The courage of the nation rose still higher when the news of the revolution in France and the revolt in Belgium reached the country. The people refused to furnish recruits and military aid, and the emperor was compelled to use violence in order to obtain either. The counties remained firm and continued to remonstrate in addresses characterized by sharp and energetic language. Joseph yielded at last. He was prostrated by a grave illness, and feeling his end approaching he wished to die in peace with the exasperated nation he had so deeply wounded. On the 28th of January, 1790, he retracted all his illegal edicts, excepting those that had reference to religious toleration, the peasantry, and the clergy, and re-established the ancient constitution of the country. Soon after he sent back the crown to Buda, where its return was celebrated with great pomp, amidst the enthusiastic shouts of the people. Before he could yet convoke the Diet death terminated the emperor’s career on the 20th of February. The world lost in him a great and noble-minded man and a friend to humanity, who, however, had been unable to realize all his lofty intentions. The effect of his reign was to rouse Hungary from the apathy into which it had sunk, and at the time of Joseph’s death, the minds of the people were a prey to an excitement no less feverish than that which had seized revolutionary France at the same period. But while in Paris democracy was victorious over royalty, the latter had to yield in Hungary to the privileged nobility. The restored constitution was a charter of political privileges for the nobles only, and as such was most jealously guarded by them. This class kept a strict watch over the liberal tendencies of the age, preventing the importation of democratic ideas from France from fear of harm to their exclusive immunities.