ween the bondmen and their landlords. But the country could not be
appeased by any boon, especially as the high protective tariff, just
then established for the benefit of the Austrian provinces, was
seriously damaging the prosperity of the people. Joseph's foreign policy
tended to increase the domestic disaffection. In 1788 he declared war
against Turkey, but the campaign turned out unsuccessful, and nearly
terminated with the Emperor's capture. The nation, emboldened by his
defeat, urged now more emphatically her demands, and requested the
Emperor to annul his illegal edicts, to submit to be crowned, and to
restore the ancient constitution. Joseph continuing to resist her
demands, most of the counties refused to contribute in aid of the war
either money or produce. In addition to their recalcitrant attitude,
they most energetically pressed the Emperor to convoke the Diet at Buda,
a few counties going even so far as to insist upon the chief justice's
convoking it, if the Emperor failed to do so before May, 1790.

The courage of the nation rose still higher when the news of the
Revolution in France and the revolt in Belgium reached the country. The
people refused to furnish recruits and military aid, and the Emperor was
compelled to use violence in order to obtain either. The counties
remained firm and continued to remonstrate in addresses characterized by
sharp and energetic language. Joseph yielded at last. He was prostrated
by a grave illness, and, feeling his end approaching, he wished to die
in peace with the exasperated nation he had so deeply wounded. On
January 28, 1790, he retracted all his illegal edicts, excepting those
that had reference to religious toleration, the peasantry, and the
clergy, and reestablished the ancient constitution of the country. Soon
after he sent back the crown to Buda, where its return was celebrated
with great pomp, amid the enthusiastic shouts of the people. Before he
could yet convoke the Diet death terminated the Emperor's career on
February 20th.

The world lost in him a great and noble-minded man, a friend to
humanity, who, however, had been unable to realize all his lofty
intentions. The effect of his reign was to rouse Hungary from the apathy
into which it had sunk, and at the time of Joseph's death the minds of
the people were a prey to an excitement no less feverish than that which
had seized revolutionary France at the same period. But while in Paris
democracy was victorio