Just before the abdication of Charles V, the Lutheran princes had forced the emperor to acknowledge their right to their own religion and to the church property which they had appropriated. The religious Peace of Augsburg had, however, as we have seen,[328] two great weaknesses. In the first place, only those Protestants who held the Lutheran faith were to be tolerated. The Calvinists, who were increasing in numbers, were not included in the peace. In the second place, the peace did not put a stop to the seizure of church property by the Protestant princes.
Spread of Protestantism.
During the last years of Ferdinand I's reign and that of his successor there was little trouble. Protestantism, however, made rapid progress and invaded Bavaria, the Austrian possessions, and above all, Bohemia, where the doctrines of Huss had never died out. So it looked for a time as if even the German Hapsburgs were to see large portions of their territory falling away from the old Church. But the Catholics had in the Jesuits a band of active and efficient missionaries. They not only preached and founded schools, but also succeeded in gaining the confidence of some of the German princes, whose chief advisers they became. Conditions were very favorable, at the opening of the seventeenth century, for a renewal of the religious struggle.
Formation of the Protestant Union and the Catholic League.
The Lutheran town of Donauwörth permitted the existence of a monastery within its limits. In 1607 a Protestant mob attacked the monks as they were passing in procession through the streets. Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, an ardent Catholic, on the border of whose possessions the town lay, gladly undertook to punish this outrage. His army entered Donauwörth, reëstablished the Catholic worship, and drove out the Lutheran pastor. This event led to the formation of the Protestant Union under the leadership of Frederick, elector of the Palatinate. The Union included by no means all the Protestant princes; for example, the Lutheran elector of Saxony refused to have anything to do with the Calvinistic Frederick. The next year the Catholics, on their part, formed the Catholic League under a far more efficient head, namely, Maximilian of Bavaria.[329]
Bohemia revolts from the Hapsburg rule, 1618.
Frederick, elector of the Palatinate, chosen king of Bohemia.
These were the preliminaries of the Thirty Years' War. Hostilities began in Bohemia, which had been added to the Hapsburg possessions through the marriage of Ferdinand I. The Protestants were so strong in that country that they had forced the emperor in 1609 to grant them privileges greater even than those enjoyed by the Huguenots in France. The government, however, failed to observe this agreement, and the destruction of two Protestant churches resulted in a revolution at Prague in 1618. Three representatives of the emperor were seized by the irritated Bohemian leaders and thrown out of the window of the palace. After this emphatic protest against the oppressive measures of the government, Bohemia endeavored to establish itself once more as an independent kingdom. It renounced the rule of the Hapsburgs and chose Frederick, the elector of the Palatinate, as its new king. He appeared to the Bohemians to possess a double advantage; in the first place, he was the head of the Protestant Union, and in the second, he was the son-in-law of the king of England, James I, to whom they looked for help.
Failure of the Bohemian revolt.
Battle on the White Hill, 1620.