Tumult of Thorn (Toruń)

The resulting Thirteen Years' War ended in 1466 with the Second Peace of Thorn, in which the province of Royal Prussia was created and incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland.

[3] After the secularization of the Teutonic Order, the newly formed Duchy of Prussia and the remaining Prussian territory adopted Lutheranism in 1525, the first state to do so.

Just as the religious tensions in the rest of Europe were settling down after the bloody Thirty Years' War and Peace of Westphalia, in the once very tolerant Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth the situation was worsening.

Only the "crown guards", loyal to the king, could eventually pacify the scene, yet only after the crowd had entered the Jesuit building, causing damage.

The court was held during the second monarchy of August II the Strong of Saxony in the era of the Silent Sejm, a time in which the Russian Empire dictated Polish internal policy.

[clarification needed] August, a former Lutheran who had been required to convert to Roman Catholicism in order to be elected to the Polish throne, regretted not being in a position to pardon the convicts.

One of the convicts converted to Roman Catholicism and was spared, as was Rösner's predecessor and proxy, Jakob Heinrich Zerneke (1672–1741), a well-respected historian who had written the Chronica Thornica[6] in 1711.

[7] The last remaining Protestant church, St Mary's, was made Catholic and given to Franciscan friars who celebrated a mass there on the day of the execution, 7 December 1724, a date which is now observed [where?]

[citation needed] The event was used by what Karin Friedrich calls "Brandenburg-Prussia's efficient propaganda machine", as an example of Polish and Catholic intolerance, even in German states which engaged in religious persecution themselves.