had been sent in July 1785 as an emissary of the Illuminati to Silesia, but on his journey he was struck down by lightning. The instructions of the Order were found on him, and as a result its intrigues were conclusively revealed to the Government of Bavaria. A searching enquiry followed, the houses of Zwack and Bassus were raided, and it was then that the documents and other incriminating evidence referred to in the preceding chapter of this book were seized and made public under the name of The Original Writings of the Order of the Illuminati (1787). But before this the evidence of four ex-Illuminati, professors of Munich, was published in two separate volumes.
The diabolical nature of Illuminism now remained no longer a matter of doubt, and the Order was officially suppressed. The opponents of Barruel and Robison therefore declare that Illuminism came finally to an end. We shall see later by documentary evidence that it never ceased to exist, and that twenty-five years later not only the Illuminati but Weishaupt himself were still as active as ever behind the scenes in Freemasonry.
But for the present we must follow its course from the moment of its apparent extinction in 1786. This course can be traced not only through the "German Union," which is believed to have been a reorganization of the original Illuminati, but through the secret societies of France. Illuminism in reality is less an Order than a principle, and a principle which can work better under cover of something else. Weishaupt himself