These bloody executions created widespread dismay in the country. No one felt safe, for everybody was ignorant of the nature of the crimes with which the unhappy victims had been charged. The counties remonstrated, in addresses sent to the king, against these cruel proceedings, but without any effect. Francis pensioned off five liberal professors at the university, interdicted the teaching of Kant’s philosophy at that seat of learning, began to persecute every enlightened man in the country, and especially delighted in vexing in every possible way the intelligent element of Zemplén County. The friends of liberty, the men of progress, were thoroughly frightened. The press, too, was fettered by the government, and thus, by degrees, public life in Hungary became torpid and stagnant, the adherents of reform were reduced to silence, and innovations had to bide their time. The reactionary government achieved a complete victory. It banished from the high offices even the most moderate men, and filled every place of importance with persons who delighted in relentlessly repressing every democratic impulse in Hungary. The Diets which met during this period paid no attention whatever to reforms. Their main function consisted in voting considerable supplies in money and soldiers for the war against the French. The Hungarian nation sacrificed a great deal for her king during the Napoleonic wars, and, when the hostile armies were approaching the border of the country, every noble personally took up arms to defend the throne of his crowned king with his life and blood. The gentry distinguished themselves by their devotion, especially in 1809. Napoleon made the Hungarians the most enticing offers in order to seduce them from their allegiance to King Francis. He called upon them by proclamation to abandon Francis, to elect, under the French protectorate, a king of their own, and to restore Hungary to complete independence. But the Hungarian nation remained unshaken in their devotion to the king, and rallied round him and the ancient dynasty. The French, failing in their scheme, entered Hungary. The Hungarians gallantly defended their native soil, but were defeated near Raab, owing to the incapacity of their Austrian generals. During the whole Napoleonic contest, to its termination, in 1815, Hungary made immense sacrifices for the royal throne, and thousands of her sons shed their blood in its defence, on the most distant battlefields of Europe.