booknetsaWebster-secretSocietiesAndSubversiveMovements

claimed to be not merely a part of Masonry but to greater privileges and the right to rule over the ordinary,
i.e. Craft Masonry."(54) The Grand Lodge of France seems, however, to have realized the danger of submitting
to the domination of the Templar element, and on the death of the Duc d'Antin and his replacement by
the Comte de Clermont in 1743, signified its adherence to English Craft Masonry by proclaiming itself
Grande Loge Anglaise de France and reissued the " Constitutions " of Anderson, first published in 1723,
with the injunction that the Scots Masters should be placed on the same level as the simple Apprentices and
Fellow Crafts and allowed to wear no badges of distinction.(55)
Grand Lodge of England appears to have been reassured by this proclamation as to the character of Freemasonry,
for it was now, in 1743, that it at last delivered a warrant to Grand Lodge of France. Yet in reality
it was from this moment that French Freemasonry degenerated the most rapidly. The Order was soon invaded
by intriguers. This was rendered all the easier by the apathy of the Comte de Clermont, appointed
Grand Master in 1743, who seems to have taken little interest in the Order and employed a substitute in the
person of a dancing master named Lacorne, a man of low character through whose influence the lodges fell
into a state of anarchy. Freemasonry was thus divided into warring factions: Lacorne and the crowd of lowclass
supporters who had followed him into the lodges founded a Grand Lodge of their own (Grande Loge
Lacorne), and in 1756 the original Freemasons again attempted to make Craft Masonry the national Masonry
of France by deleting the word " Anglaise " from the appellation of Grand Lodge, and renaming it " Grande
Loge Nationale de France." But many lodges still continue to work the additional degrees.
The rivalry between the two groups became so violent that in 1767 the government intervened and
closed down Grand Lodge.
The Templar group had, however, formed two separate associations, the " Knights of the East " (1756)
and the " Council of the Emperors of the East and West " (1758). In 1761 a Jew named Stephen Morin was
sent to America by the " Emperors " armed with a warrant from the Duc de Clermont and Grand Lodge of
Paris and bearing the sonorous title of " Grand Elect Perfect and Sublime Master," with orders to establish a
Lodge in that country. In 1766 he was accused in Grand Lodge of " propagating strange and a monstrous
doctrines " and his patent of Grand Inspector was withdrawn.(56) Morin, however, had succeeded in establishing
the Rite of Perfection. Sixteen Inspectors, nearly all Jews, were now appointed. These included
Isaac Long, Isaac de Costa, Moses Hayes, B. Spitser, Moses Cohen, Abraham Jacobs, and Hyman Long.
Meanwhile in France the closing of Grand Lodge had not prevented meetings of Lacorne's group, which,
on the death of the Duc de Clermont in 1772, instituted the " Grand Orient " with the Duc de Chartres-the
future " Philippe Egalité "-as Grand Master. The Grand Orient then invited the Grande Loge to revoke the
decree of expulsion and unite with it, and this offer being accepted, the revolutionary party inevitably carried
all before it, and the Duc de Chartres was declared Grand Master of all the councils, chapters, and
Scotch lodges of France.(57) In 1782 the " Council of Emperors " and the " Knights of the East " combined
to form the " Grand Chapitre Général de France," which in 1786 joined up with the Grand Orient. The victory
of the revolutionary party was then complete.
It is necessary to enter into all these tedious details in order to understand the nature of the factions
grouped together under the banner of Masonry at this period. The Martinist Papus attributes the revolutionary
influences that now prevailed in the lodges to their invasion by the Templars, and goes on to explain that
this was owing to a change that had taken place in the Ordre du Temple. Under the Grand Mastership of the
Regent and his successor the Duc de Bourbon, the revolutionary elements amongst the Templars had had
full play, but from 1741 onwards the Grand Masters of the Order were supporters of the monarchy. When
the Revolution came, the Duc de Cossé-Brissac, who had been Grand Master since 1776, perished amongst
the defenders of the throne. It was thus that by the middle of the century the Order of the Temple ceased to
be a revolutionary force, and the discontented elements it had contained, no longer able to find in it a refuge,
threw themselves into Freemasonry, and entering the higher degrees turned them to their subversive purpose.
According to Papus, Lacorne was a member of the Templar group, and the dissensions that took place
were principally a fight between the ex-Templars and the genuine Freemasons which ended in the triumph
of the former: Victorious rebels thus founded the Grand Orient of France. So a contemporary Mason is able
to write: " It is not excessive to say that the masonic revolution of 1773 was the prelude and the precursor
of the Revolution of 1789." What must be well observed is the secret action of the Brothers of the Templar
Rite. It is they who are the real fomentors of revolution, the others are only docile agents.(58)
But all this attributes the baneful influence of Templarism to the French Templars alone, and the existence
of such a body rests on no absolutely certain evidence. What is certain and admits of no denial on the
part of any historian, is the inauguration of a Templar Order in Germany at the very moment when the socalled
Scottish degrees were introduced into French Masonry. We shall now return to 1738 and follow
Nesta H. Webster — Secret Societies and Subversive Movements — Part I
— 81 —