A great social revolution had also taken place during the reigns of Charles and Maria Theresa. The magnates of the country deserted in the piping times of peace their eagle’s nests on the rocky crests of the hills and descended into the smiling valleys below, building there palaces for themselves after foreign patterns. Life in those rural abodes, owing to the lack of pastimes and refinement, soon became dull to the great lords, and, as there was no national capital to offer distraction, they went abroad, and soon came to like the foreign mode of life better than the lawlessness of their country homes. The Viennese court bade them welcome, overwhelmed them with distinctions, and Maria Theresa, especially, understood the art of fascinating them. Gradually they became foreigners in their dress and manners, and all the Hungarian that was still preserved by these absentees was their names and the estates they possessed in Hungary, the revenues of which they spent abroad. The atmosphere and the graces of court life succeeded in doing what the sword and violence had failed to accomplish. The great lords became estranged from their country and thoroughly Germanized. If the great noblemen alone had still the exclusive charge of defending the independence and nationality of Hungary as they had done in days of old, then indeed these blessed days of peace would have brought ruin on both. It was fortunate, however, for the country that there was still left the gentry, numbering hundreds of thousands, who, after the peace of 1711, went on in their lives as before, and concerned themselves, in their old way, with the national affairs; the counties, where self-government reigned supreme, being the scene of their action. This class of nobles did not go abroad, nor was it possible to subject any large numbers of them to the fascinations of Viennese court life. They remained at home, retained their Hungarian customs and manners, their national language and dress, and with these it was impossible to make them part. Their counties were so many bulwarks of their nationality and the independence of Hungary, and these numerous seats of self-government furnished the counterpoise to the Germanizing influences of the court, which were thus destined, as far as the nation as a whole was concerned, to come to naught in times of peace, as they had failed before when coercion was employed. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XIV. THE EMPEROR JOSEPH II. THE NATIONAL REACTION AND THE NAPOLEONIC WARS.