Napoleon convened the Grand Council of the Jews

Napoleon’s convocation of the Grand Sanhedrin is presented as a historical act that the novel’s conspiratorial interpreters transform into evidence of a hidden alliance. In their account, the assembly was not merely a response to questions of finance or political loyalty: it was Napoleon’s attempt to locate and unite scattered Templar groups. The episode shows how the Plan absorbs real events by making them links in a secret history—and how that method can intersect with the history of anti-Semitic accusation and fabricated documents.

The Assembly Recast as a Secret Initiative

The account begins with the three researchers considering what Napoleon might have learned during his time in Egypt. Their speculation about the sages he may have met beneath the pyramids connects his Egyptian expedition to the Hermetic tradition, although the narrative does not establish what he actually knew. From that uncertainty, they move to the more definite fact that in 1806 he convened an assembly of French Jews, which they identify as the Grand Sanhedrin.

The account acknowledges ordinary explanations for the assembly: reducing usury, securing the loyalty of the Jewish population, and finding new sources of financing. But the researchers regard those stated purposes as insufficient to explain the name Napoleon gave the gathering. They interpret “Grand Sanhedrin” as suggesting a directorate of hidden superiors and conclude that Napoleon had identified representatives of what they call the Jerusalemite branch of the Templar groups. In their reconstruction, the convocation was an effort to bring those scattered groups together.

This is an inference made within the Plan, not a fact independently confirmed by the narrative. The researchers begin with a historical assembly and its conventional political explanations, then treat its title as a clue to a concealed purpose. Their certainty grows not because the episode supplies direct evidence of a secret meeting or organization, but because the assembly can be fitted into the larger pattern they are constructing.

Napoleon as a Link in the Plan

The researchers extend their interpretation beyond the assembly itself. They connect Napoleon’s dealings with French Jews to the prospect of bringing several supposed branches of secret societies under his influence. When they ask what he still lacks after gaining control of many European centers, the answer is the Paulicians. The group then uses Napoleon’s movement into Russia as a clue to where that branch might be found.

A separate reference to Marshal Ney’s troops at Tomar in 1808 is also treated as part of the same network of connections. Within the Plan’s logic, the Sanhedrin, the Jerusalemite groups, the Paulicians, Russia, and Tomar become pieces in one continuous design. The episode therefore does more than assign a covert purpose to Napoleon’s assembly: it demonstrates the researchers’ characteristic procedure of connecting distant places and events until each seems to confirm the others.

The account also marks the limits of their knowledge. They concede that they do not know what Napoleon knew, even as they proceed to offer a confident explanation of his actions. That gap between uncertainty and assertion is central to the episode: the Plan converts a question about Napoleon’s motives into a narrative of secret coordination.

From Political Contact to Anti-Semitic Allegation

The novel places the imagined Templar connection beside a documented-seeming chain of anti-Semitic claims. Napoleon’s rapprochement with Jews is said to have altered the Jesuits’ course: an earlier work by Barruel had not referred to Jews, but in 1806 Barruel received a letter from Captain Simonini alleging that Jews were behind Masonry and had infiltrated secret societies. The narrative describes the letter as circulating in Paris at a politically charged moment, when Napoleon had just contacted the Grand Sanhedrin.

The letter’s claims are then shown acquiring further authority through repetition and adaptation. The Russian Orthodox Holy Synod is quoted as warning that Napoleon meant to unite Jews scattered across the world so that they could overturn the Christian church and proclaim him the Messiah. Barruel accepted a Judeo-Masonic version of the conspiracy, and the narrative later connects this development to the appearance in Russia of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Diotallevi attributes the document to the Paulicians, another branch in the researchers’ speculative map.

The sequence exposes a political use of conspiracy allegations: a real act of contact between Napoleon and Jewish representatives becomes material for claims that Jews secretly control or threaten society. The episode does not treat those claims as established history. It shows how accusation can be amplified by changing the alleged conspirators, repeating earlier assertions, and presenting hostile interpretation as evidence of a hidden plan.

The Plan’s Self-Confirming History

As the researchers continue, The Protocols become a further object in their chain of interpretation. They describe the text as twenty-four declarations attributed to the Elders of Zion, and observe that its supposed program combines contradictory positions: it attacks liberalism while advocating confusion, and calls for the manipulation of governments, revolutions, war, and public life. The contradictions do not dissuade the researchers; instead, the document’s apparent breadth allows them to treat it as a guide to concealed power.

The narrative supplies a counter-history of the text’s transmission. In 1921, the Times of London traced its source to an uncovered book with “Joli” on its spine, then identified that work as Maurice Joly’s Dialogue aux enfers entre Montesquieu et Machiavel, a political pamphlet against Napoleon III. The Times found that passages in The Protocols closely followed Joly’s text. The researchers add another layer, claiming that Joly had copied an earlier document associated with Sue, and then reinterpret the plagiarism itself as evidence that the Plan existed independently of any one author.

The account also attributes a possible role in the Protocols’ creation to Rachkovsky. It describes how Rachkovsky searched Elie de Cyon’s villa in 1897, found a pamphlet derived from Joly’s work, and allegedly replaced its target with the Jews before circulating it. In this reconstruction, the forged text then passes through Juliana or Justine Glinka and reaches the tsar. The narrative frames this history as the researchers’ theory, not as proof that its elaborate secret affiliations are true; its importance lies in showing how they turn textual borrowing, political motives, and uncertain provenance into an ever more encompassing conspiracy.

Napoleon’s assembly is thus a pivotal interpretive hinge. Within the invented Plan, it signals a possible attempt to unite hidden groups; in the broader historical sequence, it becomes the occasion around which anti-Semitic allegations are mobilized and elaborated. The episode’s irony is that the researchers’ search for a single explanation repeats the very operation they expose: disparate facts and texts are made to confirm one another until a constructed story presents itself as history.