One of the most shining pages in the law records of Hungary—an enactment granting to the two Protestant churches equal rights with the Catholic Church—is connected with the name of Stephen Bocskay. Although the Catholic Church had, during the sixteenth century, lost most of its followers, yet legally, and owing to the circumstance that the Hapsburg kings were the most zealous propagators of the Roman faith, it continued to be the only recognized church, and to exercise an unduly preponderating influence in public life, which, at that time, bore an exclusively religious impress. The Hungarian magnates and noblemen, then almost all Protestants, under the leadership of Prince Stephen Bocskay, took up arms against this privileged position of the Catholic Church, as well as in defence of the laws of the land, and succeeded in obtaining, in 1606, at the peace of Vienna, a law whereby perfect equality between the Protestant churches and the Catholic Church was established. This great victory, achieved by the Protestants, had the effect of rousing the Catholic Church to energetic action. The anti-reformation movement began in Hungary, as it had already all over Europe, and produced, under the direction of Cardinal Peter Pázmány, the archbishop of Gran, in a comparatively short time, the most surprising results. In the course of a few decades, the most influential and leading families of the aristocracy returned to the fold of the Catholic Church. The mass of the people, however, the nobility, the inhabitants of the cities, and the peasantry, still remained Protestants, and when the Transylvanian princes, Gabriel Bethlen and George Rákóczy I., were about to engage in war against the Hapsburgs, they readily rallied around these bearers of the standard of the national faith. The peace of Linz, a confirmation of the treaty of Vienna, was concluded under Rákóczy, again solemnly proclaiming the perfect equality of the Protestant churches with the Roman Catholic Church, an equality, however, which, in point of fact, was never put into practice. The written law and their good right was of no use to the Protestants, for the power was gradually slipping from their hands. Under the patronage of the royal court, the anti-reformation movement had made great conquests amongst the lower classes of the people, and sometimes by the use of violence, sometimes by other means, whole districts and large territories again became Catholic. Elated by these successes, the court of Vienna for a long time ignored its promise of freeing the Hungarian people from the Turkish yoke, and about sixty years elapsed without any hostilities against the sultans. The chief endeavor of the court was forcibly to deprive the Hungarian nation of her constitutional institutions which were based upon her nationality, and to subject to imperial absolutism the people, jealous of their liberties and accustomed to freedom. These unconstitutional proceedings on the part