Cassell's History of England, Vol. 2 (of 8) / From the Wars of the Roses to the Great Rebellion

by Anonymous

This bold deed kindled a flame throughout all Bohemia, Moravia, Lusatia, and Silesia. Thurm sent forth a proclamation assuring the Protestants that the die was cast; that they had nothing but vengeance and oppression to expect from Austria; and therefore the time was come to throw off the Austrian yoke, to resume the independence of Bohemia, and make common cause with the Protestants of Germany and the Netherlands. The people flocked to Prague; the palace was occupied by the troops of the different provinces; an oath was taken from the magistrates and officials to obey the States alone; the taxes were ordered to be paid only to those appointed by them; the Jesuits were chased from the country; a council of thirty members was elected to assume the government, and Thurm placed at their head. All this passed with lightning rapidity and caused the utmost consternation in Vienna.

Matthias was sickly and feeble both in body and mind, but his cousin Ferdinand—who had already assumed the title of King of Bohemia, a bigot of the very first water, and whose name soon became the rallying cry of all bigotry in Europe—caught at the opportunity as one sent by Heaven, to enable him to exterminate Protestantism in Austria. He sent off to the Spanish Court in the Netherlands demands for co-operation in this great work, and armies were prepared in Austria; whilst Thurm and the Bohemians, on their part, mustered with all eagerness their forces. Matthias proposed to settle the difference by arbitration, but Ferdinand rejected any such means, seized Cardinal Klesel the Emperor's adviser, and sent him prisoner into the Tyrol, so that the poor invalid Matthias remained a puppet in their hands. He died in March, 1619. Ferdinand, the prince of bigots, to whom whole nations of lives were only as so much dust in comparison with the sacredness of his dogmas, mounted the throne, being elected emperor in August of that year. Now all Europe stood in expectation of the bloody decision of this quarrel,—a quarrel which was destined to spread over all Germany, draw into its vortex Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, and England, and to be for ever remembered in the world as the most terrible of contests, the "Thirty Years' War."

At this moment, when the Protestants of Germany were joined in a Union for the maintenance of their principles, but were opposed by the far more powerful League of the Catholic princes; when Ferdinand, Emperor of Austria, supported by the Elector Maximilian of Bavaria, the head of the League in Germany, was promised the co-operation of Spain; at this moment the Crown of Bohemia was offered to Frederick, the palsgrave, and he foolishly accepted it. He was a mere youth of twenty, with more ambition than ability; but he was spurred on by his wife, Elizabeth of England, who told him he had courage enough to aspire to the hand of a king's daughter, but not to grasp a crown when offered, and who, when reminded by him of the electoral province which they possessed in safety, exclaimed, "Better a crown with a crust, than a petty electorate with abundance."

This fatal crown, which Elizabeth came to wear, and to have the crust speedily afterwards, had been already offered to John George, Elector of Saxony, who was too shrewd to accept it. Count Thurm had for a time carried all before him, and had even marched into Austria and besieged the Emperor in Vienna; but this success was soon over. The Catholic princes had armed in defence of the Emperor; the students of Vienna and fifteen hundred citizens volunteered in his cause; the distinguished Spanish General Spinola was already on his march to invade the palsgrave's hereditary State, so despised by the Princess Elizabeth; and Count Mansfeld, the general of the German Protestants, was defeated on the Bohemian soil, when Frederick the Elector was crowned king of that country in Prague, on the 25th of October, 1619. He reigned only till the 8th of November of the following year, when he was expelled from his capital by the Austrian and Bavarian forces under Maximilian and General Bucquoi. They had defeated the Protestant generals in Upper Austria and Bohemia, while Frederick—who obtained the name of the "Winter King," because he only reigned one winter—had lost the confidence of his subjects by his luxurious effeminacy, his inattention to government, his impolitic treatment of the native nobles and generals, and his bigoted partiality to the Calvinistic party. Even the Protestant Elector of Saxony, who had refused the crown, allied himself to the Catholic Emperor against him. He was roused from table only by the news of the battle before his walls, rushed out only to see his army scattered, and fled. The Counts Thurm and Hohenlohe counselled him still to make a stand in Glatz, but he was no hero to fight, even for a kingdom; he continued his flight to Breslau, thence to Berlin, and did not stop till he reached Holland. Elizabeth, his queen, now reduced to the crust, far advanced in pregnancy, and deeply pitied by all generous and chivalric minds, accompanied him in his ignominious flight.

Meanwhile, James had been a prey to the most conflicting interests. His Protestant subjects, as ill informed of the state of parties on the Continent as the unfortunate Frederick himself, had received with an outburst of joy the news of the palsgrave being crowned King of Bohemia; and Archbishop Abbot gave the very text from the Apocalypse in which this event, so favourable to the Reformed faith, was predicted. James was urged to send an army to his son-in-law's support, but he saw no chance of keeping him on the Bohemian throne. The Bohemians were divided into three violent parties—Calvinists, Lutherans, and Catholics. The Protestants of Germany were equally divided; some of them had voluntarily offered their aid to the Emperor, and others had submitted to his victorious generals. Spinola was marching on the Palatinate, and James was distracted by the fear of his daughter and son-in-law being reduced to beggary. Yet if he attempted to prop the King of Bohemia on his tottering throne, he should offend the Catholic King of Spain, the sworn ally of the Emperor, and with whom he was at this very time seeking an alliance. Without being able to save his Protestant son-in-law, he should thus lose a Catholic daughter-in-law. If he lay still, all men would call him an unnatural father, all Protestants would declare him an apostate to his religion. Never was man in such a strait. One moment he declared to the Spanish ambassador that the Elector was a fool and a villain, and that he would abandon him to his fate; at another he assured the Protestant envoys from Germany that he would support him to the utmost. At length he hit upon the only rational course; which was, not to attempt an impossibility—the support of Frederick on the baseless throne of Bohemia—but to send a force to defend his patrimonial territories from the Spaniards. The first enterprise was, in fact, soon out of the question: Prague had fallen, his son-in-law and daughter were fugitives; but the second object was still possible, and more necessary than ever.

He sent an army of four thousand men under the Earls of Oxford and Essex to the rescue of the Palatinate. This force was altogether inadequate to cope with the numerous army of the able Spinola; and yet James had exhausted all his means and all his efforts in raising it. Money he had none, and had been compelled to seek a loan and a voluntary subscription. By the autumn the Lower Palatinate was overrun by the Spaniards, and Bohemia had sought and received pardon from the Imperial Court. James's real hope was that Spain would join him in mediating a peace.

THE FRANZENSRING, VIENNA.

In this state of affairs James was compelled to summon a Parliament. It assembled on the 30th of January, 1621, the king having used all the unconstitutional means in his power to influence the return of members. In his opening speech he now admitted what he had so stoutly denied before, the presence of Undertakers in the last Parliament, "a strange kind of beasts which had done mischief." In that shallow, wheedling tone, that rather showed the hollowness of the man than conciliated, as it was meant to do, he even enlarged his confessions and admitted that he had been swayed by evil counsellors. He then demanded liberal supplies to carry on the war in the Palatinate, for which the people had indeed loudly called. The Commons expressed their readiness, but first demanded that the king should enforce the penalties against the Papists with additional rigour, observing that they were the Papists in Germany who had deprived the Elector Palatine of his crown, and were now seeking to deprive him of his hereditary domains. They recommended that no recusants should be allowed to come within ten miles of London, that they should not be permitted to attend Mass in their own houses or in the chapels of ambassadors; and they offered to pass a Bill, giving to the Crown two-thirds of the property of recusants. They then granted him two subsidies, but no tenths or fifteenths—a sum wholly inadequate to the necessities of the war, much less of his expenditure in general. Yet James, to keep them in good humour—hoping to obtain more before the close of the Session—professed to be more satisfied with it than if it had been millions, because it was so freely granted.

The Commons showed more alacrity in complaining of the breach of their privileges. They reminded the king of the four members of their House whom he had imprisoned after the last Session of Parliament, and insisted that such a practice rendered the liberty of speech amongst them a mere fiction. As it was James's policy to remain on good terms with them, he made a solemn assurance that he would respect their freedom in that matter. Yet, the next day, the House, as if to show that they themselves were ready to destroy the liberty within, which they so warmly contended against being infringed from without, expelled one of their members named Shepherd, for declaring, in a speech against a Bill for restraining the abuses of the Sabbath, that the Sabbath was Saturday, and not Sunday; that the Scriptures recommended dancing on the Sabbath day; and that this Bill was in direct opposition to the king's ordinances for the keeping of Sunday.