A History of Germany from the Earliest Times to the Present Day

by Bayard Taylor

Meanwhile the Emperor Rudolf II. was becoming so old, so whimsical and so useless, that in 1606 the princes of the house of Hapsburg held a meeting, declared him incapable of governing, "on account of occasional imbecilities of mind," and appointed his brother Matthias regent for Austria, Hungary and Moravia. The Emperor refused to yield, but, with the help of the nobility, who were mostly Protestants, Matthias maintained his claim. He was obliged, in return, to grant religious freedom, which so encouraged the oppressed Protestants in Bohemia that they demanded similar rights from the Emperor. In his helpless situation he gave way to the demand, but soon became alarmed at the increase of the heretics, and tried to take back his concession. The Bohemians called Matthias to their assistance, and in 1611 Rudolf lost his remaining kingdom and his favorite residence of Prague. As he looked upon the city for the last time, he cried out: "May the vengeance of God overtake thee, and my curse light on thee and all Bohemia!" In less than a year (on the 20th of January, 1612) he died.

Matthias was elected Emperor of Germany, as a matter of course. The house of Hapsburg was now the strongest German power which represented the Church of Rome, and the Catholic majority in the Diet secured to it the Imperial dignity then and thenceforward. The Protestants, however, voted also for Matthias, for the reason that he had already shown a tolerant policy towards their brethren in Austria, Hungary and Bohemia. His first measures, as Emperor, justified this view of his character. He held a Diet at Ratisbon for the purpose of settling the existing differences between the two, but nothing was accomplished: the Protestants, finding that they would be outvoted, withdrew in a body and thus broke up the Diet. Matthias next endeavored to dissolve both the "Union" and the "League," in which he was only partially successful. At the same time his rule in Hungary was menaced by a revolt of the Transylvanian chief, Bethlen Gabor, who was assisted by the Turks: he grew weary of his task, and was easily persuaded by the other princes of his house to adopt his nephew, Duke Ferdinand of Styria, as his successor, in the year 1617, having no children of his own.

1618. BEGINNING OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.

Ferdinand, who had been carefully educated by the Jesuits for the part which he was afterwards to play, and whose violent suppression of the Protestant faith in Styria made him acceptable to all the German Catholics, was a man of great energy and force of character. He was stern, bigoted, cruel, yet shrewd, cunning and apparently conciliatory when he found it necessary to be so, resembling, in both respects, his predecessor, Charles V. of Spain. In return for being chosen by the Bohemians to succeed Matthias as king, he confirmed them in the religious freedom which they had extorted from Rudolf II., and then joined the Emperor in an expedition to Hungary, leaving Bohemia to be governed in the interim by a Council of ten, seven Catholics and three Protestants.

The first thing that happened was the destruction of two Protestant churches by Catholic Bishops. The Bohemian Protestants appealed immediately to the Emperor Matthias, but, instead of redress, he gave them only threats. Thereupon they rose in Prague, stormed the Council Hall, seized two of the Councillors and one of their Secretaries, and hurled them out of the windows. Although they fell a distance of twenty-eight feet, they were not killed, and all finally escaped. This event happened on the 23d of May, 1618, and marks the beginning of the Thirty Years' War. After such long chronicles of violence and slaughter, the deed seemed of slight importance; but the hundredth anniversary of the Reformation (counting from Luther's proclamation against Tetzel, on the 31st of October, 1517) had been celebrated by the Protestants the year before, England was lost and France barely restored to the Church of Rome, the power of Spain was declining, and the Catholic priests and princes were resolved to make one more desperate struggle to regain their supremacy in Germany. Only the Protestant princes, as a body, seemed blind to the coming danger. Relying on the fact that four-fifths of the whole population of the Empire were Protestants, they still persisted in regarding all the political forms of the Middle Ages as holy, and in accepting nearly every measure which gave advantage to their enemies.

1619.

Although the Protestants had only three Councillors out of ten, they were largely in the majority in Bohemia. They knew what retaliation the outbreak in Prague would bring upon them, and anticipated it by making the revolution general. They chose Count Thun as their leader, overturned the Imperial government, banished the Jesuits from the country, and entered into relations with the Protestant nobles of Austria, and the insurgent chief Bethlen Gabor in Hungary. The Emperor Matthias was willing to compromise the difficulty, but Ferdinand, stimulated by the Jesuits, declared for war. He sent two small armies into Bohemia, with a proclamation calling upon the people to submit. The Protestants of the North were at last aroused from their lethargy. Count Mansfeld marched with a force of 4,000 men to aid the Bohemians, and 3,000 more came from Silesia; the Imperial army was defeated and driven back to the Danube. At this juncture the Emperor Matthias died, on the 20th of May, 1619.

Ferdinand lost not a day in taking the power into his own hands. But Austria threatened revolution, Hungary had made common cause with Bohemia, Count Thun was marching on Vienna, and he was without an army to support his claims. Count Thun, however, instead of attacking Vienna, encamped outside the walls and began to negotiate. Ferdinand, hard pressed by the demands of the Austrian Protestants, was on the very point of yielding—in fact, a member of a deputation of sixteen noblemen had seized him by the coat,—when trumpets were heard, and a body of 500 cavalry, which had reached the city without being intercepted by the besiegers, appeared before the palace. This enabled him to defend the city, until the defeat of Count Mansfeld by another portion of his army, which had entered Bohemia, compelled Count Thun to raise the siege. Then Ferdinand hastened to Frankfort to look after his election as Emperor by the Diet, which met on the 28th of August, 1619.

It seems almost incredible that now, knowing his character and designs, the three Chief Electors who were Protestants should have voted for him, without being conscious that they were traitors to their faith and their people. It has been charged, but without any clear evidence, that they were bribed: it is probable that Ferdinand, whose Jesuitic education taught him that falsehood and perjury are permitted in serving the Church, misled them by promises of peace and justice; but it is also very likely that they imagined their own sovereignty depended on sustaining every tradition of the Empire. The people, of course, had not yet acquired any rights which a prince felt himself called upon to respect.

1620. FREDERICK V. DRIVEN FROM BOHEMIA.