In 1809, on the outbreak of war between Austria and France, Gentz was for the first time actively employed by the Austrian government under Stadion; he drafted the proclamation announcing the declaration of war (15th of April), and during the continuance of hostilities his pen was ceaselessly employed.
But the peace of 1810 and the fall of Stadion once more dashed his hopes, and, disillusioned and "hellishly blasé," he once more retired to comparative inactivity at Prague.
Of Metternich, Stadion's successor, he had at the outset no high opinion, and it was not till 1812 that there sprang up between the two men the close relations that were to ripen into life-long friendship. But when Gentz returned to Vienna as Metternich's adviser and henchman, he was no longer the fiery patriot who had sympathized and corresponded with Stein in the darkest days of German depression and in fiery periods called upon all Europe to free itself from foreign rule.
On the 13th of April 1846 an imperial decree abolished some of the more burdensome feudal obligations; but this concession was greeted with so fierce an outcry, as an authoritative endorsement of the atrocities, that it was again revoked, and Count Franz von Stadion was sent to restore order in Galicia.
In Bohemia, where the attempt to hold elections for the Frankfort parliament had broken down on the opposition of the Czechs and the conservative German aristocracy, a separate constitution had been proclaimed on the 8th of April; on March the 23rd the election by the diet of Agram of Baron Joseph Jellachich as ban of Croatia was confirmed, as a concession to the agitation among the southern Sla y s; on the 18th of March Count Stadion had proclaimed a new con stitution for Galicia.