The progress of the order from 1780 on[397] was so rapid as to raise greatly the spirits of its leaders. The new method of spreading Illuminism by means of its affiliation with Masonic lodges promptly demonstrated its worth. Largely because of the fine strategy of seeking its recruits among the officers and other influential personages in the lodges of Freemasonry, one after another of the latter in quick succession went over to the new system.[398] New prefectures were established, new provinces organized, and Provincials began to report a steady and copious stream of new recruits.[399] From Bavaria into the upper and lower Rhenish provinces the order spread into Suabia, Franconia, Westphalia, Upper and Lower Saxony, and outside of Germany into Austria[400] and Switzerland. Within a few months after Knigge rescued the order from the moribund condition in which he found it, the leaders were able to rejoice in the accession of three hundred members, many of whom by their membership immensely enhanced the prestige of the order. Students, merchants, doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, judges, professors in _gymnasia_ and universities, preceptors, civil officers, pastors, priests—all were generously represented among the new recruits.[401] Distinguished names soon appeared upon the rosters of the lodges of the new system. Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, Duke Ernst of Gotha, Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar, Prince August of Saxe-Gotha, Prince Carl of Hesse, Baron Dalberg,[402] the philosopher Herder, the poet Goethe,[403] the educationist Pestalozzi,[404] were among the number enrolled. By the end of 1784 the leaders boasted of a total enrollment of between two and three thousand members,[405] and the establishment of the order upon a solid foundation seemed to be fully assured.[406] But just at the moment when the prospects were brightest, the knell of doom suddenly sounded.[407] Dangers from within and from without, with bewildering celerity and concurrence, like a besom of destruction swept from the earth the order which Adam Weishaupt, with such exaggerated anticipations, had constituted out of a little group of obscure students at Ingolstadt, on May Day, 1776.