The diet, rejoiced by these assurances, immediately sent a deputation to entreat the king to repair to Pesth, as the only means of disabusing the minds of the Croats and Serbes, who were made to believe that his public acts were the result of coercion. The prayer of the deputation was refused. The Servian insurrection continued to gain ground; the Austrian troops stationed in Hungary, for the defence of the country, refused to obey the government, and at length a communication to the Hungarian ministry, dated the 29th of June, three days prior to the speech of the Archduke Palatine, announced the intention of the Austrian ministry to put an end to the neutrality it had hitherto observed, and to support Croatia openly. All the Hungarians were then convinced that their constitution, and the independence of the country, must be defended by force of arms. But the ministry and the diet would not depart from the constitutional and legal course. A levy of 200,000 men was decreed, as well as an issue of bank-notes to cover the deficits; and the acts were presented for the royal assent by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice: but a long time elapsed before any reply could be obtained. In the mean time the situation of the country every day became worse, and another deputation was sent to the king, headed by the president of the Chamber of Deputies, to obtain the royal assent to the laws already presented; the recall of the Hungarian troops of the line, quartered everywhere except in Hungary; and orders to the foreign troops stationed in that country to discharge their duty faithfully. Finally the king was again entreated to come into his kingdom, to restore to her peace and order. The deputation received an evasive reply. But at the same time, and while the two ministers were at Vienna, the king, without acquainting them, despatched, on the 31st of August, a letter to the Palatine, directing him to send several members of the Hungarian ministry to Vienna, for the purpose of concerting measures with the Austrian ministry, to consolidate and insure the unity of the government and of the monarchy, and to open negotiations with the Croats for the reconciliation of their differences. But the king declared it to be an indispensable condition that the Ban Jellachich--who in the end of May had been denounced as a traitor--should take a part in the conferences; that all preparations for war should cease on both sides; and that the districts of the military frontier, which have always formed part of Hungary, should be provisionally subject to the Austrian ministry. _In this same document_ a communication was made to the Hungarian ministry, of a note of the Austrian government, on the relations to be established between Austria and Hungary. It was stated "that the provisions of the law of 1848, by which the Archduke Palatine had been appointed depository of the royal authority, and chief of the executive power in