olt. The
constitution was restored, the ancient liberties of the kingdom were
confirmed, and it was agreed that the Diet should be assembled
regularly every three years. Through a quarter of a century the
principal interest of Leopold's successor, Francis II. (1792-1835),[650]
was the waging of war upon revolutionary France and upon Napoleon, and
during this period circumstances conspired to cement more firmly the
relations between the Hapsburg monarchy and the Hungarian people. In
Hungary, as in Austria, the time was one of political stagnation.
Prior to 1811 the Diet was several times convened, but never for any
purpose other than that of obtaining war subsidies.

[Footnote 650: As emperor of Austria, Francis I.
(1804-1835).]

III. THE ERA OF METTERNICH

In the thoroughgoing reaction which set in with the Congress of Vienna
it fell to Austria to play the principal role. This was in part
because the dominions of the Hapsburgs had emerged from the
revolutionary epoch virtually unscathed, but rather more by reason of
the remarkable position occupied during the period 1815-1848 by
Emperor Francis I.'s minister and mentor, Prince Metternich. Easily
the most commanding personality in Europe, Metternich was at the same
time the moving spirit in international affairs and the autocrat of
Austro-Hungarian politics. Within both spheres he was, as he declared
himself to be, "the man of the _status quo_." Innovation he abhorred;
immobility he glorified. The settlement at Vienna he regarded as
essentially his own handiwork, and all that that settlement involved
he proposed to safeguard relentlessly. Throughout a full generation he
contrived, with consummate skill, to dam the stream of liberalism in
more than half of Europe.

*498. Condition of the Monarchy in 1815.*--In the dominions of the (p. 451)
Hapsburgs the situation was peculiarly such as to render all change,
from the point of view of Metternich, revolutionary and ruinous. In
respect to territory and prestige Austria emerged from the Napoleonic
wars with a distinctly improved status. But the internal condition of
the monarchy, now as ever, imparted a forbidding aspect to any policy
or movement which should give promise of unsettling in the minutest
degree the delicate, haphazard balance that had been arrived at among
the multiplicity of races, religions, and interests represented in the
Emperor's dominions. In the west were the d