Austria also at once secularised its Jesuits. In spite of earlier assurances the Pope had some misgiving about the attitude of Maria Theresa, and with a copy of the brief he sent her a letter from his own hand. She replied, as she had said for four years, that what the Pope thought it proper to do was agreeable to her. Apart from Prussia and Russia, which we will consider in the next chapter, it was chiefly in small countries like the Swiss cantons, or on the foreign missions, that the Jesuits tried to resist. At Lucerne the Jesuits induced the senate to take the bold step of suspending the execution of the brief and writing to the Vatican for explanations. They were disdainfully ignored until they decided to carry out the sentence against the Society. At Freiburg--this is told as a touching and creditable incident by the Jesuits themselves--the superior gathered a vast congregation in their chapel ("to say farewell"), made a most eloquent discourse on the virtues and services of the Society, and implored their followers to respect the Pope's orders. Naturally, the effect was the reverse of pacifying the people, and it took some time to get rid of the Jesuits in Freiburg. At Soleure and other towns there was similar trouble. At Cologne the ex-Jesuit Fuller edited the _Gazette_, and its columns erupted fiery attacks on the Pope, and reproduced all the unfavourable gossip of Rome about him and his commissioners. They were to appeal to a General Council against this infamous pontiff. It was only in June of the following year, after the Nuncio had threatened to lay an interdict on the town and the authority of the emperor was invoked, that the Jesuits and their friends were silenced; and then they merely changed their coats and continued, in their various positions, to await better days. In Poland the bishops at once began to execute the brief, but the Jesuits inspired the idea that it was invalid on a technical ground, and the senate talked of sending an ambassador to Rome. The struggle ended in the Polish Jesuits taking shelter, as we shall see, under the authority of Catherine.