The ruling powers had thus conjured up days of terror, but were utterly inadequate to the task of terminating them. Indeed after several years of this schemeless struggle, the rebellion became at last organized and conscious of a fixed object. The rebels received aid from the French and from the Porte, and Transylvania, as a state, was ready to make common cause with her countrymen. Tökölyi, a magnate of the Upper Country, a youth only twenty-one years old, but of eminent abilities, placed himself at the head of the rebels, and, now in 1678, began the war in good earnest. The rebels soon became masters of the Upper Country, and the government which had been unable to cope with the headless Kuruczes, proved quite helpless against the organized rebellion, led by an able chief. Austria was, besides, continually harassed by Louis XIV. in the west, and, to add to her difficulties, it was rumored that the Turks were preparing to invade Hungary with an immense army, which, uniting with the forces of Tökölyi, should drive the Austrians from the country.
The government, thus driven to the wall, surrendered. Negotiations soon began, the Diet was convoked in 1681, and constitutional government and freedom of worship were restored with a show of great alacrity. The concessions came too late. The rebels had no faith in the government after the cruel deceptions of which it had been guilty, and placed no trust in promises wrung from its necessitous condition. They refused to submit, and Tökölyi was proclaimed by the Porte king of Hungary. The threatened Turkish invasion became also in 1683 a fact. At this moment Hungary seemed to be lost forever to the Hapsburgs; the whole country sided with the Turks, the territory beyond the Danube also acknowledging the authority of Tökölyi.
The destinies of Hungary, nay of all Eastern Europe, hung upon the fate of besieged Vienna. The siege of Vienna was raised through the victory of Sobieski the Polish king; and the rapidly succeeding victories of the Christian armies, already referred to in the preceding chapter, awakened the hopes of the Hungarian nation, and showed that, at last, the emperor-king concerned himself in the liberation from Turkish rule of Hungarian territory. The decisive victories of Prince Eugene of Savoy finally accomplished this, and the Turks henceforth gave up all hopes of reconquering Hungary.