Secret and Suppressed: Banned Ideas and Hidden History (42 page)

The northern clique, growing desperate, authorized their Assassins to introduce into southern Europe the bubonic plague, known as the “Black Death,” in 1348. Ultimately, the plague would kill perhaps one-quarter of the European & Asian population, as much as one-third of Europe alone, and scattered outbreaks would continue well into the present century, somewhat backfiring on the northern clique. Nonetheless, it had much the desired effect, in its own way, weakening the south sufficiently to allow the north to reinstate its program of large-scale sacrifice of Jewish commoners, forcing large numbers of Jews to seek the asylum of Poland, beginning one year after introduction of the plague, in 1349. The south learned of the north’s complicity even as the plague ravaged the population, forever altering the balance of power and social structure of the continent. A force of Dominicans pushed south into deep Africa in an attempt to settle a safe base, free from the contagion of Europe; they had begun construction of stone fortifications at Great Zimbabwe when they were attacked and slaughtered by a force of Teutonic Knights, who took over the construction with the use of slave labor, culled from among the indigenous population; hopelessly outnumbered and operating far from any hope of relief, the Teutons were in turn slaughtered by an uprising of the native slaves, and the abandoned fortifications stand to this day. Thus, in AD 1375, any hopes of using the African continent to sway the balance of power were shelved, and the cliques began to concentrate as best they could on the race to exploit the Americas.

In addition to the aforementioned poverty of the north and disunity of the south, both cliques were now saddled with a massive upheaval of their socioeconomic norms caused by the plague, which led to a period of reapportionment and in-fighting in both camps. One of the major results of the plague was a loss of faith; the commoners (and more importantly, the elite) saw presbyter and prelate falling side-by-side with the peasant. It was likely this, more than anything else, that inspired the ‘war of words’ that was soon to follow. The northern clique, who never had actually accepted the Gospel, set about discrediting the Writ. In AD 1376, northern-backed theologian John Wycliff published a treatise, “Civil Dominion,” attacking the Church (and therefore the power of the southern clique); seeing, somewhat, the coming storm, the southern clique quietly began a shakeup in their power structure. The nature of the uneasy alliance between the various aristocracies was such that the pro forma obedience to the Church scarce provided the stability required to bring the clique, or actually the two major factions of the clique (the French and Roman-oriented factions) through a complete revitalization as was attempted at that time; hence relations between the two groups were strained to the point of near-dissolution; this is the root cause behind the “Great Schism” of 1378.

The Papacy & Papal courts having already been under French domination from 1309, the situation was ripe for schism; when Urban VI elected to return the Papal Court to Rome, more than a dozen Cardinals of the French faction elected Clement VII as Antipope, and reopened the Avignon Vatican. By 1409, three rival claimants were hailed as Pope, representing the French faction, the old Roman (west-central Italian) faction, and the upstart faction from Pisa (north-central Italian). This state of disunity only began to settle when the Medici family, financiers, began their bid to take over the Papacy in 1414, and the schism wasn’t totally ended until three years after. The Pope elected as compromise to the three factions Martin V, who immediately set about to reaffirm the mastery of the south over the north, but the troops sent forth to do this were defeated by Bohemian Hussite forces in AD 1431.

The legendary rivalry of the various Italian families and factions, including the sad tale of the Borgia Popes, is well recounted elsewhere, hence I mention them only in passing, as these conflicts greatly hampered the southern clique’s attempts to regain superiority over the north, and nearly single-handed guaranteed the north’s ascendancy over the course of the next several centuries. Away from the main centers of action, the Teutonic Knights once again attempted to snatch back the sacrificial Jews living in asylum in Poland. The Poles, however, are nothing if not fearless fighters. This foray of the Teutons ended with the Poles gaining west Prussia, exacerbating already strained relations with the Germanics, who decried the Poles even then as
üntermenschen.
Northern infiltration of the southern power centers had been slow and unsteady; with the victory of the Poles in 1454, a drive was attempted to sieze Spain, which, while secondary in power to the Italian and French factions, was a rising star.

Informed of the attempt by vigilant sentinels in the ranks, but unable to do without the aid rendered by the northern agents, Isabella and Ferdinand expelled the Jews resident there, and quietly shuffled their staff until the most trusted few held the positions closest to their throne. A young adventurer, confidant of the esoteric scholars at Rome, one Cristoforo Colombo, had visited the Spanish monarchs in 1486 to request their assistance in an adventure to the western continents, and had been rejected. Returning to them in 1492, bearing letters of introduction from the scholars even as the royals were expelling the Jews, it fell to Isabella — acting with Ferdinand’s approval, but in secret, that the plans not leak out — to finance the explorer’s quest. Due to the problems with the northern clique, and allowing for the possibility of the team being waylaid by northern-backed pirates, Cristoforo (known to the esoteric scholars as Xpo Ferens) was outfitted with three ships only, no escort, and a crew of convicted felons who were considered expendable. Even with these handicaps, the attempt succeeded.

So frightened were the northerners that in 1517, the Teutonic/Zionist faction goaded an emotionally-disturbed monk, one Martin Luther, to instigate a “Reformation” of the Church, in the hope that the resultant turmoil would destroy the now once-again-waxing power of the southern clique. The ongoing troubles between the English and French factions kept interference by other channels to a minimum, however, and the southern clique made serious advances in the southern continent of the Americas. Leo X, then holding the Papacy on behalf of his family, the Medici faction, granted special favors to English King Henry VIII, then excommunicated Martin Luther. The northerners, seeing the disruptive nature of these actions (discrediting them, and swaying England back toward the southern clique), had Leo assassinated, using their influence in one final push to have elected to the Papal office one Adrian Boeyens, of the Netherlands, who (as Adrian VI) would be the last northern choice (indeed, last non-Italian) Pope, for some years to come. Adrian held office only through parts of AD 1522-23, then was poisoned and replaced by Clement VII, another Medici. The southern clique, badly shaken by events and with a care about their as-yet long-distance control of the western continents, began forming more military/religious orders, such as the infamous Knights of Malta (formerly the Knights of St. John) in AD 1530, and the Jesuits in 1534 (though the date of their official recognition, AD 1540, is that found in most histories of the time). The Jesuits’ primary function, that of rooting out infiltrators, they performed admirably well — so well, indeed, that by 1543, they were able to present sufficient evidence to Paul III to force him to inaugurate the Inquisition.

Due to the victory of the northern clique, most histories of the Inquisition are hopelessly distorted, but extant Vatican records report that the primary target of the ecclesiastical courts were northern-backed infiltrators, and that these, once found guilty, were handed over to the secular courts for punishment — which was all-too-often carried out in a most un-Christian manner. Admittedly, the power of the Inquisitor’s office was rather horribly abused — most especially by rivals of the Italian faction in Spain — and so engrossed was the southern clique in the minutiae of uncovering northern conspirators that it came as a near-total surprise when, in AD 1554, the north seized control of the apparatus of the Holy Roman Empire, then under the direction of H.R.E. Karl V, born a Spaniard but by now firmly in the pocket of the northern interests.

The founding of the Royal Exchange in AD 1566 instigated an attempted invasion of England by a force of undercover Dominicans in 1574; betrayed to the English nobility by supposed allies, they were killed within weeks of their arrival. Attempts at diplomacy by the southern clique failed, and in AD 1581 regular executions of Catholics were instituted in an attempt to destroy all internal opposition from hidden southern agents. Muslims, their numbers padded by a force of native blacks, massed in West Africa, by the river Niger, for an invasion of the southern countries, but were apprehended by a force of Spanish and Portuguese mercenaries and wiped out. In that same year, within scant months, a large Spanish fleet — attempting a secret invasion of England — lost the element of surprise when a lone ship captained by the pirate Sir Richard Grenville engaged them enroute, allowing a tender to return to port with the news. In retaliation, two Popes — Innocent IX and Gregory XIV — are poisoned within a two-month period. This coming directly on the heels of three previous deaths, Gregory XIII in AD 1585 under mysterious circumstances, then Sixtus V and Urban VII within two weeks of each other in AD 1590, prompted retaliation in kind by the southern clique.

Awakening one morning late in 1592 to find the heads of five of his bastard sons nestled against him in his bed (their bodies neatly laid out on the floor), French king Henri IV, who had facilitated the English schemes against the last several Popes, publicly renounced Protestantism and sent envoys to the Italian faction in an attempt to appease them. This had been a second warning to the French, as Henri III, because of disagreements with the Roman aristocracy, had been executed by a warrior-monk in AD 1589. A letter, left on the pillow of Elizabeth I of England, to the effect that continued opposition to Rome would result in the death of any child she might bear, is credited with having persuaded Elizabeth never to marry. Nonetheless, anti-Catholic laws remained in force in England, and northern infiltrators were beginning to make their presence felt even in the ranks of the elite Jesuits, having enough power to block a reunification of the Roman and Orthodox Communions in AD 1595. Fighting between the two cliques was rivaled, in this period, only by in-fighting between the various factions. England narrowly averted total invasion by the Spanish when an Armada, sent out to attack in tandem with a Spanish-supported uprising of the Irish, was decimated in a massive storm. The French and Spanish factions, engaged for some time in open hostilities, are persuaded to lay down arms by the Roman faction; in 1600. Lord Mountjoy begins starving the rebel Irish into submission, even as Spanish reinforcements were reinforcing the defenses at Kinsale. Mountjoy would later — in AD 1602 — defeat the emaciated combined forces, quashing the rebellion.

In AD 1603, Elizabeth I dies and is succeeded by James I, who is unafraid of the southern clique. Even the release, by Portuguese mercenaries, of the plague in London does not sway him. The English had been sending covert teams to the Americas, mostly the East Coast of North America, since AD 1562, and established their first overt settlement, Jamestown, in 1607; English colonists and a force of slaves had held Virginia since 1619, marginally-patriotic religious zealots of unacceptable cults had been transported since 1620, and finally in AD 1630, an English force of 1000 was sent to reinforce covert bases in the Massachusetts territory, founding what would become Boston. With the infiltration of the Jesuits basically completed by AD 1640, the establishment of a southern clique-oriented colony, Maryland, in AD 1632, was at best a palliative measure; northern clique control of North America was essentially assured. Indeed, with the founding of Quaker-controlled Pennsylvania in AD 1682, only two of the original thirteen colonies permitted the practice of Catholicism or the Quaker faith. With the passage of formal laws making Catholicism a crime in AD 1691, and the beginning of the infamous Salem witch trials that same year, any members of religions other than those permitted by the North American branch of the northern clique — most notably Catholics and Quakers — were an endangered species.

Freemasonry was a growing fad among the second and third level echelon of the northern clique, and the Masons saw in the new land an opportunity to set themselves up as a faction in their own right. While French and Native American mercenaries carried on a war of attrition against the northern clique invaders between AD 1702-55, the Freemasons — or rather, jealous lower-echelon members of the northern clique united in Masonic Lodges — continued to accrue power in the new territories. By 1738, they posed such a threat that infiltration of southern aristocratic ranks was deemed imminent, and Clement XII issued the Papal Bull “In Eminenti” in that year, excommunicating any Catholic who was found to be a member of the Masonic Lodges. The French faction, having nominal control of the midsection of North America, were the only force with a real chance of driving the northern clique out. The French faction, however, were tired of the Roman yoke, and, fearing open north-south warfare on their soil, expelled the heavily-infiltrated Jesuits in 1762, then began covertly planning to remove the Roman-allied royalty, who had ceased to be of use to them. The French faction was, by this time, content with a behind-the-scenes stance, in the so-called lower nobility; the Royals — intended as an human shield — were costing more and more to support in the style to which they’d become accustomed.

In AD 1773, the North American faction felt confident in their strength, and, provoking commoners to engage in the ‘Boston Tea Party,’ began overt hostilities against the North European clique. War followed two years later. As the colonists dumped English tea into Boston Harbor, Clement XIV dissolved the now northern-rife Jesuits in a belated attempt to halt the erosion of southern clique power. Come 1777, a leader emerged among the new North American clique; George Wessington (later Washington) agreed to figurehead the fledgling group, and his (Wessington) family coat-of-arms, a field of stars and alternating stripes, was adopted as the new clique’s standard and the new nation’s flag.