Eugène Le Roy

Eugène Le Roy was born in 1836 in Hautefort, a commune in the Dordogne department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in southwestern France.

One prominent memory of his childhood was the planting of a tree of freedom (Arbre de la liberté) to celebrate advent in the Second Republic.

In 1877, Le Roy applied for admission to the Masonic lodge Les Amis Persévérants et l'Étoile de Vesone Réunis in eastern Périgueux, but the Prefect of Dordogne was ordered by the Minister of the Interior, Oscar Bardi de Fourtou, to close some Masonic Lodges, including the one Le Roy had joined.

As an advocate of the separation of Church and State, he wrote in the political and philosophical vein of radical Freemasonry during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

He then published Traditions et Révolutions en Périgord pendant la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle.

In 1899, he published the novel Jacquou le Croquant, which tells the story of a peasant revolt against the social injustices of his time, from the restoration era until the end of the nineteenth century.