Leopold took advantage of this conspiracy to march an army into Hungary, and attacking the discontented nobles, who had raised an army, he crushed them with terrible severity.  No mercy was shown.  He exhausted the energies of confiscation, exile and the scaffold upon his foes; and then, having intimidated all so that no one dared to murmur, declared the monarchy of Hungary no longer elective but hereditary, like that of Bohemia.  He even had the assurance to summon a diet of the nobles to confirm this decree which defrauded them of their time-honored rights.  The nobles who were summoned, terrified, instead of obeying, fled into Transylvania.  The despot then issued an insulting and menacing proclamation, declaring that the power he exercised he received from God, and calling upon all to manifest implicit submission under peril of his vengeance.  He then extorted a large contribution of money from the kingdom, and quartered upon the inhabitants thirty thousand troops to awe them into subjection.

This proclamation was immediately followed by another, changing the whole form of government of the kingdom, and establishing an unlimited despotism.  He then moved vigorously for the extirpation of the Protestant religion.  The Protestant pastors were silenced; courts were instituted for the suppression of heresy; two hundred and fifty Protestant ministers were sentenced to be burned at the stake, and then, as an act of extraordinary clemency, on the part of the despot, their punishment was commuted to hard labor in the galleys for life.  All the nameless horrors of inquisitorial cruelty desolated the land.

Catholics and Protestants were alike driven to despair by these civil and religious outrages.  They combined, and were aided both by France and Turkey; not that France and Turkey loved justice and humanity, but they hated the house of Austria, and wished to weaken its power, that they might enrich themselves by the spoils.  A noble chief, Emeric Tekeli, who had fled from Hungary to Poland, and who hated Austria as Hannibal hated Rome, was invested with the command of the Hungarian patriots.  Victory followed his standard, until the emperor, threatened with entire expulsion from the kingdom, offered to reestablish the ancient laws which he had abrogated, and to restore to the Hungarians all those civil and religious privileges of which he had so ruthlessly defrauded them.

But the Hungarians were no longer to be deceived by his perfidious promises.  They continued the war; and the sultan sent an army of two hundred thousand men to cooperate with Tekeli.  The emperor, unable to meet so formidable an army, abandoned his garrisons, and, retiring from the distant parts of the kingdom, concentrated his troops at Presburg.  But with all his efforts, he was able to raise an army of only forty thousand men.  The Duke of Lorraine, who was intrusted with the command of the imperial troops, was compelled to retreat precipitately before outnumbering