58 HUNGARY thirty years' war, was prevented from tearing the Hungarian charter of liberty, as he did the Bohemian, by the victories of the Transylva- nian prince Bethlen Gabor (Gabriel Bethlen), the successor of the profligate tyrant Gabriel Bathori, who extorted from him the treaty of Nikolsburg (1622), which again sanctioned the rights of the Protestants. A similar treaty was concluded at Linz by Ferdinand III. (1637- '57) with George I. Rakoczy of Transylvania (1645). Leopold I. (1657-1705), whose long reign in Hungary was but a series of wars, in- surrections, and executions, found a less able opponent in the ambitious George II. Rak6czy of Transylvania, and excellent generals against the Turks in Montecuculi, who gained the bat- tle of St. Gothard (1664), and Nicholas Zrinyi (the poet), but made an ignominious peace with the sultan, and sent against the insurgents of the northern counties the bloodthirsty Caraffa, Strasoldo, and others. The people rose again "for God and freedom " under Tokolyi (1678), who, being allied with Apafl of Transylvania, the Porte, and Louis XIV. of France, was near uniting the whole of Hungary under his ban- ner, when the reverses of the Turks before Vienna (1683), and the subsequent victories of the imperialists, sealed the fate of the insurrec- tion. Caraffa made the scaffold permanent in Eperies ; the diet of Presburg had to consent to the demands of the emperor in making the throne hereditary in the house of Austria and abrogating the clause of the golden bull which guaranteed the right of resistance to oppres- sion (1687) ; Prince Eugene completed the vic- tories over the Turks, and conquered the peace of Carlovitz (1699) ; Transylvania was occu- pied, and Tokolyi, who tried in vain to recov- er it, died in exile in Asia Minor. Hungary was now a province of Austria, and treated as such, when the noble-hearted Francis Rakoczy, who had long lived in exile, suddenly appeared on the N. E. borders (1703) and renewed the struggle for religious and civil liberty. Prot<- estants and Catholics flocked to his banners, which were triumphantly carried into the very vicinity of Vienna, when the emperor died. His son Joseph I. (1705-'ll) was inclined to ppace, and Rakoczy was not opposed to it, though as- sisted by Louis XIV. and the perplexities of the new emperor in the war of Spanish succession. Diets and negotiations followed each other, but without success, while the victories of Eugene and Marlborough and violent dissensions in the camp of the insurgents enabled the emperor to restore the fortunes of the war in Hungary. In the absence of Rakoczy, who had gone to Poland to procure the alliance of Peter the Great, a peace was finally concluded at Szat- mar (1711) with the representatives of the em- peror, toleration and a strict observance of the constitution being promised. Joseph's succes- sor Charles (VI. as emperor, III. as king, 1711-'40) ratified the treaty, while Rak6czy absolved his followers from their oath of al- legiance to him. The new emperor's favorite scheme, the pragmatic sanction, which was to secure the succession of the female line to all his possessions, was agreed to by the diet of 1722, which also enacted various other impor- tant laws. The peace of Passarovitz (1718), the result of Eugene's new victories, enlarged the kingdom with the Banat, the last prov- ince of the Turks in Hungary ; but after an- other war Belgrade was ceded to the Turks by the treaty concluded in that city in 1739. Charles's mild reign disposed the nation to de- fend the disputed rights of his daughter Maria Theresa (1740-'80), who appeared in person be- fore the diet of Presburg, and was greeted with lively acclamations by the chivalric nobles. Their Moriamur pro rege nostro Maria Theresa was no vain promise, for Hungarian blood was shed profusely in her wars against Frederick the Great and other enemies. She rewarded the fidelity of the people by mildness, and various ameliorations of the condition of the peasantry (the Urbarium) are among the merits of her reign ; but she too was far from strictly observ- ing the constitution, which her son Joseph II. (1780-'90), in his immoderate zeal for reforms and centralization, was eager to destroy. To avoid binding himself by the constitutional oath, he refused to be crowned in Hungary, autocratically dictated his liberal reforms, and imposed upon the country foreign officials, a foreign language, the German, and foreign official costumes. But his violent though well meant measures were opposed everywhere, and the rising in his Belgic provinces, the un- favorable issue of his war against Turkey, and finally the threatening events in France, com- pelled the philanthropic despot to revoke his decrees shortly before his death. His mild and dissolute brother Leopold II. (1790-'92), afraid of the growing storm in the West, has- tened to appease the Hungarian nation, which had been aroused by ignominious treatment and the spectacle of its perishing neighbor Poland to a general desire of national regen- eration. The diet of 1791 again sanctioned the most essential constitutional rights of the kingdom in general, and of the Protestants in particular, and for a series of years Francis, the son and successor of Leopold (1792-1835), was satisfied during his wars with France with the continual subsidies of Hungary in money and men. The rare manifestations of democratic convictions he stifled in the dun- geons of his fortresses, or, as in the case of the priest Martinovics (1795), in the blood of the offenders. The magnates were flattered and remained faithful. Thus Napoleon in vain called upon the Hungarians to rise for national independence (1809). Scarcely, however, was Napoleon fallen, when Francis's minister Met- ternich began to undermine the constitution of Hungary, the only check on the unlimited sway of the Austrian rulers. Every means, secret or open, was resorted to, but in vain. The progress of enlightenment, the warning exam- ple of Poland, and the spirit of nationality, re-
