Factions

The Institute of Fluction

Founded on 2 September 1832 by Michael Faraday, Charles Babbage, Ada Lovecraft, Mary Wollestonecraft Shelley and Balduin Van Oxenhardt.

The initial articles of association were signed at the embalming and mummification of Jeremy Bentham at University College Hospital Theatre, London.

Funding came initially from an anonymous donor, channeled through the Countess Heloïse St-Charles Daupinée, after the Prime Minister Lord Grey refused to support the project.

In January 1833 the Institute set up its research laboratory and testing grounds at the disused tunnel complex under Dover Castle. 

Free Kingdom of Miskitia-Poyais

A Kingdom (called by many a “Pirate Kingdom”) which was formed in April 1824 by King Robert Charles Frederick from the existing Mosquito or Miskito Kingdom of the Honduran coast, along with settlers attracted from Britain and France by Gregor Mc Gregor’s fraudulent Territory of Poyais. When King Robert took power in a coup, murdering his brother King George Frederick on April 23 1824, he simultaneously asserted his sovereignty over Poyais and broke with the British crown. Pirates Charles Gibbs and Roberto Cofresí were instrumental in planning his coup, and setting up the federated state that resulted. 

The Kingdom became a federation of Miskito Indians, Black Creoles, mixed Miskito-Zumba, British settlers, and pirates and privateers of all nations.

Well-insulated by dense tracts of rainforest, the Caribbean Coast always posed challenges to the 16th century Spanish conquistadores, who after subjugating the Pacific territories of Nicaragua, failed to make much headway on the eastern sea-board. Crucially, the region’s inhospitable natural setting was matched by an equally inhospitable indigenous population of Miskito, Mayagna (also known as Sumo) and Rama Indians. Their resistance to occupation was fierce, but ultimately, it was the English who made the first colonial foothold. In the late 17th century, a Miskito delegation journeyed to Jamaica to seek help from the British, who were already in regular contact with coastal communities (pirates and traders had been landing on Caribbean shores for some years.

English privateers working through the Providence Island Company made informal alliances with the Miskito, and the English began to crown Miskito kings, thus forming what came to be called the Mosquito Kingdom.

The Miskito king and the British concluded a formal Treaty of Friendship and Alliance in 1740 and a protectorate was established over the Miskito Nation, Mosquitia, or more grandiosely, the Miskito Kingdom, often called the Mosquito Coast.

A description of the kingdom written in 1699 shows that it was discontinuously spread out along the coast and probably did not include a number of settlements of English traders. There was a king but he did not have total power. The 1699 description noted that the kings and governors had no power except in war time, even in matters of justice, and otherwise the people were all equal. These superior officers included the king, a governor, a general, and by the 1750s, an admiral.

Due to British economic interest in Central America the Miskitos were able to acquire guns and other modern weapons. After Nicaragua was declared in 1821, combined Miskito-Zambo raiders began to attack Honduran settlements, often to rescue enslaved Miskitos before they were shipped to Europe, but often also to enslave other Amerindians to sell to the British to work in Jamaica. They also enslaved women from other tribes. Due to the allowance of polygamy and the added number of women from these slave raids, the Miskito population boomed. These raids continued for many years after any animosity between Britain and Spain ended. The Miskitos, for a long time, considered themselves superior to other tribes of the area, whom they referred to as "wild". European dress and English names were popular among the Miskitos.

In addition, there were a large number of slaves that had not left with their former masters when the British evacuated the region in 1786. They became the "Creoles" in local parlance, most of whom were of African or mixed Afro-European ancestry. While many were content to fish and hunt, a small number were educated and they formed a local elite that worked in tandem with European, West Indian and American whites in trading.

The Miskito Kingdom was ruled indirectly by a line of hereditary Miskito kings, who were all educated in Britain and loyal to the British crown. It is doubtful that they wielded much real power, but served an important symbolic role in the community.

Robert Charles Frederick, King of the Miskito (1824-1845) was educated in Jamaica along with George Frederick, his brother. He became king following the murder of his brother and predecessor, and was subsequently crowned in Belize on 23 April 1824. In a series of decrees issued in 26 October 1832, Robert Charles forbade his subjects to make raids on neighbouring indigenous groups and abolished slavery in his domains, effective on 1 November. That same year, he also decreed that tax rates on "all free male subjects" over the age of 14 as well as foreigners would pay one dollar in tax (a decrease from the former rate of three dollars). When Thomas Young met him in 1839, he spoke good English and was dressed in an Royal Navy uniform. He tried offenders in his country using an English court system with a jury.

The Miskito kings also continued to encourage settlement by foreigners in their lands as long as their sovereignty was respected. This included giving ample grants to Garifuna settlers who came from Trujillo and a variety of English merchants. One of the more famous settlement schemes was the Poyais scheme in 1820.

Gregor Mc Gregor and the Territory of Poyais

A Poyaisian Dollar issued by Cazique Gregor

In 1820 the Scottish adventurer Gregor MacGregor decided to found his new kingdom—the Territory of Poyais. Granting himself the title “His Highness Gregor, Cazique of Poyais,” MacGregor traveled to Britain in 1821 and was received with all the hoopla that accompanies a visiting head of state. With the aid of a fictitious guidebook and hundreds of doctored maps, he proceeded to amaze the general public with tales of Poyais’s European-style capital city and enlightened government. Poyais land offices were set up in London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, and he even managed to charm the London Stock exchange into advancing him a 200,000 pound loan for investment in the new state.

The Legation of Poyais chartered a ship called Honduras Packet, whose crew MacGregor already knew, and five London merchants received contracts to provision the ship with food and ammunition. Its cargo also included a chest full of "Poyais Dollars", Poyaisian currency MacGregor had printed in Scotland. Many of the settlers had changed their pounds to Poyais dollars.

On 10 September 1822 the Honduras Packet departed from the Port of London with 70 would-be-settlers aboard. They included doctors, lawyers and a banker who had been promised appropriate positions in the Poyais civil service. Some had also purchased officer commissions in the Poyaisian army. On 22 January 1823 another ship, the Kennersley Castle, left Leith Harbour in Scotland for Poyais with 200 would-be-settlers. The ship also carried enough provisions for a year. It arrived at "St Joseph", an abandoned settlement on the mouth of the Black River on 20 March and spent two days looking for a port. 

Eventually the newcomers found the settlers who had sailed on the Honduras Packet, which had been swept away by a storm. What the settlers had found was an untouched jungle, some natives and a couple of American hermits who had made their homes there. "St Joseph" consisted of only a couple of ruins of a previous attempt at settlement abandoned in the previous century. There was no settlement of any kind. While some of the labourers began to build rudimentary shelter for themselves, the officers and civil servants decided to try to find a way out. Lieutenant-Colonel Hector Hall, would-be-governor of Poyais, had left to look for the Honduras Packet or another ship to take them back to Britain.

The would-be-settlers began to argue with each other and some of them, who had expected better accommodation, refused to do anything. The Kennersley Castle sailed away. Tropical diseases also began to take their toll. One settler, having used his life savings to gain passage, committed suicide.

In April, the Mexican Eagle, an official ship from British Honduras with the chief magistrate on board, accidentally found the settlers. Chief magistrate Bennet listened to their story and told them that there was no such place as Poyais. A couple of days later Colonel Hall returned with King George Frederick and announced that the King had effectively revoked the land grant because MacGregor had assumed sovereignty. The Mexican Eagle took sixty settlers to British Honduras. The other settlers were rescued later.

Pirates and privateers

The law of privateers and prirates resided in one or other of the strict pirate codes which they called the Custom of the Coast. Once they had signed it, they believed that no national law applied to them. 

In the mid-17th century, the Brethren of the Coast used to choose their leader from their own ranks, but later on, the man who owned the ship and was himself an experienced pirate had an obvious right to be captain. Even so, he had to be on his best behavior throughout the voyage for the critical eyes of the crew were always upon him.

If by any chance he proved to be unsatisfactory and failed to perform his duties properly, he could be deprived of his post.

The US Navy's "Mosquito Fleet"

A squadron of shallow-draft schooners sent to the West Indies under the command of Commodore David Porter to suppress piracy between 1823 and 1825. On February 14, 1823 the fleet set sail for the Caribbean. While in the West Indies suppressing piracy, Porter invaded the town of Fajardo, Puerto Rico (a Spanish colony) to avenge the jailing of an officer from his fleet. The American government did not sanction Porter's act, and he was court-martialed upon his return to the U.S. Porter resigned and in 1826 entered the Mexican Navy as its commander-in-chief 1826–29.

David Farragut was promoted to lieutenant in 1823 during the operations against West Indies pirates. He served in the Mosquito fleet, a fleet of ships fitted out to fight pirates in the Caribbean Sea after learning his old captain Commodore Porter would be commander of the fleet he asked for and received orders to serve aboard Greyhound, one of the smaller vessels, commanded by John Porter, brother of David Porter. He was executive officer aboard the Experiment during its campaign in the West Indies fighting pirates.

La Charbonnerie

Victor Hugo’s historical epic Les Miserables portrays Paris in 1832 as a hotbed of revolutionary groups and secret societies dedicated to bringing one form of revolution – anarchist, socialist, republican, liberal, bonapartist – to the “bourgeois monarchy” of Orleans. He shows the Friends of the A B C (punning on the French pronunciation of “ABC” and “abaissés” – the oppressed) amid a chaotic array of rebel groups:

The Society of the Rights of Man begat the Society of Action. These were impatient individuals who broke away and hastened ahead. Other associations sought to recruit themselves from the great mother societies....Then the Society of Equal Workingmen which was divided into three fractions, the levellers, the communists, the reformers. Then the Army of the Bastilles, a sort of cohort organized on a military footing...The central committee, which was at the head, had two arms, the Society of Action, and the Army of the Bastilles...A legitimist association, the Chevaliers of Fidelity, stirred about among these the republican affiliations. It was denounced and repudiated there...In Paris, the Faubourg Saint-Marceau kept up an equal buzzing with the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and the schools were no less moved than the faubourgs. A cafe in the Rue Saint-Hyacinthe and the wine-shop of the Seven Billiards, Rue des Mathurins-Saint-Jacques, served as rallying points for the students. The Society of the Friends of the A B C affiliated to the Mutualists of Angers, and to the Cougourde of Aix, met, as we have seen, in the Cafe Musain.

Victor Hugo Les Miserables Volume 4 Book 1 Chapter5

What they all have in common, even the Legitimist royalists mentioned here who have nothing to do with the republican and socialist ideologies of the other groups, is a structure of secret cells based on the original model of the Masonic Lodge. As dissent became more dangerous across the world, dissenters and revolutionaries would adopt this model and adapt it until it became the revolutionary or terrorist cell we know today. In fact, the Society of the Rights of Man mentioned by Hugo (Société des Droits de l’Homme) was the first revolutionary group to display the three-letter acronym SDH which is so familiar today from the IRA and ETA, and which was cleverly satirised by Hugo in his ABC group.

Maybe the first of such societies was the Philadelphes, formed by Colonel Jacques Oudet and Charles Nodier in 1797, perhaps with the help of former Bavarian Illuminati member Johan Joachim Bode. Initially republican, they would become above all anti-bonapartist as Napoleon seized absolute power. They attracted the membership of Generals Moreau and Malet, both of whom would attempt rebellions against Napoleon. In 1815 Nodier and Didier (who would later lead a revolt against the Bourbons) wrote their History of the Secret Societies in the Army in which they detailed how the anti-bonapartist networks were infiltrated into the military and how they plotted their coups. They collaborated with the Royalist Chouans, who carried out a number of attempts on Bonaparte’s life, the most famous being the attack of the “machine infernelle”, a bomb set to explode as Napoleon’s carriage passed by, on 24 December 1800. Philadelphe GeneralMalet’s planned 1812 coup was the most dangerous political opposition that Napoleon ever faced inside France.

The Italian Carbonari were formed when French republican radical and Mason in the Rite du Misraïm lodge, Pierre-Joseph Briot, travelled to Naples. During the post-war years they organised against the restored Bourbon kingdom of Naples, carrying out a rebellion in 1820 that was crushed with Austrian help the next year. In 1833 Guiseppe Mazzini founded nationalist group Young Italy based on their example.

But the most significant growth of the Carbonari would be in Bourbon France, where opposition to the restored Bourbons would be carried out by secret societies modelled on the Masons and the Italian rebels. They would generally be Bonapartist fédérés, but also included the veteran moderate republican Marquis de Lafayette. The society of la Charbonnerie led by Philippe Buonarrotti, Eugene Raspail, Philippe Buchez and Saint-Armand Bazard, was constructed as a network of cells (ventes particulières) isolated from each other, directed by a central committee called the Haute-Vente. Their activities would run parallel to the Masonic lodge “Les amis de la verité” which shared many of the same personnel, notably Buchez and Bazard.

Their conspiracies against the Bourbon regime included the Affaire des Patriotes of 1816, after which Carbonneau, Pleignier and Tolleron would be cruelly executed, the Didier Uprising in Grenoble the same year, involving Lafayette, the 1820 Bazar Français plot of Captain Nantil, the Four Sergeants of La Rochelle in 1822, and the Belfort Rising of 1822 which again involved Lafayette and young rebels Enfantin and Hippolyte Carnot, who would become pacifist St-Simonians. According to Vidocq, who may be the agent Schlestein mentioned by police minister Decasez, the 1816 groups had a cover as “goguettes”, singing clubs, what today we would call “glee clubs”. From 1822 the society was dispersed.

The most significant group in the 1830 revolution was La Conspiration Lafayette, also called Association de Janvier or Association des Patriotes, organised around the figure of Lafayette in January 1830 and based on the clandestine Jacobin club Aide-toi, le cel t’aidera. The leader, Louis-Adolphe Robin-Morhéry, along with his lieutenants Danton, Vimal and Sampoil, was instrumental in bringing about the July revolution, but were thwarted in their intention of declaring a republic and proscribed by the new king Louis Philippe.

From 1830 onwards, in the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe D’Orleans, the original French Carbonari would become a diverse range of revolutionary groups. The Société des amis du peuple was a group run by extreme leftist Louis Blanqui, who believed in the “revolutionary vanguard” principle later adopted by Lenin. The Société Gauloise was organised by chess master and rebel Alexandre Deschapelles. The Société des Saisons was founded by Blanqui and Armand Barbès. And the Société des Droits de l’Homme (SDH) was the most subversive and best-organised of these groups, led by Audry de Puyraveau, Marc-René Voyer d'Argenson, and young students Godefroy Cavaignac, Joseph Sobrier and Joseph Guinard. Their newspaper was the Tribune des departments edited by Armand Marrast, who had been active in the 1830 revolution.

Along with the Charbonnier Democratique of Emile Babeuf, and German revolutionary exiles, the Bund der Gerechten (League of the Just) and the Bund der Geachten (League of Outlaws) these groups carried out a constant series of revolutionary acts during the July Monarchy: The June Rebellion of 5 June 1832 (immortalised in Les Miserables) and the April Rising-Massacre of Rue Transnonain in 1834 are perhaps the most famous, though of course there were also Bonapartist uprisings in this time led by Louis Bonaparte which were unconnected to these republicans.

In time they would succeed in establishing another republic, though they were to be disappointed again in 1851 when Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte converted himself from President of the Republic to Emperor. The struggle against Empire would go on into the Paris Commune of 1870 and the fall of Napoleon III .