But the Hungarians, instead of being intimidated by the success of the imperial arms, summoned another diet.  It was held in the open field in accordance with ancient custom, and was thronged by thousands from all parts of the kingdom.  With great enthusiasm and public acclaim the resolution was passed that Joseph was a tyrant and a usurper, animated by the hereditary despotism of the Austrian family.  This truthful utterance roused anew the ire of the emperor.  He resolved upon a desperate effort to bring Hungary into subjection.  Leaving his English and Dutch allies to meet the brunt of the battle on the Rhine and in the Netherlands, he recalled his best troops, and made forced levies in Austria until he had created an army sufficiently strong, as he thought, to sweep down all opposition.  These troops he placed under the most experienced generals, and sent them into Hungary in the summer of 1708.  France, weakened by repeated defeats, could send the Hungarians no aid, and the imperial troops, through bloody battles, victoriously traversed the kingdom.  Everywhere the Hungarians were routed and dispersed, until no semblance of an army was left to oppose the victors.  It seems that life in those days, to the masses of the people, swept incessantly by these fiery surges of war, could only have been a scene, from the cradle to the grave, of blood and agony.  For two years this dismal storm of battle howled over all the Hungarian plains, and then the kingdom, like a victim exhausted, prostrate and bleeding, was taken captive and firmly bound.

Ragotsky, denounced with the penalty of high treason, escaped to Poland.  The emperor, anxious no longer to exasperate, proposed measures of unusual moderation.  He assembled a convention; promised a general amnesty for all political offenses, the restitution of confiscated property, the liberation of prisoners, and the confirmation of all the rights which he had promised at his coronation.  Some important points were not touched upon; others were passed over in vague and general terms.  The Hungarians, helpless as a babe, had nothing to do but to submit, whatever the terms might be.  They were surprised at the unprecedented lenity of the conqueror, and the treaty of peace and subjection was signed in January, 1711.

In three months after the signing of this treaty, Joseph I. died of the small-pox, in his palace of Vienna.  He was but thirty-three years of age.  For a sovereign educated from the cradle to despotic rule, and instructed by one of the most bigoted of fathers, he was an unusually good man, and must be regarded as one of the best sovereigns who have swayed the scepter of Austrian despotism.