The Gods of Eden
by William Bramley
25
The "King Rats"
THROUGHOUT ALL OF history, small groups of political and
economic elites belonging to the mystical Brotherhood
network have profited from the conflicts generated by the
network. If ancient Mesopotamian, American and biblical
writings are correct, then those human elites are really only
at the top of a prisoner hierarchy. We might label those
elites the "King Rats" of Earth.
The term "King Rat" comes from a James Clavell novel
which was later made into a Hollywood movie starring
George Segal. The story King Rat concerns a group of
American and British soldiers being held captive in a
Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during World War II.
Through clever bargaining and organization, one of the
American prisoners, Corporal King, manages to amass a
wealth of* material goods desperately craved by the other
prisoners of war. As a result, he sits at the top of the
prisoner hierarchy and is often able to buy loyalty with
a cigarette or fresh egg. The other prisoners simply call
him King, for that is what he is inside the prison. When he embarks on a venture to breed rats as food, he earns
the title "King Rat," which somehow seems to fit him.
King Rat enjoys every luxury craved by the other prisoners, yet the fact remains that he is still a prisoner himself.
King Rat can only remain at the top of the pecking order
so long as everyone remains imprisoned. At the end of the
film, when the war is over and the camp is liberated, he no
longer has the prison environment he relied on to stay on
top. In freedom, he is lost, wondering if he really welcomes
the liberation. In the final scene of the movie we see him
being driven off in a truck, just another corporal. We sense,
however, even if King Rat does not, that he is better off liberated since the fragile fiefdom he had built could have been
easily toppled at any time by the Japanese prison keepers.
King's life as a liberated corporal is far more secure than
his precarious existence at the top of an oppressed prison
population.
The King Rat of cinema was ultimately a sympathetic
character. Those whom we might label the "King Rats"
of Earth are not so endearing for we will use the term to
describe only those individuals who acquire their profits
and influence not by breeding rats, but by helping to breed
war and suffering for human consumption.
For thousands of years, Earth has had endless successions
of "King Rats." In this chapter, we will look at a particularly
interesting group of them: the petty princes of 18th-century
Germany. They and their relationship to Brotherhood mysticism provide a fascinating look at a curious element of
18th-century politics—politics which have done much to
shape the social, political and economic world we live
in today.
Germany became the center of Templar Freemasonry on
continental Europe. The Knight degrees took on a unique
character in the German states where the degrees were made
into a system of Freemasonry called the "Strict Observance."
The "Strict Observance" was so named because every initiate
was required to give an oath of strict and unquestioning
obedience to those ranking above him within the Order.
The vow of obedience extended to a mysterious figure
known as the "Unknown Superior," who was said to be the secret leader of the Strict Observance and who was
reportedly residing in Scotland.
Members of the Strict Observance first passed through
the Blue Degrees before they were initiated into the higher
degrees of "Scottish Master," "Novice," "Templar," and
"Professed Knight." The "Unknown Superior" went by the
title "Knight of the Red Feather." Although secrecy in the
Strict Observance was very strong, several leaks revealed
that the Strict Observance was true to the Scottish degrees
by agitating against the House of Hanover in favor of the
Stuarts.
The Strict Observance spread quickly throughout the German states and became the dominant form of Freemasonry
there for decades. It also became influential in other countries such as France, which was the second largest center of
Freemasonry in Europe. (Germany was the largest.) In all
nations, Strict Observance members pledged obedience to
the "Unknown Superior" of Scotland. According to J. M.
Roberts, writing in his book, The Mythology of the Secret
Societies:
The Strict Observance evoked suspicion and hostility
in France because of its German origins and great
excitement was aroused by the implied recognition by
the Grand Orient [France's supreme Masonic body]
of the authority of the unknown superiors of the Strict
Observance over French freemasons.1
One of the earliest Grand Masters of the Strict Observance
was G. C. Marschall. Upon Marschall's death in 1750, the
position was assumed by a German from Saxony: the
Baron Von Hund. The Strict Observance degrees had
nearly all been created by the beginning of Von Hund's
Grand-Mastership, but Von Hund has been given credit for
doing the most to put them into recognizable form. Von -
Hund stated that he had been initiated into the Order of the
Temple (i.e. the Templar Knights) by Lord Kilmarnock, a
prominent nobleman from Scotland. Von Hund also claimed
that he had met both the "Unknown Superior" and Charles
Edward.
Like Michael Ramsey, Von Hund was on a mission to reestablish the Templar Knights in Europe. Von Hund
sought to raise money to repurchase the lands which had
been seized from the Templars centuries earlier. Although
Von Hund had many successes, he was branded a fraud by
his enemies and he eventually fell into disgrace.
The Strict Observance gained a strong following among
the German royal families (although some opposed it and
remained loyal to the English Masonic system). This is a
puzzle. Some royal families involved in the Strict Observance were politically allied to Hanover. Why would they
participate in a form of Freemasonry which secretly opposed
the English House of Hanover?
In some cases, it appears that the royal members had
joined the Strict Observance after it ceased to be virulently
pro-Stuart. Certainly the Stuart cause was waning by the
1770's when some of those German princes emerged as
Strict Observance leaders. On the other hand, there is
another important factor to be considered:
The woes of England caused by the Stuart rebellion and
by other conflicts were a source of immense profit to those
German principalities, including to Hannover! That same
small clique of German royal dynasties which had been
marrying into foreign royal families and then overthrowing
them, made big money from the conflicts which they helped
to create—conflicts which were also being stirred up by the
Brotherhood network.
To better understand this situation, we must briefly digress
and review the history of the Teutonic Knights after they
were defeated in the Crusades.
When the Crusades ended, the Teutonic Knights, like the
Templar and Hospitaller Knights, found work elsewhere. In
1211, while under the leadership of Grand Master Hermann
von Salza, the Teutonic Knights were invited to Hungary
to aid a struggle going on there. For their services, they
were awarded the district of Burzenland in Transylvania,
which was then under Hungarian rule. The Knights outlived their welcome, however, and were expelled because
they demanded too much land. After their ouster from
Transylvania, the Knights were invited by Conrad, Polish Prince of Masovia, to help fight heathen Slavs in Prussia.
The Knights were again rewarded with land. This time they
received large sections of Prussia.
The Knights gained another benefactor: German Emperor
Frederick II—the man who made the ten-year peace treaty
we discussed in Chapter 15. Although Frederick had acted
as a man of peace, he was unfortunately also associated with
this organization of war. In 1226, Frederick empowered the
Knights to become overlords of Prussia. Frederick awarded
to Grand Master von Salza the status of a prince of the German Holy Roman Empire. Frederick was also responsible
for a reorganization of the Order.
The Teutonic Knights were thoroughly entrenched in
Prussia by the year 1229. They built solid fortresses and
imposed Christianity on the native Prussian populace with
an energetic military campaign. By 1234, the Knights were
politically autonomous and served under no authority except
the Pope. The Knights surrendered their extensive Prussian
holdings to the Pope in name and received them back as
fiefs. In reality, the Teutonic Knights were the true rulers
of Prussia, not the Pope.
With Papal support, the ranks of the Teutonic Knights
ballooned rapidly. Many Germans traveled to Prussia to
enter the new and potentially lucrative theatre of war.
This migration eventually brought about the complete
"Germanization" of Prussia. Commerce and industry eventually replaced armed conflict and Prussia became a major
commercial center. By the early 1300's, the dominion of
the Teutonic Knights extended over most of the southern
and southeastern coastline of the Baltic Sea. The Teutonic
Knights had two centuries in which to leave their indelible
mark on central and western Europe. Before losing power,
the Knights had established the militant character of Prussia
that would define that region for centuries to follow.
By the early 1500's the fate of the Teutonic Knights had
worsened. They were driven out of West Prussia by Poland
and were forced to rule East Prussia as a Polish fief. By 1618,
Prussia fell completely under the rule of the Hohenzollern
dynasty. This effectively marked the end of autonomous
Teutonic Knight rule.
Despite continuing friction between the Knights and the
Hohenzollerns over control of Prussia, the Hohenzollerns
kept significant elements of the Knight organization alive.
At least one Hohenzollern, Albert of Brandenburg-Anspach,
had been a Grand Master of the Order around 1511.
Hohenzollern Prussia adopted the colors of the Teutonic
cloaks (black and white) as the official hues of the land.
The two-headed Teutonic bird became Prussia's national
symbol.
Like the other knightly organizations of the Crusades,
the Teutonic Knights were eventually turned into a secret
fraternal society, this time under the sponsorship of the
royal Hapsburg family of Austria. The Teutonic Knights
still survive in that form today.
Under the rule of the Hohenzollerns, the power and influence of Prussia grew. Prussia became a formidable player
in the tangled political arena of Europe. By the eighteenth
century, the Hohenzollerns had also become extensively
intertwined with their German royal neighbors through marriage. For example, history's most famous Hohenzollern,
Frederick II (better known as "Frederick the Great"), had
been set up by his father in 1733 to marry Elizabeth Christina
of the northwestern German principality of Brunswick. (In
1569, the Brunswick dynasty had founded the Brunswick-Luneburg family line which later became the Hannover
family.) Frederick's mother was Sophia Dorothea, sister of
Hanoverian King George II. Generations earlier, Frederick
the Great's great grandfather had married Henrietta, daughter
of the Prince of Orange.
Political marriages, because they were usually loveless,
were often unsatisfactory to those who were wed. This
proved true in the joining of Frederick the Great to
Elizabeth Christina of Brunswick. Frederick had wanted
to marry one of the Hanoverians, but his father's stern
will prevailed. Despite this unhappy arrangement, Frederick
still had amicable ties to others in the Brunswick family.
It was in Brunswick that Frederick, not yet the King
of Prussia, was secretly initiated into Freemasonry on
August 14, 1738 against his father's wishes. The initiation had been authorized by the Lodge of Hamburg in Hannover. The Lodge practiced the Blue Degrees of
English Freemasonry.
Two years after his initiation, Frederick II became the
king of Prussia. He then publicly revealed his Masonic membership and initiated others into the Order.* At
Frederick's command, a Grand Lodge was established in
Berlin called Lodge of Three Globes. Its first meeting was
held on September 13,1740. This Lodge began as an English
system lodge and it had the authority to grant charters. *In 1740, Frederick initiated several other important German nobles into Freemasonry: his brother, Prince William; the Margrave (Prince) Charles of Brandenburg (whose family was also married into the House of Hanover through Caroline of Brandenburg as wife to King George II); and Frederick William, the Duke of Holstein.
How long Frederick remained active in Freemasonry is
still debated today. Some historians believe that he ceased
his Masonic activities in 1744 when the demands of war
occupied his full attention. His general cynicism later in
life eventually extended to Freemasonry. Nevertheless,
Frederick's name continued to appear as the authority
for Masonic charters even after he was reportedly inactive.
It is uncertain whether Frederick merely lent his name to
the granting of charters or was personally involved in the
process.
Within about a decade of Frederick's Masonic initiation,
the Strict Observance and its Scottish degrees were in the
process of almost completely taking over German Masonry. Frederick's Lodge of Three Globes became decidedly
"Strict Observance" when its new statutes were adopted
on November 20, 1764. On January 1, 1766, Baron Von
Hund, Grand Master of the Strict Observance, constituted the
Three Globes as a Scots or Directoral Lodge empowered to
warrant other Strict Observance Lodges. All lodges already
warranted by the Three Globes except one (the Royal York
Lodge) went over to the Strict Observance (Scottish) system.
Whatever Frederick's masonic involvement may or may
not have been, he and his Prussian kingdom profited from
the conflicts of England that Scottish Masonry had been contributing to. Despite his domestic liberalism and professed anti-Machiavellian beliefs, Frederick proved by his
actions to be as warlike and as shrewdly manipulative in the
complex web of European politics as any man of his day. His
goal was the militaristic expansion of the Prussian kingdom.
He was not above aiding insurrection and being fickle in
his alliances to achieve his goal. In the 1740's, Frederick
had a political alliance with France. France was actively
supporting the Jacobites against the Hanoverians and rumors
circulated in London that Frederick was helping the Jacobites
prepare for their big invasion of England in 1745.
Frederick afterwards shifted his alliance back to England
and continued to profit from England's woes. He not only
gained territory, but money as well. Sharing in Frederick's
monetary profits were other German principalities, including Hannover itself. They all made their money by renting
German soldiers to England at exorbitant prices. Hannover
had already been engaged in this enterprise for decades.
The rental of German mercenaries to England was perhaps
one of the great "scams" of European history: a small clique
of German families overthrew the English throne and placed
one of their own upon it. They then used their influence to
militarize England and to involve it in wars. By doing so,
they could milk the British treasury by renting expensive
soldiers to England to fight in the wars they helped to
create! Even if the Hanoverians were unseated in England,
they would go home to German Hannover with a handsome
profit made from the wars to unseat them. This may be one
key to the puzzle of why some members of this German
clique supported Scottish Templar Freemasonry and later
took on leadership positions within it.
England rented German mercenaries through the signing
of "subsidy treaties," which were really business contracts.
England began entering into subsidy treaties almost immediately after the German takeover of their country by the House
of Orange in 1688. As we recall, one of the first things that
William and Mary did after taking the English throne was
to launch England into war.
The German mercenaries were a constant burden to
England. One early mention of them is found in the correspondence of the Duke of Marlborough.* Marlborough was an English leader fighting on the European
continent against France during the War of Spanish
Succession (1701-1714).** Hannover was renting troops
to England at that time—years before Hannover took
the British throne. On May 15, 1702, Marlborough discussed the need to pay the Hanoverian troops so that
they would fight:
* Letters written by the Duke of Marlborough are translated here into modern English.
**Wars of "succession" were wars sparked by disputes over who should succeed to a royal throne. The major European powers often got involved in these frays and turned them into large-scale conflicts which could drag on for years.
If we have the Hanover troops, I am afraid there must
be one hundred thousand crowns given them before
they will march, so that it would be very much for
the Service if that money were ready in Holland at
my coming.2
Four days later, 22,600 pounds were allocated by the
English government to pay the mercenaries.
Prussia and Hesse were also supplying mercenaries to
Britain during that war. Marlborough's woes in getting
them paid continued. Writing from the Hague on March
26, 1703, he lamented:
Now that I am come here [the Hague] I find that the
Prussians, Hessians, nor Hanoverians have not received
any of their extraordinaries [fees] .. .3
England's next major European war was the War of
Austrian Succession (1740-1748). Frederick the Great was
allied with France against England this time. This did
not stop other German principalities from continuing their
business relationship with England, especially Hannover
and Hesse. Although Hannover now sat on the British throne, it was not about to cease its profitable enterprise.
If anything, Hannover's British reign gave that German
principality greater leverage to drive even harder bargains
with England for Hanoverian mercenaries. A letter written
on December 9, 1742 by Horace Walpole, Britain's former
Prime Minister, discussed the enormous fee England was
asked to pay for renting 16,000 Hanoverian troops:
. . .
there is a most bold pamphlet come out. . . which
affirms that in every treaty made since the accession [to
the British throne] of this family [Hanover], England
has been sacrificed to the interests of Hanover. . .4
The pamphlet mentioned by Walpole contained these
amusing words:
Great Britain hath been hitherto strong and vi[g]orous
enough to bear up Hanover on its shoulders, and
though wasted and wearied out with the continual
fatigue, she is still goaded on ... For the interests
of this island [England] must, for this once, prevail,
or we must submit to the ignominy of becoming only
a money-province to that electorate [Hannover].5
In the end, opposition to the subsidy treaties failed.
England truly became Hannover's "money-province." Lamented Walpole:
We have every now and then motions for disbanding
Hessians and Hanoverians, alias mercenaries; but they
come to nothing.6
The subsidy treaties were indeed lucrative. For example, in the contract year beginning December 26, 1743,
the British House granted 393,733 pounds for 16,268 Hanoverian troops. This may not seem like much until
we realize that the value of the pound was very much
higher than it is today. To raise some of this money, the Parliament went as far as to authorize a lottery.
At the same time that England was fighting the War of
Austrian Succession, it was also fighting the Jacobites. More
German troops were needed on that front.
On September 12, 1745, Charles Edward of the Stuart
family led his famous invasion of England by way of
Scotland. "Bonnie Prince Charlie," as Charles Edward
was called, captured Edinburgh on September 17 and was
approaching England with the intent of taking London.
That meant more money for Hesse. On December 20,
1745, Hanoverian King George II announced that he had
sent for 6,000 Hessian troops to fight in Scotland against
Charles Edward. King George presented Parliament with
a bill for the Hessian troops. It was approved. The
Hessians landed on February 8 of the following year.
Meanwhile, back on the European front, England hired
more soldiers from Holland, Austria, Hannover, and
Hesse to pursue England's "interests" there. The bills
were staggering.
The war on the Continent finally ended. It was not long, of
course, before the rulers of Europe were involved in another
one. This time it was the Seven Years War (1756-1763)—
one of the largest armed conflicts in European history up
until that time.* Frederick of Prussia had switched his
allegiance back again to England, and the two nations
(England and Prussia) were pitted against France, Austria,
Russia, Sweden, Saxony, Spain, and the Kingdom of Two
Sicilies. Frederick did not ally himself to England this
time out of fickle love for Britain. England was paying
him. By the Treaty of Westminster effective April 1758,
Frederick received a substantial subsidy from the English
treasury to continue his fighting, much of it to defend his
own interests! The treaty ran from April to April and was
renewable annually. * The Seven Years War was actually an expansion of the French and Indian War being fought in North America between England and France. The expansion of the war into Europe had been triggered by Frederick the Great himself when he invaded Saxony.
During the Seven Years War, England also paid out money to help Hannover defend its own German interests. France
had attacked Hannover, Hesse, and Brunswick. Some of
the subsidy money paid to Hannover and Hesse was used
by those principalities to defend their own borders. The
treaty with Hesse, signed on June 18, 1755 (shortly before
the Seven Years War erupted) was especially generous. In
addition to "levy money" (money used to gather an army
together) and "remount money" (money used to acquire
fresh horses), Hesse was granted a yearly subsidy of 36,000
Pounds when its troops were under German pay, and double
that when they entered British pay. An additional 36,000
Pounds went directly to the coffers of the Landgrave of
Hesse.
Many English Lords did not feel that German troops were
worth the money. While discussing a possible French invasion of England, Walpole joked, "if the French do come, we
shall at least have something for all the money we have laid
out on Hanoverians and Hessians!"7
William Pitt, another
influential English statesman, added these amusing words
to the debate:
The troops of Hanover, whom we are now expected
to pay, marched into the Low Countries, where they
still remain. They marched to the place most distant
from the enemy, least in danger of an attack, and
most strongly fortified had an attack been designed.
They have, therefore, no other claim to be paid than
that they left their own country for a place of greater
security. I shall not, therefore, be surprised, after
such another glorious campaign. . . to be told that
the money of this nation cannot be more properly
employed than in hiring Hanoverians to eat and
sleep.8
The German principality to profit most from the soldiers for-hire business was Hesse.
In taking a quick look at the history of Hesse, we
find that after Philip the Magnanimous died in 1567,
Hesse was divided between Philip's four sons into four
main provinces: Hesse-Kassel (often spelled Hesse-Cassel), Hesse-Darmstadt, Hesse-Rheinfels, and Hesse-Marburg.
The most important and powerful of these four Hessian
regions became Hesse-Kassel, into which Hesse-Rheinfels
and Hesse-Marburg would later be reabsorbed.
Renting mercenaries to England became the Hessian royal
family's most lucrative enterprise. Although Hesse itself
was scarred during some of the European conflicts, the
Hessian dynasty built an immense fortune from the soldier
business. In fact, Landgrave Frederick II of Hesse-Kassel
(not to be confused with Frederick II of Prussia or with
the German emperor Frederick II of the Crusade era)
made Hesse-Kassel the richest principality in Europe
by renting out mercenaries to England during Britain's
next great struggle: the War for American Independence,
also known as the American Revolution. Also benefiting
from the American Revolution was the royal House of
Brunswick. Its head, Charles I, rented soldiers to England
at a very handsome price to help fight the rebelling
colonists.
As we can see, Hesse, Hannover and a few other German
states profited handsomely from the conflicts which had
beset England. The problems of Britain gave them the
opportunity to plunder the British treasury at the expense of
the English people. This had the additional effect of pushing
England into ever-deepening debt to the new bankers with
their inflatable paper money.
The populace of Germany also suffered. Most of the
mercenaries rented to England were young men involuntarily
conscripted and forced to fight where their leaders sent them.
Many were maimed and killed so that their rulers could live
in greater luxury. The wealth and influence of a small clique
of German dynasties had been built upon the blood of the
young.
Lurking behind these activities we continue to find
the presence of the Brotherhood network. As the years
progressed, members of the royal families of Hesse and
Brunswick emerged as leaders of the Strict Observance. In
1772, for example, at a Masonic congress in Kohlo, Duke
Charles William Ferdinand of Brunswick was chosen to
succeed Von Hund as Grand Master of the Strict Observance.* Several years after his election to the Grand Master
position, Duke Ferdinand succeeded Charles I as the ruler
of Brunswick and inherited the money from Brunswick's
rental of mercenaries. * With the election of Duke Ferdinand, the Strict Observance underwent several changes. The Strict Observance was informally called the "United Lodges." Another congress was held ten years later in 1782 in Wilhelmsbad (a city near Hanau in Hesse-Kassel). There the name "Strict Observance" was dropped altogether and the Order was thereafter called the "Beneficent Knights of the Holy City." The Wilhelmsbad congress officially abandoned the story that the Templar Knights were the original creators of Freemasonry. However, the Knight degrees were retained, as was the idea of leadership by an "Unknown Superior."
Sharing leadership duties in the Strict Observance with
the Duke of Brunswick was Prince Karl of Hesse, son of
Frederick II of Hesse-Kassel. According to Jacob Katz in
his book, Jews and Freemasons in Europe, 1723-1939,
Prince Karl was later "accepted as the head of all German
Freemasons."9
Karl's brother, William IX, who later inherited the principality and immense fortune of Hesse-Kassel
from their father, was also a Freemason. William IX had
provided mercenaries to England when he earlier ruled
Hesse-Hanau.
How important a role did the Brotherhood itself really
play in manipulating these affairs? To determine if there
truly was active Brotherhood involvement of a Machiavellian nature, it would help to discover if there was any
single Brotherhood agent who participated first in one
faction and then in another. We would require a Brotherhood agent traveling in all circles: from the Jacobites
to the electors of Hesse, from the King of France to
Prussia.
Interestingly, history records just such an individual. We
would not normally learn of such an agent because of the
secrecy surrounding Brotherhood activity. This particular
person, however, by virtue of his flamboyant personality,
his remarkable artistic talents, and his flair for drama, had
attracted so much attention to himself that his activities and
travels were noted and recorded for posterity by many of the people around him. Deified by some and declared a
charlatan by others, this flamboyant agent of the Brotherhood was best known by a false appellation: the Count of
St. Germain.
26
The Count of
St. Germain
A CONTROVERSIAL FIGURE IN the intrigues of 18th-century
Europe was a secretive and colorful individual known as
the Count of St. Germain.* St. Germain's life has been the
subject of many articles and at least one book. Ever since his
reported death in 1784, there has been a tendency to either
deify him or to dismiss him as an unimportant charlatan.
Neither characterization seems to accurately reflect what he
truly was. *Not to be confused with the French general of the same name, nor Claude Louis de St. Germain, an 18th-century mystic.
St. Germain's activities are important because his movements provide a fascinating link between the wars going on in
Europe, the deeper levels of the Brotherhood, and the clique
of German princes—particularly the House of Hesse. 137s
The first of many mysteries concerning St. Germain is
the circumstance of his birth. Many researchers believe him to have been the offspring of Francis II, ruler of the once
powerful principality of Transylvania. Transylvania, famous
in cinema as the home of the mythical human vampire,
Dracula, and other assorted literary ne'er-do-wells, had
ties to the dynasty in Hesse. Francis II of Transylvania
had married sixteen-year-old Charlotte Amalie of Hessen-Reinfels on September 25, 1694 at the cathedral of Cologne
in Germany.
Out of this union came two known children. However,
when the will of Francis II was published in 1737, a third
unnamed son was mentioned as a beneficiary. This third
child proved to be Leopold-George, eldest son and heir
to the Transylvanian throne. Leopold-George was born in
either 1691 or 1696, depending upon which theory of his
birth one accepts. Because of the uncertainty of his birthdate,
it is not known if he was the son of Charlotte of Hesse or
of Francis II's prior wife. What does appear certain is that
Leopold-George's early "death" in 1700 had been staged
to save him from the deadly intrigues which were about to
destroy the Transylvanian dynasty and end the independence
of Transylvania.
Leopold-George is believed to have been the Count of
St. Germain.
St. Germain first appeared in European society in 1743
when he would have been a man in his forties. Little is
known about his life before that year. A dossier on the
mysterious Count had been created by order of French
Emperor Napoleon III (r. 1852-1870) but, unfortunately,
all of the documents were destroyed in a fire that engulfed
the house in which the dossier was stored. This resulted
in the loss of irreplaceable information about St. Germain.
St. Germain's own secretiveness only deepens the mystery
about his life. The surviving information indicates that St.
Germain was raised to become one of the most active, colorful, and successful secret political agents of the Brotherhood
in the 18th century.
Of St. Germain's early life, Strict Observance leader
Prince Karl of Hesse wrote that St. Germain had been raised
in childhood by the last of the powerful Medici family of
Italy. The Duke of Medici, like some earlier Medicis, was engrossed in the mystical philosophies prevalent in Italy
at the time, which may account for St. Germain's deep
involvement in the Brotherhood network as an adult. While
under Medici care, St. Germain is believed to have studied
at the university in Siena.
St. Germain's first documented appearance in European
society occurred in England in 1743. At that time, the
Jacobite cause was very strong and the 1745 invasion
of Scotland was only two years away. During those two
crucial years prior to the invasion, St. Germain resided in
London. Only glimpses of his activities during that time are
available. St. Germain was a gifted musician and several
of his musical compositions were publicly performed in
the Little Haymarket Theatre in early February 1745. St.
Germain also had several of his trios published by the Walsh
company of London.
British authorities did not believe that St. Germain was in
London to pursue a musical career, however. In December
1745, with the Jacobite invasion underway, St. Germain was
arrested by the British on suspicion of being a Jacobite agent.
He was released when rumored letters from Charles Edward,
leader of the Stuart invasion, were not found on his person.
Horace Walpole wrote of the arrest afterwards:
. .. t'other day they seized an odd man, who goes by the
name of Count St. Germain. He has been here these two
years, will not tell who he is or whence, but professes
two very wonderful things, the first that he does not
go by his right name, and the second, that he never had
any dealings, or desire to have any dealings, with any
woman—nay, nor with an succedaneum [substitute].
He sings, plays on the violin wonderfully, composes,
is mad, and not very sensible.1
After his release, St. Germain departed England and spent
one year as the guest of Prince Ferdinand von Lobkowitz,
first minister to the Austrian emperor. The War of Austrian
Succession was still raging at the time, in which Austria and
England were allied against France and Prussia. During this
visit to Austria, St. Germain was introduced to the French Minister of War, the Marshal de Belle-Isle, who, in turn,
introduced St. Germain to the French court.
This is an intriguing sequence of events. Here we have
a man arrested as a suspected enemy of England during a
time of war, who then immediately went to stay with a top
minister of a nation (Austria) which was allied to England.
During that stay, this same man befriended the Minister of
War of a nation (France) which was an enemy of Austria!
St. Germain's political contacts on all sides of a raging war
were remarkable.
What St. Germain did for the next three years after leaving
Austria is not certain.
St. Germain reappeared in European society again in
1749, this time as a guest of King Louis XV of France.
France, a Catholic nation, actively supported the Jacobite
cause against the Hanoverians of England. France was also
involved in many other foreign intrigues. According to a
lady of the French court who later wrote of St. Germain in
her memoirs:
From 1749, the King [Louis XV] employed him [St.
Germain] on diplomatic missions and he acquitted
himself honorably in them.2
King Louis had gained fame as an architect of 18th century secret diplomacy. The acceptance of St. Germain
into the French Court and his work for the French king as
a political agent is significant for several reasons:
First, it points to the important role that Brotherhood
members have played in the creation and operation of
national and international intelligence networks throughout
history; a matter we will consider in more detail in later
chapters.
Secondly, as a Catholic, King Louis XV adhered to Papal
decrees. The papacy was hostile to Freemasonry. Indeed,
Roman Catholicism and Freemasonry are both factions with
origins in the Brotherhood which have long opposed one
another. In 1737, Louis XV issued an edict forbidding all
French subjects to have anything to do with Freemasonry.
During the ensuing decades, the French government actively repressed the French Freemasons with police raids and
imprisonment. Louis XV's edict of 1737 was followed a
year later by Pope Clement's Papal Bull which forbade
Catholics everywhere from participating in or supporting
Freemasonry under penalty of excommunication; yet here
was the Count of St. Germain, who would later reveal a
life-long involvement in the Brotherhood, residing as a guest
of the King. The likely explanation, based upon the known
facts of St. Germain's life, is that he was not so much a
Freemason as he was an agent of the higher Brotherhood. It is
also unlikely that the French King understood St. Germain's
role in the Brotherhood network.
St. Germain's exact activities from 1749 through 1755
are largely unknown. In 1755, he made a second trip to
India. He went with English Commander Robert Clive who
was on his way there to fight the French! India was a major
theatre of war in which a great deal was at stake. Commander
Clive was an important leader on the British side. This trip
highlighted once again St. Germain's remarkable political
contacts and his ability to travel back and forth between
important leaders of warring camps. One biographer has
suggested that the Count may have been acting as a secret
agent of King Louis XV of France when he went to India
with Clive, for when St. Germain returned, he was awarded
in 1758 with an apartment in the French royal palace at
Chambord. He was also given laboratory facilities for his
chemical and alchemical experiments, in which Louis XV
sometimes participated.
St. Germain was clearly a flamboyant and multifaceted
character. One of the talents for which he achieved fame was
his considerable knowledge of alchemy. (Alchemy mixes
mysticism with chemistry and was a staple of Rosicrucian
practice.) St. Germain became a topic of gossip in the French
court because he claimed to possess the alchemical Elixir of
Life. The Elixir was said to be a secret formula which made
people physically immortal. This was the same Elixir many
European Rosicrucians claimed to possess. St. Germain may
have had tongue slightly in cheek when he made the claim, however. He is quoted as saying to King Louis XV, "Sire,
I sometimes amuse myself not by making it believed, but
by allowing it to be believed, that I have lived in ancient
times."3
In 1760, St. Germain left France for the Hague in Holland.
This trip was made during the height of the Seven Years War.
Holland was a neutral country during that conflict. Exactly
what St. Germain was trying to accomplish in Holland
remains debated even today. After declaring himself to be
a secret agent of King Louis XV, St. Germain tried to gain
an audience with the English representative at the Hague.
St. Germain claimed that he was there to negotiate a peace
between England and France. However, the French Foreign
Minister, the Duke of Choiseul, and the French ambassador
to Holland, Count D'Affry, had not been notified by their
king about St. Germain's purported mission. The Duke
of Choiseul therefore branded St. German a charlatan
and ordered his arrest. To avoid imprisonment by Dutch
authorities, St. Germain fled to London in the same year.
St. Germain's escape was aided by his influential friend,
Count Bentinck, the President of the Dutch Council of
Deputy Commissioners.
As a result of this debacle and the unwillingness of Louis
XV to publicly acknowledge St. Germain as his agent, St.
Germain was unable to openly return to French royal society until 1770—the year in which his enemy, the Duke of
Choiseul, was disgraced and removed from power.
St. Germain had a second, and perhaps even more compelling, reason for making that ill-fated trip to Holland. A
letter written on March 25, 1760 by Prince de Galitzin,
Russian Minister to England, offered this insight into St.
Germain's aborted activities in Holland:
I know the Count de St. Germain well by reputation.
This singular man has been staying for some time in
this country, and I do not know whether he likes it.
There is someone here with whom he appears to be
in correspondence, and this person declares that the
object of the Count's journey to Holland is merely
some financial business.4
The financial business mentioned by de Galitzen was
very secret. It appeared to be the true purpose of St.
Germain's visit. St. Germain was in Holland to exploit
the marriage of a Princess Caroline to the German prince
of Nassau-Dillenburg for the purposes of establishing a
"Fund" for France. St. Germain wanted to negotiate the
formation of the Fund with Dutch bankers. According
to French ambassador D'Affrey, "his objective in general was to secure the credit of the principal bankers
there for us."5
In another letter, D'Affry stated that St.
Germain "had come to Holland solely to complete the
formation of a Company adequate to the responsibility of
this Fund. . . ."6
The formation of the Fund was probably the true reason for
St. Germain's (and perhaps King Louis's) extreme secrecy.
France already had important financiers to the royal Court:
the wealthy Paris-Duverney Brothers. The Paris Brothers
had salvaged France's financial standing after the disastrous
Bank of France episode involving the inflated money of John
Law. St. Germain was quite hostile to the Paris Brothers
and he did not want them to gain control of the Fund. St.
Germain is quoted by Monsieur de Kauderbach, a minister
of the Saxon court in the Hague:
. . .
he [King Louis XV of France] is surrounded only
by creatures placed by the Brothers Paris, who alone
cause all the trouble of France. It is they who corrupt
everything, and thwarted the plans of the best citizen in
France, the Marshal de Belle-Isle. Hence the disunion
and jealousy amongst the Ministers. All is corrupted by
the Brothers Paris; perish France, provided they may
attain their object of gaining eight hundred millions.7
St. Germain may well have had legitimate grounds for
objecting to the undue influence of the Paris Brothers.
St. Germain's mission in the Hague, however, was only
an attempt to covertly wrest financial control from the
Paris Brothers and put it back into the hands of the
same clique of financiers whose predecessors had institutionalized the inflatable paper money system to begin with—the very system which had brought financial ruin
to France and the consequent intervention of the Paris
Brothers. Because of St. Germain's sudden forced departure
from Holland, he was never able to complete his financial
mission.
Upon arriving in London after fleeing Holland, St.
Germain was once again arrested and released. During
this short stay in England, St. Germain published seven
violin solos.
St. Germain continued his covert political activities after
leaving London. In 1760, he returned secretly to Paris. There
St. Germain is believed to have stayed with his friend, the
Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst. Anhalt-Zerbst was another German state which rented mercenaries to England, although it
never accumulated the same wealth as some of its German
neighbors.
The Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst had a daughter, Catherine
II. On August 21, 1744, Catherine II had married Peter
III of Russia. This marriage had been arranged by
Frederick the Great of Prussia, who was a friend of
the Anhalt-Zerbst family and, at least for a time, of St.
Germain.
In 1762, two years after St. Germain's quiet return to
Paris, Peter III assumed the Russian throne. St. Germain
traveled immediately to the Russian capital of St. Petersburg
where he helped Catherine overthrow Peter and establish her
as the Empress of Russia. Assisting in the coup d'etat was
the Russian Orloff family. The Orloffs are believed to have
murdered Peter by strangling him in a phony brawl. For his
assistance in the coup, St. Germain was made a general of
the Russian army and he remained a close friend of the
Orloff family for many years. Catherine, who later became
known as "Catherine the Great," went on to rule Russia for
twenty-nine years.
With this bold coup, St. Germain had helped put Russia
under the rule of the same small clique of German royal
families under which other European countries had fallen.
The same modus operandi was used: the marriage of a royal
German into the victim dynasty followed by a revolution or coup. Here we find evidence of direct Brotherhood involvement in the person of St. Germain.
What St. Germain did between 1763 and 1769 after
leaving Russia is a mystery. He is known to have spent
approximately one year in Berlin and was a short-term guest
of Friedrich August of Brunswick. From Brunswick, St.
Germain continued his travels around Europe. He returned
to France in 1770. In 1772, St. Germain again acted as
an agent for Louis XV, this time during negotiations in
Vienna over the partition of Poland. Unfortunately for St.
Germain, Louis XV died on May 10, 1774 and Louis's
nineteen-year-old grandson, Louis XVI, took the throne.
The new king brought Choiseul back to power and took
a personal dislike to St. Germain. The Count was forced
to leave French society for the last time.
St. Germain immediately departed for Germany where,
only eleven days after the death of Louis XV, he was a guest
of William IX of Hesse—the prince who was to inherit the
vast Hesse-Kassel fortune. According to J. J. Bjornstahl,
writing in his book of travels:
We were guests at the court of the Prince-Hereditary
Wilhelm von Hessen-Cassel (brother of Karl von
Hessen) at Hanau, near Frankfort.
As we returned on the 21st of May 1774 to the
Castle of Hanau, we found there Lord Cavendish
and the Comte de St. Germain; they had come
from Lausanne, and were travelling to Cassel and
Berlin..8
After his visit to the home of the Hessian prince, St.
Germain traveled about Europe some more. He was welcomed as a guest of the Margrave of Brandenburg and
by others. Finally, in 1779, St. Germain was taken in by
Prince Karl of Hesse, who was a top leader of the Strict
Observance. St. Germain spent the last five years of his
known life with Karl.
In 1784, St. Germain reportedly died. The church register
of Eckenforde contained the entry:
Deceased on February 27, buried on March 2, 1784,
the so-called Compte de St. Germain and Weldon*—
further information not known—privately deposited in
this Church.9 *St. Germain used many aliases. Weldon was one of them.
It was after his reported death that St. Germain's true
status within the Brotherhood emerged. Not only was St.
Germain portrayed as one of the highest representatives
of the Brotherhood, he was also deified as a physically
immortal being who did not age or die. A number of his
contemporary admirers claimed that they saw St. Germain
at times when it should have been impossible for them to
do so because of St. Germain's age. For example, Baron
E. H. Gleichen, writing in his memoirs published in 1868,
stated:
I have heard Rameau and an old relative of a French
ambassador at Venice testify to having known St.
Germain in 1710, when he had the appearance of a
man of fifty years of age.10
If St. Germain was fifty years old in 1710, then he would
have been 124 years old when he reportedly died. There
are, however, those who claim that St. Germain did not
die in 1784. A German mystical magazine published in
1857, Magazin der Beweisführer fur Verurteilung des
Freimaurer-Ordens, stated that St. Germain was one of
the French representatives to the 1785 Masonic convention
in Paris, one year after his reported death. Another writer,
Cantu Cesare, in his work, Gli Eretici d'Italia, stated that St.
Germain was present at the famous Wilhelmsbad Masonic
conference which was also held in 1785.
These reports are viewed by some people as evidence that
St. Germain's death had been staged (perhaps for the second
time in his life) to enable him to escape the controversy which
surrounded him so that he could live out the rest of his life in
relative quiet.
St. Germain's alleged appearances after death did not
end in 1785, however. Countess D'Adhemar, a member of
the French court who wrote her memoirs shortly before
her death in 1822, alleged seeing St. Germain many times
after his reported death, usually during times of upheaval.
She claimed that St. Germain had sent warnings to the
King and Queen of France (his enemy Louis XVI and
Marie Antoinette) just prior to the outbreak of the French
Revolution which occurred in 1789. She also claimed that
she saw him in 1793, 1804, 1813, and 1820. A Rosicrucian
writer, Franz Graeffer, stated that St. Germain had made
appearances in Austria after his reported death, and was
honored there as an advanced Adept of the Brotherhood.
In the late 1800's, Madame Helena Blavatsky, one of the
cofounders of the Theosophical Society, declared that St.
Germain was one of the Hidden Masters of Tibet who
secretly controlled the destiny of the world. In 1919, a
man claiming to be St. Germain appeared in Hungary at
a time when a successful communist-led revolution was
underway in that country. Finally, in 1930, a man named
Guy Ballard claimed that he met St. Germain on Mount
Shasta in California, and that St. Germain had helped him
establish a new Brotherhood branch known as the "I AM."
We will look at the "I AM" in a later chapter.
Were all of these witnesses lying? Probably not. The
Brotherhood occasionally sponsored "resurrections" as a
way to deify select members. That is what had been done
with Jesus. In fact, those Brotherhood branches which deify
St. Germain (which is certainly not all of them) often give St.
Germain the same spiritual status as Jesus. Why St. Germain
was chosen for deification may never be fully understood.
Perhaps his successes on behalf of the Brotherhood were far
more numerous than we know. Whatever the reason might
have been, it is clear that St. Germain was mortal. He did
die, if not on the reported date of his demise, then surely
within a decade of it. [He is wrong about Christ. he did die on the cross and was resurrected 3 days later, appearing to numerous individuals over 40 days. This is what the holy spirit attests to, and it has the last say in all matters related to man and his journey on this Earth, not man and his speculation. D.C]
During his lifetime, and still today, many people have
labeled St. Germain a fraud and charlatan. Some critics
contend that St. Germain was nothing more than a glib con
artist of common birth whose entry into royal society came about solely through his wiles and colorful personality. The
evidence we have looked at clearly does not support this
argument. It was not easy for an outsider to enter so many
royal circles and remain there. St. Germain's involvement in
the overthrow of Peter of Russia was not a petty scam; it was
a major coup which altered the political landscape of Europe.
Yes, St. Germain was a charlatan on a number of matters,
but that made his political activities and connections no less
significant. St. Germain's color and flamboyance obscured
a deadly serious side to his life. His travels and activities
tied the Brotherhood to the Hessian princes, the intrigues of
France, the wars of Europe, and the paper money bankers.
The personality of St. Germain reveals that when we discuss "behind-the-scenes" influences, we are not necessarily
talking about eerie characters who skulk about in shadows
doing incomprehensible things. We are usually discussing
people who are as lively and colorful as the rest of us.
They succeed and they fail. They have their charms and
their quirks like everyone else. They exercise influence
over people, but not puppetlike control. They are affected
by the same things that everyone else is affected by. These
observations lead to an important point:
When some writers describe the influence of the Brotherhood network in history, and when some readers read about
it, they envision strange subterranean "occult" forces at
work. This is an illusion generated by the mysticism and
secrecy of the Brotherhood itself. Changes in society, whether
for good or bad, are caused by people doing things. The
Brotherhood network has simply been an effective channel
to get people to act, and to keep much of what they do secret.
The influence of the Brotherhood network only appears
mysterious and "occult" because so many actions have
gone unrecorded and unknown to outsiders. The corrupted
Brotherhood network does not have today, nor has it ever
had, effective "occult" powers. The world can therefore be
remade for the better by people simply acting and doing.
No magic wand is needed. Just some elbow grease.
27
Here a Knight,
There a Knight. . .
EVEN AFTER THE collapse of the Stuart cause, the Knight
degrees remained popular and spread rapidly. The pro-Stuart
slant vanished in favor of an anti-monarchical philosophy
in some Templar organizations, and a pro-monarchical sentiment in others. Freemasons practicing the Templar
degrees played important political roles on both sides of
the monarchy vs. anti-monarchy battles going on in the 18th
century, thereby helping to keep that issue alive in such a
way that people would find it something to continuously
fight over. For example, King Gustavus III of Sweden
and his brother, Karl, the Duke of Sodermanland, had
been initiated into the Strict Observance in 1770. In
the following year, one of Gustavus first acts upon
assuming the Swedish throne was to mount a coup
d'etat against the Swedish Riksdag [parliament] and re-establish greater powers in the Crown. According to
Samuel Harrison Baynard, writing in his book, History
of the Supreme Council, Gustavus was assisted largely by
fellow Freemasons.
The Knight degrees also found a home in Ireland where
they attached themselves to the Order of Orange. As
we recall, the Orange Order was a militant organization
patterned after Freemasonry. It was founded to ensure
that Protestantism remained England's dominant religion.
Members of the Orange Order vowed to support the
Hanoverians as long as the Hanoverians continued their
support of Protestantism. The Knight degrees were grafted
onto the Order of Orange in the early 1790's, by which
time the Stuart cause was nearly dead. The Orange Order's
Templar degrees were, and still are today, called the "Black
Preceptory." Although the Orange Order and the Black
Preceptory are supposed to be equal in status and rank,
entry into the Black Preceptory is accomplished only after
a person has first passed through the degrees of the Orange
Order. According to Tony Gray, writing in his fascinating
book, The Orange Order, the Black Preceptory today has
eleven degrees and "a great deal of secrecy still shrouds the
inner workings of this curious institution."1
Approximately
50% to 60% of all Orange members become members of
the Preceptory. The Orange Order itself continues to be
strongly Protestant and anti-Catholic, and in this way it
contributes to some of the conflicts between Catholics and
Protestants in Ireland today.
Another interesting chapter in the history of the Templar
Degrees concerns the creation of a bogus "Illuminati."
"Illuminati," as we recall, was the Latin name given to the
Brotherhood. In 1779, a second "Illuminati" was started in
the Strict Observance Lodge of Munich. This second bogus
"Illuminati" was led by an ex-Jesuit priest named Adam
Weishaupt and was structured as a semiautonomous organization. Openly political and anti-monarchical, Weishaupt's
"Illuminati" formed another channel of "higher degrees"
for Freemasons to graduate into after completing the Blue
Degrees. Weishaupt's "Illuminati" had its own "hidden
master" known as the "Ancient Scot Superior." The Strict
Observance members who were initiated into this "Illuminati" apparently believed that they were being initiated into
the highest echelons of the real Illuminati, or Brotherhood.
Once initiated under strict vows of secrecy, members were "revealed" a great deal of political and anti-monarchical philosophy.
Weishaupt's "Illuminati" was soon attacked, however. Its
headquarters in German Bavaria were raided by the Elector
of Bavaria in 1786. Many radical political aims of the Illuminati were discovered in documents seized during the raid.
The Duke of Brunswick, acting as Grand Master of German
Freemasonry, finally issued a manifesto eight years later,
in 1794, to counteract Weishaupt's bogus "Illuminati" after
the public scandal could no longer be contained. Joining in
the suppression of Weishaupt's Bavarian "Illuminati" were
many Rosicrucians. Despite the repression, this "Illuminati"
survived and still exists today.
Many people have mistakenly believed that Weishaupt's
"Illuminati" was the true Illuminati and that it took over all
of Freemasonry. This error is caused by Weishaupt's express
desire to have his degrees become the only "higher degrees"
of Freemasonry. One can still find books today which theorize that Weishaupt's "Illuminati" was, and still is, the source
of nearly all of mankind's social ills. A careful study of the
evidence indicates that Weishaupt's "Illuminati" is actually
a red herring in this respect. Although Weishaupt's "Illuminati" did contribute to some of the revolutionary agitation
going on in Europe, its impact on history does not appear
to have been as great as some people believe, despite the
enormous publicity it received. The social ills which have
sometimes been blamed on Weishaupt's "Illuminati" existed
long before the birth of Adam Weishaupt. What did take
over nearly all of Freemasonry in the eighteenth century
were the Templar degrees, which were not the same thing
as Weishaupt's "Illuminati." The true significance of the
Bavarian Illuminati is that is was an antimonarchy faction allowed to operate out of Strict Observance lodges;
meanwhile, the Strict Observance was generally considered
pro-monarchy and it supported pro-monarchy causes, as in
the Swedish Riksdag overthrow, mentioned earlier. This
made the Strict Observance a source of secret agitation on
both sides of the monarchy versus anti monarchy conflicts
for a number of years—another example of Brotherhood
Machiavellianism.
The worldwide transformation of human society announced in the Rosicrucian Fama Fraternitatis gained
momentum as Freemasons and other mystical network
members led numerous revolutions around the world.
The uprisings were not confined to Europe; they spilled
across the Atlantic Ocean and took root in the European
colonies in North America. There they gave birth to the
single most influential nation on Earth today: the United
States of America.145s
28
American Phoenix
WHEN EUROPEAN COLONISTS sailed to North America,
the Brotherhood organizations sailed with them. In 1694,
a group of Rosicrucian leaders from Europe founded a
colony in what is today the state of Pennsylvania. Some
of their picturesque buildings in Ephrata still stand as a
unique tourist attraction.
Freemasonry followed. On June 5, 1730, the Duke of
Norfolk granted to Daniel Coxe of New Jersey one of the
earliest known Masonic deputations to reach the American
colonies. The deputation appointed Mr. Coxe provisional
Grand Master of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
It also allowed him to establish lodges. One of the earliest
official colonial lodges was founded by Henry Price in
Boston on August 31, 1733 under a charter from the Mother
Grand Lodge of England. Masonic historian Albert MacKey
believes that lodges probably existed earlier, but that their
records have been lost.
Freemasonry spread rapidly in the American colonies just
as it had done in Europe. The early lodges in the British colonies were nearly all chartered by the English Mother
Grand Lodge, and members of the early lodges were loyal
British subjects.
Englishmen were not the only people to colonize America.
England had a major rival in the New World: France. The
competition between the two nations caused frequent spats
over colonial boundaries. This brought about a number of
violent clashes on American soil, such as Queen Anne's
War during the first decade of the 18th century, and King
George's War in 1744. Even during times of peace, relations
between the two superpowers were anything but smooth.
One of Britain's loyal military officers in the colonies
was a man named George Washington. He had been initiated into Freemasonry on November 4, 1752 at the age
of 20. He remained a member of the Craft for the rest
of his life. Washington became an officer in the colonial
army, which was under British authority, by the time he
reached his mid-twenties. Standing six feet three inches tall
and weighing nearly two hundred pounds, Washington was
a physically impressive figure.
One of Washington's military duties was to keep an eye
on French troops in tense border regions. The Treaty of Aixla-Chapelle executed in 1748 had ended King George's War
and had returned some territories to France. Both England
and France benefited from this pause in hostilities because
the wars were driving the two into debt. Even the inflatable
paper currencies the two nations used to help pay for their
wars did not prevent the serious financial difficulties that
wars always bring.
Unfortunately, the peace lasted less than a decade. It
was broken, according to some historians, by George
Washington during one of his military forays into the
Ohio Valley. Washington and his men sighted a group
of French soldiers, but were not spotted by the French in
return. On the command of Washington, his troops opened
fire without warning. It turned out that Washington's soldiers
had ambushed credentialed French ambassadors traveling
with a customary military escort. The French alleged afterwards that they were on their way to confer with the British
to settle some of the disputes still existing over the Ohio regions. Washington justified his attack by stating that the
French soldiers were "skulking" and that their claim to
diplomatic immunity was a pretense. Whatever the truth
might have been, the French felt that they had been the
victims of unprovoked military aggression. The French and
Indian War was soon underway. It spread to Europe as the
Seven Years War.
The renewed warfare was disastrous. According to
Frederick the Great, the Seven Years War claimed as
many as 853,000 military casualties, plus hundreds of
thousands of civilian lives. Heavy economic damage was
inflicted upon both England and France. When the war
ended, England faced a national debt of 136 million pounds,
most of it owed to a banking elite. To repay the debt, the
English Parliament levied heavy taxes in its own country.
When this taxation became too high, duties were placed
on goods in the American colonies. The duties quickly
became a sore point with the American colonists who began
to resist.
Another change caused by the War was Hanover's abandonment of their policy of keeping a small standing army in
Britain. England's armed forces were greatly expanded. This
brought about a need to tax citizens even more. In addition,
nearly 6,000 British troops in America needed housing and
they often encroached upon the property rights of colonists.
This generated yet more colonial dissent.
The fourth adverse consequence of the War (at least in
the minds of the colonists) was England's capitulation to
the demands of several American Indian nations. The
American Indians had fought on the side of the French
because of the encroachment of British colonists on Indian
lands. After the French and Indian War, the Crown issued
the Proclamation of 1763 commanding that the vast region
between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi
River was to be a widespread Indian reservation. British
subjects were not permitted to settle there without approval
from the Crown. This sharply reduced western expansion.
The first of Britain's new colonial tax measures went into
effect in 1764. It was known as the Sugar Act. It placed duties
on lumber, food, rum and molasses. In the following year a new tax, the Stamp Act, was instituted to help pay for the
British troops stationed in the colonies.
Many colonists strongly objected to the taxes and the
manner in which they were collected. Under British "writs of
assistance," for example, Crown custom agents could search
wherever they pleased for goods imported in violation of the
Acts. The agents had almost unlimited powers to search and
seize without notice or warrant.
In October 1765, representatives from nine colonies met at
a Stamp Act Congress in New York. They passed a Declaration of Rights expressing their opposition to taxation without
colonial representation in the British Parliament. The Declaration also opposed trials without juries by British Admiralty
courts. This act of defiance was partially successful. On
March 17, 1766, five months after the Stamp Act Congress
met, the Stamp Act was repealed.
Despite sincere efforts by the British Parliament to satisfy
many colonial demands, a significant independence movement was developing in the American colonies. Under the
leadership of a man named Samuel Adams, a secret organization calling itself the "Sons of Liberty" began to commit
acts of violence and terrorism. They burned the records of
the Vice Admiralty court and looted the homes of various
British officials. They threatened further violence against
stamp agents and other British authorities. The Sons of
Liberty organized economic boycotts by urging colonists
to cancel orders for British merchandise. These acts hurt
England because the colonies were very important to Britain
as a trade outlet. Therefore, in 1770, Britain bowed once
again to the colonists by repealing all duties except on tea. By
that time, however, the revolutionary fervor was too strong to
be halted. The result was bloodshed. On March 5, 1770, the
"Boston Massacre" occurred in which British troops fired
into a Boston mob and killed five people. Tensions continued
to mount and more secret revolutionary groups were formed.
Britain would still not repeal the tax on tea. On October
14, 1773, three years after the Boston Massacre, colonists
dressed as Indians crept onto a British ship anchored in
Boston harbor and threw large quantities of tea into the
water. This incident was the famous "Boston Tea Party."
These acts of rebellion finally caused Parliament to enact
trade sanctions against the colonists. The sanctions merely
fueled the rebellion. In 1774, a group of colonial leaders
convened the First Continental Congress to protest British
actions and to call for civil disobedience. In March 1775,
Patrick Henry gave his famous "Give me liberty or give
me death" speech at a convention in Virginia. Within less
than a month of that speech, the American Revolution got
under way with the Battle of Concord, where an organized
colonial militia called "the minute men" suffered eight
casualties while inflicting 273 on the British. In June of
that same year, George Washington, the man who some
historians believe had gotten the entire snowball rolling two
decades earlier when he had ordered his troops to fire on the
French in the Ohio Valley, was named commander-in-chief
of the new ragtag Continental Army.
Historians have noted that economic motives were not
the only ones propelling the American revolutionaries. This
became obvious after the British Parliament repealed nearly
all of the tariffs they had imposed. King George III, despite
being a Hanoverian, was popular at home and he initially
thought of himself as a friend to the colonists. The sharp
attacks against King George by revolutionary spokesmen
quite upset him because the attacks seemed out of proportion to his actual role in the problems complained of by the
colonists. More of the revolutionary rhetoric should have
been aimed at Parliament. There was clearly something
deeper driving the revolutionary cause: the rebels were
out to establish a whole new social order. Their revolt
was fueled by sweeping philosophies which encompassed
much more than their disputes with the Crown. One of those
philosophies was Freemasonry.
A "Who's Who" of the American Revolution is almost
a "Who's Who" of American colonial Freemasonry. Freemasons fighting on the revolutionary side included George
Washington, Benjamin Franklin (who had been a Mason
since at least 1731), Alexander Hamilton, Richard Montgomery, Henry Knox, James Madison, and Patrick Henry.
Revolutionaries who were also Masonic Grand Masters
included Paul Revere, John Hancock, and James Clinton, in addition to Washington and Franklin. According to Col.
LaVon P. Linn in his article "Freemasonry and the National
Defense, 1754-1799,"1
out of an estimated 14,000 officers
of all grades in the Continental Army, one seventh, or 2,018,
were Freemasons. They represented a total of 218 lodges.
One hundred of those officers were generals. Col. Linn
remarks:
In all our wars, beginning with the French and Indian
Wars and the War for American Independence, the
silhouettes of American military Masons have loomed
high above the battles.2
Europe provided the Americans with two additional Freemasons of importance. From Germany came the Baron von
Steuben, who personally turned Washington's ragged troops
into the semblance of a fighting army. Von Steuben was a
German Freemason who had served in the Prussian Army
as an aide-de-camp to Frederick the Great. He had been
discharged during the 1763 Prussian demobilization after
the Seven Years War. At the time that von Steuben's
services were procured in France by Benjamin Franklin,
von Steuben was a half-pay captain who had been out of
military work for fourteen years. Franklin, in order to get
the approval of Congress, faked von Steuben's dossier by
stating von Steuben to be a Lieutenant General. The deception worked, much to the ultimate benefit of the Continental
Army.
The second European was the Marquis de Lafayette.
La Fayette was a wealthy French nobleman who, in his
very early twenties, had been inspired by news of the
American Revolution while serving in the French army
in Europe, so he sailed to America to aid the revolutionary
cause. In 1778, during his service with the Continental
Army, La Fayette was made a Freemason. Later, after
the war, La Fayette revealed just how important Freemasonry was to the leadership of the revolutionary army.
In his address to the "Four of Wilmington" Lodge of
Delaware during his last visit to America in 1824, La
Fayette said:
At one time [while serving under General Washington]
I could not rid my mind of the suspicion that the General harboured doubts about me; this suspicion was
confirmed by the fact that I had never been given
a command-in-chief. This thought was an obsession
and it sometimes made me very unhappy. After I had
become an American freemason General Washington
seemed to have seen the light. From that moment
I never had reason to doubt his entire confidence.
And soon thereafter I was given a very important
command-in-chief.3
When we consider the prominence of Freemasons in the
American Revolution,* it should come as no surprise that
revolutionary agitation came from Masonic lodges directly.
According to Col. Linn's article, the famous Boston Tea
Party was the work of Masons coming directly out of a
lodge:
* Two important Revolutionary leaders who are thought not to have been Freemasons are Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson. According to John C. Miller, writing in his book, Sam Adams, Pioneer in Propaganda: It is surprising to find that Sam Adams, who belonged to almost every liberal political club in Boston and carried the heaviest schedule of "lodge nights" of any patriot, was not a Mason. Many of his friends were high-ranking Masons and the Boston lodge did much to foster the Revolution, but Sam Adams never joined the Masonic Society.4
Thomas Jefferson's name was recorded in the Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of Virginia in 1883 as a visitor to the Charlottesville Lodge No. 60 on September 20, 1817. The Pittsburg Library Gazette, Vol. 1, August 4, 1828, mentions Jefferson as a Notable Mason. During his lifetime, he was even accused of being an agent of Weishaupt's Bavarian "Illuminati." More recently, some Rosicrucians have cited Jefferson as a member of their fraternity. Despite all of this, actual records of Jefferson's membership in any of those organizations appears to be either missing or nonexistent, except as that one-time visitor to the Charlottesville Lodge. For this reason, some Masonic historians believe that Jefferson was either an inactive Mason, or was not a member at all.
On December 6, 1773, a group disguised as American
Indians seems to have left St. Andrew's Lodge in Boston and gone to Boston Harbor where cargoes of
tea were thrown overboard from three East Indiamen
[ships from the East Indies]. St. Andrew's Lodge closed
early that night "on account of the few members in
attendance."5
Sven G. Lunden, in his article, "Annihilation of Freemasonry," states that St. Andrew's Lodge was the leading
Masonic body in Boston. He adds:
And in the book which used to contain the minutes of
the lodge and which still exists, there is an almost blank
page where the minutes of that memorable Thursday
should be. Instead, the page bears but one letter—a
large T. Can it have anything to do with Tea?6
In Sam Adams, Pioneer of Propaganda, author John C.
Miller describes the hierarchy of the anti-British mobs which
played such an important role in the conflict. The mobs
were not just random aggregates of disgruntled colonials.
Mr. Miller explains the important role of Freemasons in
those mobs:
A hierarchy of mobs was established during Sam
Adam's rule of Boston: the lowest classes—servants,
negroes, and sailors—were placed under the command
of a "superior set consisting of the Master Masons
carpenters of the town"; above them were put the
merchants' mob and the Sons of Liberty .. .7
Masonic Lodges were not johnny-come-lately's to the
revolutionary cause. There is evidence that they were the initial instigators. At least one lodge engaged in agitation from
the very beginning. Letters and newspapers from the early
1760's reveal that the Boston Masonic Society was stirring
up anti-British sentiment at the end of the Seven Years War,
a good ten years before the Revolution actually began:
The Boston Masonic Society peppered [governor
Thomas] Hutchinson and the royal government from its meeting place in "Adjutant Trowel's long Garret,"
where it was said more sedition [inciting to revolt],
libels, and scurrility were hatched than in all the
garrets in Grubstreet. Otis and his Masonic brethren became such adept muckrakers that Hutchinson's
friends believed they must have "ransak'd Billingsgate
and the Stews" for mud to sling at the Massachusetts
aristocracy.8
We might wonder how American lodges became sources
of revolt when they were nearly all chartered under the
English system which, as we recall, was pro-Hanoverian and
forbade political controversy within the lodges. It must be
kept in mind that by the 1760's, the anti-Hanoverian Templar
degrees had become firmly established in Europe and had
also traveled secretly to many of the lodges in the American
colonies. For example, as mentioned in an earlier chapter,
St. Andrew's Lodge of Boston, which had perpetrated the
Boston Tea Party in 1773, conferred a Templar degree
already on August 28, 1769 after applying for the warrant
in 1762 from the Scottish Grand Lodge in Edinburgh. That
application was made almost a decade before the American
Revolution began. Some Templars were not only anti-Hanoverian, they sought the abolition of all monarchy.
The philosophical importance of Freemasonry to the
American Revolutionaries can also be seen in the symbols which the revolutionary leaders chose to represent
the new American nation. They were Brotherhood/Masonic
symbols.
Among a nation's most significant symbols is the national
seal. An early proposal for the American national seal was
submitted by William Barton in 1782. In the upper right-hand
corner of Barton's drawing is a pyramid with the tip missing.
In place of the tip is a triangular "All-Seeing Eye of God."
The All-Seeing Eye, as we recall, has long been one of
Freemasonry's most significant symbols. It was even sewn
on the Masonic aprons of George Washington, Benjamin
Franklin, and other Masonic revolutionaries. Above the
pyramid and eye on Barton's proposal are the Latin words
Annuit Coeptis, which means "He [God] hath prospered our beginning." On the bottom is the inscription Novus Ordo Seclorum: "The beginning of a new order of the ages."
This bottom inscription tells us that the leaders of the
Revolution were pursuing a broad universal goal which
encompassed much more than their immediate concerns
as colonists. They were envisioning a change in the entire
world social order, which follows the goal announced in
the Fama Fraternitatis.
Barton's pyramid and accompanying Latin inscriptions
were adopted in their entirety. The design is still a part of
the American Great Seal which can be seen on the back of
the U.S. $1.00 bill.
The main portion of Barton's design was not adopted
except for one small part. In the center of Barton's proposal
is a shield with two human figures standing on either side.
Perched atop the shield is a phoenix with wings outstretched;
in the middle is a small phoenix burning in its funeral pyre.
As discussed earlier, the phoenix is a Brotherhood symbol
used since the days of ancient Egypt. The phoenix was adopted by the Founding Fathers for use on the reverse of the first
official seal of the United States after a design proposed by
Charles Thompson, Secretary of the Continental Congress.
The first die of the U.S. seal depicts a long-necked tufted
bird: the phoenix. The phoenix holds in its mouth a banner
with the words E. Pluribus Unum ("Out of many, one").
Above the bird's head are thirteen stars breaking through a
cloud. In one talon the phoenix holds a cluster of arrows;
in the other, an olive branch. Some people mistook the bird
for a wild turkey because of the long neck; however, the
phoenix is also long of neck and all other features of the
bird clearly indicate that it is a phoenix. The die was retired
in 1841 and the phoenix was replaced by the bald eagle—
America's national bird.
Freemasons consider their fraternal ties to transcend
their political and national divisions. When the War for
American Independence was over, however, the American
lodges split from the Mother Grand Lodge of London and
created their own autonomous American Grand Lodge. The
Scottish degrees soon became dominant in American Freemasonry. The two major forms of Freemasonry practiced in the United States today are the York Rite (a version of
the original English York Rite) and the Scottish Rite. The
modern York Rite has a total of ten degrees: the topmost
is "Knights Templar." The Scottish Rite has a total of
thirty-three degrees, many of which are Knight degrees.
The influence of Freemasonry in American politics
remained strong long after the Revolution was over. About
one third of all U.S. Presidents have been Freemasons, most
of them in the Scottish Rite.*
* In addition to George Washington and James Madison, Freemasons in the Presidency have been: James Monroe (initiated November 9, 1775), Andrew Jackson (in. 1800), James Polk (in. June 5, 1820), James Buchanan (in. December 11, 1816), Andrew Johnson (in. 1851), James Garfield (in. November 22, 1861 or 1862), William McKinley (in. May 1, 1865), Theodore Roosevelt (in. January 2, 1901), William Howard Taft (in. February 18, 1908), Warren Harding (in. June 28, 1901), Franklin D. Roosevelt (in. October 10, 1911), Harry S. Truman (in. February 9, 1909), and Gerald Ford (in. 1949). The list of prominent American Freemasons also includes such people as the late J. Edgar Hoover, founder of the F.B.I., who had attained the highest (33rd) degree of the Scottish Rite, and presidential candidate Jesse Jackson (in. 1988). Famous American artists have also been members, such as Mark Twain, Will Rogers and W. C. Fields.
The influence of Freemasonry in American politics
extended beyond the Presidency. The U.S. Senate and House
of Representatives have had a large Masonic membership for
most of the nation's history. In 1924, for example, a Masonic
publication listed sixty Senators as Freemasons.9
They constituted over 60% of the Senate. More than 290 members
of the House of Representatives were also named as lodge
members. This Masonic presence has waned somewhat in
recent years. In an advertising supplement entitled, "Freemasonry, A Way of Life," the Grand Lodge of California
revealed that in the 97th Congress (1981-1983), there were
only 28 lodge members in the Senate and 78 in the House.
While that represents a substantial drop from the 1920's,
Freemasonry still has a good-sized representation in the
Senate with more than a quarter of that legislative body
populated by members of the Craft.
The American Revolution was more than a local uprising.
It involved many nations. France was a secret participant
in the American cause long before the actual outbreak
of war. As early as 1767, the French Foreign Minister,
Duke of Choiseul, had sent secret agents to the American
colonies to gauge public opinion and to learn how far the
seeds of revolt had grown. France also dispatched agent
provocateurs to the colonies to secretly stir up anti-British
sentiment. In 1767, Benjamin Franklin, who was not yet
committed to armed warfare with England, accused France
of attempting to blow up the coals between Britain and her
American subjects. After Choiseul was deposed in 1770,
his successor, Comte de Vergennes, continued Choiseul policy and was instrumental in bringing about France's open
military support for the American cause after the War for
Independence began.*
*Interestingly, Vergennes was also a Freemason. He supported some of the French Freemasons, such as Voltaire, who were creating the fervent intellectual climate that led to the French Revolution. The French Revolution overthrew Vergennes' king, Louis XVI, within a decade of Vergennes' death. It is ironic that while he was alive, Vergennes had opposed all deep seated reforms to French society. He thereby helped create the popular discontent which did so much to make the French Revolution successful.
Frederick the Great of Prussia was another to openly
support the American rebels. He was among the first
European rulers to recognize the United States as an
independent nation. Frederick even went as far as closing
his ports to Hessian mercenaries sailing to fight against the
revolutionaries. Just how deeply Frederick was involved in
the American cause may never be known, however. There is
no doubt that many colonists felt indebted to him and viewed
him as one of their moral and philosophical leaders. Decades
after the Revolution, a number of Masonic lodges in America
adopted several Scottish degrees which had reportedly been
created by Frederick. The first American Lodge of the
Scottish Rite, which was established in Charleston, South
Carolina, published a circular on October 10,1802 declaring that authorization of its highest degree came from Frederick,
whom they still viewed as the head of all Freemasonry:
On the 1st of May, 5786 [1786], the Grand Constitution of the Thirty-Third Degree, called the Supreme
Council of the Sovereign Grand Inspectors General,
was ratified by his Majesty the King of Prussia, who
as Grand Commander of the Order of Prince of the
Royal Secret,* possessed the Sovereign Masonic
power over all the Craft. In the New Constitution
this Power was conferred on a Supreme Council of
Nine Brethren in each nation, who possess all the
Masonic prerogatives in their own district that his
Majesty individually possessed, and are Sovereigns
of Masonry.10
*More than "Degrees in the Scottish Rite are grouped together in sections, and each section is given a name. Order of Prince of the Royal Secret is today called the Consistory [Council] of Sublime Princes of the Royal Secret and contains the 31st and 32nd degrees of. the Scottish Rite. Another indication of the early Scottish Rite's admiration for things Prussian is found in the title of the 21st degree, which is called Noachite, or Prussian Knight.
Some scholars argue that Frederick was not active in
Freemasonry in the late 1700's. They feel that his name
was simply used to lend the Rite an air of authority. This
argument may well be true, or at least partially so. The
significance of the Charleston pamphlet lies in the loyalty
that the early American Scottish Rite openly proclaimed to
German Masonic sources so soon after the founding of the
new American republic.
While some German Freemasons from Prussia were
aiding the American cause, other German Masons were
helping Great Britain, and at an enormous profit. Nearly
30,000 German soldiers were rented to Great Britain by
six German states: Hesse-Kassel, Hesse-Hanau, Brunswick,
Waldeck, Ansbach-Bayreuth, and Anhalt-Zerbst. More than half of those troops were supplied by Hesse-Kassel; hence,
all of the Germans soldiers were known as "Hessians."
Hesse-Kassel's troops were considered to be the best of
the mercenaries; their accurate gunfire was feared by the
colonial troops. In many battles, there were more Germans
fighting for the British than there were British soldiers. In
the Battle of Trenton, for example, Germans were the only
soldiers against whom the Americans fought. This does
not mean that the German soldiers were especially loyal
to Britain, or even to their own German rulers. Almost
one sixth of the German mercenaries (an estimated 5,000)
deserted and stayed in America.
The use of German mercenaries created a stir in both
England and America. Many British leaders, including supporters of the monarch, objected to hiring foreign soldiers
to subdue British subjects. For the Germans, the arrangement was as lucrative as ever. The Duke of Brunswick,
for example, received 11,517 pounds 17 schillings 1 1/2
pence for the first year's rental, and twice that figure
during each of the following two years. In addition, the
Duke received "head money" of more than seven pounds
for each man, for a total of 42,000 pounds for Brunswick's
six thousand soldiers. For each soldier killed, Brunswick
was paid an additional fee, with three wounded counting as
one dead. The Prince of Hesse-Kassel, Frederick II, earned
about 21,000,000 thaler for his Hessian troops, amounting
to a net total of approximately five million British pounds.
That was an almost unheard of sum during his day and it
accounted for more than half of the Hesse-Kassel fortune
inherited by William IX when his father died in 1785. The
Hesse-Kassel treasury became one of the largest (some
say the largest) princely fortunes in Europe because of
the American Revolution.
The American Revolution followed the pattern of earlier
revolutions by weakening the head of state and creating
a stronger legislature. Sadly, the American revolutionaries
also gave their new nation the same inflatable paper money
and central banking systems that had been erected by revolutionaries in Europe. Even before the American Revolution
was won, the Continental Congress had gotten into the inflatable paper money business by printing money known as
"Continental notes." These notes were declared legal tender
by the Congress with nothing to back them. The Continental
Congress used the notes to buy the goods it needed to fight
the Revolutionary War. Cooperative colonists accepted the
money on the promise that the notes would be backed by
something after the war was won. As the Continental notes
continued to come off Ben Franklin's press, inflation set
in. This caused more notes to be printed, which triggered
a hyperinflation. After the war was won and a new "hard"
currency (currency backed by a metal) was established, the
Continental notes were only redeemable for the new currency
at the rate of one cent to the dollar. It was another clear and
painful lesson on how paper money, inflation and devaluation can be effective tools to help nations fight wars.
Ironically, some American Founding Fathers used the
experience of the Continental notes to urge the creation
of a central bank patterned after the Bank of England to
better control the currency of the new American nation.
The proposed central bank was a hot issue of debate with
strong emotions running for and against the plan. The probank faction won. After several years of controversy,
America's first central bank, the Bank of the United States,
was chartered in 1791. The charter expired twenty years
later, was renewed after a five-year lapse, was vetoed by
President Andrew Jackson in 1836, regained its charter
twenty-seven years later (in 1863), and finally became
the Federal Reserve Bank, which is America's central
bank today. Although considerable opposition to a central
bank has always existed in the United States, the country
has had one, under one name or another, for most of its
history.
The Founding Father credited with creating America's
first central bank was Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton had
joined the revolutionary movement in the early 1770's and
rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and aide-de-camp
on Washington's staff by 1777. Hamilton was a good
military commander and became a close friend of George
Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette. After the war
ended, Hamilton studied law, was admitted to the bar, and in February 1784, founded and became director of the Bank
of New York.
Hamilton's goal was to create an American banking system patterned after the Bank of England. Hamilton also
wanted the new U.S. government to assume all state debts
and turn them into one large national debt. The national
government was to continue increasing its debt by borrowing
from Hamilton's proposed central bank, which would be privately owned and operated by a small group of financiers.
How was the American government going to repay all of
this debt?
In an act of supreme irony, Hamilton wanted to place
taxes on goods, just as the British had done prior to the
Revolution! After Hamilton became Secretary of Treasury,
he pushed through such a tax on distilled liquor. This tax
resulted in the famous Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 in which
a group of mountain people refused to pay the tax and began
to speak openly of rebellion against the new American
government. At Hamilton's insistence, President George
Washington called out the militia and had the rebellion
crushed militarily! Hamilton and his backers had managed
to establish in the United States a situation identical to
England before the American Revolution: a nation deeply
in debt which must resort to taxing its citizens to repay the
debt. One might legitimately ask: why did Messrs. Hamilton
and Washington bother participating in the American Revolution? They simply used their influence to create the very
same institutions in America that the colonists had found
so odious under British rule. This question is especially
relevant today as the United States faces an astounding
national debt of over two trillion dollars, and an enormous
tax burden on its citizens far higher than anything ever
conceived of by Britain to impose on the colonists in the
18th century.
Although Hamilton's plans were largely successful, they
did not go without very considerable opposition. Leading
the fight against the establishment of a privately-owned
central bank were James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.
They wanted the government to be the issuer of the national
currency, not a central bank. In a letter dated December 13, 1803, Jefferson expressed his strong opinion about the Bank
of the United States:
This institution is one of the most deadly hostility
existing, against the principles and form of our
constitution.11
He added:
. . .
an institution like this, penetrating by its branches
every part of the Union, acting by command and in
phalanx [unison], may, in a critical moment, upset the
government. I deem no government safe which is under
the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any
other authority than that of the nation, or its regular
functionaries.12
Although one of Jefferson's objections to the central
bank rested on his concerns that such a bank might be an
obstruction during times of war, he was nonetheless quite
farsighted about some of the effects that such an institution
would have. Not only did the U.S. central banks create major
financial panics in 1893 and 1907, but the financial fraternity
operating the U.S. central bank has exerted, and continues to
exert today, a strong influence in U.S. affairs, especially foreign affairs, just as Jefferson had warned. It was Jefferson's
powerful influence, incidentally, which caused the five-year
delay in the renewal of the bank's charter in 1811.
We have just finished viewing the American Revolution
in a less than rosy light. There was, however, a powerful
humanitarian influence at work inside the circle of Founding
Fathers that must be acknowledged. The United States is
one of the freer countries today as a direct result of that
influence, even if Americans are still far from being a
completely free peoples. The American founders affirmed
important freedoms, especially those of speech, assembly
and religion. An excellent Constitution was created for the
United States that has proven highly workable in such a
large and diverse society. The genocide which seemed to
go along with earlier Brotherhood political activity is conspicuously absent in the American Revolution. American
Freemasons today are proud of the role that their Brethren
played in creating the American nation, and justly so. The
spark of humanitarianism which periodically resurfaces in
the Brotherhood network surely did so again during the
founding of the American republic.
If we were to name a few of the most important humanitarians among the Founding Fathers, we might list such
well-known figures as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison,
Patrick Henry, and Richard Henry Lee. One of the most
important of the Founding Fathers is rarely mentioned, however. He is the one in whose memory no large monuments
have ever been erected in Washington, D.C. His portrait
does not grace any U.S. currency and he did not even have
a postage stamp issued in his honor until 1981. That man
was George Mason.
George Mason was described by Thomas Jefferson as "one
of our really great men, and of the first order of greatness."13
Mason is the most neglected of the Founding Fathers because
he ignored political glory, shunned office, and was never
famous for his oratory; yet he stands as one of the most farsighted of the men who created the American nation. After
the Revolution, George Mason opposed the plans of
Hamilton and declared that Hamilton had "done us more
injury than Great Britain and all her fleets and armies."14
It was George Mason who pushed hardest for the adoption
of a federal Bill of Rights. The ten Amendments to the U.S.
Constitution which constitute the Bill of Rights are based
upon Mason's earlier Virginia Declaration of Rights written
by him in 1776. The Bill of Rights almost did not make it
into the American Constitution, and it would not have done
so had not Mason engaged in a heated battle to ensure its
inclusion. Despite his chronic ill health, Mason published
influential pamphlets denouncing the proposed Constitution
because it lacked specific individual rights. Most drafters of
the Constitution, including Alexander Hamilton, declared a
Bill of Rights unnecessary due to the balance and limitation
of powers imposed on the federal government by the Constitution. Mason persisted and was supported by Richard
Henry Lee and Thomas Jefferson. With the backing of James Madison, the Bill of Rights was finally pushed through to
ratification in the final hours. When we consider how the
federal government has grown since then and how crucial
the Bill of Rights have become, we can appreciate what a
man of vision George Mason truly was. His far-sightedness
and humanitarianism were also manifested in his attempts
to completely abolish slavery. At a time when even his
friends George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were
slave owners, George Mason denounced the slave trade as
a "disgrace to mankind" and worked to have it outlawed
throughout all of the states. George Mason did not succeed
in this quest during his lifetime, but his dream did come
true less than a century later when slavery was abolished
in the United States by the thirteenth amendment to the
Constitution.* Although most American schoolchildren do
not hear much about George Mason in their history lessons
or have his portrait hanging in their classrooms, he was one
of the great heroes of human freedom.
* La Fayette and a few other Freemasons also deserve credit for the success of the anti-slavery movement. They belonged to a Masonic organization known as the Societe des Amis des Noirs (Society of the Friends of the Blacks) which worked to bring about the universal emancipation of blacks. Unfortunately, Aryanism still remained very much alive in other Brotherhood branches.
The renewed spark of humanitarianism which arose during the American Revolution was soon overshadowed. The
establishment of the inflatable paper money system in the
United States was a clue that something was still badly
amiss in the Brotherhood network. As similar revolutions
led by Freemasons erupted around the world, the old horrors
reemerged. One of those horrors was calculated genocide.
next
The World Afire
notes
CHAPTER 25: The "King Rats"
.
1. Roberts, J. M., The Mythology of the Secret Societies
(New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1972), p. 111.
2. Snyder, Henry L. (ed.), The Marlborough-Godolphin
Correspondence (Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1975),
pp. 57-58.
3. Ibid., p. 159.
4. Lewis, W. S. (ed.), Horace Walpole's Correspondence
with Sir Horace Mann (New Haven, Yale University Press,
1960), vol. 19, p. 123.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., p. 180.
7. Ibid., vol. 20, p. 570.
8. Petrie, Sir Charles, The Four Georges (Port Washington,
Kennikat Press, 1971), p. 101.
9. Katz, Jacob, Jews and Freemasons in Europe, 1723-1939
(Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1970), p. 64.
CHAPTER 26: The Count of St. Germain
1. Lewis, W. S., op. cit., vol. 20, p. 570.
2. Cooper-Oakley, Isabel, The Count of St. Germain
(Blauvelt, Rudolph Steiner Publications, 1970), p. 94.
3. Franco, Johan, "The Count of St. Germain," The Musical
Quarterly (New York, G. Schirmer, Inc.), October 1950,
Vol. XXXVI, No. 4, p. 541.
4. Cooper-Oakley, op. cit., p. 233.
5. Ibid., p. 169.
6. Ibid., p. 170.
7. Ibid., pp. 100-101.
8. Ibid., pp. 147-148.
9. Ibid., p. 135.
10. Ibid., p. 7.
CHAPTER 27: Here a Knight, There a Knight. . .
1. Gray, Tony, The Orange Order (London, The Bodley
Head, Ltd., 1972), p. 209.
CHAPTER 28: American Phoenix
1. Linn, Col. La Von P., "Freemasonry and the National
Defense, 1754-1799," The New Age (Washington, Supreme
Council, 33rd degree, Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite of
Freemasonry of the Southern Jurisdiction, U.S.A., March
1974), Vol. LXXXII, No. 3.
462 William Bramley
2. Ibid., p. 13.
3. De La Fuye, Maurice; Babeau, Emile; The Apostle of
Liberty: A Life of LaFayette (London, Thames & Hudson,
1956), p. 42.
4. Miller, John C, Sam Adams, Pioneer in Propaganda
(Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1936), p. 40.
5. Linn, op. cit., p. 16.
6. Lunden, Sven G., "Annihilation of Freemasonry," The
American Mercury (New York, The American Mercury,
Inc., Feb. 1941), vol. LII, No. 206, p. 189.
7. Miller, op. cit., p. 70.
8. Ibid., p. 37.
9. Official Masonic Record of the Third Annual Fashion and
Home Exposition for the Benefit of Masonic Free Hospitals
(New York, May 13 to 24, 1924).
10. MacKey, op. cit., p. 292.
11. Ford, Paul Leicester (ed.), The Works of Thomas
Jefferson (New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1905), vol.
X, p. 57.
12. Ibid.
13. Rutland, Robert A. (ed.), The Papers of George Mason,
1725-1792 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press,
1970), vol. 1, p. 296.
14. Ibid., p. cxxv
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