Joseph II and to a lesser extent his mother, the aristocracy and the religious establishment were the major patrons of the arts, until rising middle class aspirations incorporated music into the lives of the bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, the Baroque was evolving into the less grandiose form, the Rococo. The virtual abolition of censorship under van Swieten also encouraged artistic expression and the themes of artistic work often reflected enlightenment thinking. Francis II: French Revolution and wars (1792–1815) Francis II (1792–1835) was only 24 when he succeeded his father Leopold VII in 1792, but was to reign for nearly half a century and a radical reorganisation of European politics. He inherited a vast bureaucracy created by his uncle whose legacy of reform and welfare was to last throughout the next two centuries. The image of the monarch had profoundly changed, as had the relationship between monarch and subject. His era was overshadowed by events in France, both in terms of the evolving Revolution and the onset of a new form of European warfare with mass citizen armies. Austria recoiled in horror at the execution of Francis' aunt Maria Antonia in 1793 (despite futile attempts at rescue and even negotiation for release), leading to a wave of repression to fend off such dangerous sentiments influencing Austrian politics. At the same time Europe was consumed by the French Revolutionary (1792–1802) and Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815). The French Revolution effectively ended Austria's experiment with modernity and reform from above, and marked a retreat to legitimacy. Domestic policy Francis started out cautiously. The bureaucracy was still Josephist and the legal reforms under the guidance of Sonnenfels resulting in the Criminal Code of 1803 and the Civil Code of 1811. On the other hand, he restored Pergen to his position of Chief of Police. The discovery of a Jacobin plot in 1794 was a catalyst to the onset of repression. The leaders were executed or imprisoned, but there was little evidence of a tangible threat to the Habsburgs. Suppression of dissent with the Recensorship Commission of 1803 created a void in cultural and intellectual life, yet some of the world's greatest music comes from this time (see below). There were still elements of Josephism abroad, and Stadion, the foreign minister with his propagandist Friedrich von Gentz was able to appeal to popular nationalism to defeat Napoleon. What exactly such nationalism actually represented is difficult to precisely identify—certainly it