After the meeting of this Diet, however, very little was done in the direction of reforms. The good work was interrupted, partly by the premature death of Leopold II (March 1, 1792), and partly by the warlike period, extending over twenty-five years, which, in Hungary as throughout all Europe, claimed public attention, and diverted the minds of the leaders of the nation from domestic topics. Francis I, the son and successor of Leopold II, caused himself to be crowned in due form, and much was at first hoped from his reign. But the Jacobin rule of terror in Paris, and the dread of seeing the revolutionary scenes repeated in his own realm, wrought a complete change in his character and policy. He soon stubbornly rejected every innovation, and gradually became a pillar of strength for the European reaction, that extravagant conservatism which expected to efface the effects of the French Revolution by an unquestioning adherence to the old and traditional order of things. This illiberal spirit of the monarch rendered impossible for the time any further reform movement in Hungary. Every question of desirable change met with the most obstinate opposition on the part of the King, and the reforms submitted by the royal commissions were considered by every successive Diet without ever becoming law. The period which now followed was gloomy in the extreme, as well for Hungary as for the Austrian provinces of Francis I. The inhabitants of these countries were constantly called upon by the King in the course of the wars to make sacrifices in treasure and blood, by furnishing recruits and by paying high taxes. At the same time the Government resorted to the most absolute and arbitrary measures to prevent the people from being contaminated with French ideas. The press was crushed by severe penalties. Every enlightened idea was banished from the schools and expunged from the school-books. Only men for whose extreme reactionary spirit the police could vouch were appointed to the professorships or to other offices. A system of universal spying and secret information caused everybody to be suspected and to suffer from private vindictiveness, while those who dared to avow liberal views were the objects of cruel persecution. FOOTNOTES: [28] From Vambery's _Hungary_, in Story of the Nations Series (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons), by permission. SIEGE AND SURRENDER OF YORKTOWN A.D. 1781 HENRY B. DAWSON LORD CORNWALLIS After almost seven years of struggle, the American colonies, with the aid of France, won by the success of their arms that independence which they declared in 1776. The close of the Yorktown campaign with the surrender of Cornwallis virtually ended the Revolutionary War.