The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies Read Online Free PDF

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Directly the Reign of Terror was over, the masonic lodges, which during the Revolution had been replaced by the clubs, began to reopen, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century were in a more flourishing condition than ever before.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,