Tragically, Françoise was found hanged in her cell—either suicide or murder. Maurice was imprisoned for a short time only and managed to avoid the guillotine. Simon, along with his cousins, ended up spending over a year in prison (McPhee 223). During his incarceration at du Plessis prison in Paris, Simon first met Gracchus Babeuf (as did Buonarroti who was also in jail). Buonarroti himself places Simon directly in the middle of the Pantheon Club and subsequent Conspiracy of Equals (Buonarroti 40, 88, 97-8).

Drawing on this rich past, then, Simon certainly was eminently qualified for his future post as “a remarkable specialist” at “the heart of the Restoration security system” (Spitzer 70). And even though it was Napoleon who broke up the Conspiracy of Equals, Simon had managed to get a job under the self-proclaimed Emperor and compiled for him a dossier “of all known political conspiracies since 1792.” It came to be known as the “green book” (Billington 123).

Following Napoleon’s abdication

… [and] as the armies of the European monarchies entered Paris, all hopes for revolution seemed to have ended. Babeuf’s son committed suicide; and Simon Duplay committed to the flames his “green book,” which alone might have provided a definitive history of early revolutionary conspiracy. But no sooner had he destroyed this massive inventory of those who had “troubled the tranquility of France” since 1792 than he was forced to begin another. Working for the restored Bourbons from 1815 until his death in 1827, he compiled some fifteen thousand dossiers on real-life organizations far more fanciful than Nodier’s Philadelphians or Buonarroti’s Sublime Perfect Masters. In his view, the seminal revolutionary organization was Didier’s; and the key role in developing a revolutionary movement throughout France was played by the Masonic Association of Misraïm, allegedly the original Egyptian Rite with 90 degrees of membership (128; my emphasis).

The main source for Billington’s revelation about Misraim’s “key role in developing a revolutionary movement throughout France” (which I haven’t been able to consult), was a lengthy report penned by Duplay, found in the Archives Nationales F7 6666, and published in full by Léonce Grasilier: “Un secrétaire de Robespierre: Simon Duplay (1774-1827) et son Mémoire sur les Sociétés secrètes et les conspirations sous la restauration,” in Revue internationale des sociétés secrètes, n°3 (Paris: 5 march 1913), pp. 510-554.

A document from the same folio series (F7 6666) is posted on the scholarly/primary-source website carboneria.it. Most likely it was written by Duplay himself and part of the report published by Grasilier. In any case, we’re informed, the lodges of the rite were shut down in 1823, in Paris and throughout France; the archives of the Order were confiscated by the government the year pervious. On its Supreme Council were two names worthy of note: Pierre-Joseph Briot (1771-1827) and Charles Teste. Both were linked to Buonarroti and his secret societies, the Italian Carbonari, and involved with the leaders of the French Charbonnerie (Lehning 133; Eisenstein 105). In the case of Teste, as mentioned above, he was one of the first recruits in Joseph Rey’s Union — this alone attests to his revolutionary ties at an early date, before 1820. Afterwards, he would be well-known as one of Buonarroti’s most trusted agents, from 1828 onwards (Eisenstein 101-09, 149-51). On Briot, here’s a short synopsis (Billington 130-1):

The original Philadelphians of the 1790s had come from the wooded and relatively unspoiled Jura region between Besancon and Geneva; Buonarroti and his friends operated there until he moved to Brussels in 1824 … This rural mutation of Masonry from Besancon was transplanted by the Napoleonic armies to southern Italy, where it was politicized and popularized throughout the Kingdom of Naples during the rule of Napoleon’s maverick brother-in-law, Joachim Murat (1808-15). A leading role was played by a veteran of the Besancon group, Jean-Pierre Briot, whose fascination with a new type of forest fraternity was apparently fueled by the experience of escaping from Austrian imprisonment into the Black Forest and by his own political experience as revolutionary commissioner for the Island of Elba in 1801-02, before moving to Naples and founding the first Carbonari group in 1807.

This Grand Master of Misraïm—on its directing council no less—was responsible, it seems, for founding the Carbonari itself. Furthermore, nearly everything I’ve read about the secret society discusses Briot as having played a prominent role, if not its actual founder. J. M. Roberts even—that unrelenting naysayer of the power of secret societies during the 18th and 19th centuries—wrote that after arriving in Naples in 1806, Briot “seems to have sown the seeds of the first Carbonari lodges. In 1808 he is known to have asked his wife to send him his masonic notebooks and it may have been in connexion with the setting-up of the Carbonari that he did this” (298).

It is not such a stretch to suppose that both Teste and Briot may have been “mobile deacons” for the Sublimes Maîtres Parfaits. Briot, after all, was a member of the Philadelphes which, as previously noted, had been absorbed into Buonarroti’s secret society in 1812. Of the 90 degrees in Misraïm at the time, the last three were purposely concealed. The masonic archivist Claude-Antoine Thory, in the first volume of the valuable Acta Latomorum, published in 1815, notes: “All its degrees, except the 88th, 89th and 90th have different names that can be read in our nomenclature. With regard to these last three, we do not know their name: in the manuscript we have they are indicated as veiled, and those who possess it are called Maîtres absolus [Absolute masters]; they claim the privilege of leading instinctively all branches of Freemasonry” (Thory 327-8). A further bit of circumstantial evidence, though admittedly unreliable, comes via the police informant/turncoat J. Witt-Döring, who testified to the Bayreuth authorities in 1824 that the last veiled grades of Misraïm were “dependent on the ‘Comité directeur’” (Lehning 133 n.5) — that is to say, the secret controlling body of conspirators assumed to be pulling the strings behind the scenes, either in Paris or Geneva.

Charbonnerie

When Joubert and Dugied returned with information on the inner-workings of the Italian Carbonari, they found that their cohorts had been busy studying the techniques of German secret societies (Spitzer 231 and n. 58). These methods probably included those of the Burschenschaften, but would also have encompassed the system that Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830) proposed for the Illuminati.

In a letter dated 16 February, 1782, Weishaupt writes to his underling, Franz Xaver von Zwack (1756-1843):

I would like to introduce amongst the brethren a perfect discipline … My work with you shall be carried out as indicated by the following figure:

Immediately under me, I have two [subordinates] into whom I infuse my whole spirit; these two in turn correspond with two others, and so on. In this manner, and with the simplest means possible, I will inflame a thousand men into action. Similarly, this is the same method by which secret societies necessarily operate within the political sphere (Nachtrag, I, 31-2).

And again, more explicitly, Weishaupt to Ferdinand Maria Baader (1747-97) a few days later:

I have sent to Cato an outline according to which we can, methodically and without much trouble, lead, with the largest number of men, the greatest Order to the best results…

The spirit of the first, the most zealous and the most enlightened, communicates daily and incessantly with a a; the a interacts with b b, and the other a with c c; b b and c c convey [their orders] in the same fashion to the 8 immediately below, these to the next 16, the 16 to the 32 which follow, and so forth. I have written to Cato already in more detail. In short: each one has two wing-adjutants, through whose intermediary he acts on all the others. It is from the center that the whole force issues and flows back upon itself again. Each member bounds in definite subordination two initiates, whom he studies and observes completely, moulds, excites and drills, so to speak, like recruits, so that finally some day they have the advantage of exercising with the whole regiment. We can proceed in this manner throughout all the degrees (ibid 59-60; cf. Melanson 241-243).

The budding revolutionaries during the subsequent centuries marvelled at the ingeniousness, almost military precision of such a stratagem. They must have; for it was replicated, implemented, and tinkered with endlessly. The beauty of such a system is the simplicity and rate with which it could be expanded, all the while maintaining a protective buffer for those “unknown superiors” at the top. Additionally, those at the same level had no way of contacting, or even knowing that the others existed—both a cellular and pyramidal structure.

It was almost identical to the way the Italian Carbonari had operated and the French Charbonnerie as well. On the precise method of the latter, we can do no better than to quote from Louis Blanc (the socialist contemporary and friend of many of those involved):

It was agreed that around a parent association called the haute vente, there should be formed under the name of ventes centrales other associations, which again were to have under them ventes particulieres. The number of members in each association was limited to twenty, to evade the provisions of the penal code. The haute vente was originally composed of the seven founders of charbonnerie, Bazard, Flotard, Buchez, Dugied, Carriol, Joubert, and Limperani. It filled up vacancies in its own body.

The following was the method adopted to form the ventes centrales: Two members of the haute ventetook a third person as their associate without making him acquainted with their rank, and they named him president of the incipient vente, at the same time assuming to themselves the one the title of deputy, the other that of censor. The duty of the deputy being to correspond with the superior association, and that of censor to control the proceedings of the secondary association, the haute ventebecame by these means the brain as it were of each of the ventes it created, whilst it remained in relation to them mistress of its own secret and of its own acts.

The ventes particulieres were only administrative subdivisions, having for objects to avoid the complications which the progress of charbonnerie might introduce into the relations between the haute vente and the deputies of the ventes centrales. As the latter emanated from the parent society, so did the inferior societies from the secondary. There was an admirable elasticity in this arrangement: theventes were speedily multiplied ad infinitum.

The impossibility of altogether baffling the efforts of the police had been clearly foreseen: in order to diminish the importance of this difficulty, it was agreed that the several ventes should act in common, without, however, knowing each other, so that the police might not be able to lay hold on the whole ramification of the system, except by penetrating the secrets of the haute vente. It was consequently forbidden every charbonnier belonging to one vente to attempt to gain admission into another, and this prohibition was backed by the penalty of death.

The founders of charbonnerie had counted on the support of the troops; hence the double organization given to the system. Each vente was subjected to a military staff, the gradations of which were parallel with those of the civil officership. Corresponding respectively with charbonnerie, the haute vente, theventes centrales, and the ventes particulieres, there were the legion, the cohortes, the centuries, and themanipules. When charbonnerie acted civilly, the military officership was in abeyance; on the other hand, when it acted in a military point of view, the functions of the civil officers were suspended. Independently of the force derived from the play of these two powers, and from their alternate government, the double denominations they rendered necessary afforded a means of baffling the researches of the police.

The duties of the charbonnier were, to have in his possession a gun and fifty cartridges, to be ready to devote himself, and blindly to obey the orders of unknown leaders (Blanc 49-50).

By the end of 1821 “several hundred ventes” were operating in Paris (Spitzer 191). From this center, cells (or ventes) quickly spread throughout France, concentrated mostly in the east and west (see Google Map below; markers correspond to verified cells). At its height, after only a little more than a year, there were as many as 50,000 members, though the guesses of the government ran as high as 800,000 (241-3).

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The following is a chronological list of Carbonari conspiracy, 1821-22 (condensed from Spitzer 77-141).

• The cavalry school plot, at Saumur, in December 1821: a plan for simultaneous insurrections is uncovered, with direct connections to a pseudo-masonic, secret society called Chevaliers de la Liberté, which was allied and later subsumed by the Carbonari.
• Belfort, 1 January 1822: officers conspire in an attempted coup; shots fired; bandits chased away. Arrests and investigations quickly followed; the taking of Belfort was to be a signal for a national revolution.
• Toulon, 7 January: a Captain Vallé unwittingly discloses a plot to overthrow the government within the next three or four days; Carbonari documents uncovered by the police on follow-up investigation.
• Nantes, 5 February: several officers and noncoms of the thirteenth regiment are arrested after the revelations of a Sergeant Major Ranvaud; Carbonari are implicated, and the Chevaliers de la Liberté as well — statutes, oaths, ceremonies, secret signs and grips of the latter are uncovered.
• 24-25 February: at 6AM on the 24th, the citizens at Thouars are awakened by the revolutionary tocsin; the town had been seized by General Jean-Baptiste Berton along with “rotten elements in the National Guard led by armed officers and reinforced by persons from the surrounding countryside” (109). They march onward toward Saumur and arrive in the evening. Its mayor confronts Berton and persuades him not to engage. The stalemate continues through the night, which allows most of the insurgents to escape before morning, including Berton.
• Mid-March: subversion of the forty-fifth regiment. The famous Four Sergeants of La Rochelle—Pommier, Goubin, Bories, Raoulx—arrested. Detailed confessions from at least two would disclose Carbonari operations and recruits all the way to the heart of Paris; fugitive Berton was implicated as well.
• Late March/early April: subversion of the fortieth regiment at Strasbourg. A soldier manages to get initiated into the Carbonari in an undercover investigation; four Lieutenants are arrested.
• July, the Colmar Affair: the entrapment of ex-Colonel Caron. The latter had sussed out recruits to free the Belfort conspirators held in Colmar. After leading him on for a bit, the authorities arrested him.

After the conspiracies and attempted insurrections were thwarted, suspects arrested and interrogated—Berton too, in June—the justice system took over, and a series of trials played out in public. Eight members of the Amis de la Vérité were implicated in the Belfort plot and another five in the La Rochelle affair (191), including Buchez, Bazard, Joubert and Flottard (122, 161-2).

The situation is best summarized in the Ohio University “Charbonnerie” entry by Spitzer, which forms part of its “Encyclopedia of Revolutions of 1848”:

Although there was not sufficient evidence to bring most of the leaders of the organization to book, the police netted a sufficient number of less prudent elements to stage a series of political trials that contributed ten victims to revolutionary martyrology, notably including the appealing, poignantly naive four sergeants of La Rochelle who became, and remain to this day, the object of a minor cult. The arrest and executions of 1822 marked the end of a large-scale attempt at the overthrow of the Bourbon regime through plot and insurrection, and many of the activists of the conspiratorial organization turned to the legal opposition that contributed to the last crisis of the monarchy in 1830. While ex-carbonari did not notably figure on the barricades in the Three Glorious Days, they were actively engaged in consolidating the new revolutionary administration in Paris.

The four sergeants were guillotined at Place de Grève in Paris, 21 September, 1822. Following the July Revolution of 1830, a public celebration was held there, on the eighth anniversary, in which a spokesman for the Amis de la Vérité is recorded as saying: “What was their crime? Their crime, citizens [was that] they had attempted what you have accomplished: they conspired for liberty” (Spitzer 4).

During the tenth anniversary, the lodge took to the streets again. The event is recorded in Revue de la franc-maçonnerie:

The lodge of the Amis de la Vérité, who had resolved to publicly celebrate the anniversary of the execution of the brothers Bories, Pommier, Goubin et Raoux [sic], all four members of this lodge, accused of conspiracy against the government of the Bourbons, which took place September 21, 1822, met locally for its regular meeting at rue de Grenelle St. Honoré. At half past two, the procession advanced and headed to the Place de Grève. Four commissioners, decorated with tricolor armbands, each carried a banner decorated with oak leaves, embroidered with the names Bories, Pommier, Goubin and Raoux. Respect and order greeted the procession; the 300 brothers exiting the rue de Grenelle, rose to 500 in the court of the Louvre, and increased successively until 2000 arrived at the place de Grève, where they were met with the silence of a large crowd. Wherever they had gone, the line of the National Guard gave military honours, and everyone was inspired with reverence and admiration. At precisely four o’clock, that fatal hour of these unfortunate victims, a drum roll is heard, and one of the members of the lodge, the brother Buchez, gave a speech appropriate for the occasion. After the ceremony, the procession returned to the local lodge, where a petition to the Chamber of Deputies for the abolition of the death penalty, was adopted by vote, and, in an instant, covered with signatures.

***

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