THE BUILDER October, 1926

Facts for Fable About Frederick the Great

BY BRO. CYBUS FIELD WILLARD, California

THE Yankee doughboys when they went to France, which then was "bled
white" and the English "had their backs against the wall," are
credited with looking over its capital with some amusement and
quizzically remarking, "So this is Paris."

In this same spirit the writer read in the June number of THE
BUILDER the article entitled "The Great Frederick or the God of the
Fable," taken from an alleged "History of French Freemasonry" and
translated by Bro. A. L. Kress. After reading it, he said:

"So this is American Masonic research."

There is nothing new in it. Certainly there is no research
connected with it as there is with other articles in the same
number. Instead of going to official Masonic documents to prove the
falsity of the multitudinous assertions that Frederick the Great
had the controlling influence in the formation and shaping of the
polity of that branch of Masonry which is now known as the "Ancient
and Accepted Scottish Rite," Lantoine repeats the old chestnuts
ascribed to Lord Dover and Mirabeau and which were refuted by
Albert Pike, as will be shown later. These have been repeated again
and again, by German writers also, and for reasons which will also
be explained later.

Lord Dover (1797-1833), an English author, wrote a Life of
Frederick the Great, which was published in 1831, or forty-five
years after the death of Frederick. Frederick was not then popular
in England as he had been basely deserted by George III of England
in 1760, in the midst of the Seven Years' War, on account of fear
for his kingdom of Hanover, leaving Frederick alone to fight the
combined Roman Catholic powers of Europe. Frederick needed the help
of the Freemasons, and they needed the help of Frederick. Frederick
took it out on George III by helping to make him lose the brightest
jewels of the crown, the American colonies, in the Revolutionary
War. He furnished Baron von Steuben, his Adjutant General, no doubt
supplied with all the plans of his staff, and it was von Steuben
who drilled the American Army and licked it into shape so it could
withstand regular British troops.

The assertions that Mirabeau are alleged to have made as to
Frederick's physical condition were successfully controverted by
Albert Pike in his Historical Inquiry, and yet they have been
repeated over over again by the French and German writers, have a
motive in so doing. Now comes Lantoine the same old falsehoods, as
Pike bluntly terms them. 

Albert Pike's Historical Inquiry in Regard to the Grand
Constitutions of 1786 was first published in 1872 by the Supreme
Council for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States, as an
introduction to the Latin Constitutions. In February, 1883, a
separate edition of this Inquiry was issued at Washington, D.C., in
pamphlet form, to which appended a short preface which Pike, as
Grand Commander and with his signed thereto, said:

As the authenticity of the Grand Constitutions of 1786 continues to
be denied upon the same old untenable and exploded grounds, it is
deemed advisable to print and publish this Inquiry for more,
general circulation. It contains my reasons for believing these
Constitutions to be genuine.

It should be read by evert Masonic writer and every member of the
Scottish Rite. He says on page 127:

But we now believe that they were made at Berlin under the auspices
of Frederick in May, 1786, and that he was the Patron and Protector
of the high degrees and did approve these Constitutions.

On page 129, he says:

Francois Xavier Martin, afterwards for many years Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana, in all address
delivered at New Bern, in North Carolina, in 1789, and published
two or three years later in the Free Masons' Magazine of London,
said that Frederick the Great was in his lifetime at the head of
Masonry in Europe.

The statement, so often repeated, that Frederick was not in a
condition to attend to any business in May, 17186, we repeat, is a
mere bald and naked falsehood, contradicted by every account of the
closing scenes of his life. There never was the least foundation
for it. It is simply a lie. Mirabeau who is quoted as authority in
support of this lie, in his 10th Letter (of the "Histoire Secrete
de la Cour de Berlin") writes on 2d of August, 1786, "Au reste la
tete est parfaitement libre et l'on travaille meme beaucoup" ("For
the rest his head is perfectly clear and he even works a great
deal"). In Letter XIV on the 17th of August, he wrote "Je savais le
mercredi--qu'il n'avait parlait qu'a midi aux secretaires, qui
attendaient depuis cinq heures de matin; que cependant les depeches
avaient ete nettes et precises," ("I knew Wednesday that nothing
was said until noon to the secretaries, who were in attendance from
five o'clock in the morning; but nevertheless the dispatches were
perspicuous and precise " [Page 138]

In the year 1786, he (Frederick) was 74 years of age an in full
possession of those uncommon powers of understanding by which he
had always been distinguished. But his body was not equally
vigorous with his mind. Count Herzberg attended him until the
moment of his death and has given in his Memoire Historique sur la
derniere annee de la vie de Frederic II a full account of his
mental and bodily condition, confirming what Mirabeau said, as we
have quoted above, that on the 2nd of August his head was perfectly
clear and he performed a great amount of labor. Count Herzberg
says: "He employed the same indefatigable attention to the internal
government of his kingdom and to the management of his affairs
during the last seven months of his life [the date of the signing
of these Constitutions, May 1, was three and a half months before
his death] as he had formerly, and with the same success,
notwithstanding the painful malady with which he was all the time
afflicted. He did not for a moment remit his practice of reading
all the dispatches of his foreign Ministers and of dictating every
morning from five to seven the answers to be immediately sent. Only
a few days before his death he thus dictated all the maneuvres to
be performed at the reviews in Silesia. [Page 139]

From this it can be seen it would be perfectly easy for him to have
dictated, on May 1, the Grand Constitutions.
On page 140 we read:

Count Herzberg says that during the last five weeks of his life,
though he was much swollen with dropsy, could not lie on a bed nor
move from his chair, he never betrayed the least symptom of
uneasiness. He read night and morning the despatches of his foreign
ambassadors, and the civil and military reports of his ministers
and generals, and dictated the answers to his three Cabinet
Secretaries in the most minute and regular manner as he did his
answers to the letters and applications of individuals. Thiebault
(Original Anecdotes of Frederick the Great, Vol. I page 141) says:
"He directed his State affairs to the very last and a few moments
before his decease insisted on signing a letter addressed to M. de
Launay." Thiebault had been at the Court of Frederick for twenty
years and had personal knowledge of that whereof he wrote.

On page 141, he says:

From Lord Dover's Life of Frederick II, London, 1832, we take the
following facts and circumstances. Frederick had had gout for some
time and in August, 1785, fever. On the 18th of September, 1785, he
had an attack of apoplexy from which he recovered. During the
autumn his fever left him but was succeeded by a hard dry cough.
His legs swelled and oppression in his chest prevented him from
sleeping in bed. The gout left him and never returned. In April,
1786, he was better and on the 17th of that month he went to Sans
Souci, which residence he never left. On the 4th of July, 1786, he
applied himself to public business from half past three in the
morning to seven. Then he ate a huge breakfast, at eleven was
helped on horseback and remained riding and frequently galloping
about the gardens of Sans Souci (Potsdam) for three hours.

If he could do this on the 4th of July, he could sign the
Constitutions of 1786 in May, as our Supreme Council, in 1802, said
he did.

On the 6th of June, 1786, he wrote to Dr. Zimmerman requesting him
to repair to Potsdam that he might consult him. The doctor did so
immediately and remained until the 11th of July. He found the King
afflicted with dropsy but in the perfect possession of his
intellect and mental vigor; and afterwards published his
Conversations with the late King of Prussia had during that visit.
[Page 140]

It will be interesting in view of the assertions that have been
made that Frederick took no interest, in his later life, in
Freemasonry to ascertain who this Dr. Zimmerman was. On page 144,
Pike says:

Dr. Zimmerman, author of Thoughts on Solitude and who was with
Frederick in June and July, 1786, was an Illuminatus President of
the Order in Manheim, and most active in propagating it in other
countries. He was employed by it as a Missionary and erected Lodges
at Neuchatel, in Hungary and even in Rome. When in Hungary he
boasted of having established more than a hundred Lodges, some of
which were in England.

From Carlyle's History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Book XXI, Chap.
9, Bro. Pike quotes as follows: [See page 208, Historical Inquiry]

During all this while and to the very end, Friedrich's affairs
great and small, were in every branch and item guided on by him
with a perfection not surpassed in his palmiest days: he saw his
Ministers, saw all who had business with him, many who had little;
and in the sore coil of bodily miseries, as Hertzberg observed with
wonder, never was the King's intellect or his judgment more just
and decisive. The body of Friedrich is a ruin but his soul is still
here; and receives his friends and does his tasks as formerly.

LANTOINE AND PIKE 

Lantoine goes too far when he insinuates doubts of Albert Pike's
truthfulness. The latter he quotes as having said:

We possess the copy of the Constitutions of Frederick and I certify
that it conforms with the original which through misfortune has
disappeared and on which the august signature had been effaced by
the water of the sea.

Lantoine tries to be sarcastic when he says: "And we do not even
know the name of the wretch who not only exposed the manuscript to
the spray but also let it be borne away by the wind," with much
more, in the same poor taste. We of the older generation who have
come within the sphere of Albert Pike's activities and influence,
know that he was the soul of honor. His strict rectitude and
honesty is proverbial. If he said he certified to the fact that the
copy of the Constitutions, which they possess, conforms to the
original which through misfortune has disappeared, every one of the
300,000 Scottish Rite Masons of the Southern Jurisdiction will
accept this statement as being absolutely true. This in spite of
whatever nasty innuendoes against the honesty of our great Grand
Commander that may be made by any member of the French bodies,
which have fought the Scottish Rite for their own selfish purposes
ever since it was re-introduced into France in 1804.

In his Historical Inquiry, page 142, Albert Pike summed up the
matter in a masterly manner, which lays bare the reasons for the
animus of the French writers, such as Lantoine, in their bitter and
mendacious attacks on the Scottish Rite, while he flays them for
their oath-breaking proclivities. This summing up is as follows:

We may safely "rest the case" as far as this point is concerned
[that of Frederick being unable to sign the Constitutions of 1786
on account of sickness], and it is the one on which the greatest
stress has been laid ever since the writers of the Grand Orient of
France commenced their war on the Grand Constitutions. That body,
originally created by a revolting committee of the Grand Lodge and
which during the Empire [the time of Napoleon] was compelled to
respect the rights of the Supreme Council of France to which,
receiving from it the degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish
Rite, in 1804, all its prominent members had sworn allegiance; that
body which had never had or pretended to the least jurisdiction
over the degrees above the 18th, clutched the whole when it
hastened to prostrate itself and rub its muzzle in the dust before
the Bourbon throne on the fall of the Empire; and as the Grand
Constitutions, permitting but one Supreme Council in France,
branded that one "set up in its bosom" as illegitimate and
spurious, as it was, its writers denied the authority of these
Constitutions, which they were all sworn to obey who had the
degrees of the Rite.

It is well to bear in mind, today, when efforts are being made to
belittle Albert Pike, that he was a man of towering intellect and
ripe culture, capable of reading in the original, in no matter what
language, any desired book in his wide research, whether Sanscrit,
Zend, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin or any of the modern languages.
He was also an eminent lawyer who had won great suits in the U. S.
Supreme Court, to which he was admitted to practice, and his legal
mind was capable of knowing all about and gauging the value of
evidence and the credibility of witnesses educed. It is impossible
to quote here the whole of his Historical Inquiry. It gives from
pages 142 to 153 a very comprehensive study of all the Masonic
systems that appeared from 1760 to 1786 in Germany and throws a
flood of light over the controversies, chicaneries and trickeries
that marked the period and are the real reasons why the German
writers wish to deny that Frederick ever had any connection with
the Rite. On page 153, Pike says:

Prussia was a Protestant country. Frederick was a philosopher--
holding the opinions of Voltaire, Rousseau, D'Alembert, Condorcet,
and others. He was opposed to all tyranny over the conscience and,
of course, to Papism. To prevent the extension of Romanism in
Germany and to limit the power and dominions of Austria were the
great purposes of his life. Within his own kingdom he resolved to
govern and he did govern everything. It will be seen that towards
the end of his life he had reasons for wishing to control the
Masonic Order.

Frederick's greatest merit in the cause of Germany was in warding
off the last comprehensive plan of the Roman church for the
conversion of the Protestants. He preserved Germany from the
attempt of Maria Theresa to make Catholicism the religion of the
Empire: [Vehse, Court of Prussia.]

On page 154, Pike says:

Frederick's interference in these affairs excited against him the
Roman Catholic potentates of Europe, whose spirit of revenge was
formidably manifested in the coalition of 1756, when Austria and
France united for his destruction. The principle which actuated
Louis XV in forming this coalition was a religious one. This the
papers of the Duke de Choiseul prove. His object was to crush
Frederick and Protestantism. Frederick saved Germany in 1756 by the
resolute stand he made against the House of Hapsburg.

This coalition of 1756 to which Pike refers started the Seven
Years' War (1756-1763), in which of course Frederick would have the
support of the Freemasons against the efforts of the Papacy.

The Freemasons in 1785 were numerous enough to make their support
desirable, either to Austria or Prussia. Each sought it, continues
Bro. Pike on page 155. Vehse says [Court of Austria, II, p. 312]
that Joseph II put himself at the head of the Secret Orders--The
Freemasons and Illuminati were made the tools of his plans for the
acquisition of Bavaria, and "were the tools of Joseph until
Frederick opened their eyes."

How did he open their eyes? or rather how did he bring the
influence of the Masonry, of which these men were the chiefs, over
from Joseph II to himself? We think it was by the sensible and
effective measure of putting himself at their head. If he did so,
the Constitutions of 1786 were a natural result.

THE JESUITS AND MASONRY IN GERMANY

Bro. Pike goes on to examine historical conditions existing at that
time when the Jesuits swarmed over Germany and fought Masonry
there, as well as elsewhere. He believed the question whether
Frederick did put himself at the head of the Free Masonry of the
higher degrees and formed a scale which rejected all the degrees
invented in Germany as one of great probability, and he says, page
157:

When we scrutinize the Constitutions ascribed to Frederick, we find
in them passages which so perfectly apply to the circumstances that
existed at their imputed date as to form strong evidence that they
were written at that time.

That Frederick was reputed to be the head of the Rite at Berlin is
attested by a volume of evidence and there is no positive evidence
against it. Some of this attesting evidence will be given later.

To show how baseless is the testimony of the opponents of the
Scottish Rite as to the physical condition of Frederick, which in
their opinion made it impossible for him to have signed these
Constitutions of 1786 on May 1, let us examine an impartial
authority, fortified by the passage of time and with many source
information at its command. In the article FREDERICK II, the
Encyclopedia Britannica says:

Frederick's chief trust was in his treasury and his army. By
continual economy he left in the former the immense sum of
70,000,000 thalers; the latter at his death numbered 200,000 men
disciplined with all the strictness to which he, throughout life,
accustomed his troops. He died at Sans Souci, Aug 17, 1786, his
death hastened by exposure to a storm of rain, stoically borne,
during a military review.

Yet Lantoine and the other writers, from whom he takes these old
falsehoods, would have us believe that this wonderful man of
affairs, who could sit out review his troops in a storm of rain,
was too sick to sign the Constitutions of 1786, on May 1, three
months and a half previously. The absurdity of these old statements
is apparent.

Let me say at this point, that prior to the researches I have made
as to the origin of the Scottish Rite, I believed, as Pike once
did, that the assertions that Frederick the Great had something to
do with the organization of that body were merely fables made up to
amuse the new members of the Rite but baseless as historical
verities. Pike said he once thought this story a "pious fraud". But
the more I dug into matters and consulted official documents, I
found, as I will show later, that the headquarters of the Scottish
Rite (which was the Rite of Perfection with 25 degrees until these
Constitutions of 1786 were adopted) were in Berlin and that all
reports and lists of members were transmitted to Berlin. I have
been forced to believe that Frederick II controlled these
headquarters as the head of the Rite, as a multitude of writers
have asserted. This Rite of Perfection was, three and a half months
before his death, when he was according to the testimony of many
historians in full possession of all his mental acuteness, changed
from a Rite of 25 degrees to the Scottish Rite of 33 degrees by the
Constitutions of 1786, and these Constitutions show why and how it
was done, what Rites the extra degrees came from, and that it was
by his own ipse dixit.

THE GRAND LODGE OF THE THREE GLOBES

In the same manner, and by his own "say-so", he had erected the
symbolic lodge, which he organized in 1740, to a Grand Lodge which
he called Aux Trois Globes (To the Three Globes), as everything at
his court was in the French language then. This most irregular
Grand Lodge, which exists at Berlin today as one of the old
Prussian Grand Lodges, thus irregularly constituted was duly
recognized by the Grand Lodge of England.

It is evident that Lantoine is ignorant of the fact that Frederick
was carried on the tableau or list of officers as Grand Master of
this Grand Lodge until 1758, with Baron von Printzen as Deputy
Grand Master and doing most of the work, as is customary.

In that year, Gould recites, a Chapter of Clermont of Scottish
degrees was organized by Baron von Printzen and the Marquis de
Tilly-Lernais, a French officer, prisoner of war, of the Duke de
Broglie's regiment, of which regiment Baron de Kalb was also a
member. This Chapter was attached to the Grand Lodge Aux Trois
Globes, which Chapter still exists at Berlin, according to Gould.
Gould also shows the identity of the Chapters of Clermont (which
were named after the Count de Clermont, duc de Bourbon, then Grand
Master of France and head of the Council of Emperors of the East
and West), with the latter organization which was then the
governing body of the Rite of Perfection. Gould also shows in his
Complete History of Freemasonry, Yorston American edition, that in
1760 the Chapter of Clermont at Berlin assumed the name of "Premier
Chapter of Clermont." What this meant can be inferred, if at that
time Frederick in some manner became the head of the Rite as it
then was.

In 1758 certain Masons, styling themselves "Sovereign Princes and
Grand Officers of the Grand Sovereign Lodge of St. John of
Jerusalem," founded at Paris a body called "The Chapter of Emperors
of the East and West." This Rite seems in the beginning to have
consisted of twenty-five degrees, at least all the writers who
speak of its original scale assign to it that number. The Rite
established or adopted by this chapter or council consisting of
twenty-five degrees, has ordinarily been known as the Rite of
Perfection or of Heredom. In 1759 the Council of the Emperors of
the East and West is said to have established a council of Princes
of the Royal Secret at Bordeaux. [Page 170, Historical Inquiry]

On the 27th of August, 1761, Stephen Morin was given a patent by
the Grand Lodge of France and the Council of Emperors of the East
and West, which was signed by nine commissioners and certified to
by Daubantin as Secretary of the Grand Lodge and of the Sublime
Council of the Prince Masons in France.

On the 21st of September, 1762, it is said nine commissioners from
the Council of Emperors of the East and West and from the Council
of the Princes of the Royal Secret at Bordeaux, met at the latter
place and settled the Regulations of the Masonry of Perfection in
thirty-five articles. Wherever and whenever made, the testimony of
all the writers is unanimous that these Constitutions became as
early as 1762 the law of the Rite of Perfection. [Page 176.]

BORDEAUX OR BERLIN

Now this matter of the Princes of the Royal Secret being organized
at Bordeaux is only a blind. Prussia and France were then engaged
in the Seven Years' War and it was necessary to assign it to
Bordeaux instead of Berlin, where it was organized as the Chapter
of Clermont which Gould speaks of as being organized in 1758, and
Rebold in his Histoire des Trois Grandes Loges, pages 46 and 47,
goes into it very minutely. On page 46, he says:

Independent of these Provincial Grand Lodges, there were also
established in France other constitutive bodies, some professing
the Scottish Rite introduced by Doctor Ramsay (1730) and others,
analogous Rites under other names: we will cite among others the
Chapter of Arras constituted the 15th of April, 1747, by Prince
Charles Edward Stuart, and another under the title of "Mother Lodge
of St. John of Scotland" constituted at Marseilles, in 1751, by a
Scotchman of the suite of the Prince. Later there was established
the Chapter of Clermont, founded at Paris in 1754--the refuge of
all the partisans of the Stuarts. In order to hide the true authors
of the System of the Templars, later called "The Strict
Observance", they made believe that the Chevalier de Bonneville
likewise a partisan of the Stuarts, was the founder of it, while he
was only its propagator. Finally in 1758, the Chapter called the
"Emperors of the East and West" was formed, of which the members
gave themselves the titles of "Sovereign Prince Masons, Deputies
General of the Royal Art Grand Wardens and Officers of the Grand
and Sovereign Lodge of Saint John of Jerusalem."

Then below this is a note in which Rebold says:

After the Acta Latamorum of Thory, it would be by this chapter that
the consistory of Princes of the Royal Secret was founded, in 1758,
at Bordeaux, and the commissioners of these two councils, in
meeting assembled, established the Regulations in 35 articles of
the Masonry called "of Perfection" which determined the 25 degrees
of the Scottish system, such as has been practiced in France since
that time. This assertion of Thory is inexact for there exists no
proof that a consistory of Princes of the Royal Secret was sitting
at Bordeaux before 1789.

But there was one at Berlin as a Chapter of Clermont, which Gould
says was formed in the year 1758. Rebold goes on to say:

No Masonic authority of that name having existed, neither in 1758
nor in 1761, at Bordeaux, it could not in consequence have aided in
the establishment of these famous regulations upon which the
Supreme Council for France of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite at
Paris founds its origin and its rights to the exclusive
administration of this rite and which it calls "The Grand
Constitutions." Outside of the facts which will be advanced later
against the authenticity of these regulations that they designate
unreasonably as constitutions . . . the manuscript of it, which
exists to this date, must leave it to be supposed that it was at
Berlin [instead of Bordeaux] that it had been drawn up, for the
name of the city where they were determined upon is indicated there
only by the initial B followed by three points. Now as they assure
us that the King, Frederic of Prussia, had ratified them in his
quality of supreme chief of the rite . . . this initial must indeed
indicate Berlin and not Bordeaux. Is it by ignorance or by design
that later they have completed the word and substituted there
Bordeaux? [Page 47, Rebold.]

In this connection, let us throw a cross-light on the situation by
showing that Rebold was right when he said that the initial B must
have been Berlin; and the reason was the war then existing between
France and Prussia, which caused them to camouflage it as Bordeaux
when in fact it was Berlin. On page 176 of Historical Inquiry
Albert Pike says:

In two old rituals of the twenty-fourth degree (Kadosh) in our
possession, is the following note: "The Grand Inspector, Stephen
Morin, founder of the Lodge of Perfection, in a Consistory of
Princes of the Royal Secret, held at Kingston, Jamaica, in January
of the Masonic year 5769, informed the Prince Masons that latterly
there had been some excitement at Paris and investigations had been
made there, to learn whether the Masons styled Kadosch were not in
reality the Knights Templar; and that it had in consequence been
determined in the GRAND CHAPTER OF COMMUNICATION OF BERLIN AND
PARIS that the degree should for the future be styled Knights of
the White and Black Eagle and that the jewel should be a black
eagle." That degree is so styled in the Regulations of 1762.

This shows that there was a Grand Chapter at Berlin in 1768, or
only six years after the Regulations were drawn up at Berlin, as
Rebold said.

FRENCH FREEMASONRY

The Grand Orient of France has for years dropped the belief in God,
the Grand Architect, out of its Freemasonry and, as a consequence,
it is not regarded as a Masonic body by the other Grand Lodges
representing over 90 per cent of the Masons of the world. The Grand
Lodge of France to which Lantoine is said to belong is merely the
"me, too," the echo of the Grand Orient, and has done the same. I
have been reading his diatribes for some time past in Le Symbolisme
and while he is a brilliant writer, yet like most Frenchmen he is
not always reliable. As he has spoken sneeringly of "The Great
Frederick or the God of the Fable", so might I have termed my
characterization of his article, in view of the position of the
French Grand Lodges in the eyes of the Masonic world, "The Fable
Without God or Truth."
