Note 406 — Chapter III

In its efforts to obtain a decisive triumph over rival systems of Freemasonry, substantial progress had been made. At Munich, the Secret Chapter of the dominant Masonic fraternity in that city capitulated to the new system. At Vienna, Masons eagerly enrolled as Illuminati with a view to blocking the attempt of the Rosicrucians to extend the hegemony of that branch. The important general congress of Freemasons, held at Wilhelmsbad, in July, 1782, for the purpose of arriving at some conclusion concerning the claims of rival systems, yielded to the Illuminati a double advantage: the pretensions of the Order of the Strict Observance, its most dangerous rival, were disallowed and the opportunity which the congress offered in the form of a field for winning new recruits was adroitly seized by representatives of the Illuminati, with the result that its emissaries retired from the congress completely satisfied. Further, the Order of the Illuminati had apparently put itself on the high road to a complete victory in the Masonic world by securing the enlistment of the two most important personages in German Freemasonry, Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick and Prince Carl of Hesse. The full extent of the order’s conquests among the various branches of Masonry is impossible of full and accurate statement, for the principal reason which Engel gives: “Nur wenige Dokumente existieren als Nachweis, denn es ist natürlich, dass solche in der Verfolgungszeit in Bayern vernichtet wurden, um nicht verdächtigt zu werden und äussere Verbindungen ziemlich schroff abgebrochen wurden, als sich die Skandalsucht erhob und dem Orden und deren Leiter all erdenlichen Schlechtigkeiten andichtete. Im Laufe der Zeit sind dann die betreffenden Schriften von den Logen als minderwertig missachtet und beseitigt worden, so dass eine Aufklärung heute ungemein erschwert ist.” (Op. cit., pp. 349 et seq.) Still, Forestier, in his chapter on “L’Action sur les Loges Allemandes” (pp. 343–388), from which the foregoing isolated facts are drawn, gathers together a very considerable body of evidence, all tending to show that Illuminated Freemasonry was permitted to enjoy a very gratifying, though brief, period of prosperity.