L'affaire des fiches vue par les francs-maçons du Grand Orient de France en Basse-Normandie

The Affaire des Fiches and the Freemasons of the Grand Orient of France in Lower Normandy ; Since the Dreyfus Affair and especially under the ministry of “Republican Defence” led by Waldeck-Rousseau in 1899, the Freemasons of the Grand Orient of France (GODF) got into the habit of writing to the Order’s Council to denounce the anti-Republican attitudes of various army officers. When General André was appointed Minister of War in May 1900, with the goal of converting the army to republicanism, it was entirely natural that he turned discreetly to a few Freemasons all across France to help him build up a card-index system that noted army officers’ pro-or anti-republican opinions. This episode is very familiar, on the national level. It went down in history as “The Affaire des Fiches”, after it emerged publicly during an open session of the National Assembly in 1904 and led to the resignation of the Combes government in January 1905. But the role of the Freemasons in all this, at the local level, is much less well known. The study of the archives of the Grand Orient’s masonic lodges in Lower Normandy enables the historian to discover not just the role played by Freemasons in the affair and their supportive stance towards the government in the name of republican defence. It also allows insights as to the attacks that some of them suffered at the hands of the local press. Despite the tide of anti-masonic feeling that succeeded the scandal linked to the Affair, in the following months normal attitudes came to the fore once again with a fresh round of letters to the paperts denouncing officers of supposedly royalist and bonapartist sympathies.