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First Empire
The plebiscite of 6 November 1804 legitimized the First French Empire of Napoleon I. In the following days, Masons learned that his brother Joseph Bonaparte had been named Grand Master of the Grand Orient de France, with its administration effectively placed in the hand of Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès. One legend states that Napoleon himself had been a Mason, but comments he made on Saint Helena seem clear proof of the opposite:
>[Freemasonry is] a pile of imbeciles who assemble for good cheer and for the execution of many ridiculous follies. Nevertheless, they carried out good actions from time to time.[15]
A young woman received into a lodge of adoption during the First French Empire.
During the First Empire, the Grand Orient de France was under strict control from the political authorities[16] and little by little gathered almost all of French Freemasonry (which had newly developed and quickly reached 1,200 lodges, mainly military ones) under its aegis.[16] Nevertheless, in 1804 count Alexandre de Grasse-Tilly (1765–1845) came to France from his birthplace in the Antilles with powers assigned him by the Supreme Council of Charleston, founded in 1802. He established a Supreme Council of France and contributed to the creation of a "General Scottish Grand Lodge of France", under the protection of Kellerman. State centralism demanded the merger of these two institutions, which happened some years later.
Second Empire
In 1851, Napoleon III put an end to the Second French Republic and initiated the Second French Empire. As his uncle had done before him, he offered his protection to French Freemasonry.[16] He got the Grand Orient de France to agree to elect Prince Murat as its Grand Master but it did not wish to be represented by Murat. In 1862 they gained permission to elect a different representative and Napoleon III decided to name his successor himself - this was Maréchal Magnan, who was not already a Mason and so had to go through all 33 ranks of Scottish Rite Freemasonry in rapid succession to take up the post. The imperial decree had forgotten to mention the other French Masonic Rite, and so the "Scottish Rite",[20] under the academician Jean Viennet (1777–1868), only just managed to maintain its independence.
Two years later, the emperor newly authorised the Grand Orient to elect its Grand Master. Magnan was elected and remained Grand Master until his death in 1865 (the archbishop of Paris gave Magnan's absolution before his coffin, which was draped with Masonic insignia, for which he was criticised by the Pope). Learning its lesson from this authoritarian period, the Grand Orient suppressed the role of Grand Master at the end of the Second Empire, putting its leadership instead in the hands of a "President of the Council of the Order".
In 1869 there was a dispute between the Grand Orient and the Grand Lodge of Louisiana in the United States over recognizing a Lodge that the GLL did not recognize. This was a prelude to the schism of Continental Freemasonry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Freemasonry_in_France#Second_Empire