to easily turn to violence against those they perceived as their enemies, particularly the Polish state and what they saw as its representatives, the Poles and generally the Catholics, as well as the Jews. Royal Prussia Since Teutonic times the language of the Prussian elite and administration has been German. This did not change after the incorporation into the kingdom of Poland. It was only from the beginning of the 16th century that the role of the Polish language began to increase. Since 1527 there have been complaints from representatives of large cities that some council members use Polish, although they know German. In 1555, a canon of Gniezno delivered a speech to the Prussian Sejm in Polish, without the help of an interpreter. In the second half of the 16th century, royal decrees were issued in Polish, debates in the Landtag were held in Polish. Great Prussian families polonised their names: the Baysen to Bażyński; the Zehmen to Cema; the Dameraw to Działyński, and the Mortangen to Mortęski, the Kleinfelds to Krupocki. Partitions (1795–1918) Polonization also occurred during times when a Polish state did not exist, despite the empires that partition Poland applied the policies aimed at reversing the past gains of Polonization or aimed at replacing Polish identity and eradication of Polish national group. The Polonization took place in the early years of the Prussian partition, where, as a reaction to the persecution of Roman Catholicism during the Kulturkampf, German Catholics living in areas with a Polish majority voluntarily integrated themselves within Polish society, affecting approximately 100,000 Germans in the eastern provinces of Prussia. According to some scholars the biggest successes in Polonization of the non-Polish lands of former Commonwealth were achieved after the Partitions, in times of persecution of Polishness (noted by Leon Wasilewski) (1917), Mitrofan Dovnar-Zapolsky (1926). Paradoxically, the substantial eastward movement of the Polish ethnic territory (over these lands) and growth of the Polish ethnic regions were taking place exactly in the period of the strongest Russian attack on everything Polish in Lithuania and Belarus. The general outline of causes for that is considered to include the activities of the Roman-Catholic Church and the cultural influence exacted by the big cities (Vilna, Kovno) on these lands, the activities of the Vilna educational district in 19th century–1820s, the activities of the local administration, still controlled by the local Polish or already Polonized nobility up to the