10
N
OTABLE
M
EMBERS OF THE
B
AVARIAN
I
LLUMINATI
By Terry Melanson
1. Charles-Pierre-Paul, Marquis de Savalette de Langes (1745-1797)
avalette de Langes was the son of Charles Pierre Savalette de Magnanville (1713-1790) –intendant of the Generality of Tours (1745) and Keeper of the Royal Treasury from 1756 to 1788 –and Marie-Émilie Joly de Choin (1726-1776), the daughter of a fermier général. In 1773, like hisfather, Savalette de Langes became a Keeper of the Royal Treasury; 1790/91, Captain of the ParisNational Guard in the battalion of Saint Roch and aide-de-campe to Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834).
Gardes du Trésor royal
(i.e. keeper of the royal treasury) was a heredity title. On the significance of thepost, Roland Mousnier writes:
The highest-ranking
receveur-payeurs
were the two
gardes du Trésor royal
. According to the edict of June1748 this office was worth 1,200,000 livres. They earned 5 percent of the official value of the office insalary plus 12,000 additional livres when they were actually on duty; they also received 1,500 livres insalary for their work on the council and 60,000 livres, increased by Necker to 85,000, to cover the wagesand expenses of their
commis
. These offices were family property. In 1749 Charles-Pierre Savalette deMagnanville took the first of the two posts. In 1773 his son, Charles-Pierre-Paul Savalette de Langesbecame his assistant and designated heir. In November 1785 they switched positions, Langes becomingthe titulary of the post and Magnanville his assistant and designated heir. Both men were
maîtres desrequêtes
and
conseillers d'Etat
. The father was for a time
intendant
of Tours. The family could claim threedegrees of nobility and thus came close, in principle, to the
gentilhommerie
.
One of the most active and influential Masons of his time, Savalette de Langes was first initiated in 1766at the Lodge “L'Union Indivisible” in Lille, he was the founder of the Paris Lodge “
Les Amis Réunis”(1771), Regime of the Philalèthes (1773), and convoked the Philalèthes Convents of Paris in 1785 and
1787. From the beginning Savalette was on the side of the Duke de Chartres (future Duke d’Orléans) forthe creation of the Grand Orient, and after this was accomplished (1773) Savalette subsequentlybecame its Grand Officer and Archivist. He was also a member of the Paris Lodge “L’Olympique de la
1
,H. Champion (1996), p. 146; Pierre-François Pinaud, “Un cercle d’initiés à Paris à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. Les Amis réunis, 1771-1791,” in
Paris et Ile-de-France -Mémoires
(tome 44, 1993), in particular pp. 136-9; and Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire,“SAVALETTE DE LANGES, Charles Pierre Paul”
(an entry in a French Masonic Encyclopaedia). On the National Guard and Savalette, one should also be aware of the account byBarruel (though he neglects to cite a source).
2
S
1 Melanson, Terry Notable Members of the Bavarian Illuminatihttp://www.bavarian-illuminati.info/ 2011-02-26
Parfaite Estime” from 1783-88, the founder of “La Société Olympique” in 1785, and a member of theParis Lodge “Centre des Amis” in 1793.
Permanent, official correspondence between the Illuminati and Savalette’s Amis Réunis was establishedin 1784. Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig von Beulwitz (1755-1829), the head of the Rudolstadt Illuminati wasinitiated into the Amis Réunis in 1784, while visiting Paris, and received into the 11
th
class of thePhilalèthes. Another Illuminatus, Sigismund Falgera (1752-1790) was already initiated into the AmisRéunis in 1784 (to 1789) and was appointed the official Illuminati correspondent/liaison to the ParisLodge.
The famous trip Johann Joachim Christoph Bode (then head of the Illuminati) had made from Weimar toParis in 1787 has been for over 200 years a source of speculation. It turns out, however, that Bode hadkept a travel journal that was only recently rediscovered and published for the first time in 1994. This,along with a letter Bode sent to Illuminatus Christian, Prince of Hessen-Darmstadt (1763-1830) atprecisely the same time, includes the explicit admission that the Master of the Amis Réunis and thePhilalèthes, Savalette de Langes, after over a month of meetings and talks with Bode, was persuaded to join the Illuminati. He was initiated on August 1
st
, 1787, followed three days later by Jean-Baptiste-Marie-Adéodat Taillepied de Bondy (1741-1822) and Alexandre-Louis Roëttiers de Montaleau (1748-1808). This hitherto unknown secret Lodge of the Illuminati in Paris had decided to operate underanother name –
Philadelphes
. Little else is known save the pledge to work toward the “healthy reason”of the politically inclined Illuminati. Additional Amis Réunis recruits during Bode’s visit were Jean-Baptiste Le Sage (1757/67-1838) and Francois-Antoine Lemoyne Daubermesnil (1748-1802).Yet even before this, other Illuminati were simultaneously members of the Amis Réunis – CountKolowrat, for one (see below) – and it would be hard to believe that they hadn’t at least tried to“Illuminize” this most important Lodge in Paris. In this regard, about all we can safely say is that thereremains a lack of documentation about any successes the Illuminati may have had in France
before1787
.
In the letter to Christian von Darmstadt, Bode outlined some specifics about how the Illuminati wouldoperate in France:1.
Correspondences should be marked with a cross. In this way, out of politeness and respect,rejections from the censors would be few;2.
The utilization of a standard Masonic cipher, but for the ninth key, the word St. ... [a gap in thetext, perhaps deliberately] from an agreed upon almanac;
3
4
See Porset, op. cit., p. 217. There’s confusion about who became the official correspondent – Beulwitz or Falgera. Porsetwrote that it was the former while Hermann Schüttler, in“Freimaurer und Illuminaten. Bodes Wirken in den geheimenGesellschaften”(1994), specifically identifies the latter. And on page 51 in the Falgera bio in
Die Mitglieder desIlluminatenordens 1776-1787/93
(1991), Schüttler mentions that Falgera, after being initiated into the Illuminati in 1782,became the Order’s propagandist for France, also listing his membership in the Amis Réunis and the new Chapter it had formedin 1788. At any rate, both Beulwitz and Falgera, in 1784, managed to establish official contact between the Illuminati in Bavariaand the Amis Réunis in Paris.
5
,pp. 68-97; Schüttler,
Die Mitglieder...
, pp. 92-93, 128, 131, 132-3, 153, 221 and especially his introduction toBode’s diary,“Freimaurer und Illuminaten Bodes Wirken in den geheimen Gesellschaften
,” where the details of the letter toChristian von Darmstadt can be found; cf. Porset, op. cit., pp. 225-241.
2 Melanson, Terry Notable Members of the Bavarian Illuminatihttp://www.bavarian-illuminati.info/ 2011-02-26
3.
Adopt the name Philadelphes instead of Illuminati, and in place of Minervals, Preparatory classor Aspirants. One of the reasons, Bode says, is that the Amis Réunis already have the class of Philalèthes for their final grade. And finally, for those adverse to mysterious societies, abeneficial assembly under the name Philanthropes.Less than a year after Bode’s visit an organizational transformation did in fact take place at the AmisRéunis: a new Chapter was instituted, which included only one-fifth of the total number of Amis Réunismembers. There were seventy-six members, according to Hermann Schüttler, of which eleven wereknown Illuminati. Of the eleven, however, he only lists ten: Daubermesnil, Le Sage, Roëttiers deMontaleau, Savalette de Langes, Taillepied de Bondy, Ludwig X. Landgrave von Hessen-Darmstadt(1753-1830), Friedrich Rudolf Salzmann (1749-1820), Friedrich Tiemann (1743-1802) and Russian envoyCount Alexander Sergeyevich Stroganov (1733-1811). Among others, those who also belonged to the
Chapter were the banker brothers Louis-Daniel Tassin (1742-1794) and Gabriel Tassin de l'Étang (1743-1794), Jean-Pierre Louis de Beyerlé (1740-1806) and François-Marie Marquis de Chefdebien d’Armissan(1753-1814). Schüttler rightly described it as a “lodge within a lodge within a lodge” (Amis Réunis ->Illuminati/Philadelphes -> the new 1788 Chapter). About the nature of its work nothing is known, onlythat it lasted until 1792 and had dwindled to 22 members.
The significance of this and other evidence, as it relates to the conspiracy thesis of the FrenchRevolution, is summarized by Porset:
The register of the
Amis Réunis
to which I have already referred, specifies, in 1789, which Brothers calledfor the recommencement of the
Convent
of Paris on the occasion of the reunion of the Estates-General…Montmorency-Luxembourg, who fled to England on the first day of the Revolution, was amember of the
Philalèthes
, but he was not a revolutionary. Yet in a very interesting letter written at thattime, to Chataigner, he blames the
Philalèthes
and explains that he never wanted to give in to theirpressure, but he adds that he didn't want to betray them - whom he respected; and finally, Chaillon deJonville, deputy Grand Master of the Grand Lodge, thus the institution which preceded the Grand Orient,denounced the
Philadelphes
in a text which appeared in 1789; he held them responsible for therevolutionary disturbances. What more can be said? These Brothers of the foremost Lodges, weren’t theyin a position to speak [candidly] about what they had experienced?
Professor Porset, himself a Grand Orient Mason, thus ends his erudite work on the Philalèthes byreluctantly admitting that the 18
th
Century contemporary “anti-masonic” Illuminati conspiracy theorists,such as Barruel, Starck, Lefranc,and Hervás y Panduro (though Robison might be mentioned in this
company as well) were better-informed than has previously been suspected.
6
See Schüttler, “Freimaurer und Illuminaten Bodes ...,” op. cit; cf. Porset, op. cit., pp. 234-5. As mentioned in note 4, Falgerawas also a member of the new Chapter, adding up to eleven confirmed members of the Illuminati, as Schüttler had stated.Salzmann is indeed listed as a member of the Illuminati in Schüttler,
Die Mitglieder
..., p. 131, as is Tiemann, p. 154 (though withan asterisk, meaning unconfirmed), but Stroganov is not. This was in 1991, however, and the introduction in Bode’s diary comesthree years later. I can only assume that Tiemann and Stroganov have since been confirmed, perhaps by way of the lostSchwedenkiste archivesin Moscow.
7
Quoted and translated in
Perfectibilists
, p. 73; see also Porset, op. cit., pp. 733-5.
8
Porset, op. cit., p. 734: “[Ils] étaient mieux informés qu’on ne l’a cru.”
Melanson, Terry Notable Members of the Bavarian Illuminatihttp://www.bavarian-illuminati.info/ 2011-02-26
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10 Notable Members of the Bavarian Illuminati
Biographical essay on ten notable members of the Bavarian Illuminati, utilizing relevant and up-to-date scholarly research.
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