During the twenty years which preceded his death in 1835, Francis continued to oppose the revolutionary spirit. He had none of the mystical tendencies of the tsar Alexander I., and only adhered to the half fantastic Holy Alliance of 1815 out of pure politeness. But he was wholly in sympathy with the policy of "repression" which came, in popular view, to be identified with the Holy Alliance; and though Metternich was primarily responsible for the part played by Austria in the "policing" of Europe, Francis cannot but be held personally responsible for the cruel and impolitic severities, associated especially with the sinister name of the fortress prison of the Spielberg, which made so many martyrs to freedom. It is not surprising that Francis was denounced by Liberals throughout Europe as a tyrant and an obscurantist. But though at home, as abroad, he met all suggestions of innovation by a steady refusal to depart from old ways, he was always popular among the mass of his subjects, who called him "our good Kaiser Franz." In truth, if in the spirit of the traditional _Landesvater_ he chastised his disobedient children mercilessly, he was essentially a well-meaning ruler who forwarded the material and moral good of his subjects according to his lights. But he held that, by the will of God, the whole sovereign authority resided in his person, and could not be shared with others without a dereliction of duty on his part and disastrous consequences; and his capital error as a ruler of Austria was that he persisted in maintaining a system of administration which depended upon the indefatigable industry of a single man, and was entirely outgrown by the modern development of his subjects. Before his death, government in Austria was almost choked, and it broke down under a successor who had not his capacity for work. Like his ancestor Philip II. of Spain, Francis carried caution, and a disposition to sleep upon every possible proposal, to a great length. He died on the 2nd of March 1835. See Baron J.A. Helfert, _Kaiser Franz und die oesterreichischen Befreiungs-Kriege_ (Vienna, 1867). Ample bibliographies will be found in Krones von Marchland's _Grundriss der oesterreichischen Geschichte_ (Berlin, 1882).