But already in this same year of 1785 the first act of the revolutionary drama had been played out. The famous "Affair of the Necklace" can never be understood in the pages of official history; only an examination of the mechanism provided by the secret societies can explain that extraordinary episode, which, in the opinion of Napoleon, contributed more than any other cause to the explosion of 1789. In its double attack on Church and Monarchy the Affair of the Necklace fulfilled the purpose of both Frederick the Great and of the Illuminati. Cagliostro, we know, received both money and instructions from the Order for carrying out the plot, and after it had ended in his own and the Cardinal de Rohan's exoneration and exile, we find him embarking on fresh secret-society work in London, where he arrived in November of the same year. Announcing himself as the Count Sutkowski, member of a society at Avignon, he "visited the Swedenborgians at their Theosophical Society meeting in rooms in the Middle Temple and displayed minute acquaintance with their doctrines, whilst claiming a superior knowledge."[606] According to a generally received opinion, Cagliostro was the author of a mysterious proclamation which appeared at this moment in the _Morning Herald_ in the cypher of the Rose-Croix.[607] But in the year before these events an extraordinary thing had happened. An evangelist preacher and Illuminatus named Lanze 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.[608] 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.[609] 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.