to a greater extent yet by the disaffected spirit rife
among the people, and especially threatening among the Serb population
of the country. The laws secured the liberties of the Protestant and the
Greek united churches, remedied the most urgent griefs of the peasantry,
and declared those who were not noble capable of holding minor offices.
Although the most important measures of reform were put off to a future
time by the Diet of 1790-1791, several preparatory royal commissions
having been appointed for their consideration, yet the work it
accomplished was the salutary beginning of a liberal legislation which
culminated, not quite sixty years later, in the declaration of the equal
rights of the people as the basis of the Hungarian commonwealth.

After the meeting of this Diet, however, very little was done in the
direction of reforms. The good work was interrupted, partly by the
premature death of Leopold II (March 1, 1792), and partly by the warlike
period, extending over twenty-five years, which, in Hungary as
throughout all Europe, claimed public attention, and diverted the minds
of the leaders of the nation from domestic topics. Francis I, the son
and successor of Leopold II, caused himself to be crowned in due form,
and much was at first hoped from his reign. But the Jacobin rule of
terror in Paris, and the dread of seeing the revolutionary scenes
repeated in his own realm, wrought a complete change in his character
and policy.

He soon stubbornly rejected every innovation, and gradually became a
pillar of strength for the European reaction, that extravagant
conservatism which expected to efface the effects of the French
Revolution by an unquestioning adherence to the old and traditional
order of things. This illiberal spirit of the monarch rendered
impossible for the time any further reform movement in Hungary. Every
question of desirable change met with the most obstinate opposition on
the part of the King, and the reforms submitted by the royal commissions
were considered by every successive Diet without ever becoming law.

The period which now followed was gloomy in the extreme, as well for
Hungary as for the Austrian provinces of Francis I. The inhabitants of
these countries were constantly called upon by the King in the course of
the wars to make sacrifices in treasure and blood, by furnishing
recruits and by paying high taxes. At the same time the Government
resorted to the most absolute and arbitrary m