former, despoiled, degraded, incapacitated for joining the work of
reform upon which the latter has finally entered, now constitutes
an obstacle to progress. While the Austrian duchies are at present
extremely liberal in their religious and political tendencies, Bohemia
and Polish Galicia are confederated with the Tyrol in opposing every
measure that savors of liberalism. Bohemia has been surnamed the
Ireland of the Austrian crown.

The union of Hungary with the house of Habsburg has always been
personal rather than constitutional. The Hungarians claimed
independence in all municipal and purely administrative matters.
Moreover, during the Thirty Years' war, and even later, a large
portion of the land was in possession of the Turks and their allies,
the Transylvanians, with whom the Hungarians were in sympathy. The
first great siege of Vienna by the Turks was in 1529--the last, and
by far the most formidable, in 1683. The city escaped only through
the timely assistance of the Poles under Sobieski. Ten years later the
tide had changed. The Austrian armies, led by Prince Eugene, defeated
the Turks in a succession of decisive battles, and put an end for ever
to danger from that quarter. Hungary and Transylvania became permanent
Austrian possessions.

Amid such alternations of fortune the growth of Vienna was necessarily
slow. In 1714, after six centuries of existence, its population
amounted to only 130,000. The city retained all the characteristics
of a fortress and frontier-post. The old part, or core, now called
the "inner town," was a compact body of houses surrounded by massive
fortification-walls and a deep moat. Outside of this was a _rayon_ or
clear space six hundred feet in width, separating the city from
the suburbs. These suburbs, Leopoldstadt, Mariahilf, etc., now