No More Learning

After the example of the Germans, they drew
up a Confession of their own, in which Lutherans as well as Calvinists
recognized their own doctrines, and they sought to transfer to the new
Confession the privileges of the original Utraquists. In this they were
opposed by their Roman Catholic countrymen, and forced to rest content
with the Emperor’s verbal assurance of protection.

As long as Maximilian lived, they enjoyed complete toleration, even
under the new form they had taken. Under his successor the scene
changed. An imperial edict appeared, which deprived the Bohemian
Brethren of their religious freedom. Now these differed in nothing from
the other Utraquists. The sentence, therefore, of their condemnation,
obviously included all the partisans of the Bohemian Confession.
Accordingly, they all combined to oppose the imperial mandate in the
Diet, but without being able to procure its revocation. The Emperor and
the Roman Catholic Estates took their ground on the Compact and the
Bohemian Constitution; in which nothing appeared in favour of a religion
which had not then obtained the voice of the country. Since that time,
how completely had affairs changed! What then formed but an
inconsiderable opinion, had now become the predominant religion of the
country. And what was it then, but a subterfuge to limit a newly
spreading religion by the terms of obsolete treaties? The Bohemian
Protestants appealed to the verbal guarantee of Maximilian, and the
religious freedom of the Germans, with whom they argued they ought to be
on a footing of equality. It was in vain--their appeal was dismissed.

Such was the posture of affairs in Bohemia, when Matthias, already
master of Hungary, Austria, and Moravia, appeared in Kolin, to raise the
Bohemian Estates also against the Emperor. The embarrassment of the
latter was now at its height. Abandoned by all his other subjects, he
placed his last hopes on the Bohemians, who, it might be foreseen, would
take advantage of his necessities to enforce their own demands. After
an interval of many years, he once more appeared publicly in the Diet at
Prague; and to convince the people that he was really still in
existence, orders were given that all the windows should be opened in
the streets through which he was to pass--proof enough how far things
had gone with him. The event justified his fears. The Estates,
conscious of their own power, refused to take a single step until their
privileges were confirmed, and religious toleration fully assured to
them. It was in vain to have recourse now to the old system of evasion.
The Emperor’s fate was in their hands, and he must yield to necessity.
At present, however, he only granted their other demands--religious
matters he reserved for consideration at the next Diet.

The Bohemians now took up arms in defence of the Emperor, and a bloody
war between the two brothers was on the point of breaking out. But
Rodolph, who feared nothing so much as remaining in this slavish
dependence on the Estates, waited not for a warlike issue, but hastened
to effect a reconciliation with his brother by more peaceable means. By
a formal act of abdication he resigned to Matthias, what indeed he had
no chance of wresting from him, Austria and the kingdom of Hungary, and
acknowledged him as his successor to the crown of Bohemia.

Dearly enough had the Emperor extricated himself from one difficulty,
only to get immediately involved in another. The settlement of the
religious affairs of Bohemia had been referred to the next Diet, which
was held in 1609. The reformed Bohemians demanded the free exercise of
their faith, as under the former emperors; a Consistory of their own;
the cession of the University of Prague; and the right of electing
`Defenders’, or `Protectors’ of `Liberty’, from their own body. The
answer was the same as before; for the timid Emperor was now entirely
fettered by the unreformed party. However often, and in however
threatening language the Estates renewed their remonstrances, the
Emperor persisted in his first declaration of granting nothing beyond
the old compact. The Diet broke up without coming to a decision; and
the Estates, exasperated against the Emperor, arranged a general meeting
at Prague, upon their own authority, to right themselves.

They appeared at Prague in great force. In defiance of the imperial
prohibition, they carried on their deliberations almost under the very
eyes of the Emperor. The yielding compliance which he began to show,
only proved how much they were feared, and increased their audacity.
Yet on the main point he remained inflexible. They fulfilled their
threats, and at last resolved to establish, by their own power, the free
and universal exercise of their religion, and to abandon the Emperor to
his necessities until he should confirm this resolution. They even went
farther, and elected for themselves the DEFENDERS which the Emperor had
refused them. Ten were nominated by each of the three Estates; they
also determined to raise, as soon as possible, an armed force, at the
head of which Count Thurn, the chief organizer of the revolt, should be
placed as general defender of the liberties of Bohemia. Their
determination brought the Emperor to submission, to which he was now
counselled even by the Spaniards. Apprehensive lest the exasperated
Estates should throw themselves into the arms of the King of Hungary, he
signed the memorable Letter of Majesty for Bohemia, by which, under the
successors of the Emperor, that people justified their rebellion.

The Bohemian Confession, which the States had laid before the Emperor
Maximilian, was, by the Letter of Majesty, placed on a footing of
equality with the olden profession. The Utraquists, for by this title
the Bohemian Protestants continued to designate themselves, were put in
possession of the University of Prague, and allowed a Consistory of
their own, entirely independent of the archiepiscopal see of that city.
All the churches in the cities, villages, and market towns, which they
held at the date of the letter, were secured to them; and if in addition
they wished to erect others, it was permitted to the nobles, and
knights, and the free cities to do so. This last clause in the Letter
of Majesty gave rise to the unfortunate disputes which subsequently
rekindled the flames of war in Europe.

The Letter of Majesty erected the Protestant part of Bohemia into a kind
of republic. The Estates had learned to feel the power which they
gained by perseverance, unity, and harmony in their measures. The
Emperor now retained little more than the shadow of his sovereign
authority; while by the new dignity of the so-called defenders of
liberty, a dangerous stimulus was given to the spirit of revolt. The
example and success of Bohemia afforded a tempting seduction to the
other hereditary dominions of Austria, and all attempted by similar
means to extort similar privileges. The spirit of liberty spread from
one province to another; and as it was chiefly the disunion among the
Austrian princes that had enabled the Protestants so materially to
improve their advantages, they now hastened to effect a reconciliation
between the Emperor and the King of Hungary.

But the reconciliation could not be sincere. The wrong was too great to
be forgiven, and Rodolph continued to nourish at heart an
unextinguishable hatred of Matthias. With grief and indignation he
brooded over the thought, that the Bohemian sceptre was finally to
descend into the hands of his enemy; and the prospect was not more
consoling, even if Matthias should die without issue. In that case,
Ferdinand, Archduke of Graetz, whom he equally disliked, was the head of
the family. To exclude the latter as well as Matthias from the
succession to the throne of Bohemia, he fell upon the project of
diverting that inheritance to Ferdinand’s brother, the Archduke Leopold,
Bishop of Passau, who among all his relatives had ever been the dearest
and most deserving. The prejudices of the Bohemians in favour of the
elective freedom of their crown, and their attachment to Leopold’s
person, seemed to favour this scheme, in which Rodolph consulted rather
his own partiality and vindictiveness than the good of his house. But
to carry out this project, a military force was requisite, and Rodolph
actually assembled an army in the bishopric of Passau. The object of
this force was hidden from all. An inroad, however, which, for want of
pay it made suddenly and without the Emperor’s knowledge into Bohemia,
and the outrages which it there committed, stirred up the whole kingdom
against him. In vain he asserted his innocence to the Bohemian Estates;
they would not believe his protestations; vainly did he attempt to
restrain the violence of his soldiery; they disregarded his orders.
Persuaded that the Emperor’s object was to annul the Letter of Majesty,
the Protectors of Liberty armed the whole of Protestant Bohemia, and
invited Matthias into the country. After the dispersion of the force he
had collected at Passau, the Emperor remained helpless at Prague, where
he was kept shut up like a prisoner in his palace, and separated from
all his councillors. In the meantime, Matthias entered Prague amidst
universal rejoicings, where Rodolph was soon afterwards weak enough to
acknowledge him King of Bohemia. So hard a fate befell this Emperor; he
was compelled, during his life, to abdicate in favour of his enemy that
very throne, of which he had been endeavouring to deprive him after his
own death. To complete his degradation, he was obliged, by a personal
act of renunciation, to release his subjects in Bohemia, Silesia, and
Lusatia from their allegiance, and he did it with a broken heart. All,
even those he thought he had most attached to his person, had abandoned
him. When he had signed the instrument, he threw his hat upon the
ground, and gnawed the pen which had rendered so shameful a service.

While Rodolph thus lost one hereditary dominion after another, the
imperial dignity was not much better maintained by him. Each of the
religious parties into which Germany was divided, continued its efforts
to advance itself at the expense of the other, or to guard against its
attacks. The weaker the hand that held the sceptre, and the more the
Protestants and Roman Catholics felt they were left to themselves, the
more vigilant necessarily became their watchfulness, and the greater
their distrust of each other. It was enough that the Emperor was ruled
by Jesuits, and was guided by Spanish counsels, to excite the
apprehension of the Protestants, and to afford a pretext for hostility.
The rash zeal of the Jesuits, which in the pulpit and by the press
disputed the validity of the religious peace, increased this distrust,
and caused their adversaries to see a dangerous design in the most
indifferent measures of the Roman Catholics. Every step taken in the
hereditary dominions of the Emperor, for the repression of the reformed
religion, was sure to draw the attention of all the Protestants of
Germany; and this powerful support which the reformed subjects of
Austria met, or expected to meet with from their religious confederates
in the rest of Germany, was no small cause of their confidence, and of
the rapid success of Matthias. It was the general belief of the Empire,
that they owed the long enjoyment of the religious peace merely to the
difficulties in which the Emperor was placed by the internal troubles in
his dominions, and consequently they were in no haste to relieve him
from them.

Almost all the affairs of the Diet were neglected, either through the
procrastination of the Emperor, or through the fault of the Protestant
Estates, who had determined to make no provision for the common wants of
the Empire till their own grievances were removed. These grievances
related principally to the misgovernment of the Emperor; the violation
of the religious treaty, and the presumptuous usurpations of the Aulic
Council, which in the present reign had begun to extend its jurisdiction
at the expense of the Imperial Chamber. Formerly, in all disputes
between the Estates, which could not be settled by club law, the
Emperors had in the last resort decided of themselves, if the case were
trifling, and in conjunction with the princes, if it were important; or
they determined them by the advice of imperial judges who followed the
court. This superior jurisdiction they had, in the end of the fifteenth
century, assigned to a regular and permanent tribunal, the Imperial
Chamber of Spires, in which the Estates of the Empire, that they might
not be oppressed by the arbitrary appointment of the Emperor, had
reserved to themselves the right of electing the assessors, and of
periodically reviewing its decrees. By the religious peace, these
rights of the Estates, (called the rights of presentation and
visitation,) were extended also to the Lutherans, so that Protestant
judges had a voice in Protestant causes, and a seeming equality obtained
for both religions in this supreme tribunal.

But the enemies of the Reformation and of the freedom of the Estates,
vigilant to take advantage of every incident that favoured their views,
soon found means to neutralize the beneficial effects of this
institution. A supreme jurisdiction over the Imperial States was
gradually and skilfully usurped by a private imperial tribunal, the
Aulic Council in Vienna, a court at first intended merely to advise the
Emperor in the exercise of his undoubted, imperial, and personal
prerogatives; a court, whose members being appointed and paid by him,
had no law but the interest of their master, and no standard of equity
but the advancement of the unreformed religion of which they were
partisans. Before the Aulic Council were now brought several suits
originating between Estates differing in religion, and which, therefore,
properly belonged to the Imperial Chamber. It was not surprising if the
decrees of this tribunal bore traces of their origin; if the interests
of the Roman Church and of the Emperor were preferred to justice by
Roman Catholic judges, and the creatures of the Emperor. Although all
the Estates of Germany seemed to have equal cause for resisting so
perilous an abuse, the Protestants alone, who most sensibly felt it, and
even these not all at once and in a body, came forward as the defenders
of German liberty, which the establishment of so arbitrary a tribunal
had outraged in its most sacred point, the administration of justice.
In fact, Germany would have had little cause to congratulate itself upon
the abolition of club-law, and in the institution of the Imperial
Chamber, if an arbitrary tribunal of the Emperor was allowed to
interfere with the latter. The Estates of the German Empire would
indeed have improved little upon the days of barbarism, if the Chamber
of Justice in which they sat along with the Emperor as judges, and for
which they had abandoned their original princely prerogative, should
cease to be a court of the last resort. But the strangest
contradictions were at this date to be found in the minds of men. The
name of Emperor, a remnant of Roman despotism, was still associated with
an idea of autocracy, which, though it formed a ridiculous inconsistency
with the privileges of the Estates, was nevertheless argued for by
jurists, diffused by the partisans of despotism, and believed by the
ignorant.

To these general grievances was gradually added a chain of singular
incidents, which at length converted the anxiety of the Protestants into
utter distrust. During the Spanish persecutions in the Netherlands,
several Protestant families had taken refuge in Aix-la-Chapelle, an
imperial city, and attached to the Roman Catholic faith, where they
settled and insensibly extended their adherents. Having succeeded by
stratagem in introducing some of their members into the municipal
council, they demanded a church and the public exercise of their
worship, and the demand being unfavourably received, they succeeded by
violence in enforcing it, and also in usurping the entire government of
the city. To see so important a city in Protestant hands was too heavy
a blow for the Emperor and the Roman Catholics. After all the Emperor’s
requests and commands for the restoration of the olden government had
proved ineffectual, the Aulic Council proclaimed the city under the ban
of the Empire, which, however, was not put in force till the following
reign.

Of yet greater importance were two other attempts of the Protestants to
extend their influence and their power. The Elector Gebhard, of
Cologne, (born Truchsess--[Grand-master of the kitchen. ]--of Waldburg,)
conceived for the young Countess Agnes, of Mansfield, Canoness of
Gerresheim, a passion which was not unreturned. As the eyes of all
Germany were directed to this intercourse, the brothers of the Countess,
two zealous Calvinists, demanded satisfaction for the injured honour of
their house, which, as long as the elector remained a Roman Catholic
prelate, could not be repaired by marriage. They threatened the elector
they would wash out this stain in his blood and their sister’s, unless
he either abandoned all further connexion with the countess, or
consented to re-establish her reputation at the altar. The elector,
indifferent to all the consequences of this step, listened to nothing
but the voice of love. Whether it was in consequence of his previous
inclination to the reformed doctrines, or that the charms of his
mistress alone effected this wonder, he renounced the Roman Catholic
faith, and led the beautiful Agnes to the altar.

This event was of the greatest importance. By the letter of the clause
reserving the ecclesiastical states from the general operation of the
religious peace, the elector had, by his apostacy, forfeited all right
to the temporalities of his bishopric; and if, in any case, it was
important for the Catholics to enforce the clause, it was so especially
in the case of electorates. On the other hand, the relinquishment of so
high a dignity was a severe sacrifice, and peculiarly so in the case of
a tender husband, who had wished to enhance the value of his heart and
hand by the gift of a principality. Moreover, the Reservatum
Ecclesiasticum was a disputed article of the treaty of Augsburg; and all
the German Protestants were aware of the extreme importance of wresting
this fourth electorate from the opponents of their faith. --[Saxony,
Brandenburg, and the Palatinate were already Protestant. ]--The example
had already been set in several of the ecclesiastical benefices of Lower
Germany, and attended with success. Several canons of Cologne had also
already embraced the Protestant confession, and were on the elector’s
side, while, in the city itself, he could depend upon the support of a
numerous Protestant party. All these considerations, greatly
strengthened by the persuasions of his friends and relations, and the
promises of several German courts, determined the elector to retain his
dominions, while he changed his religion.

But it was soon apparent that he had entered upon a contest which he
could not carry through. Even the free toleration of the Protestant
service within the territories of Cologne, had already occasioned a
violent opposition on the part of the canons and Roman Catholic
`Estates’ of that province. The intervention of the Emperor, and a
papal ban from Rome, which anathematized the elector as an apostate, and
deprived him of all his dignities, temporal and spiritual, armed his own
subjects and chapter against him. The Elector assembled a military
force; the chapter did the same. To ensure also the aid of a strong
arm, they proceeded forthwith to a new election, and chose the Bishop of
Liege, a prince of Bavaria.

A civil war now commenced, which, from the strong interest which both
religious parties in Germany necessarily felt in the conjuncture, was
likely to terminate in a general breaking up of the religious peace.
What most made the Protestants indignant, was that the Pope should have
presumed, by a pretended apostolic power, to deprive a prince of the
empire of his imperial dignities. Even in the golden days of their
spiritual domination, this prerogative of the Pope had been disputed;
how much more likely was it to be questioned at a period when his
authority was entirely disowned by one party, while even with the other
it rested on a tottering foundation. All the Protestant princes took up
the affair warmly against the Emperor; and Henry IV. of France, then
King of Navarre, left no means of negotiation untried to urge the German
princes to the vigorous assertion of their rights. The issue would
decide for ever the liberties of Germany. Four Protestant against three
Roman Catholic voices in the Electoral College must at once have given
the preponderance to the former, and for ever excluded the House of
Austria from the imperial throne.

But the Elector Gebhard had embraced the Calvinist, not the Lutheran
religion; and this circumstance alone was his ruin. The mutual rancour
of these two churches would not permit the Lutheran Estates to regard
the Elector as one of their party, and as such to lend him their
effectual support. All indeed had encouraged, and promised him
assistance; but only one appanaged prince of the Palatine House, the
Palsgrave John Casimir, a zealous Calvinist, kept his word. Despite of
the imperial prohibition, he hastened with his little army into the
territories of Cologne; but without being able to effect any thing,
because the Elector, who was destitute even of the first necessaries,
left him totally without help. So much the more rapid was the progress
of the newly-chosen elector, whom his Bavarian relations and the
Spaniards from the Netherlands supported with the utmost vigour. The
troops of Gebhard, left by their master without pay, abandoned one place
after another to the enemy; by whom others were compelled to surrender.
In his Westphalian territories, Gebhard held out for some time longer,
till here, too, he was at last obliged to yield to superior force.
After several vain attempts in Holland and England to obtain means for
his restoration, he retired into the Chapter of Strasburg, and died dean
of that cathedral; the first sacrifice to the Ecclesiastical
Reservation, or rather to the want of harmony among the German
Protestants.

To this dispute in Cologne was soon added another in Strasburg. Several
Protestant canons of Cologne, who had been included in the same papal
ban with the elector, had taken refuge within this bishopric, where they
likewise held prebends. As the Roman Catholic canons of Strasburg
hesitated to allow them, as being under the ban, the enjoyment of their
prebends, they took violent possession of their benefices, and the
support of a powerful Protestant party among the citizens soon gave them
the preponderance in the chapter. The other canons thereupon retired to
Alsace-Saverne, where, under the protection of the bishop, they
established themselves as the only lawful chapter, and denounced that
which remained in Strasburg as illegal. The latter, in the meantime,
had so strengthened themselves by the reception of several Protestant
colleagues of high rank, that they could venture, upon the death of the
bishop, to nominate a new Protestant bishop in the person of John George
of Brandenburg. The Roman Catholic canons, far from allowing this
election, nominated the Bishop of Metz, a prince of Lorraine, to that
dignity, who announced his promotion by immediately commencing
hostilities against the territories of Strasburg.

That city now took up arms in defence of its Protestant chapter and the
Prince of Brandenburg, while the other party, with the assistance of the
troops of Lorraine, endeavoured to possess themselves of the
temporalities of the chapter. A tedious war was the consequence, which,
according to the spirit of the times, was attended with barbarous
devastations. In vain did the Emperor interpose with his supreme
authority to terminate the dispute; the ecclesiastical property remained
for a long time divided between the two parties, till at last the
Protestant prince, for a moderate pecuniary equivalent, renounced his
claims; and thus, in this dispute also, the Roman Church came off
victorious.

An occurrence which, soon after the adjustment of this dispute, took
place in Donauwerth, a free city of Suabia, was still more critical for
the whole of Protestant Germany. In this once Roman Catholic city, the
Protestants, during the reigns of Ferdinand and his son, had, in the
usual way, become so completely predominant, that the Roman Catholics
were obliged to content themselves with a church in the Monastery of the
Holy Cross, and for fear of offending the Protestants, were even forced
to suppress the greater part of their religious rites. At length a
fanatical abbot of this monastery ventured to defy the popular
prejudices, and to arrange a public procession, preceded by the cross
and banners flying; but he was soon compelled to desist from the
attempt. When, a year afterwards, encouraged by a favourable imperial
proclamation, the same abbot attempted to renew this procession, the
citizens proceeded to open violence. The inhabitants shut the gates
against the monks on their return, trampled their colours under foot,
and followed them home with clamour and abuse. An imperial citation was
the consequence of this act of violence; and as the exasperated populace
even threatened to assault the imperial commissaries, and all attempts
at an amicable adjustment were frustrated by the fanaticism of the
multitude, the city was at last formally placed under the ban of the
Empire, the execution of which was intrusted to Maximilian, Duke of
Bavaria. The citizens, formerly so insolent, were seized with terror at
the approach of the Bavarian army; pusillanimity now possessed them,
though once so full of defiance, and they laid down their arms without
striking a blow. The total abolition of the Protestant religion within
the walls of the city was the punishment of their rebellion; it was
deprived of its privileges, and, from a free city of Suabia, converted
into a municipal town of Bavaria.

Two circumstances connected with this proceeding must have strongly
excited the attention of the Protestants, even if the interests of
religion had been less powerful on their minds. First of all, the
sentence had been pronounced by the Aulic Council, an arbitrary and
exclusively Roman Catholic tribunal, whose jurisdiction besides had been
so warmly disputed by them; and secondly, its execution had been
intrusted to the Duke of Bavaria, the head of another circle. These
unconstitutional steps seemed to be the harbingers of further violent
measures on the Roman Catholic side, the result, probably, of secret
conferences and dangerous designs, which might perhaps end in the entire
subversion of their religious liberty.

In circumstances where the law of force prevails, and security depends
upon power alone, the weakest party is naturally the most busy to place
itself in a posture of defence. This was now the case in Germany. If
the Roman Catholics really meditated any evil against the Protestants in
Germany, the probability was that the blow would fall on the south
rather than the north, because, in Lower Germany, the Protestants were
connected together through a long unbroken tract of country, and could
therefore easily combine for their mutual support; while those in the
south, detached from each other, and surrounded on all sides by Roman
Catholic states, were exposed to every inroad. If, moreover, as was to
be expected, the Catholics availed themselves of the divisions amongst
the Protestants, and levelled their attack against one of the religious
parties, it was the Calvinists who, as the weaker, and as being besides
excluded from the religious treaty, were apparently in the greatest
danger, and upon them would probably fall the first attack.

Both these circumstances took place in the dominions of the Elector
Palatine, which possessed, in the Duke of Bavaria, a formidable
neighbour, and which, by reason of their defection to Calvinism,
received no protection from the Religious Peace, and had little hope of
succour from the Lutheran states. No country in Germany had experienced
so many revolutions in religion in so short a time as the Palatinate.
In the space of sixty years this country, an unfortunate toy in the
hands of its rulers, had twice adopted the doctrines of Luther, and
twice relinquished them for Calvinism. The Elector Frederick III.
first abandoned the confession of Augsburg, which his eldest son and
successor, Lewis, immediately re-established. The Calvinists throughout
the whole country were deprived of their churches, their preachers and
even their teachers banished beyond the frontiers; while the prince, in
his Lutheran zeal, persecuted them even in his will, by appointing none
but strict and orthodox Lutherans as the guardians of his son, a minor.
But this illegal testament was disregarded by his brother the Count
Palatine, John Casimir, who, by the regulations of the Golden Bull,
assumed the guardianship and administration of the state. Calvinistic
teachers were given to the Elector Frederick IV. , then only nine years
of age, who were ordered, if necessary, to drive the Lutheran heresy out
of the soul of their pupil with blows. If such was the treatment of the
sovereign, that of the subjects may be easily conceived.

It was under this Frederick that the Palatine Court exerted itself so
vigorously to unite the Protestant states of Germany in joint measures
against the House of Austria, and, if possible, bring about the
formation of a general confederacy. Besides that this court had always
been guided by the counsels of France, with whom hatred of the House of
Austria was the ruling principle, a regard for his own safety urged him
to secure in time the doubtful assistance of the Lutherans against a
near and overwhelming enemy. Great difficulties, however, opposed this
union, because the Lutherans’ dislike of the Reformed was scarcely less
than the common aversion of both to the Romanists. An attempt was first
made to reconcile the two professions, in order to facilitate a
political union; but all these attempts failed, and generally ended in
both parties adhering the more strongly to their respective opinions.
Nothing then remained but to increase the fear and the distrust of the
Evangelicals, and in this way to impress upon them the necessity of this
alliance. The power of the Roman Catholics and the magnitude of the
danger were exaggerated, accidental incidents were ascribed to
deliberate plans, innocent actions misrepresented by invidious
constructions, and the whole conduct of the professors of the olden
religion was interpreted as the result of a well-weighed and systematic
plan, which, in all probability, they were very far from having
concerted.

The Diet of Ratisbon, to which the Protestants had looked forward with
the hope of obtaining a renewal of the Religious Peace, had broken up
without coming to a decision, and to the former grievances of the
Protestant party was now added the late oppression of Donauwerth. With
incredible speed, the union, so long attempted, was now brought to bear.
A conference took place at Anhausen, in Franconia, at which were present
the Elector Frederick IV. , from the Palatinate, the Palsgrave of
Neuburg, two Margraves of Brandenburg, the Margrave of Baden, and the
Duke John Frederick of Wirtemburg,--Lutherans as well as Calvinists,--
who for themselves and their heirs entered into a close confederacy
under the title of the Evangelical Union. The purport of this union
was, that the allied princes should, in all matters relating to religion
and their civil rights, support each other with arms and counsel against
every aggressor, and should all stand as one man; that in case any
member of the alliance should be attacked, he should be assisted by the
rest with an armed force; that, if necessary, the territories, towns,
and castles of the allied states should be open to his troops; and that,
whatever conquests were made, should be divided among all the
confederates, in proportion to the contingent furnished by each.

The direction of the whole confederacy in time of peace was conferred
upon the Elector Palatine, but with a limited power. To meet the
necessary expenses, subsidies were demanded, and a common fund
established. Differences of religion (betwixt the Lutherans and the
Calvinists) were to have no effect on this alliance, which was to
subsist for ten years, every member of the union engaged at the same
time to procure new members to it. The Electorate of Brandenburg
adopted the alliance, that of Saxony rejected it. Hesse-Cashel could
not be prevailed upon to declare itself, the Dukes of Brunswick and
Luneburg also hesitated. But the three cities of the Empire, Strasburg,
Nuremburg, and Ulm, were no unimportant acquisition for the league,
which was in great want of their money, while their example, besides,
might be followed by other imperial cities.

After the formation of this alliance, the confederate states,
dispirited, and singly, little feared, adopted a bolder language.
Through Prince Christian of Anhalt, they laid their common grievances
and demands before the Emperor; among which the principal were the
restoration of Donauwerth, the abolition of the Imperial Court, the
reformation of the Emperor’s own administration and that of his
counsellors. For these remonstrances, they chose the moment when the
Emperor had scarcely recovered breath from the troubles in his
hereditary dominions,--when he had lost Hungary and Austria to Matthias,
and had barely preserved his Bohemian throne by the concession of the
Letter of Majesty, and finally, when through the succession of Juliers
he was already threatened with the distant prospect of a new war. No
wonder, then, that this dilatory prince was more irresolute than ever in
his decision, and that the confederates took up arms before he could
bethink himself.

The Roman Catholics regarded this confederacy with a jealous eye; the
Union viewed them and the Emperor with the like distrust; the Emperor
was equally suspicious of both; and thus, on all sides, alarm and
animosity had reached their climax. And, as if to crown the whole, at
this critical conjuncture by the death of the Duke John William of
Juliers, a highly disputable succession became vacant in the territories
of Juliers and Cleves.

Eight competitors laid claim to this territory, the indivisibility of
which had been guaranteed by solemn treaties; and the Emperor, who
seemed disposed to enter upon it as a vacant fief, might be considered
as the ninth. Four of these, the Elector of Brandenburg, the Count
Palatine of Neuburg, the Count Palatine of Deux Ponts, and the Margrave
of Burgau, an Austrian prince, claimed it as a female fief in name of
four princesses, sisters of the late duke. Two others, the Elector of
Saxony, of the line of Albert, and the Duke of Saxony, of the line of
Ernest, laid claim to it under a prior right of reversion granted to
them by the Emperor Frederick III. , and confirmed to both Saxon houses
by Maximilian I. The pretensions of some foreign princes were little
regarded. The best right was perhaps on the side of Brandenburg and
Neuburg, and between the claims of these two it was not easy to decide.
Both courts, as soon as the succession was vacant, proceeded to take
possession; Brandenburg beginning, and Neuburg following the example.
Both commenced their dispute with the pen, and would probably have ended
it with the sword; but the interference of the Emperor, by proceeding to
bring the cause before his own cognizance, and, during the progress of
the suit, sequestrating the disputed countries, soon brought the
contending parties to an agreement, in order to avert the common danger.
They agreed to govern the duchy conjointly. In vain did the Emperor
prohibit the Estates from doing homage to their new masters; in vain did
he send his own relation, the Archduke Leopold, Bishop of Passau and
Strasburg, into the territory of Juliers, in order, by his presence, to
strengthen the imperial party. The whole country, with the exception of
Juliers itself, had submitted to the Protestant princes, and in that
capital the imperialists were besieged.

The dispute about the succession of Juliers was an important one to the
whole German empire, and also attracted the attention of several
European courts. It was not so much the question, who was or was not to
possess the Duchy of Juliers;--the real question was, which of the two
religious parties in Germany, the Roman Catholic or the Protestant, was
to be strengthened by so important an accession--for which of the two
RELIGIONS this territory was to be lost or won. The question in short
was, whether Austria was to be allowed to persevere in her usurpations,
and to gratify her lust of dominion by another robbery; or whether the
liberties of Germany, and the balance of power, were to be maintained
against her encroachments. The disputed succession of Juliers,
therefore, was matter which interested all who were favourable to
liberty, and hostile to Austria.
The Evangelical Union, Holland,
England, and particularly Henry IV. of France, were drawn into the
strife.

This monarch, the flower of whose life had been spent in opposing the
House of Austria and Spain, and by persevering heroism alone had
surmounted the obstacles which this house had thrown between him and the
French throne, had been no idle spectator of the troubles in Germany.
This contest of the Estates with the Emperor was the means of giving and
securing peace to France. The Protestants and the Turks were the two
salutary weights which kept down the Austrian power in the East and
West; but it would rise again in all its terrors, if once it were
allowed to remove this pressure. Henry the Fourth had before his eyes
for half a lifetime, the uninterrupted spectacle of Austrian ambition
and Austrian lust of dominion, which neither adversity nor poverty of
talents, though generally they check all human passions, could
extinguish in a bosom wherein flowed one drop of the blood of Ferdinand
of Arragon. Austrian ambition had destroyed for a century the peace of
Europe, and effected the most violent changes in the heart of its most
considerable states. It had deprived the fields of husbandmen, the
workshops of artisans, to fill the land with enormous armies, and to
cover the commercial sea with hostile fleets. It had imposed upon the
princes of Europe the necessity of fettering the industry of their
subjects by unheard-of imposts; and of wasting in self-defence the best
strength of their states, which was thus lost to the prosperity of their
inhabitants. For Europe there was no peace, for its states no welfare,
for the people’s happiness no security or permanence, so long as this
dangerous house was permitted to disturb at pleasure the repose of the
world.

Such considerations clouded the mind of Henry at the close of his
glorious career. What had it not cost him to reduce to order the
troubled chaos into which France had been plunged by the tumult of civil
war, fomented and supported by this very Austria! Every great mind
labours for eternity; and what security had Henry for the endurance of
that prosperity which he had gained for France, so long as Austria and
Spain formed a single power, which did indeed lie exhausted for the
present, but which required only one lucky chance to be speedily
re-united, and to spring up again as formidable as ever. If he would
bequeath to his successors a firmly established throne, and a durable
prosperity to his subjects, this dangerous power must be for ever
disarmed. This was the source of that irreconcileable enmity which
Henry had sworn to the House of Austria, a hatred unextinguishable,
ardent, and well-founded as that of Hannibal against the people of
Romulus, but ennobled by a purer origin.

The other European powers had the same inducements to action as Henry,
but all of them had not that enlightened policy, nor that disinterested
courage to act upon the impulse. All men, without distinction, are
allured by immediate advantages; great minds alone are excited by
distant good. So long as wisdom in its projects calculates upon wisdom,
or relies upon its own strength, it forms none but chimerical schemes,
and runs a risk of making itself the laughter of the world; but it is
certain of success, and may reckon upon aid and admiration when it finds
a place in its intellectual plans for barbarism, rapacity, and
superstition, and can render the selfish passions of mankind the
executors of its purposes.

In the first point of view, Henry’s well-known project of expelling the
House of Austria from all its possessions, and dividing the spoil among
the European powers, deserves the title of a chimera, which men have so
liberally bestowed upon it; but did it merit that appellation in the
second? It had never entered into the head of that excellent monarch,
in the choice of those who must be the instruments of his designs, to
reckon on the sufficiency of such motives as animated himself and Sully
to the enterprise. All the states whose co-operation was necessary,
were to be persuaded to the work by the strongest motives that can set a
political power in action. From the Protestants in Germany nothing more
was required than that which, on other grounds, had been long their
object,--their throwing off the Austrian yoke; from the Flemings, a
similar revolt from the Spaniards. To the Pope and all the Italian
republics no inducement could be more powerful than the hope of driving
the Spaniards for ever from their peninsula; for England, nothing more
desirable than a revolution which should free it from its bitterest
enemy. By this division of the Austrian conquests, every power gained
either land or freedom, new possessions or security for the old; and as
all gained, the balance of power remained undisturbed. France might
magnanimously decline a share in the spoil, because by the ruin of
Austria it doubly profited, and was most powerful if it did not become
more powerful. Finally, upon condition of ridding Europe of their
presence, the posterity of Hapsburg were to be allowed the liberty of
augmenting her territories in all the other known or yet undiscovered
portions of the globe. But the dagger of Ravaillac delivered Austria
from her danger, to postpone for some centuries longer the tranquillity
of Europe.

With his view directed to this project, Henry felt the necessity of
taking a prompt and active part in the important events of the
Evangelical Union, and the disputed succession of Juliers. His
emissaries were busy in all the courts of Germany, and the little which
they published or allowed to escape of the great political secrets of
their master, was sufficient to win over minds inflamed by so ardent a
hatred to Austria, and by so strong a desire of aggrandizement. The
prudent policy of Henry cemented the Union still more closely, and the
powerful aid which he bound himself to furnish, raised the courage of
the confederates into the firmest confidence. A numerous French army,
led by the king in person, was to meet the troops of the Union on the
banks of the Rhine, and to assist in effecting the conquest of Juliers
and Cleves; then, in conjunction with the Germans, it was to march into
Italy, (where Savoy, Venice, and the Pope were even now ready with a
powerful reinforcement,) and to overthrow the Spanish dominion in that
quarter. This victorious army was then to penetrate by Lombardy into
the hereditary dominions of Hapsburg; and there, favoured by a general
insurrection of the Protestants, destroy the power of Austria in all its
German territories, in Bohemia, Hungary, and Transylvania. The
Brabanters and Hollanders, supported by French auxiliaries, would in the
meantime shake off the Spanish tyranny in the Netherlands; and thus the
mighty stream which, only a short time before, had so fearfully
overflowed its banks, threatening to overwhelm in its troubled waters
the liberties of Europe, would then roll silent and forgotten behind the
Pyrenean mountains.

At other times, the French had boasted of their rapidity of action, but
upon this occasion they were outstripped by the Germans. An army of the
confederates entered Alsace before Henry made his appearance there, and
an Austrian army, which the Bishop of Strasburg and Passau had assembled
in that quarter for an expedition against Juliers, was dispersed. Henry
IV. had formed his plan as a statesman and a king, but he had intrusted
its execution to plunderers. According to his design, no Roman Catholic
state was to have cause to think this preparation aimed against itself,
or to make the quarrel of Austria its own. Religion was in nowise to be
mixed up with the matter. But how could the German princes forget their
own purposes in furthering the plans of Henry? Actuated as they were by
the desire of aggrandizement and by religious hatred, was it to be
supposed that they would not gratify, in every passing opportunity,
their ruling passions to the utmost? Like vultures, they stooped upon
the territories of the ecclesiastical princes, and always chose those
rich countries for their quarters, though to reach them they must make
ever so wide a detour from their direct route. They levied
contributions as in an enemy’s country, seized upon the revenues, and
exacted, by violence, what they could not obtain of free-will. Not to
leave the Roman Catholics in doubt as to the true objects of their
expedition, they announced, openly and intelligibly enough, the fate
that awaited the property of the church. So little had Henry IV. and
the German princes understood each other in their plan of operations, so
much had the excellent king been mistaken in his instruments. It is an
unfailing maxim, that, if policy enjoins an act of violence, its
execution ought never to be entrusted to the violent; and that he only
ought to be trusted with the violation of order by whom order is held
sacred.

Both the past conduct of the Union, which was condemned even by several
of the evangelical states, and the apprehension of even worse treatment,
aroused the Roman Catholics to something beyond mere inactive
indignation. As to the Emperor, his authority had sunk too low to
afford them any security against such an enemy. It was their Union that
rendered the confederates so formidable and so insolent; and another
union must now be opposed to them.

The Bishop of Wurtzburg formed the plan of the Catholic union, which was
distinguished from the evangelical by the title of the League. The
objects agreed upon were nearly the same as those which constituted the
groundwork of the Union. Bishops formed its principal members, and at
its head was placed Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria. As the only
influential secular member of the confederacy, he was entrusted with far
more extensive powers than the Protestants had committed to their chief.
In addition to the duke’s being the sole head of the League’s military
power, whereby their operations acquired a speed and weight unattainable
by the Union, they had also the advantage that supplies flowed in much
more regularly from the rich prelates, than the latter could obtain them
from the poor evangelical states. Without offering to the Emperor, as
the sovereign of a Roman Catholic state, any share in their confederacy,
without even communicating its existence to him as emperor, the League
arose at once formidable and threatening; with strength sufficient to
crush the Protestant Union and to maintain itself under three emperors.
It contended, indeed, for Austria, in so far as it fought against the
Protestant princes; but Austria herself had soon cause to tremble before
it.

The arms of the Union had, in the meantime, been tolerably successful in
Juliers and in Alsace; Juliers was closely blockaded, and the whole
bishopric of Strasburg was in their power. But here their splendid
achievements came to an end. No French army appeared upon the Rhine;
for he who was to be its leader, he who was the animating soul of the
whole enterprize, Henry IV. , was no more! Their supplies were on the
wane; the Estates refused to grant new subsidies; and the confederate
free cities were offended that their money should be liberally, but
their advice so sparingly called for. Especially were they displeased
at being put to expense for the expedition against Juliers, which had
been expressly excluded from the affairs of the Union--at the united
princes appropriating to themselves large pensions out of the common
treasure--and, above all, at their refusing to give any account of its
expenditure.

The Union was thus verging to its fall, at the moment when the League
started to oppose it in the vigour of its strength. Want of supplies
disabled the confederates from any longer keeping the field. And yet it
was dangerous to lay down their weapons in the sight of an armed enemy.
To secure themselves at least on one side, they hastened to conclude a
peace with their old enemy, the Archduke Leopold; and both parties
agreed to withdraw their troops from Alsace, to exchange prisoners, and
to bury all that had been done in oblivion. Thus ended in nothing all
these promising preparations.

The same imperious tone with which the Union, in the confidence of its
strength, had menaced the Roman Catholics of Germany, was now retorted
by the League upon themselves and their troops. The traces of their
march were pointed out to them, and plainly branded with the hard
epithets they had deserved. The chapters of Wurtzburg, Bamberg,
Strasburg, Mentz, Treves, Cologne, and several others, had experienced
their destructive presence; to all these the damage done was to be made
good, the free passage by land and by water restored, (for the
Protestants had even seized on the navigation of the Rhine,) and
everything replaced on its former footing. Above all, the parties to
the Union were called on to declare expressly and unequivocally its
intentions. It was now their turn to yield to superior strength. They
had not calculated on so formidable an opponent; but they themselves had
taught the Roman Catholics the secret of their strength. It was
humiliating to their pride to sue for peace, but they might think
themselves fortunate in obtaining it. The one party promised
restitution, the other forgiveness. All laid down their arms. The
storm of war once more rolled by, and a temporary calm succeeded. The
insurrection in Bohemia then broke out, which deprived the Emperor of
the last of his hereditary dominions, but in this dispute neither the
Union nor the League took any share.

At length the Emperor died in 1612, as little regretted in his coffin as
noticed on the throne. Long afterwards, when the miseries of succeeding
reigns had made the misfortunes of his reign forgotten, a halo spread
about his memory, and so fearful a night set in upon Germany, that, with
tears of blood, people prayed for the return of such an emperor.

Rodolph never could be prevailed upon to choose a successor in the
empire, and all awaited with anxiety the approaching vacancy of the
throne; but, beyond all hope, Matthias at once ascended it, and without
opposition. The Roman Catholics gave him their voices, because they
hoped the best from his vigour and activity; the Protestants gave him
theirs, because they hoped every thing from his weakness. It is not
difficult to reconcile this contradiction. The one relied on what he
had once appeared; the other judged him by what he seemed at present.

The moment of a new accession is always a day of hope; and the first
Diet of a king in elective monarchies is usually his severest trial.
Every old grievance is brought forward, and new ones are sought out,
that they may be included in the expected reform; quite a new world is
expected to commence with the new reign. The important services which,
in his insurrection, their religious confederates in Austria had
rendered to Matthias, were still fresh in the minds of the Protestant
free cities, and, above all, the price which they had exacted for their
services seemed now to serve them also as a model.

It was by the favour of the Protestant Estates in Austria and Moravia
that Matthias had sought and really found the way to his brother’s
throne; but, hurried on by his ambitious views, he never reflected that
a way was thus opened for the States to give laws to their sovereign.
This discovery soon awoke him from the intoxication of success.
Scarcely had he shown himself in triumph to his Austrian subjects, after
his victorious expedition to Bohemia, when a humble petition awaited him
which was quite sufficient to poison his whole triumph. They required,
before doing homage, unlimited religious toleration in the cities and
market towns, perfect equality of rights between Roman Catholics and
Protestants, and a full and equal admissibility of the latter to all
offices of state. In several places, they of themselves assumed these
privileges, and, reckoning on a change of administration, restored the
Protestant religion where the late Emperor had suppressed it. Matthias,
it is true, had not scrupled to make use of the grievances of the
Protestants for his own ends against the Emperor; but it was far from
being his intention to relieve them. By a firm and resolute tone he
hoped to check, at once, these presumptuous demands. He spoke of his
hereditary title to these territories, and would hear of no stipulations
before the act of homage. A like unconditional submission had been
rendered by their neighbours, the inhabitants of Styria, to the Archduke
Ferdinand, who, however, had soon reason to repent of it. Warned by
this example, the Austrian States persisted in their refusal; and, to
avoid being compelled by force to do homage, their deputies (after
urging their Roman Catholic colleagues to a similar resistance)
immediately left the capital, and began to levy troops.

They took steps to renew their old alliance with Hungary, drew the
Protestant princes into their interests, and set themselves seriously to
work to accomplish their object by force of arms.

With the more exorbitant demands of the Hungarians Matthias had not
hesitated to comply. For Hungary was an elective monarchy, and the
republican constitution of the country justified to himself their
demands, and to the Roman Catholic world his concessions. In Austria,
on the contrary, his predecessors had exercised far higher prerogatives,
which he could not relinquish at the demand of the Estates without
incurring the scorn of Roman Catholic Europe, the enmity of Spain and
Rome, and the contempt of his own Roman Catholic subjects. His
exclusively Romish council, among which the Bishop of Vienna, Melchio
Kiesel, had the chief influence, exhorted him to see all the churches
extorted from him by the Protestants, rather than to concede one to them
as a matter of right.

But by ill luck this difficulty occurred at a time when the Emperor
Rodolph was yet alive, and a spectator of this scene, and who might
easily have been tempted to employ against his brother the same weapons
which the latter had successfully directed against him--namely, an
understanding with his rebellious subjects. To avoid this blow,
Matthias willingly availed himself of the offer made by Moravia, to act
as mediator between him and the Estates of Austria. Representatives of
both parties met in Vienna, when the Austrian deputies held language
which would have excited surprise even in the English Parliament. “The
Protestants,” they said, “are determined to be not worse treated in
their native country than the handful of Romanists. By the help of his
Protestant nobles had Matthias reduced the Emperor to submission; where
80 Papists were to be found, 300 Protestant barons might be counted.
The example of Rodolph should be a warning to Matthias. He should take
care that he did not lose the terrestrial, in attempting to make
conquests for the celestial. ” As the Moravian States, instead of using
their powers as mediators for the Emperor’s advantage, finally adopted
the cause of their co-religionists of Austria; as the Union in Germany
came forward to afford them its most active support, and as Matthias
dreaded reprisals on the part of the Emperor, he was at length compelled
to make the desired declaration in favour of the Evangelical Church.

This behaviour of the Austrian Estates towards their Archduke was now
imitated by the Protestant Estates of the Empire towards their Emperor,
and they promised themselves the same favourable results. At his first
Diet at Ratisbon in 1613, when the most pressing affairs were waiting
for decision--when a general contribution was indispensable for a war
against Turkey, and against Bethlem Gabor in Transylvania, who by
Turkish aid had forcibly usurped the sovereignty of that land, and even
threatened Hungary--they surprised him with an entirely new demand.
The Roman Catholic votes were still the most numerous in the Diet; and
as every thing was decided by a plurality of voices, the Protestant
party, however closely united, were entirely without consideration. The
advantage of this majority the Roman Catholics were now called on to
relinquish; henceforward no one religious party was to be permitted to
dictate to the other by means of its invariable superiority. And in
truth, if the evangelical religion was really to be represented in the
Diet, it was self-evident that it must not be shut out from the
possibility of making use of that privilege, merely from the
constitution of the Diet itself. Complaints of the judicial usurpations
of the Aulic Council, and of the oppression of the Protestants,
accompanied this demand, and the deputies of the Estates were instructed
to take no part in any general deliberations till a favourable answer
should be given on this preliminary point.

The Diet was torn asunder by this dangerous division, which threatened
to destroy for ever the unity of its deliberations. Sincerely as the
Emperor might have wished, after the example of his father Maximilian,
to preserve a prudent balance between the two religions, the present
conduct of the Protestants seemed to leave him nothing but a critical
choice between the two. In his present necessities a general
contribution from the Estates was indispensable to him; and yet he could
not conciliate the one party without sacrificing the support of the
other. Insecure as he felt his situation to be in his own hereditary
dominions, he could not but tremble at the idea, however remote, of an
open war with the Protestants. But the eyes of the whole Roman Catholic
world, which were attentively regarding his conduct, the remonstrances
of the Roman Catholic Estates, and of the Courts of Rome and Spain, as
little permitted him to favour the Protestant at the expense of the
Romish religion.

So critical a situation would have paralysed a greater mind than
Matthias; and his own prudence would scarcely have extricated him from
his dilemma. But the interests of the Roman Catholics were closely
interwoven with the imperial authority; if they suffered this to fall,
the ecclesiastical princes in particular would be without a bulwark
against the attacks of the Protestants. Now, then, that they saw the
Emperor wavering, they thought it high time to reassure his sinking
courage. They imparted to him the secret of their League, and
acquainted him with its whole constitution, resources and power. Little
comforting as such a revelation must have been to the Emperor, the
prospect of so powerful a support gave him greater boldness to oppose
the Protestants. Their demands were rejected, and the Diet broke up
without coming to a decision. But Matthias was the victim of this
dispute. The Protestants refused him their supplies, and made him alone
suffer for the inflexibility of the Roman Catholics.

The Turks, however, appeared willing to prolong the cessation of
hostilities, and Bethlem Gabor was left in peaceable possession of
Transylvania. The empire was now free from foreign enemies; and even at
home, in the midst of all these fearful disputes, peace still reigned.
An unexpected accident had given a singular turn to the dispute as to
the succession of Juliers. This duchy was still ruled conjointly by the
Electoral House of Brandenburg and the Palatine of Neuburg; and a
marriage between the Prince of Neuburg and a Princess of Brandenburg was
to have inseparably united the interests of the two houses. But the
whole scheme was upset by a box on the ear, which, in a drunken brawl,
the Elector of Brandenburg unfortunately inflicted upon his intended
son-in-law. From this moment the good understanding between the two
houses was at an end. The Prince of Neuburg embraced popery. The hand
of a princess of Bavaria rewarded his apostacy, and the strong support
of Bavaria and Spain was the natural result of both. To secure to the
Palatine the exclusive possession of Juliers, the Spanish troops from
the Netherlands were marched into the Palatinate. To rid himself of
these guests, the Elector of Brandenburg called the Flemings to his
assistance, whom he sought to propitiate by embracing the Calvinist
religion. Both Spanish and Dutch armies appeared, but, as it seemed,
only to make conquests for themselves.

The neighbouring war of the Netherlands seemed now about to be decided
on German ground; and what an inexhaustible mine of combustibles lay
here ready for it! The Protestants saw with consternation the Spaniards
establishing themselves upon the Lower Rhine; with still greater anxiety
did the Roman Catholics see the Hollanders bursting through the
frontiers of the empire. It was in the west that the mine was expected
to explode which had long been dug under the whole of Germany. To the
west, apprehension and anxiety turned; but the spark which kindled the
flame came unexpectedly from the east.

The tranquillity which Rodolph II. ’s ‘Letter of Majesty’ had established
in Bohemia lasted for some time, under the administration of Matthias,
till the nomination of a new heir to this kingdom in the person of
Ferdinand of Gratz.

This prince, whom we shall afterwards become better acquainted with
under the title of Ferdinand II. , Emperor of Germany, had, by the
violent extirpation of the Protestant religion within his hereditary
dominions, announced himself as an inexorable zealot for popery, and was
consequently looked upon by the Roman Catholic part of Bohemia as the
future pillar of their church. The declining health of the Emperor
brought on this hour rapidly; and, relying on so powerful a supporter,
the Bohemian Papists began to treat the Protestants with little
moderation. The Protestant vassals of Roman Catholic nobles, in
particular, experienced the harshest treatment. At length several of
the former were incautious enough to speak somewhat loudly of their
hopes, and by threatening hints to awaken among the Protestants a
suspicion of their future sovereign. But this mistrust would never have
broken out into actual violence, had the Roman Catholics confined
themselves to general expressions, and not by attacks on individuals
furnished the discontent of the people with enterprising leaders.

Henry Matthias, Count Thurn, not a native of Bohemia, but proprietor of
some estates in that kingdom, had, by his zeal for the Protestant cause,
and an enthusiastic attachment to his newly adopted country, gained the
entire confidence of the Utraquists, which opened him the way to the
most important posts. He had fought with great glory against the Turks,
and won by a flattering address the hearts of the multitude. Of a hot
and impetuous disposition, which loved tumult because his talents shone
in it--rash and thoughtless enough to undertake things which cold
prudence and a calmer temper would not have ventured upon--unscrupulous
enough, where the gratification of his passions was concerned, to sport
with the fate of thousands, and at the same time politic enough to hold
in leading-strings such a people as the Bohemians then were. He had
already taken an active part in the troubles under Rodolph’s
administration; and the Letter of Majesty which the States had extorted
from that Emperor, was chiefly to be laid to his merit. The court had
intrusted to him, as burgrave or castellan of Calstein, the custody of
the Bohemian crown, and of the national charter. But the nation had
placed in his hands something far more important--ITSELF--with the
office of defender or protector of the faith. The aristocracy by which
the Emperor was ruled, imprudently deprived him of this harmless
guardianship of the dead, to leave him his full influence over the
living. They took from him his office of burgrave, or constable of the
castle, which had rendered him dependent on the court, thereby opening
his eyes to the importance of the other which remained, and wounded his
vanity, which yet was the thing that made his ambition harmless. From
this moment he was actuated solely by a desire of revenge; and the
opportunity of gratifying it was not long wanting.

In the Royal Letter which the Bohemians had extorted from Rodolph II. ,
as well as in the German religious treaty, one material article remained
undetermined. All the privileges granted by the latter to the
Protestants, were conceived in favour of the Estates or governing
bodies, not of the subjects; for only to those of the ecclesiastical
states had a toleration, and that precarious, been conceded. The
Bohemian Letter of Majesty, in the same manner, spoke only of the
Estates and imperial towns, the magistrates of which had contrived to
obtain equal privileges with the former. These alone were free to erect
churches and schools, and openly to celebrate their Protestant worship;
in all other towns, it was left entirely to the government to which they
belonged, to determine the religion of the inhabitants. The Estates of
the Empire had availed themselves of this privilege in its fullest
extent; the secular indeed without opposition; while the ecclesiastical,
in whose case the declaration of Ferdinand had limited this privilege,
disputed, not without reason, the validity of that limitation. What was
a disputed point in the religious treaty, was left still more doubtful
in the Letter of Majesty; in the former, the construction was not
doubtful, but it was a question how far obedience might be compulsory;
in the latter, the interpretation was left to the states. The subjects
of the ecclesiastical Estates in Bohemia thought themselves entitled to
the same rights which the declaration of Ferdinand secured to the
subjects of German bishops, they considered themselves on an equality
with the subjects of imperial towns, because they looked upon the
ecclesiastical property as part of the royal demesnes. In the little
town of Klostergrab, subject to the Archbishop of Prague; and in
Braunau, which belonged to the abbot of that monastery, churches were
founded by the Protestants, and completed notwithstanding the opposition
of their superiors, and the disapprobation of the Emperor.

In the meantime, the vigilance of the defenders had somewhat relaxed,
and the court thought it might venture on a decisive step. By the
Emperor’s orders, the church at Klostergrab was pulled down; that at
Braunau forcibly shut up, and the most turbulent of the citizens thrown
into prison. A general commotion among the Protestants was the
consequence of this measure; a loud outcry was everywhere raised at this
violation of the Letter of Majesty; and Count Thurn, animated by
revenge, and particularly called upon by his office of defender, showed
himself not a little busy in inflaming the minds of the people. At his
instigation deputies were summoned to Prague from every circle in the
empire, to concert the necessary measures against the common danger. It
was resolved to petition the Emperor to press for the liberation of the
prisoners. The answer of the Emperor, already offensive to the states,
from its being addressed, not to them, but to his viceroy, denounced
their conduct as illegal and rebellious, justified what had been done at
Klostergrab and Braunau as the result of an imperial mandate, and
contained some passages that might be construed into threats.

Count Thurn did not fail to augment the unfavourable impression which
this imperial edict made upon the assembled Estates. He pointed out to
them the danger in which all who had signed the petition were involved,
and sought by working on their resentment and fears to hurry them into
violent resolutions. To have caused their immediate revolt against the
Emperor, would have been, as yet, too bold a measure. It was only step
by step that he would lead them on to this unavoidable result. He held
it, therefore, advisable first to direct their indignation against the
Emperor’s counsellors; and for that purpose circulated a report, that
the imperial proclamation had been drawn up by the government at Prague,
and only signed in Vienna. Among the imperial delegates, the chief
objects of the popular hatred, were the President of the Chamber,
Slawata, and Baron Martinitz, who had been elected in place of Count
Thurn, Burgrave of Calstein. Both had long before evinced pretty openly
their hostile feelings towards the Protestants, by alone refusing to be
present at the sitting at which the Letter of Majesty had been inserted
in the Bohemian constitution. A threat was made at the time to make
them responsible for every violation of the Letter of Majesty; and from
this moment, whatever evil befell the Protestants was set down, and not
without reason, to their account. Of all the Roman Catholic nobles,
these two had treated their Protestant vassals with the greatest
harshness. They were accused of hunting them with dogs to the mass, and
of endeavouring to drive them to popery by a denial of the rites of
baptism, marriage, and burial. Against two characters so unpopular the
public indignation was easily excited, and they were marked out for a
sacrifice to the general indignation.

On the 23rd of May, 1618, the deputies appeared armed, and in great
numbers, at the royal palace, and forced their way into the hall where
the Commissioners Sternberg, Martinitz, Lobkowitz, and Slawata were
assembled. In a threatening tone they demanded to know from each of
them, whether he had taken any part, or had consented to, the imperial
proclamation. Sternberg received them with composure, Martinitz and
Slawata with defiance. This decided their fate; Sternberg and
Lobkowitz, less hated, and more feared, were led by the arm out of the
room; Martinitz and Slawata were seized, dragged to a window, and
precipitated from a height of eighty feet, into the castle trench.
Their creature, the secretary Fabricius, was thrown after them. This
singular mode of execution naturally excited the surprise of civilized
nations. The Bohemians justified it as a national custom, and saw
nothing remarkable in the whole affair, excepting that any one should
have got up again safe and sound after such a fall. A dunghill, on
which the imperial commissioners chanced to be deposited, had saved them
from injury.

It was not to be expected that this summary mode of proceeding would
much increase the favour of the parties with the Emperor, but this was
the very position to which Count Thurn wished to bring them. If, from
the fear of uncertain danger, they had permitted themselves such an act
of violence, the certain expectation of punishment, and the now urgent
necessity of making themselves secure, would plunge them still deeper
into guilt. By this brutal act of self-redress, no room was left for
irresolution or repentance, and it seemed as if a single crime could be
absolved only by a series of violences. As the deed itself could not be
undone, nothing was left but to disarm the hand of punishment. Thirty
directors were appointed to organise a regular insurrection.