The attitude of the Germans in West Prussia was not uniform toward the proselytizing Jesuits and Slavic tyranny. A large proportion of the immigrant German nobles became Catholic and Polish; the townsmen and peasants remained for the most part obstinately Protestant. So there was added to the conflict in language conflict in religious creed, and to race hatred a religious frenzy. In this century of enlightenment the persecution of Germans in these districts became fanatical. One church after another was torn down, the wooden ones set on fire, and after the church was burned the village had lost its right to a parish: German preachers and school teachers were driven out and disgracefully maltreated. "_Vexa Lutheranum dabit thalerum_" ("harry a Lutheran and he will give up a thaler") was the usual motto of the Poles against the Germans. One of the greatest landowners in the country, a certain Unruh of the Birnbaum family, the starost of Gnesen, was sentenced to die, after having his tongue pulled out and his hands chopped off, because he had copied from German books into a notebook sarcastic remarks about the Jesuits. There was no more justice, no more safety. The national party of the Polish nobility, in alliance with fanatic priests, persecuted most passionately those whom they hated as Germans and Protestants. All sorts of plunder-loving rabble collected on the side of the "patriots" or "confederates." They collected into bands, overran the country in search of plunder, and fell upon the smaller towns and German villages, not only from religious zeal, but still more from the greed of booty. The Polish nobleman Roskowsky wore boots of different colors, a red one to indicate fire, and a black one for death. Thus he rode, levying blackmail, from one place to another, and in Jastrow he had the hands, the feet, and finally the head of the Protestant preacher Willich cut off and thrown into a swamp. This happened in 1768. Such was the condition of the country just before the Prussian occupation. It was a state of things that might perhaps be found now in Bosnia, but would be unheard of in the most wretched corner of Christian Europe.