The figure of most importance in the beginning of the year 1789 was that of the Emperor Joseph II., and his dominions were those in which an observer would have prophesied a great revolution. Joseph was at that date a man of forty-seven; he had been elected Emperor in the place of his father, Francis of Lorraine, in 1765, and succeeded to the hereditary dominions of the House of Austria on the death of his mother, Maria Theresa, in 1780. He was, perhaps, the best type of the class of benevolent despots. A singularly industrious, enlightened, and able ruler, his ideas were far in advance of those of his age,—so much in advance, indeed, that his efforts to impose them upon his subjects brought upon himself hatred instead of gratitude, and among the people turbulence and insurrection instead of peace and tranquillity. The history of the Emperor Joseph’s reforms, and of the disturbances which resulted from them, belongs to an earlier volume of this series. In 1789 the whole of the hereditary dominions of the House of Hapsburg were in a state of ferment. The Emperor’s scheme of welding them into an Austrian nation, by insisting on the use of the German language, by simplifying the state of the law and the administration, and assimilating the various religious and educational institutions, had roused the fire of local patriotism. In Hungary and in the Tyrol, in Bohemia, and, above all, in the Austrian Netherlands, or Belgium, there was declared rebellion, fanned by local prejudices, religious fanaticism, and the spirit of caste. The first and second of these causes were chiefly responsible in the Austrian Netherlands, the third in Hungary. The Belgians, and more especially the Brabançons, were in arms for their local rights and ancient constitutions, which had been infringed by the Emperor’s decrees. The Belgian clergy, who looked upon Joseph as worse than an infidel for his treatment of the Pope and his suppression of religious houses, were inflamed at the establishment of an Imperial Seminary in Brussels as a rival to the Roman Catholic University of Louvain. But in Hungary it was the magnates of the country who had fought so gallantly for Maria Theresa and saved her throne, who were in an attitude of open disaffection. This was partly due to Joseph’s infringement of their Constitution and his removal of the Iron Crown to Vienna, but still more to his abolition of serfdom. As has been already stated, serfdom in Europe was practically extinct in the western part of the Continent, that is, in France, in Belgium, and on the Rhine, while it increased in intensity steadily towards the east, and was as bad in Prussia Proper, Poland, and Hungary, as in Russia. ‘Most merciful Emperor,’ ran a petition from an Hungarian peasant to Joseph, ‘four days’ forced labour for the seigneur; the fifth day, fishing for him; the sixth day, hunting with him; and the seventh belongs to God. Consider, most merciful Emperor, how can I