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 MODERN TIMES and after a short stay of Henry of Valois, who forsook his Polish kingdom for the crown of France, the heroic Stephen Báthory, Duke of Transsylvania, was elected King of Poland in 1576. The renowned conquests he won in the north and east were all solemnized by triumphal entries into the capital. The Jesuits at that time preached patriotism and loyalty to the monarch; they took a leading part in national education, literature, and religious life, and it was by their means chiefly that the rise of Protestantism was ultimately checked by Catholic reaction. At Cracow they also took care of such poor as were ashamed to beg. The great writer and preacher Peter Skarga, a member of this Order, founded the "Mercy Society" connected with a bank called "Mount of Piety" (Mons pietatis), which has survived all misfortunes of the town. The citizens did not fare very well at this period; the nobility jealously kept hold of their monopoly of political rights, and it was their want of economic sense that brought to pass the pernicious laws of 1565, by which Polish merchants were forbidden to export their wares, the import of foreign merchandise being at the same time greatly facilitated. The nobility only wanted to get all they required at the lowest possible price, and generally to regulate prices at their own sweet will. In spite of these hard times Cracow would have been able to maintain its high level by means of the accumulated resources of centuries, if King Sigismund III (of the Swedish Vasa dynasty) had not ultimately lowered the town's importance by transferring his residence to Warsaw.

The Swedish campaigns (about the middle of the seventeenth century) with their sieges—Cracow sustained one in 1655—plunderings, and fires, dealt the hardest blow to the welfare of the town and brought about its economic decadence. They also made terrible havoc among its art treasures. Many of the monuments, whether of noble or ignoble metal, were then destroyed for ever. The plague visited the impoverished town and desolated its streets; all life ceased, there was a quiet of death, a lethargy only broken sometimes by religious quarrels. Nor did the eighteenth century prove a happier era. The wars