Teutonic knights, to be viceroy of the kingdom;
while the Protestants were persecuted with unheard-of rigour, and many
of their ministers imprisoned in the fortresses, or sent in chains to
the galleys at Naples.

The confederates of Upper Hungary had been better on their guard: and on
the news of the fate of Zriny and his associates, they forthwith
assembled in arms at Kaschau or Cassovia, and electing Francis Racoczy,
son of the late prince of Transylvania, and son-in-law of Zriny, as
their leader, bade defiance to the Emperor. The civil war continued
several years without decisive success on either side; till on the
death, in 1676, of Racoczy, (who had previously abandoned the popular
cause,) the famous Emeric Tekoeli, then only twenty years of age, was
chosen general. He was the hereditary enemy of the Austrians; his father
Stephen, Count of Kersmark, having been besieged in his castle by the
Imperialists at the time of his death; and while he pressed the Germans
in the field with such vigour as to deprive them of nearly all the
fortified places they still held in Upper Hungary, the negotiation with
the Porte for aid was renewed, and being backed by the diplomatic
influence of France, then at war with the empire, was more favourably
received by Kara-Mustapha than the former advances of the malcontents
had been by his predecessor. The war with Russia, however, prevented the
Turks for the present from interfering with effect, but Abaffi was
authorized to support the insurgents in the mean time, while Leopold,
fearing the total loss of Hungary, summoned a diet at Oedenburg (in
1681) for the redress of grievances, in which most of the ancient
privileges of the kingdom were restored, full liberty of conscience
promised to the Lutherans and Calvinists, and Paul Esterhazy named
Palatine. But these concessions, wrung only by hard necessity from the
Cabinet of Vienna, came now too late. Tekoeli replied to the amnesty
proclaimed by the Emperor, by the publication of a counter-manifesto, in
which were set forth a hundred grievances of the Hungarians; and, having
obtained a great accession of strength by his marriage (June 1682) to
Helen Zriny, the widow of Racoczy, whereby he gained all the adherents
of those two powerful houses, he summoned a rival diet at Cassovia,
where he openly assumed the title of sovereign prince of Upper Hungary,
exercising the prerogatives of royalty, and striking money in his own
name, which bore his