Frederick Augustus of Saxony succeeded Sobieski. He had qualified for the throne by corrupting half the Diet and abjuring the Protestant faith, and, although he was naturally of a tolerant disposition, he was compelled to allow the Jesuits and other clergy to continue to weaken the country by religious persecution. Father Vota was entrusted with the charge of his accommodating conscience, and concluded that the opportunity was excellent for transplanting Catholic intolerance into Saxony, to which Frederick Augustus was for a time forced to retire. The apologist for the Jesuits relates that it was Frederick Augustus himself who desired to coerce the Protestants, and that Vota prudently restrained him. That would be a remarkable situation--a loose and unprincipled monarch, who had embraced the Catholic faith only as the price of a crown, restrained by the confessor of Sobieski from persecuting his Protestant subjects--but we know that, in point of fact, it was the Saxon ministers who had to restrain the Jesuit. Augustus III., an orthodox voluptuary and worthless monarch, followed upon the throne of Poland; the Jesuits continued to prosper and the country to decay. We shall see how, when its helpless frame is torn by its covetous neighbours, the Jesuits are still in full possession of their wealth and power, and are the first to bow to and win the favour of the Russian invader. There is, however, one incident of Polish life in the eighteenth century on which it is necessary to dwell more fully. We have an ample account of this repulsive event[32] and it throws an unpleasant light on the activity of the Jesuits in Poland.