Bohemia, from the earliest times to the fall of national independence in 1620 / With a short summary of later events

by C. Edmund Maurice

Although Matthias seemed now to be securely seated on the throne of Bohemia, he was quite aware that his difficulties were by no means at an end. He had been put forward, originally, as the candidate rather of his family than of the Bohemian people; and his necessary concessions to popular feeling, in the matter of civil and religious liberty, had often roused the opposition of his kinsmen.

The difficulties of his position had been somewhat mitigated during his first triumphs in Moravia by the judicious statesmanship, administrative ability, and personal popularity of Z̆erotin. On the one hand he had persuaded his friends to keep in the background their extremer demands for religious liberty; and on the other hand he had contrived, by ingenious exercises of administrative power, to strain the actual concessions of the new ruler to such an extent that they proved a better check on the tyranny of nobles and priests than the (verbally) larger concessions of Rudolf’s Letter of Majesty. Illyezhazy and the Hungarian Protestants had consented to follow the lead of Z̆erotin in these matters; but in Austria Matthias had already had a foretaste of the embarrassments which were to be increased by his conquest of Bohemia.

Tschernembl, who led the Protestants of Upper Austria, was by no means disposed to be content with half measures, either in civil or religious liberty. He was a strong Calvinist; and while he had none of Z̆erotin’s scruples about religious wars, he was also far more indifferent than the Moravian noble to kings in general, and to the House of Hapsburg in particular. Under his leadership the Protestants of Upper Austria demanded the fullest securities for their liberties, before they would accept Matthias as their Duke; and they seized on a castle in Linz, as a pledge for future concessions. In Lower Austria the Protestants were, at this time, less numerous or less determined; for when, in September, 1608, Matthias summoned representatives of both the Austrian provinces to meet at Vienna, he found himself able to resist and defeat the demands of the Protestants. Upon this, Tschernembl and his friends at once left the city, and took up their quarters at Horn, from which step they became known as the “Horner.” This policy of Tschernembl’s produced some coolness between him and Z̆erotin; Tschernembl was in consequence thrown into closer relations with the German Protestants; so when, in November, 1608, Peter Vok von Rosenberg invited Christian of Anhalt to meet Z̆erotin and Tschernembl at Tr̆ebon̆, the Austrian consented to come, but the Moravian refused.

Z̆erotin, however, while anxious to hinder violent opposition to Matthias, had no wish to hinder the growth of Austrian liberty nor to break the link between the Austrian and Bohemian Protestants; so he strongly urged Matthias to concede the demands of Tschernembl and his friends, in a peaceable manner. This advice was the more important because Tschernembl was inclined, in a moment of irritation, to listen to advances from Rudolf; but he soon discovered the folly of that course, and at the same time he began to lose faith in the promises of Christian of Anhalt. Thus Z̆erotin was able once more to bring his king and his friend together; and in March, 1609, Matthias granted much wider liberties to the Austrian Protestants than he had yet conceded in Moravia.

But this triumph of Z̆erotin’s policy brought on him the fierce hostility of Bishop Khlesl, who even refused to give the Sacrament to Matthias and his councillors, on the occasion of the festival of reconciliation between the Duke of Austria and his subjects. Nor was Z̆erotin contented with Matthias’s own action; for the latter began to show signs, at that time, of an inclination to treat with Rudolph; and a proposal of the Moravian Assembly to disband some of its forces just before the outbreak of the Passau rising, was in vain resisted by Z̆erotin. When, then, Matthias finally succeeded in winning the crown of Bohemia, he found himself surrounded by Councillors who were bitterly opposed to each other, and who had each their own reasons for distrusting their King.

Nor were Matthias’s difficulties confined to those larger questions of civil and religious liberty which affected the whole kingdom. The reunion of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia under one king, at once reawakened controversies which had, for some time, fallen into the background. Silesia was by no means disposed to abandon that position of equal alliance with Bohemia which had been granted in the hour of danger; and Moravia did not desire to exchange the complete independence which she had gained by separation, for the subordinate condition in which the Bohemians wished to place her. Concessions therefore had to be made to the local feeling of the dependent provinces—concessions which might conceivably have worked well in a time of complete peace, but which, in a time of continual disorder and mutual suspicion, led necessarily to further difficulties.

But Khlesl saw that these local divisions, though they might at first sight seem to embarrass Matthias, could yet be made, by judicious management, to promote those schemes for the increase of the royal power which the ambitious bishop had been always devising. It was in Hungary that he specially hoped to lay the foundations of a firmer despotism; and the method by which he hoped to accomplish it was a war for the conquest and annexation of Transylvania. For this purpose he stirred up the Transylvanians against their Prince, and then backed the insurgents by an invasion of their territory. The suspicions of the Hungarian Protestants were, however, quickly aroused; and Matthias was deserted by his troops. Then he appealed to Moravia for help, on the ground of the dangers to which their province would be exposed by a Turkish invasion, and the consequent need of consolidating the Hungarian power for their protection.

Here again Khlesl was, for the time, defeated by Z̆erotin, who opposed the war on the ground that no Hungarian Assembly had sanctioned it; but when Z̆erotin followed up this victory by attempting to revive his scheme for a common Assembly of all Matthias’s subjects, he was successfully opposed by the Bohemians, who declined any close union with Austria or Hungary.

But if, for the time, Khlesl’s hopes for strengthening Matthias, by the divisions among his subjects, had been scarcely realised to the full, he soon found a new encouragement in the increased power and dignity which the King of Bohemia gained by his election to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. Z̆erotin, indeed, had himself supported Matthias’s candidature in order to exclude a more dangerous claimant; but, nevertheless, the election was felt to be a distinct gain to the Catholic and despotic party; and Khlesl took advantage of it to renew his attacks on the Protestants. In these attacks he was backed by Dietrichstein, the Bishop of Olmütz, who hoped that Matthias would help him to increase his power over the clergy and their dependants.

But again Z̆erotin succeeded in resisting the clerical encroachments in Moravia; and his opposition so impressed the Archduke Maximilian that he used his influence with Matthias to obtain concessions to the Protestants. Matthias, however, soon found that no concessions would induce the Moravian Estates to sanction the Hungarian war; and even an appeal to the Presburg Assembly had no better success.