The liberation of the Hungarian soil, however important in itself, proved no immediate panacea for the ills of which the country had to complain. Even while the struggle was going on, many things happened which pointed to troubles in the future. The Hungarian inhabitants along the course of the Danube were rudely interrogated by the soldiers of the imperial army of liberation as to what faith they professed, and if they were found to adhere to the new tenets they were mercilessly set adrift. In the Upper Country a certain Caraffa, the military commandant of that district, committed acts of the most cruel atrocity. This bloody monster pretended to have discovered a conspiracy, and obtained from the government, which was disposed to suspect the loyalty of the Hungarians, full powers to deal with it and to put it down. Caraffa made a terrible use of his commission. He made wholesale arrests of the suspected and loyal alike, threw into prison men of high standing against whom he had a personal grudge, and rich people whose property he coveted, and extorted from them by dreadful tortures the confession of crimes they had never committed. These unfortunates were then executed upon the strength of their confessions. This _bloody tribunal of Eperjes_, of ill-fame, which inspired horror all over the land, continued its malevolent functions until the first months of 1687, when it was abolished, through the intercession of the Diet which had just been convoked. This Diet, however, was in most of its work not at all anxious to hamper the government. On the contrary, it displayed a pliability which made it forget the true interests of the country. Thus it substituted for the ancient right of the nation to elect their kings, the hereditary right of succession in the male branch of the Hapsburg dynasty, and it was this Diet that relinquished the time-honored right of the people, guaranteed by the Golden Bull, to resist with arms any illegal acts of the king, without incurring the penalty of treason for so doing. There were some malicious critics who pretended that this unpatriotic legislation was due to the pressure of imperial guns pointed at the place in which the Diet met. At all events the servile spirit exhibited by the Diet gave color to the apprehensions of those Hungarians who were of one mind with Tökölyi, that Hungary must be irretrievably ruined if she passed under the authority of the Austrians.