that is to say in 1752, Lord Holdernesse, in a letter to the British Ambassador in Paris, Lord Albemarle, headed "Very secret," speaks of "the influence which the King of Prussia has of late obtained over all the French Councils"; and a few weeks later Lord Albemarle refers to "the great influence of the Prussian Court over the French Councils by which they are so blinded as not to be able to judge for themselves."
But it is time to turn to another sphere of activity which Masonry opened out to the ambitions of Frederick.
The making of the Encyclopédie, which even those writers the most sceptical with regard to secret influences behind the revolutionary movement admit to have contributed towards the final cataclysm, is a question