At this critical moment, when only a supple policy, united with
a vigorous arm, could have maintained the tranquillity of the Empire,
its evil genius gave it a Rodolph for Emperor.  At a more peaceful period
the Germanic Union would have managed its own interests, and Rodolph,
like so many others of his rank, might have hidden his deficiencies
in a mysterious obscurity.  But the urgent demand for the qualities
in which he was most deficient revealed his incapacity.
The position of Germany called for an emperor who, by his known energies,
could give weight to his resolves; and the hereditary dominions of Rodolph,
considerable as they were, were at present in a situation to occasion
the greatest embarrassment to the governors.

The Austrian princes, it is true were Roman Catholics, and in addition
to that, the supporters of Popery, but their countries were far from being so.
The reformed opinions had penetrated even these, and favoured by
Ferdinand's necessities and Maximilian's mildness, had met with
a rapid success.  The Austrian provinces exhibited in miniature
what Germany did on a larger scale.  The great nobles and the ritter class
or knights were chiefly evangelical, and in the cities the Protestants had
a decided preponderance.  If they succeeded in bringing a few of their party
into the country, they contrived imperceptibly to fill all places of trust
and the magistracy with their own adherents, and to exclude the Catholics.
Against the numerous order of the nobles and knights,
and the deputies from the towns, the voice of a few prelates was powerless;
and the unseemly ridicule and offensive contempt of the former soon drove them
entirely from the provincial diets.  Thus the whole of the Austrian Diet had
imperceptibly become Protestant, and the Reformation was making rapid strides
towards its public recognition.  The prince was dependent on the Estates,
who had it in their power to grant or refuse supplies.  Accordingly,
they availed themselves of the financial necessities of Ferdinand and his son
to extort one religious concession after another.  To the nobles and knights,
Maximilian at last conceded the free exercise of their religion,
but only within their own territories and castles.  The intemperate enthusiasm
of the Protestant preachers overstepped the boundaries which prudence
had prescribed.  In defiance of the express prohibition, several of them
ventured to preach publicly, not only in the towns, but in Vienna itself,
and the people flocked in crowds to this new doctrine,
the best seasoning of which was personality and abuse.  Thus continued food
was supplied to fanaticism, and the hatred of two churches,
that were such near neighbours, was farther envenomed by the sting
of an impure zeal.

Among the hereditary dominions of the House of Austria,
Hungary and Transylvania were the most unstable, and the most difficult
to retain.  The impossibility of holding these two countries
against the neighbouring and overwhelming power of the Turks,
had already driven Ferdinand to the inglorious expedient of recognizing,
by an annual tribute, the Porte's supremacy over Transylvania;
a shameful confession of weakness, and a still more dangerous temptation
to the turbulent nobility, when they fancied they had any reason to complain
of their master.  Not without conditions had the Hungarians submitted
to the House of Austria.  They asserted the elective freedom of their crown,
and boldly contended for all those prerogatives of their order
which are inseparable from this freedom of election.  The near neighbourhood
of Turkey, the facility of changing masters with impunity,
encouraged the magnates still more in their presumption; discontented with
the Austrian government they threw themselves into the arms of the Turks;
dissatisfied with these, they returned again to their German sovereigns.
The frequency and rapidity of these transitions from one government
to another, had communicated its influences also to their mode of thinking;
and as their country wavered between the Turkish and Austrian rule,
so their minds vacillated between revolt and submission.
The more unfortunate each nation felt itself in being degraded into a province
of a foreign kingdom, the stronger desire did they feel to obey
a monarch chosen from amongst themselves, and thus it was always easy
for an enterprising noble to obtain their support.  The nearest Turkish pasha
was always ready to bestow the Hungarian sceptre and crown on a rebel
against Austria; just as ready was Austria to confirm to any adventurer
the possession of provinces which he had wrested from the Porte,
satisfied with preserving thereby the shadow of authority,
and with erecting at the same time a barrier against the Turks.
In this way several of these magnates, Batbori, Boschkai, Ragoczi, and Bethlen
succeeded in establishing themselves, one after another,
as tributary sovereigns in Transylvania and Hungary;
and they maintained their ground by no deeper policy
than that of occasionally joining the enemy, in order to render themselves
more formidable to their own prince.

Ferdinand, Maximilian, and Rodolph, who were all sovereigns
of Hungary and Transylvania, exhausted their other territories
in endeavouring to defend these from the hostile inroads of the Turks,
and to put down intestine rebellion.  In this quarter
destructive wars were succeeded but by brief truces,
which were scarcely less hurtful:  far and wide the land lay waste,
while the injured serf had to complain equally of his enemy and his protector.
Into these countries also the Reformation had penetrated;
and protected by the freedom of the States, and under the cover
of the internal disorders, had made a noticeable progress.
Here too it was incautiously attacked, and party spirit thus became
yet more dangerous from religious enthusiasm.  Headed by a bold rebel,
Boschkai, the nobles of Hungary and Transylvania raised the standard
of rebellion.  The Hungarian insurgents were upon the point of making
common cause with the discontented Protestants in Austria, Moravia,
and Bohemia, and uniting all those countries in one fearful revolt.
The downfall of popery in these lands would then have been inevitable.

Long had the Austrian archdukes, the brothers of the Emperor,
beheld with silent indignation the impending ruin of their house;
this last event hastened their decision.  The Archduke Matthias,
Maximilian's second son, Viceroy in Hungary, and Rodolph's presumptive heir,
now came forward as the stay of the falling house of Hapsburg.  In his youth,
misled by a false ambition, this prince, disregarding the interests
of his family, had listened to the overtures of the Flemish insurgents,
who invited him into the Netherlands to conduct the defence of their liberties
against the oppression of his own relative, Philip the Second.
Mistaking the voice of an insulated faction for that of the entire nation,
Matthias obeyed the call.  But the event answered the expectations
of the men of Brabant as little as his own, and from this imprudent enterprise
he retired with little credit.

Far more honourable was his second appearance in the political world.
Perceiving that his repeated remonstrances with the Emperor were unavailing,
he assembled the archdukes, his brothers and cousins, at Presburg,
and consulted with them on the growing perils of their house,
when they unanimously assigned to him, as the oldest,
the duty of defending that patrimony which a feeble brother was endangering.
In his hands they placed all their powers and rights,
and vested him with sovereign authority, to act at his discretion
for the common good.  Matthias immediately opened a communication with
the Porte and the Hungarian rebels, and through his skilful management
succeeded in saving, by a peace with the Turks, the remainder of Hungary,
and by a treaty with the rebels, preserved the claims of Austria
to the lost provinces.  But Rodolph, as jealous as he had hitherto
been careless of his sovereign authority, refused to ratify this treaty,
which he regarded as a criminal encroachment on his sovereign rights.
He accused the Archduke of keeping up a secret understanding with the enemy,
and of cherishing treasonable designs on the crown of Hungary.

The activity of Matthias was, in truth, anything but disinterested;
the conduct of the Emperor only accelerated the execution
of his ambitious views.  Secure, from motives of gratitude,
of the devotion of the Hungarians, for whom he had so lately obtained
the blessings of peace; assured by his agents of the favourable disposition
of the nobles, and certain of the support of a large party, even in Austria,
he now ventured to assume a bolder attitude, and, sword in hand,
to discuss his grievances with the Emperor.  The Protestants
in Austria and Moravia, long ripe for revolt, and now won over to the Archduke
by his promises of toleration, loudly and openly espoused his cause,
and their long-menaced alliance with the Hungarian rebels
was actually effected.  Almost at once a formidable conspiracy
was planned and matured against the Emperor.  Too late did he resolve
to amend his past errors; in vain did he attempt to break up
this fatal alliance.  Already the whole empire was in arms;
Hungary, Austria, and Moravia had done homage to Matthias,
who was already on his march to Bohemia to seize the Emperor in his palace,
and to cut at once the sinews of his power.

Bohemia was not a more peaceable possession for Austria than Hungary;
with this difference only, that, in the latter, political considerations,
in the former, religious dissensions, fomented disorders.
In Bohemia, a century before the days of Luther, the first spark
of the religious war had been kindled; a century after Luther,
the first flames of the thirty years' war burst out in Bohemia.
The sect which owed its rise to John Huss, still existed in that country; --
it agreed with the Romish Church in ceremonies and doctrines,
with the single exception of the administration of the Communion,
in which the Hussites communicated in both kinds.  This privilege
had been conceded to the followers of Huss by the Council of Basle,
in an express treaty, (the Bohemian Compact); and though it was afterwards
disavowed by the popes, they nevertheless continued to profit by it
under the sanction of the government.  As the use of the cup
formed the only important distinction of their body,
they were usually designated by the name of Utraquists;
and they readily adopted an appellation which reminded them
of their dearly valued privilege.  But under this title lurked also
the far stricter sects of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren,
who differed from the predominant church in more important particulars,
and bore, in fact, a great resemblance to the German Protestants.
Among them both, the German and Swiss opinions on religion
made rapid progress; while the name of Utraquists, under which they managed
to disguise the change of their principles, shielded them from persecution.

In truth, they had nothing in common with the Utraquists but the name;
essentially, they were altogether Protestant.  Confident in the strength
of their party, and the Emperor's toleration under Maximilian,
they had openly avowed their tenets.  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* 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.

* Grand-master of the kitchen.

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.  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.

* Saxony, Brandenburg, and the Palatinate were already Protestant.

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.