Temple_. Under the Grand
Mastership of the Regent and his successor the Duc de Bourbon, the
revolutionary elements amongst the Templars had had full play, but from
1741 onwards the Grand Masters of the Order were supporters of the
monarchy. When the Revolution came, the Duc de Cosse-Brissac, who had
been Grand Master since 1776, perished amongst the defenders of the
throne. It was thus that by the middle of the century the Order of the
Temple ceased to be a revolutionary force, and the discontented elements
it had contained, no longer able to find in it a refuge, threw
themselves into Freemasonry, and entering the higher degrees turned them
to their subversive purpose. According to Papus, Lacorne was a member of
the Templar group, and the dissensions that took place were principally
a fight between the ex-Templars and the genuine Freemasons which ended
in the triumph of the former:

Victorious rebels thus founded the Grand Orient of France. So a
contemporary Mason is able to write: "It is not excessive to say
that the masonic revolution of 1773 was the prelude and the
precursor of the Revolution of 1789." What must be well observed is
the secret action of the Brothers of the Templar Rite. It is they
who are the real fomentors of revolution, the others are only
docile agents.[396]

But all this attributes the baneful influence of Templarism to the
French Templars alone, and the existence of such a body rests on no
absolutely certain evidence. What is certain and admits of no denial on
the part of any historian, is the inauguration of a Templar Order in
Germany at the very moment when the so-called Scottish degrees were
introduced into French Masonry. We shall now return to 1738 and follow
events that were taking place at this important moment beyond the
Rhine.

7

GERMAN TEMPLARISM AND FRENCH ILLUMINISM

The year after Ramsay's oration--that is to say in 1738--Frederick,
Crown Prince of Prussia, the future Frederick the Great, who for two
years had been carrying on a correspondence with Voltaire, suddenly
evinced a curiosity to know the secrets of Freemasonry which he had
hitherto derided as "Kinderspiel," and accordingly went through a hasty
initiation during the night of August 14-15, whilst passing through
Brunswick.[397]

The ceremony took place not at a masonic lodge, but at a hotel, in the
presence of a deputation summoned by the Graf von Lippe-Buckeburg from
G