Historical story

Freemasonry in the nineteenth-century revolutions

The French Revolution is considered by many, together with the American Revolution, the cornerstone on which the contemporary age rests, the point of origin for the long nineteenth century that would have ended only with the outbreak of the First World War and the undisputed protagonist of this epoch of transition between the old regime and the new world order, it would be the bourgeois class that would slowly shape a new world in which land ownership was only one, arguably the most limited, expression of wealth.

During the ancien regime the possession of lands was determined by the feudal economy in which the lands were an almost exclusive property of the monarchy, in fact the lands belonged to the king, and were administered by noble families, who in turn entrusted the management and use of the lands to the popular masses residing in the area and over which they exercised their political and social power. This economic system typical of feudal society is erroneously considered by many to be a peculiar system of the medieval age, however it also persists throughout the modern age and in some colonial areas it survives until the mid-nineteenth century, not to say the beginning of the twentieth. .

The end of the ancien regime and the consequent collapse of feudal society lead to the birth of a new economic system and a new social structure which are considered the peculiar elements of the contemporary age. These will be the affirmation of the bourgeoisie and the birth of an economy that is no longer landed but capitalist. Put simply, wealth is no longer determined by the possession of land but by capital, a good in a certain abstract sense, which can be quantified by the sum of all the material goods owned by an individual, thus making the wealth of the bourgeois class tangible. that in the feudal age, despite having more wealth than some nobles, were considered an economically inferior class to the nobility.

Towards the middle of the 18th century, the rich bourgeois began to experience more and more the discomfort of their situation, one of the most significant examples in this sense is expressed by the figure of John Hancock , one of the American founding fathers, whose family had been enriched by trade, and if they were British and his family were extremely wealthy, it did not enjoy an extremely marginal political weight at home, perpetually living one step lower than the aristocracy, and looked down on even by those aristocrats who fell into poverty who had nothing but their own noble title.

This social intolerance combined with a growing desire for political representation and protection of their interests progressively spreads throughout Europe and in the colonies, and when at the end of the seven-year war between France and Great Britain, the French crowns will essentially ask the bourgeois class to pay the bulk of the expenses of the war, while the aristocracy will almost not be taxed, and the high lords will continue to live in the most unbridled luxury in a country in crisis and without even trying to reduce their expenses and court waste, the bourgeoisie who had learned a lot from studying the past, found themselves in a situation similar to that of the wealthy Greek merchants of the fifth century BC. , forced to pay the costs of wars wanted by the aristocracy.

By becoming aware of this, the bourgeoisie would have required an ever greater political representation and adaptation to the fiscal conditions of the aristocracy or vice versa, a taxation on the properties of the aristocrats, but this did not happen, and intolerance grew further moving from the rich bourgeoisie to the masses popular oppressed by the aristocracy and the monarchy, whose anger was fueled by the bourgeoisie itself.

We therefore seek to present a classic model for the affirmation of power, identifying an internal or external danger whose elimination represents the key to power.

In the Greek world the class of rich merchants had managed to obtain political power from the aristocracy, quelling the revolts with the promise of fiscal and social reforms, and during the French revolution, the bourgeoisie aimed at a similar epilogue, however, the evolution technological especially as regards armaments, would have made the popular masses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries much more dangerous and better armed than the popular masses of the fifth century BC. and the revolution got out of hand, making it necessary to establish the directory as the only system to put an end to the civil war that broke out in France, and to restore social order, an order that had now been destroyed and had to be rebuilt from scratch.

In this succession of events, and above all in the rapid degeneration of events, it is evident that there was not a great design upstream attributable to Masonic organizations whose intent was to overturn the pre-established order, and similarly there is no spirit of the capable people. to embody a desire for social revenge.

Masonic organizations and secret societies do not exist at the moment or rather, they are not political organizations, but associations with predominantly recreational and in some cases philanthropic purposes, and should not be confused with the already existing political clubs that we can consider the ancestors of modern parties. The two entities (Masonic associations and political clubs) begin to merge together during the nineteenth century and would have been protagonists of the European revolutionary waves following 1830, especially those of 1848 in which the organization and planning by secret societies would have borne more fruit.
In the three great revolutionary cycles of the nineteenth century, namely 20/21, 30/31 and 48, we have three different organizational structures, in the first case, (20 21) the model is analogous to that of the French revolution, i.e. there is no organization, the revolution spreads almost autonomously from one nation to another, infecting the various city elites in Europe who, eager for constitutional papers and parliamentary representation, would have taken to the streets almost instinctively, hoping to repeat what happened in 1789 but without being able to due to a lack of planning and the lack of participation of the popular masses whose main interest was bread and not politics.

In 3031 there is a first organizational hint, but once again the mistake of not involving the popular masses is made, and once again their absence would have led to the failure of the revolution.

In 1848 the secret societies have learned their lesson, and in the organizational phase they will be able to penetrate the poorest strata of the population, promising bread and rights, and by coordinating the insurrections they will be able to generate a chain effect very similar to that generated almost by chance in 1789.

Between 1789 and 1848 Europe has profoundly changed, the democratic experience of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic age and the industrial revolution initially in Great Britain and then also in continental Europe made the wealth coming from the land derisory, and at the same time the monetary economy is perceived as potentially unlimited.

In this case and in these precise circumstances, the revolution of 1848 can be considered as the fruit of the meticulous organization of secret and clandestine associations, in some cases Masonic in other cases we, who have specific political and economic interests, which have the precise intent to overturn the established order by laying the foundations of a new world order, thus giving life to the anachronistic myth of the Masonic organization of the French Revolution.