The second and third partition of Poland, which united Lithuania and White Russia under the sovereignty of Russia, tended to buoy up the oppressed Lithuanian Hasidim, who could now join forces against the common enemy with their brethren all over the northwestern region. The Hasidic propaganda took on new courage. To enhance the success of their missionary activity, the Hasidim spread a rumor, that the former anti-Hasidic thunderer, the veteran Rabbi Elijah Gaon, was sorry for all the hostile acts he had committed against the sectarians, and that in consequence the excommunication formerly hurled by him against them was no longer valid. When this clever ruse became known in Vilna, the indignant champions of Rabbinism prompted the aged Gaon to publish an epistle in which he reaffirmed his former attitude towards the "heretics," and declared that all the herems previously issued against them remained in force (May, 1796). The epistle was intrusted to two envoys, who were dispatched from Vilna to a number of cities, for the purpose of stirring up an anti-Hasidic agitation. When the envoys arrived in Minsk, and set about executing their instructions, the Hasidim started a rumor to the effect that the Gaon's signature under the epistle was not genuine. The Kahal of Minsk sent an inquiry to Vilna, and in reply received, in September, 1796, a new energetic appeal of the Gaon addressed to all the gubernatorial Kahals of Lithuania, White Russia, Volhynia, and Podolia. Ye mountains of Israel--cried the great zealot--ye spiritual shepherds, and ye lay leaders of every Government, also ye, the heads of the Kahals of Moghilev, Polotzk, Zhitomir, Vinnitza, and Kamenetz-Podolsk, you hold in your hands a hammer wherewith you may shatter the plotters of evil, the enemies of light, the foes of the [Jewish] people. Woe unto this generation! They [the Hasidim] violate the Law, distort our teachings, and set up a new covenant; they lay snares in the house of the Lord, and give a perverted exposition of the tenets of our faith. It behooves us to avenge the Law of the Lord, it behooves us to punish these madmen before the whole world, for their own improvement. Let none have pity on them and grant them shelter!... Gird yourselves with zeal in the name of the Lord! In calling to arms against the Hasidim in these fulminant terms, the venerable knight of Rabbinism was moved by the profound conviction that the "new sect," which by that time numbered its adherents by the hundreds of thousands, was leading the Jewish religion and nation to ruin, because it was rending asunder the Jewish camp internally while the political upheavals were severing it externally. He was moreover alarmed by the luxuriant growth of the cult of the Tzaddiks, or miracle-workers, which constituted a menace to the purity of the Jewish doctrine.