An assembly of the Hungarian estates of the realm and royal free cities ("szabad királyi város") had convened at Bratislava ("Pozsony") since the late Middle Ages; however, it never achieved extended legislative rights in the centralised Habsburg Monarchy and the succeeding Austrian Empire. In the course of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 a national assembly was called at Pest that was dismissed by decree of Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria in October; the next year an Hungarian assembly met at the Protestant Great Church of Debrecen, which declared the new Emperor Franz Joseph deposed and elected Lajos Kossuth regent-president. The revolution was finally suppressed by Austrian troops under General Julius Jacob von Haynau and the assembly dissolved.