It was abundantly evident that in this controversy the actual power lay in the hands of the King and the Uniats. King Sigismund, of the Catholic branch of the Vasa line of Sweden, had no intention of giving any rights to the Orthodox and his followers controlled the organs of the state. The Orthodox could do little but argue, write and talk and that seemed little enough. With the control of the state on their side, the Uniats felt that they could overlook the many polemical pamphlets that were hurled against them, especially by Ivan Vyshensky, the most celebrated of the defenders of Orthodoxy. Vyshensky was a monk who had studied at Mount Athos. He was a conservative in the educational disputes and felt that the modern schools were not severely Orthodox enough, not enough critical of the modern Western learning; but when it came to the dispute over the Union, he stood firmly with the brotherhoods. His pamphlets, written with bitter invective against the Uniats, had a telling effect. The King and his lords paid no attention. They were sure of an ultimate victory and set about acting accordingly. They commenced to dispossess by force those of the bishops and priests who refused to accept the Union and on the death of the Metropolitan of Kiev, Rohoza, in 1590, they appointed as the new Metropolitan Poty, who was the violent advocate of the Union. Poty kept urging the King and the government to further acts of aggression against the Orthodox and his arguments fell upon willing ears. Yet it was a long distance between talk and realization. The Orthodox fought zealously in defence of their rights, as they considered them, although it was evident that they were fighting a losing battle. The number of influential lords on their side and in the Polish senate was steadily decreasing as more and more of them became Polonized and joined the Roman Catholic Church. Even a promise of the King in 1597, forced by the foreign situation, that he would appoint only Orthodox to the Orthodox sees and parishes remained a dead letter, for the King did not feel himself bound by any promise to the heretics or the dissidents, as they were now called in Polish official language. The reaction varied in the different provinces. In Lviv and Peremyshl where there were still Orthodox bishops, even though the influence of Polish landlords was strong, there was some relief. In those dioceses where the Catholic landlords joined with the Uniat bishops the situation was worse. In some others, as Kiev, where there still remained a considerable number of Orthodox landlords, there was a still different situation and in Kiev particularly, Prince Vasil Konstantin Ostrozky as governor of the province openly disobeyed the orders of the king.