Joseph was succeeded by his brother, Leopold II, who until now had been Grand Duke of Tuscany. The new ruler was as enlightened as his predecessor, and had as much the welfare of the people at heart; but he respected, at the same time, the laws and the constitution. He immediately convoked the Diet in order to be crowned, and by this act he solemnly sealed the peace with the nation. The people hailed with joy this first step of their new King, and there was nothing in the way of their now obtaining lawfully from the good-will of the King the salutary legislation which Joseph had attempted to force arbitrarily upon them. But the fond hopes in this direction were doomed to disappointment. The national movement had not helped to power those who were in favor of progress, equality of rights, and democracy. No doubt there were people in the country who differed from the men in authority, who were sincerely attached to the doctrines of the French Revolution and eager to supplant the privileges of the nobles by the broader rights belonging to all humanity. The national literature was in the hands of men of this class. They combated the reactionary spirit of the nobility, and contended for the recognition of the civil and political rights of by far the largest portion of the people, the non-nobles. They boldly and with generous enthusiasm wielded the pen in defence of those noble ideas, and indoctrinated the people with them as much as the restraints placed upon the press allowed it at that period. They succeeded in obtaining recruits for their ideas from the very ranks of the privileged classes, and many an enlightened magnate admitted that the time had arrived for modernizing the Constitution of Hungary by an extension of political rights. Their number was swelled also by the more intelligent portion of the inhabitants of the cities, and those educated patriotic people who, although no gentle blood flowed in their veins, had either obtained office under Joseph's reign or had imbibed the political views of that monarch. But all of these men combined formed but an insignificant fraction of the people compared to the numerous nobility, who, after their enforced submission during ten years, were eager to turn to the advantage of their own class the victory they had achieved over Joseph. During the initial preparations for the elections to the Diet, and in the course of the elections, sentiments were publicly uttered and obtained a majority in the county assemblies, which caused a feverish commotion among the common people and the peasantry.