We have already seen what influence the Jesuits had acquired in Poland, under Sigismund III., in whose reign “a systematic war of popular riots, excited by the Jesuits or their tools, was begun against the Protestants.”[273] In fact, their temples were overthrown, their burial-grounds profaned, their properties destroyed, their persons injured, and no redress whatever was given or could be expected from judges and magistrates appointed at the recommendation of the Jesuits. Their pupils not unfrequently celebrated Ascension-day by assaulting those of the evangelical persuasion, breaking into their houses, plundering and destroying their property. Woe to the Protestant whom they could seize in his house, or whom they even met on the streets on these occasions! The evangelical church of Cracow was attacked in the year 1606, and in the following year the church was furiously stormed, the dead being torn from their graves; in 1611, the church of the Protestants in Wilna shared the same fate, and its ministers were maltreated or murdered. In 1615, a book appeared in Posen, which maintained that the Protestants had no right to dwell in that city. In the following year, the pupils of the Jesuits destroyed the Bohemian church so completely, that they left no stone remaining upon another, and the Lutheran church was burnt. The same things occurred in other places; and in some instances the Protestants were compelled by continual attacks to give up their churches. Nor did they long confine their assaults to the towns; the students of Cracow proceeded to burn the churches of the neighbouring districts. In Podlachia, an aged evangelical minister named Barkow was walking before his carriage, leaning on his staff, when a Polish nobleman approaching from the opposite direction, commanded his coachman to drive directly over him; before the old man could move out of the way, he was struck down, and died from the injuries he received.[274]