The Master Game
Page 83
Reverse: In the zenith of an unfinished pyramid is an eye in a triangle surrounded with a golden glory. Over the eye are the words ‘Annuit Coeptis’. On the base of the pyramid the numerical letters MDCCLXXVI, and underneath, the motto ‘Novo Ordo Seculorum’.
55 See a very good article on this topic by Geoff Muirden, ‘Conspiracy Theory and the French Revolution’, in The Journal of Historical Review, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 109 – 15.
56 See Nesta H. Webster, The French Revolution, Constable & Co., London, 1919. See also Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, A & B Publishers Group, New York, 1998 (1924), chapter 9.
57 Faucher, op. cit., p. 39.
58 Ibid., p. 24.
59 Ibid., p. 25.
60 Ribadeau-Dumas, op. cit., p. 199.
61 See Evans, op. cit. See also Master Mason magazine, vol.1, no.1, January 1924, to vol. 7, no. 3 & 4, March – April 1930.
62 Grand Larousse Encyclopédique, vol. 7, pp. 1009 – 10.
63 Galtier, op. cit., p. 37.
64 In July 1789 there were only seven prisoners in the Bastille. These were Jean de la Corrége, Jean Bèchade, the Count of Solages; Tavernier, Bernard Laroche, Jean-Antoine Pujade and DeWhitt, the latter an insane Irishman who was jailed as a spy; he was taken on the shoulders of the rioters that freed him from the Bastille, all the time shouting that he was Julius Caesar.
65 Captain Deflue had been moved to the Bastille earlier on July 7, 1789 along with 32 ‘Salis-Samade’, a regiment of Swiss guards, to protect the Bastille. There were also 84 invalides at the time also appointed to defend the Bastille. All in all, a very poor match for the Parisian mob.
66 Chevallier, op. cit., vol. I, p. 272.
67 Out of the 25 Millions living in France at the time, 350,000 or so were ‘nobility’ and some 150,000 were ‘clergy’. All the rest was considered the Third Estate.
68 Faucher, op. cit., p. 32.
69 Ibid.
70 In 1791 Talleyrand was excommunicated by the pope after he consecrated two ‘constitutional’ bishops. Talleyrand was to play a pivotal role a few years later in the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and his daring military expedition to Egypt.
71 ‘Et bien, f …, qu'ils restent!’, see Faucher, op. cit., p. 172, plate 1.
72 Ibid., p. 34.
73 Ibid.
74 The first guillotining took place on April 25, 1792, when Nicolas Jacques Pelletie was executed in public at Place de Grève in Paris. The guillotine was still used in France well into the 20th century, and was finally officially banned in 1981. The last execution by guillotine in France was on 10 September 1977 in Marseilles, when the murderer Hamida Djambuti was beheaded.
75 Hivert-Messeca & Hivert-Messeca, op. cit., p. 124.
76 For source data see www.infomonnaies.com/fr/cnpr/v25/p2516.htm. ; also see Arslan, op. cit., p. 644.
77 This image can be seen, for instance, above the bronze image of George Washington on the Washington Monument (obelisk) in Washington, DC, east entrance, above the inner door.
78 Grand Larousse Encyclopédique, vol. 3, p. 910b.
79 Vovelle, op. cit., p. 28.
80 The Convention Nationale was essentially controlled by the ‘Montagnards’, the main political party to which the Hébertists also belonged. Its bitter rivals were the Girondins, a moderate and conservative faction, who were accused of secretly harbouring Royalist sympathies. When the Girondin were defeat at the Convention in June 1793 the Hébertists and the Montagnards lost a common enemy, a serious void, since their politics was mostly dependent on blaming another party and launching fiery verbal attacks on such ‘enemy of the people’. Thus the momentum of accusation-styled politics was now deflected on each other, and soon the mood turned quite deadly. Robespierre, siezing an opportunity provided by a huge fraud and spy scandal which was construed to have involved the Hébertists, ordered the arrest of Hébert and Chaumette. They were hastily tried and sent to the scafold in March 1794. Now with no one left to blame and accuse for the problems that the Republic was facing, a terrible feud ensued between Robespierre and Danton – a feud that was to prove fatal for both men. Danton, who had been somehow mixed up in the scandal of the Société Des Indes, was accused of treason and sent to the guillotine in April 1794.
81 Faucher, op. cit., pp. 42 – 4.
82 Kathleen Jones, Women Saints: Lives of Faith and Courage, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY, 1999, p. 55.
83 See François Victor Alphonse Aulard, Culte de la Raison, Paris, 1892 and Christianity and the French Revolution, English edition, 1927). Aulard published many works of sources on the French Revolution. His best-known work is the Political History of the French Revolution (1901). In 1886 Aulard became the first professor of the history of the French Revolution at the University of the Sorbonne.
84 Vovelle, op. cit. Author K. Jones (op. cit.) reports the events of Sister Madeleine Fontaine (1723 – 1794), a nun who suffered the horrors of this persecution in 1794 and was decapitated by the guillotine in June 1794 under the orders of Joseph Lebon, an apostate priest and a collaborator of Robespierre at the Convention. Sister Madeleine Fontaine, who was in her early seventies, was in charge of a small group of nuns in Arras where they ran a hospital and a school for children when the Revolution broke out. Apparently when she was dragged onto the scaffold, the old nun turned to the crowd and cried: ‘Listen, Christians! We are the last victims. The persecution is going to stop. The gallows will be destroyed. The altar of Jesus will rise again gloriously!’ Sister Madeleine Fontaine was beatified by Pope Benefict XV on 13 June 1920.
85 Baring & Cashford, op. cit., pp. 399 – 401. Apparently the wearing of the Phrygian cap by the revolutionary Sans Culottes, the most extremist faction of the French Revolution, had been popularized by Jacques-Louis David in Les Amours d’Hélène et Paris which he had painted in 1787 for the Duke of Artois, the future Charles X.
86 Maarten J. Vermaseren, Cybele and Attis, translated by A. M. H. Lemmers, Thames & Hudson, London, 1977, p. 10.
87 Baltrušaitis, op. cit., p. 80.
88 Ibid. Actually what Isis has on her head is not a tower but a ‘throne’. Its upright shape, however, can easily be mistaken for a tower, indeed as it often was by the Parisian historians of the 18th and 19th century.
89 Ovason, op. cit., p. 87.
90 Jérôme Lalande, Astronomie par M. de la Lande, 1731, vol. IV, pp. 245ff.
91 Gérard de Nerval, Les Illuminés, Editions Folio, 1976; also see Cagliotro, Les Païens de la République, p. 1200.
92 Kerisel, op. cit., p. 160.
93 Vovelle, op. cit., p. 105.
94 Ibid., p. 271
95 Grand Larousse Encyclopédique, vol. 1, p. 365a.
96 Louis Blanc, History, vol. II, pp. 365 – 7.
97 Grand Larousse Encyclopédique, vol. 8, p. 1014c.
98 ‘MM. Dupuis et Lalande voient Isis par-tout …!’; see Baltrušaitis, op. cit., p. 31.
99 Ibid., p. 35; Faucher, op. cit., p. 20.
100 Charles-François Dupuis, Origine de tous les Cultes our Religion Universelle, Paris, 1794, vol. III, p. 50; Baltrušaitis, op. cit., pp. 24 – 30.
101 ‘Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, année 1785, compte rendu de J. de Lalande’, in Le Journal des Scavans, July 1788, pp. 475 – 8.
102 In the Pyramid Texts, which date from the third millennium BC, we read that ‘Sothis [Sirius, the star of Isis]is your beloved daughter [of Ra] who prepares yearly sustenance for you in her name of ‘Year’. Pyramid Texts, line 965.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: PARIS UNVEILED
1 Kerisel, op. cit., p. 158.
2 Marcello Fagiolo, Architettura e Massoneria, Convivio/Nardini Editore, Florence, 1988, p. 44.
3 James Stephen Curl, The Art and Architecture of Freemasonry, B. T. Batsford, London, 1991, p. 118
4 Ibid.
5 Kerisel, op. cit., p. 161.
6 Curl, op. cit., p. 129.
7 Ibid., p. 129. For a detailed review on the pyramid design and the French Rev
olution, see J. P. Mouilleseaux, ‘Les Pyramides éphémères de la Révolution Française’, Revue FMR, 21, vol. VI, August 1989.
8 Ibid., p. 129.
9 Ibid., p. 117.
10 Fagiolo, op. cit., p. 53.
11 Legaret & Courtines, op. cit., p. 83, plate 3.
12 Ibid., plate 6.
13 Ovason, op. cit., p. 116.
14 Curl, op. cit., pp. 132 – 3.
15 See notes 47 & 48 of Chapter Twelve.
16 Vovelle, op. cit., frontispiece.
17 Faucher, op. cit., p. 34. It may be of interest to note that in 1819 Mme de la Villette, Voltaire's adored step-daughter, opened the so-called adoption lodge in Paris called ‘Belle et Bonne’ for the Rite of Misraim that practiced higher degrees of the Egyptian Rite (see Dossiers de l’Histore, no. 7, p. 98; also see Naudon, op. cit., p. 230).
18 Her real name was Marie Josèphe Rose. She was named ‘Joséphine’ by Napoleon after they married in 1796. Apparently the nickname was derived from Joseph, Napoleon's younger brother.
19 Hivert-Messeca & Hivert-Messeca, op. cit., p. 159.
20 Ibid., p. 160.
21 Ibid., p. 159.
22 Naudon, op. cit., p. 172.
23 François Collaveri, Napoleon: empereur franc-maçon, Editions Tallandier, Paris, 1986, pp. 26 – 27.
24 Ibid., p. 168.
25 The same had happened much later in 1867 when the Empress Eugénie, a greatgrand-daughter of Joséphine, bedazzled the khedive of Egypt in one of the most exquisite and daring flirtations in history that eventually led to the construction of the Suez Canal by her cousin, the engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps (see Trevor Mostyn, Egypt: La Belle Epoque, Quartet Books, London, 1989, p. 17).
26 Mostyn, op. cit., p. 17.
27 Faucher, op. cit., p. 9 & pp. 32 – 3. Perhaps it should also be noted that Talleyrand's illegitimate son, the famous painter Eugène Delacroix, was among the core of agitators accused by the French police to have plotted with the Egyptian Masonic Rite of Memphis and the Carbonari against the restored king Louis XVIII in the failed coup d’état of 1822.
28 Evans, op. cit.
29 Iversen, op. cit., p. 125.
30 Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, p. 154.
31 Iversen, op. cit., p. 100.
32 Jean Lacouture, Champollion: Úne vie de lumières, Editions Grasset, Paris, 1988, p. 382.
33 Ibid., p. 34.
34 Faucher, op. cit., p. 18.
35 Chevallier, op. cit., vol. I, p. 261.
36 Napoleon cited in John S. C. Abbott (ed.), Confidential correspondence of the Emperor Napoleon and the Empress Joséphine, Mason Brothers, New York, 1858, p. 22.
37 Napoleon cited in John Eldred Howard (ed.), Letters and documents of Napoleon, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1961, p. 165.
38 Lacouture, op. cit., p. 35.
39 Aubrey Noakes, Cleopatra's Needle, H. F. & G. Witherby, London, 1962, p. 1.
40 Vincent Cronin, Napoleon, Harper Collins, 1994, p. 146.
41 Noakes, op. cit., p. 1.
42 A military-political class made up of the descendents of freed slaves.
43 Alan Moorehead, The Blue Nile, Penguin, 1983, p. 65. Apparently Napoleon also told the Imams of Egypt: ‘In the name of Allah … tell your people that the French are also Muslims … they have [occupied Rome and] ruined the papal See which was always urging the Christians to attack Islam …’
44 Lauren Foreman & Ellen Blue Phillips, Napoleon's Lost Fleet, Roundtable Press, New York, 1999, p. 69.
45 Ibid., p. 159.
46 Ibid., p. 49.
47 Moorehead, op. cit., p. 124.
48 Naudon, op. cit., p. 224.
49 Thomas Hodgkin with Henry Ketcham, The Life of Charlemagne (Charles the Great), A. L. Burt, New York, 1902, p. 261.
50 See Donald Bullough, The Age of Charlemagne, Paul Elek, London, 1973; also see Russell Chamberlain, Charlemagne, Grafton, London, 1986. Apparently Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as Holy Roman emperor in gratitude for having saved him and as well as Rome. In the Frankish Royal Annals (Grandes Chroniques de France) it is reported that one of the Charlemagne's advisers suggested the idea to the pope. According to Einhard, his biographer, as well as other contemporary writers, the coronation actually took Charlemagne by surprise and made him angry. This, say modern scholars, is because Charlemagne considered the pope to be a mere subject of his vast empire.
51 Pope Pius VII, who had been forced to participate in this charade, was to take his revenge when Napoleon's empire began to crumble. Firstly in 1814, the pope restored the order of the Jesuits, which had been banned from France in 1764, and later, when the French had forced an earlier pope, Clement IX, to completely dissolve the Jesuit order in 1773. Perhaps not unrelated, in 1821, when Napoleon was dying a solitary death at St. Helen, Pius VII issued his famous bull, Ecclessiam a Jesu Christo, condemning Freemasonry and the Carbonari in all Christiandom (see Faucher, op. cit., p. 71).
52 Naudon, op. cit., p. 78.
53 Court de Gébelin, op. cit.
54 Noël, op. cit.
55 Duché, op. cit., p. 237.
56 Faucher, op. cit., p. 315.
57 See François Collaveri, La Franc-Maçonnerie des Bonaparte, Editions Payot, Paris, 1982; also see Galtier, op. cit., p. 139; see also Naudon, op. cit., p. 97.
58 Chevallier, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 17 – 30.
59 See Collaveri, La Francs Maçonnerie des Bonapartes, annex iv.
60 Ibid., p. 67.
61 Ibid., p. 68.
62 The Kneph, vol. III, no. 6, June 1883, p. 45; see Galtier, op. cit., p. 139 – 40.
63 Humbert, op. cit., p. 40.
64 Naudon, op. cit., p. 124.
65 Humbert, op. cit., p. 48; although the foundation stones were laid as well as the raising of a cardboard model of the building, the project was eventually abandoned due to lack of funds.
66 Lacouture, op. cit., p. 20.
67 Ibid., pp. 55 & 63.
68 Ibid., p. 54 – 5.
69 Baltrušaitis, op. cit., p. 55, see also plate III.
70 Arslan, op. cit., p. 645.
71 The architects were: Chalgrin (1806 – 1811), Joust (1811 – 1814), Blouet (1833 – 1836). The sculptors were: Cortot, Rude, Etex, Pradier, Lemaire.
72 Also known as l’Apothéose de Napoléon.
73 Baltrušaitis, op. cit., p. 80.
74 Ibid.
75 Ibid., p. 8.
76 Margaret Laing, Joséphine and Napoleon, Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1973, pp. 131 – 2.
77 Project d’Achèvement de L’Arc de Triomphe de L’Étoile, Monument des Victories, Sciences et Arts, ou de la Légion d’Honneur, offert au Roi des Français, Louis-Philippe 1er, et au Deux Chambres. A photograph of this project can be seen in the museum of the Arc de Triomphe.
78 Naudon, op. cit., p. 78; Faucher, op. cit., p. 22 & pp. 62 – 3.
79 The Count of Artois had another son, Louis Antoine, but he was believed to be impotent.
80 Naudon, op. cit., p. 98.
81 Faucher, op. cit., p. 71.
82 Ibid., pp. 72 – 4.
83 Ibid., p. 73.
84 Galtier, op. cit., p. 121.
85 Jean-Marcel Humbert, ‘Charles X et l’Égypte’, in Bourbons magazine, no. 11, January – February 1998.
86 Lacouture, op. cit., p. 38; see also Emmanuel de Las Cases, Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, Seuil, Paris, 1968, p. 67.
87 Lacouture op. cit., p. 333 – 74.
88 Ibid.
89 Ibid., p. 340.
90 Ibid., p. 324.
91 Faucher, op. cit., p. 73.
92 Lacouture, op. cit., p. 465.
93 Galtier, op. cit., p. 40.
94 Lacouture, op. cit., p. 33.
95 Ibid., p. 190.
96 Lacouture, op. cit., pp. 33 & 549.
97 Lacouture, op. cit., p. 550; Naudon, op. cit., p. 166.
98 Galtier, op. cit., pp. 150 – 1.
99 Ibid.
100 Ibid.
101 Ibi
d.
102 This painting can be seen in Room no. 30 in the Sully Wing of the Louvre Museum, the interior of which was designed by the architect Fontaine during the reign of Charles X.
103 Lacouture, op. cit. p. 727.
104 Galtier, op. cit., p. 151.
105 Belzoni is a character well known to British Freemasons. He had married a Englishwoman called Sarah and who, after Belzoni's death, was very active in promoting his Masonic thesis that the Egyptian god, Osiris, had been a ‘Freemason’ because he was ‘clad in the distinctive Masonic apron’ as was obvious, at least to Belzoni and his followers, from depictions on many Egyptian monuments (Short, op. cit., p. 118). It was Belzoni, of all people, who was to discover the magnificent tomb of Sethi I, the ‘Sesotris’ that had been the subject of much Masonic controversy in England and France. Belzoni, with the help of Henry Salt, had made a full scale facsimile of this temple and had it shipped to Europe in 1818. First to Paris then to London in 1821, where it had made a sensation, especially in Masonic circles (see Morris Bierbrier (ed.), Who Was Who in Egyptology, Egypt Exploration Society, London, 1995, pp. 23 – 4). It is interesting to note, therefore, that Champollion, in March 1829, gave a party inside the Temple of Sethi I in honour of the birthday of his daughter, Zoraide, and also to the ‘late Belzoni’ (who died in 1825) whom Champollion apparently much admired (See Lacouture, op. cit., p. 661).