Rudolf thereupon appealed to the Duke of Brunswick to advance him money; and the Duke succeeded in getting various promises which soon amounted to the sum required. When he arrived at Passau, he found that Leopold and several of the other commanders had left for Prague; that Colonel Ramée, who was in command, would not listen to proposals of delay; and that the paymaster of the forces was being hindered from receiving the money which had been raised for the troops. At last, when the soldiers had been worked up to a state of frenzy by the non-fulfilment of the promises of payment, Ramée suddenly led them into Upper Austria, where they committed every kind of cruelty on the defenceless inhabitants. Rudolf had cherished the wild hope that the discontent of the Austrian Protestants with Matthias would make them willing to revolt from him; but he soon found that, whatever might be their disagreements with their present ruler, they at any rate preferred him to Rudolf. So, after failing to obtain any success in Austria, Leopold suddenly changed his plans; and in February, 1611, the Bohemian Assembly were startled by the news that the Passau forces had entered Bohemia, had seized Krumov, and had soon after captured Budejóvice and Tabor. A little later came the news that Ramée was on his march to Prague.
Leopold offered to go out to meet the troops, and to order them to return to Krumov; but on February 13th he suddenly reappeared before Prague at the head of the very forces that he had pretended to disband. Two days later they broke into the Small Division of the town; and, though gallantly resisted by Count Thurn at the head of both soldiers and citizens, Leopold succeeded in mastering that division of the city. But in the Old and New Town the citizens rallied and drove back the Passauer. The old fierce spirit now awoke in Prague; and, as soon as Leopold and his forces had been expelled from the Old Town, the citizens attacked and destroyed several of the monasteries; and the troops of the Assembly with difficulty succeeded in saving the Jesuit College from a similar fate. Leopold now marched against the Castle, and, after a short parley, persuaded the troops to surrender. A herald was next despatched to the Karlsbrücke to demand that the Old Town should receive a Passau garrison. Count Thurn and two of the other generals were wounded, and prisoners in the hands of the enemy; and Budovĕc had been sent into Moravia shortly before the advance of the Passauer. But though deprived of their leaders, both military and spiritual, the Praguer still held out against the enemy. The Imperial herald was dismissed with scorn; and when Ramée threatened to fire upon the town, several workmen announced that, at the first shot, every Catholic in the city should be put to death. Rudolf himself became shocked at the cruelties which had been committed, and refused to allow Ramée to set the town on fire. The peasantry flocked in from the surrounding districts to help in the defence; while they cut off and killed all the supporters of the Passauer whom they could find in the outskirts of the town. Budovĕc returned from Moravia at this crisis, and encouraged the Praguer by promises of fresh help, and it soon became known that Matthias was on his march to Prague.
Leopold, as cowardly as he was cruel, now proposed to desert the cause of Rudolf, and offered his services to Matthias. The latter, however, would have nothing to say to him; and Ramée, in his turn becoming alarmed, tried to make sure of his spoil by sending it in waggons out of the city. The Praguer, however, succeeded in intercepting these waggons, and in arresting, at the same time, one of Leopold’s intriguers. The prisoner at once confessed the whole plot; and Ramée, fearing the results of the discovery, secretly marched away from the city. In order to persuade his troops to go the more readily, he produced a portion of their long withheld pay. This suddenly revealed to them the base intrigue of which they had been at once the victims and the tools; and they called upon their colonel to lead them back to Prague, to execute vengeance on Leopold. Leopold however, succeeded in escaping secretly from the city, and went to Budejóvice, where he still hoped to make a stand; but when the Pope himself wrote to tell him that he had injured and disgraced the Catholic cause, the miserable creature felt the helplessness of his position, and tried to convince the Pope that he had been in no way responsible for the march of the Passauer.
In the meantime, Matthias was welcomed as a deliverer. On April 12, 1611, the Bohemian Assembly once more met; and, after some wrangling between the Estates of the different provinces, about the language to be used and the methods to be followed, they deposed Rudolf from the throne of Bohemia; and on May 22nd he himself consented to free his subjects from their allegiance, and to allow Matthias to be crowned in his place. Even now the unfortunate Emperor still hoped to redeem his position by fresh intrigues; and he seems actually to have entertained the idea of appealing to Christian of Anhalt, and the Protestants, against Matthias; but ill health, misfortunes, and growing old age interfered to cut short any further plots; and his miserable life at last ended in January, 1612.
