Unfortunately the court of Vienna was not content with winning back the Magyars to the Church. The Habsburg kings were as jealous of the political as of the religious liberties of their Hungarian subjects. This was partly owing to the fact that national aspirations of any sort were contrary to the imperial system, which claimed to rule by right divine, and partly to an inveterate distrust of the Magyars, who were regarded at court as rebels by nature, and therefore as enemies far more troublesome than the Turks. The conduct of the Hungarian nobles in the past, indeed, somewhat justified this estimate, for the fall of the ancient monarchy was entirely due to their persistent disregard of authority, to their refusal to bear their share of the public burdens. They were now to suffer severely for their past misdoings, but unfortunately the innocent nation was forced to suffer with them. Throughout the latter part of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century, the Hungarian gentry underwent a cruel discipline at the hands of their Habsburg kings. Their privileges were overridden, their petitions were disregarded, their diets were degraded into mere registries of the royal decrees. They were never fairly represented in the royal council, they were excluded as far as possible from commands in Hungarian regiments, and were treated, generally, as the members of an inferior and guilty race. This era of repression corresponds roughly with the reign of Leopold I. (1657-1705), who left the government of the country to two bigoted Magyar prelates, György Szelepesényi (1595-1685) and Lipót (Leopold) Kollonich (1631-1707), whose domination represents the high-water mark of the anti-national regimen. The stupid and abortive conspiracy of Peter Zrinyi and three other magnates, who were publicly executed (April 30, 1671), was followed by wholesale arrests and confiscations, and for a time the legal government of Hungary was superseded (Patent of March 3, 1673) by a committee of eight persons, four Magyars and four Germans, presided over by a German governor; but the most influential person in this committee was Bishop Kollonich, of whom it was said that, while Pázmány hated the heretic in the Magyar, Kollonich hated the Magyar in the heretic. A gigantic process against leading Protestant ministers for alleged conspiracy was the first act of this committee. It began at Pressburg in March 1674, when 236 of the ministers were "converted" or confessed to acts of rebellion. But the remaining 93 stood firm and were condemned to death, a punishment commuted to slavery in the Neapolitan galleys. Sweden, as one of the guarantors of the peace of Westphalia, and several north German states, protested against the injury thus done to their coreligionists. It was replied that Hungary was outside the operation of the treaty of Westphalia, and that the Protestants had been condemned not _ex odio religionis_ but _crimine rebellionis_.