CHAPTER XXI

THE FRENCH CARBONARI
It seems a strange turn of destiny that an association that began as an innocent mixture of trade gild and benevolent society in one country should be carried into another and there devoted to revolutionary purposes, and be finally brought back to the country of its origin altered, if not out of all recognition, out of all conformity to its primal purpose. That is what happened when the Carbonari were established as a French society in Paris in the year 1820.1
It was introduced there by two young Frenchmen who had been initiated as Carbonari in Naples. On their return to Paris they initiated five of their friends, remodelled the ritual, excising from it the religious elements that had been prominent in the Italian version, and proceeded to declare their group of seven the Grand Lodge of France.
One cannot help believing that the organization which they gave to the new body was also an importation from Italy and the work of heads much older than theirs in the business of conspiracy; for it was specifically designed to secure unity of purpose between revolutionaries in every country. Pepe had proposed to accomplish this by corres¬ pondence in his Constitutional Society of European Patriots;2 the aim of the French Carbonari was to have a few unknown heads in each country directing the move¬ ment, with dictatorial powers that could not be called in question by the rank and file, and free, therefore, to settle any common course of action with the chiefs of the society in any other country, should such a policy be desirable.
1 Vide p. g 1 for an account of the original French society of the Char- bonniers.
2 Vide p. 153.
170
THE FRENCH CARBONARI 1 7 1
The Society, according to the plan laid down in its organ¬ ization, was to be directed in each separate country by a junta consisting of a few men. These would give their orders to subordinate juntas, who would have no knowledge of each other. All the power would be vested in the hands of the Central Junta, the members of which would remain unknown to all but a few trusted agents.
The proceedings adopted by the Grand Lodge of France to increase its membership and influence were equally well calculated to ensure secrecy and safety. The utmost care was taken to secure the right kind of recruit, and members were only enrolled after minute enquiries had been made about their antecedents. The meetings were held at night in lonely places. All orders were transmitted verbally. When necessary the members communicated with one another in public by signs. At his initiation the candidate swore on a dagger enmity to all monarchies thenceforth.
In the formation of new Lodges, two members of the Grand Lodge initiated the first member of it and made him its president. They became its vice-president and censor, while the president himself remained in ignorance of their rank in the Grand Lodge, all communications with which passed through the vice-president. All the proceedings in the Lodge itself were controlled by the censor. To lessen the risk of treachery a Lodge was limited to a membership of twenty; and communication between subordinate Lodges was forbidden. As a further means of baffling the vigilance of the police, a double organization was devised, and the society was divided for military purposes into legions, cohorts, centuries, and maniples.
The movement began to spread so fast that the originators doubted their own ability to control it. The Grand Master¬ ship was offered to Lafayette, and his acceptance of the office was followed by the adhesion to the society of Manuel, Argenson, Corcelles, and other leading Liberals.
Emissaries were then sent all over France to spread the movement in the provinces, and they met with great success. In 1822 the number of the French Carbonari were estimated at 60,000. Their ranks were filled mainly by students,
172 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
subaltern and non-commissioned officers and the superior class of artizans. Every member was ordered to provide himself with a musket and twenty rounds of ball, for the chief end of the society was revolution by force.
All its plots miscarried from the first. The 29th December, 1821, was fixed for a general rising and the proclamation of a republic, but it had to be deferred at the last moment till New Year’s Day, because Lafayette was late in arriving at the rendezvous appointed as the scene of the outbreak, which was Befort, in Alsace. The postponed attempt was a complete fiasco. Once again Lafayette did not arrive in time, and this fortunate absence from the scene of events saved him from inclusion in the subsequent prosecutions.
By this time, however, the directorate of the Carbonari must have become a secret de Polichinelle, for when in Feb- ruary, 1822, further equally abortive attempts at insur¬ rection at Saumur, Lyons and Marseilles demonstrated that the conspiracy was a far-reaching one and engineered by the Carbonari, the Royalist party began clamouring for the arrest of Lafayette, Manuel and Argenson. The Ministry was afraid of making political martyrs of such popular national heroes, but had no such scruples in regard to lesser fry; an example was needed to inspire fear; so some Carbonari soldier conspirators who had been arrested after a futile attempt at insurrection in La Rochelle were publicly executed in Paris, in spite of plots laid to rescue them by armed force. This incident, known to Lrench political history as that of the Four Sergeants of La Rochelle, created immense public excitement at the time.1
These revelations of the Carbonari activity caused Louis XVIII and his ministers extreme uneasiness; and since the Carbonari movement was supposed to have come from Spain the French Government was the more ready to play in that country in 1823 the part which Austria had played in Italy in 1821.
How General Pepe planned to defeat the invasion of Spain by tampering with the Carbonari in the French army and was shipwrecked on Spanish pundonor has been told elsewhere.2.
Wide p. 92. 2 Vide p. 155.
THE FRENCH CARBONARI 1 73
The French Carbonari continued to exist, and no doubt to plot; but they took no prominent part in the July Revolu¬ tion of 1830, and only one of their leaders, Dupont, was included in Louis Philippe’s first ministry.
A lack of union had developed in the society, for the provinces had grown far from content to go on following guides whose identity was not to be revealed to them. This discontent came to a head in the year 1833, when the Lyons Lodges demanded to be told who their unknown superiors might be. The information was not accorded, and the dissidents set themselves to revise the statutes of the Order. A secession took place, and the Lyons Lodges formed a new society which had nothing secret about it.
As for the original Carbonari, they soon dissolved as a separate entity, and those members who wished to continue the conspiracy were absorbed into one of the new revolu¬ tionary societies which began to make their appearance in France about this time.