Page:Gregor The story of Bohemia.pdf/474

 number was from time to time increased until the country endured innumerable evils from the fearful system of bureaucracy thus established. The land was also full of spies, through whose maliciousness many good men were seized and cruelly persecuted.

The government of the country at this time was rather the government of Prince Metternich than of Francis I; for this foreigner was the chief counselor of the emperor, and the despotic policy pursued was due entirely to his influence. The government of Joseph II had indeed been a despotism; but it was an enlightened and paternal despotism, while that of Francis I was blind, selfish, and oppressive in the extreme.

The other evils that afflicted the country during the reign of Metternich were the hard times coming at the close of the French wars; provisions were unusually high, and to this was added the Asiatic cholera that visited the country in 1847.

Francis I died in 1835, and was succeeded by his son Ferdinand, who, as King of Bohemia, was the fifth of that name; but as Emperor of Austria, the first.

Ferdinand as a man was kind-hearted and magnanimous, and the people welcomed him as their sovereign with sincere joy; but owing partly to poor health, and partly to his disinclination to public life, he proved a most weak and inefficient ruler. He retained in his cabinet his father’s counselors, among whom the most objectionable was the hated Prince Metternich. These advisers attempted to continue the old despotic system; but they soon found that it was no longer possible, for the liberty-loving spirit roused in France soon found