The last Polish king who extended efficient protection to the Jews against the classes and parties hostile to them, was John III. Sobieski (1674-1696), who by his military exploits succeeded in restoring the political prestige of Poland. This King had frequent occasion to fight the growing anti-Semitic tendencies of the Shlakhta, the municipalities, and the clergy. He granted safe-conducts to various Jewish communities, protecting their "liberties and privileges," enlarged their sphere of self-government, and freed them from the jurisdiction of the local municipal authorities. In 1682 he complied with the request of the Jews of Vilna, who begged to be released from the municipal census. The application was prompted by the fact that a year previously they had been induced by the magistracy of Vilna, which assured them of complete safety, to go outside the town where the census of the Jews and the Christian trade-unions was taken. But no sooner had the Jews left the confines of the city than the members of the trade-unions and other Christian inhabitants of Vilna began to shoot at them and rob them of their clothes and valuables. The Jews would have been entirely annihilated, had not the pupils of the local Jesuit college taken pity on them, and rescued them from the fury of the mob. While the riot was in progress, the magistracy of Vilna not only failed to defend the Jews, but even looked on at the proceedings "with great satisfaction." It is necessary to point out that such manifestation of humaneness on the part of the Polish college youth was a rare phenomenon, indeed. As a rule, the students themselves were the initiators of the "tumults" or disorders in the Jewish quarter, and the scholastic riots referred to previously did not cease even under John Sobieski. The pupils of the Catholic academy in Cracow made an attack upon the Jews because of their refusal to pay the so-called _kozubales_, the scholastic tax which had been agreed upon between the Jews and the Christian colleges (1681-1682). In 1687 the tumultuous scholars, this time in Posen, were joined by the street mob, and for three consecutive days the Jews had to defend themselves against the rioters with weapons in their hands. The national Polish Diets condemned these forms of violence, and in their "constitutions" guaranteed to the Jews inviolability of person and property, particularly when they found it necessary to raise the head-tax or impose special levies upon the Jews.