BOOK I.

Produced by David Widger

THE WORKS

OF

FREDERICK SCHILLER

Translated from the German

Illustrated

HISTORY OF THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR IN GERMANY.

PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION.

The present is the best collected edition of the important works of

Schiller which is accessible to readers in the English language.

Detached poems or dramas have been translated at various times since

the first publication of the original works; and in several instances

these versions have been incorporated into this collection. Schiller

was not less efficiently qualified by nature for an historian than for

a dramatist. He was formed to excel in all departments of literature,

and the admirable lucidity of style and soundness and impartiality of

judgment displayed in his historical writings will not easily be

surpassed, and will always recommend them as popular expositions of the

periods of which they treat.

Since the publication of the first English edition many corrections and

improvements have been made, with a view to rendering it as acceptable

as possible to English readers; and, notwithstanding the disadvantages

of a translation, the publishers feel sure that Schiller will be

heartily acceptable to English readers, and that the influence of his

writings will continue to increase.

THE HISTORY OF THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS was translated by Lieut.

E. B. Eastwick, and originally published abroad for students’ use. But

this translation was too strictly literal for general readers. It has

been carefully revised, and some portions have been entirely rewritten

by the Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, who also has so ably translated the

HISTORY OF THE THIRTY YEARS WAR.

THE CAMP OF WALLENSTEIN was translated by Mr. James Churchill, and first

appeared in “Frazer’s Magazine.” It is an exceedingly happy version of

what has always been deemed the most untranslatable of Schiller’s works.

THE PICCOLOMINI and DEATH OF WALLENSTEIN are the admirable version of

S. T. Coleridge, completed by the addition of all those passages which

he has omitted, and by a restoration of Schiller’s own arrangement of

the acts and scenes. It is said, in defence of the variations which

exist between the German original and the version given by Coleridge,

that he translated from a prompter’s copy in manuscript, before the

drama had been printed, and that Schiller himself subsequently altered

it, by omitting some passages, adding others, and even engrafting

several of Coleridge’s adaptations.

WILHELM TELL is translated by Theodore Martin, Esq., whose well-known

position as a writer, and whose special acquaintance with German

literature make any recommendation superfluous.

DON CARLOS is translated by R. D. Boylan, Esq., and, in the opinion of

competent judges, the version is eminently successful. Mr. Theodore

Martin kindly gave some assistance, and, it is but justice to state,

has enhanced the value of the work by his judicious suggestions.

The translation of MARY STUART is that by the late Joseph Mellish,

who appears to have been on terms of intimate friendship with Schiller.

His version was made from the prompter’s copy, before the play was

published, and, like Coleridge’s Wallenstein, contains many passages not

found in the printed edition. These are distinguished by brackets. On

the other hand, Mr. Mellish omitted many passages which now form part of

the printed drama, all of which are now added. The translation, as a

whole, stands out from similar works of the time (1800) in almost as

marked a degree as Coleridge’s Wallenstein, and some passages exhibit

powers of a high order; a few, however, especially in the earlier

scenes, seemed capable of improvement, and these have been revised,

but, in deference to the translator, with a sparing hand.

THE MAID OF ORLEANS is contributed by Miss Anna Swanwick, whose

translation of Faust has since become well known. It has been.

carefully revised, and is now, for the first time, published complete.

THE BRIDE OF MESSINA, which has been regarded as the poetical

masterpiece of Schiller, and, perhaps of all his works, presents the

greatest difficulties to the translator, is rendered by A. Lodge, Esq.,

M. A. This version, on its first publication in England, a few years

ago, was received with deserved eulogy by distinguished critics. To the

present edition has been prefixed Schiller’s Essay on the Use of the

Chorus in Tragedy, in which the author’s favorite theory of the “Ideal

of Art” is enforced with great ingenuity and eloquence.

Contents:

Book I.

Introduction.--General effects of the Reformation.--Revolt of Matthias.

--The Emperor cedes Austria and Hungary to him.--Matthias acknowledged

King of Bohemia.--The Elector of Cologne abjures the Catholic Religion.

--Consequences.--The Elector Palatine.--Dispute respecting the

Succession of Juliers.--Designs of Henry IV. of France.--Formation of

the Union.--The League.--Death of the Emperor Rodolph.--Matthias

succeeds him.--Troubles in Bohemia.--Civil War.--Ferdinand extirpates

the Protestant Religion from Styria.--The Elector Palatine, Frederick

V., is chosen King by the Bohemians.--He accepts the Crown of Bohemia.--

Bethlen Gabor, Prince of Transylvania, invades Austria.--The Duke of

Bavaria and the Princes of the League embrace the cause of Ferdinand.--

The Union arm for Frederick.--The Battle of Prague and total subjection

of Bohemia.

Book II.

State of the Empire.--Of Europe.--Mansfeld.--Christian, Duke of

Brunswick.--Wallenstein raises an Imperial Army at his own expense.

--The King of Denmark defeated.--Death of Mansfeld.--Edict of

Restitution in 1628.--Diet at Ratisbon.--Negociations.--Wallenstein

deprived of the Command.--Gustavus Adolphus.--Swedish Army.--Gustavus

Adolphus takes his leave of the States at Stockholm.--Invasion by the

Swedes.--Their progress in Germany.--Count Tilly takes the Command of

the Imperial Troops.--Treaty with France.--Congress at Leipzig.--Siege

and cruel fate of Magdeburg.--Firmness of the Landgrave of Cassel.--

Junction of the Saxons with the Swedes.--Battle of Leipzig.--

Consequences of that Victory.

Book III.

Situation of Gustavus Adolphus after the Battle of Leipzig.--Progress of

Gustavus Adolphus.--The French invade Lorraine.--Frankfort taken.--

Capitulation of Mentz.--Tilly ordered by Maximilian to protect Bavaria.

--Gustavus Adolphus passes the Lech.--Defeat and Death of Tilly.--

Gustavus takes Munich.--The Saxon Army invades Bohemia, and takes

Prague.--Distress of the Emperor.--Secret Triumph of Wallenstein.--

He offers to Join Gustavus Adolphus.--Wallenstein re-assumes the

Command.--Junction of Wallenstein with the Bavarians.--Gustavus Adolphus

defends Nuremberg.--Attacks Wallenstein’s Intrenchments.--Enters

Saxony.--Goes to the succour of the Elector of Saxony.--Marches against

Wallenstein.--Battle of Lutzen.--Death of Gustavus Adolphus.--Situation

of Germany after the Battle of Lutzen.

Book IV.

Closer Alliance between France and Sweden.--Oxenstiern takes the

Direction of Affairs.--Death of the Elector Palatine.--Revolt of the

Swedish Officers.--Duke Bernhard takes Ratisbon.--Wallenstein enters

Silesia.--Forms Treasonable Designs.--Forsaken by the Army.--Retires to

Egra.--His associates put to death.--Wallenstein’s death.--His

Character.

Book V.

Battle of Nordlingen.--France enters into an Alliance against Austria.--

Treaty of Prague.--Saxony joins the Emperor.--Battle of Wistock gained

by the Swedes.--Battle of Rheinfeld gained by Bernhard, Duke of Weimar.

--He takes Brisach.--His death.--Death of Ferdinand II.--Ferdinand III.

succeeds him.--Celebrated Retreat of Banner in Pomerania.--His

Successes.--Death.--Torstensohn takes the Command.--Death of Richelieu

and Louis XIII.--Swedish Victory at Jankowitz.--French defeated at

Freyburg.--Battle of Nordlingen gained by Turenne and Conde.--Wrangel

takes the Command of the Swedish Army.--Melander made Commander of the

Emperor’s Army.--The Elector of Bavaria breaks the Armistice.--He adopts

the same Policy towards the Emperor as France towards the Swedes.--The

Weimerian Cavalry go over to the Swedes.--Conquest of New Prague by

Koenigsmark, and Termination of the Thirty Years’ War.

HISTORY OF THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR IN GERMANY.

BOOK I.

From the beginning of the religious wars in Germany, to the peace of

Munster, scarcely any thing great or remarkable occurred in the

political world of Europe in which the Reformation had not an important

share. All the events of this period, if they did not originate in,

soon became mixed up with, the question of religion, and no state was

either too great or too little to feel directly or indirectly more or

less of its influence.

Against the reformed doctrine and its adherents, the House of Austria

directed, almost exclusively, the whole of its immense political power.

In France, the Reformation had enkindled a civil war which, under four

stormy reigns, shook the kingdom to its foundations, brought foreign

armies into the heart of the country, and for half a century rendered it

the scene of the most mournful disorders. It was the Reformation, too,

that rendered the Spanish yoke intolerable to the Flemings, and awakened

in them both the desire and the courage to throw off its fetters, while

it also principally furnished them with the means of their emancipation.

And as to England, all the evils with which Philip the Second threatened

Elizabeth, were mainly intended in revenge for her having taken his

Protestant subjects under her protection, and placing herself at the

head of a religious party which it was his aim and endeavour to

extirpate. In Germany, the schisms in the church produced also a

lasting political schism, which made that country for more than a

century the theatre of confusion, but at the same time threw up a firm

barrier against political oppression. It was, too, the Reformation

principally that first drew the northern powers, Denmark and Sweden,

into the political system of Europe; and while on the one hand the

Protestant League was strengthened by their adhesion, it on the other

was indispensable to their interests. States which hitherto scarcely

concerned themselves with one another’s existence, acquired through the

Reformation an attractive centre of interest, and began to be united by

new political sympathies. And as through its influence new relations

sprang up between citizen and citizen, and between rulers and subjects,

so also entire states were forced by it into new relative positions.

Thus, by a strange course of events, religious disputes were the means

of cementing a closer union among the nations of Europe.

Fearful indeed, and destructive, was the first movement in which this

general political sympathy announced itself; a desolating war of thirty

years, which, from the interior of Bohemia to the mouth of the Scheldt,

and from the banks of the Po to the coasts of the Baltic, devastated

whole countries, destroyed harvests, and reduced towns and villages to

ashes; which opened a grave for many thousand combatants, and for half a

century smothered the glimmering sparks of civilization in Germany, and

threw back the improving manners of the country into their pristine

barbarity and wildness. Yet out of this fearful war Europe came forth

free and independent. In it she first learned to recognize herself as a

community of nations; and this intercommunion of states, which

originated in the thirty years’ war, may alone be sufficient to

reconcile the philosopher to its horrors. The hand of industry has

slowly but gradually effaced the traces of its ravages, while its

beneficent influence still survives; and this general sympathy among the

states of Europe, which grew out of the troubles in Bohemia, is our

guarantee for the continuance of that peace which was the result of the

war. As the sparks of destruction found their way from the interior of

Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria, to kindle Germany, France, and the half

of Europe, so also will the torch of civilization make a path for itself

from the latter to enlighten the former countries.

All this was effected by religion. Religion alone could have rendered

possible all that was accomplished, but it was far from being the SOLE

motive of the war. Had not private advantages and state interests been

closely connected with it, vain and powerless would have been the

arguments of theologians; and the cry of the people would never have met

with princes so willing to espouse their cause, nor the new doctrines

have found such numerous, brave, and persevering champions. The

Reformation is undoubtedly owing in a great measure to the invincible

power of truth, or of opinions which were held as such. The abuses in

the old church, the absurdity of many of its dogmas, the extravagance of

its requisitions, necessarily revolted the tempers of men, already

half-won with the promise of a better light, and favourably disposed

them towards the new doctrines. The charm of independence, the rich

plunder of monastic institutions, made the Reformation attractive in the

eyes of princes, and tended not a little to strengthen their inward

convictions. Nothing, however, but political considerations could have

driven them to espouse it. Had not Charles the Fifth, in the

intoxication of success, made an attempt on the independence of the

German States, a Protestant league would scarcely have rushed to arms in

defence of freedom of belief; but for the ambition of the Guises, the

Calvinists in France would never have beheld a Conde or a Coligny at

their head. Without the exaction of the tenth and the twentieth penny,

the See of Rome had never lost the United Netherlands. Princes fought

in self-defence or for aggrandizement, while religious enthusiasm

recruited their armies, and opened to them the treasures of their

subjects. Of the multitude who flocked to their standards, such as were

not lured by the hope of plunder imagined they were fighting for the

truth, while in fact they were shedding their blood for the personal

objects of their princes.

And well was it for the people that, on this occasion, their interests

coincided with those of their princes. To this coincidence alone were

they indebted for their deliverance from popery. Well was it also for

the rulers, that the subject contended too for his own cause, while he

was fighting their battles. Fortunately at this date no European

sovereign was so absolute as to be able, in the pursuit of his political

designs, to dispense with the goodwill of his subjects. Yet how

difficult was it to gain and to set to work this goodwill! The most

impressive arguments drawn from reasons of state fall powerless on the

ear of the subject, who seldom understands, and still more rarely is

interested in them. In such circumstances, the only course open to a

prudent prince is to connect the interests of the cabinet with some one

that sits nearer to the people’s heart, if such exists, or if not, to

create it.

In such a position stood the greater part of those princes who embraced

the cause of the Reformation. By a strange concatenation of events, the

divisions of the Church were associated with two circumstances, without

which, in all probability, they would have had a very different

conclusion. These were, the increasing power of the House of Austria,

which threatened the liberties of Europe, and its active zeal for the

old religion. The first aroused the princes, while the second armed the

people.

The abolition of a foreign jurisdiction within their own territories,

the supremacy in ecclesiastical matters, the stopping of the treasure

which had so long flowed to Rome, the rich plunder of religious

foundations, were tempting advantages to every sovereign. Why, then, it

may be asked, did they not operate with equal force upon the princes of

the House of Austria? What prevented this house, particularly in its

German branch, from yielding to the pressing demands of so many of its

subjects, and, after the example of other princes, enriching itself at

the expense of a defenceless clergy? It is difficult to credit that a

belief in the infallibility of the Romish Church had any greater

influence on the pious adherence of this house, than the opposite

conviction had on the revolt of the Protestant princes. In fact,

several circumstances combined to make the Austrian princes zealous

supporters of popery. Spain and Italy, from which Austria derived its

principal strength, were still devoted to the See of Rome with that

blind obedience which, ever since the days of the Gothic dynasty, had

been the peculiar characteristic of the Spaniard. The slightest

approximation, in a Spanish prince, to the obnoxious tenets of Luther

and Calvin, would have alienated for ever the affections of his

subjects, and a defection from the Pope would have cost him the kingdom.

A Spanish prince had no alternative but orthodoxy or abdication. The

same restraint was imposed upon Austria by her Italian dominions, which

she was obliged to treat, if possible, with even greater indulgence;

impatient as they naturally were of a foreign yoke, and possessing also

ready means of shaking it off. In regard to the latter provinces,

moreover, the rival pretensions of France, and the neighbourhood of the

Pope, were motives sufficient to prevent the Emperor from declaring in

favour of a party which strove to annihilate the papal see, and also to

induce him to show the most active zeal in behalf of the old religion.

These general considerations, which must have been equally weighty with

every Spanish monarch, were, in the particular case of Charles V., still

further enforced by peculiar and personal motives. In Italy this

monarch had a formidable rival in the King of France, under whose

protection that country might throw itself the instant that Charles

should incur the slightest suspicion of heresy. Distrust on the part of

the Roman Catholics, and a rupture with the church, would have been

fatal also to many of his most cherished designs. Moreover, when

Charles was first called upon to make his election between the two

parties, the new doctrine had not yet attained to a full and commanding

influence, and there still subsisted a prospect of its reconciliation

with the old. In his son and successor, Philip the Second, a monastic

education combined with a gloomy and despotic disposition to generate an

unmitigated hostility to all innovations in religion; a feeling which

the thought that his most formidable political opponents were also the

enemies of his faith was not calculated to weaken. As his European

possessions, scattered as they were over so many countries, were on all

sides exposed to the seductions of foreign opinions, the progress of the

Reformation in other quarters could not well be a matter of indifference

to him. His immediate interests, therefore, urged him to attach himself

devotedly to the old church, in order to close up the sources of the

heretical contagion. Thus, circumstances naturally placed this prince

at the head of the league which the Roman Catholics formed against the

Reformers. The principles which had actuated the long and active reigns

of Charles V. and Philip the Second, remained a law for their

successors; and the more the breach in the church widened, the firmer

became the attachment of the Spaniards to Roman Catholicism.

The German line of the House of Austria was apparently more unfettered;

but, in reality, though free from many of these restraints, it was yet

confined by others. The possession of the imperial throne--a dignity

it was impossible for a Protestant to hold, (for with what consistency

could an apostate from the Romish Church wear the crown of a Roman

emperor?) bound the successors of Ferdinand I. to the See of Rome.

Ferdinand himself was, from conscientious motives, heartily attached to

it. Besides, the German princes of the House of Austria were not

powerful enough to dispense with the support of Spain, which, however,

they would have forfeited by the least show of leaning towards the new

doctrines. The imperial dignity, also, required them to preserve the

existing political system of Germany, with which the maintenance of

their own authority was closely bound up, but which it was the aim of

the Protestant League to destroy. If to these grounds we add the

indifference of the Protestants to the Emperor’s necessities and to the

common dangers of the empire, their encroachments on the temporalities

of the church, and their aggressive violence when they became conscious

of their own power, we can easily conceive how so many concurring

motives must have determined the emperors to the side of popery, and how

their own interests came to be intimately interwoven with those of the

Roman Church. As its fate seemed to depend altogether on the part taken

by Austria, the princes of this house came to be regarded by all Europe

as the pillars of popery. The hatred, therefore, which the Protestants

bore against the latter, was turned exclusively upon Austria; and the

cause became gradually confounded with its protector.

But this irreconcileable enemy of the Reformation--the House of Austria

--by its ambitious projects and the overwhelming force which it could

bring to their support, endangered, in no small degree, the freedom of

Europe, and more especially of the German States. This circumstance

could not fail to rouse the latter from their security, and to render

them vigilant in self-defence. Their ordinary resources were quite

insufficient to resist so formidable a power. Extraordinary exertions

were required from their subjects; and when even these proved far from

adequate, they had recourse to foreign assistance; and, by means of a

common league, they endeavoured to oppose a power which, singly, they

were unable to withstand.

But the strong political inducements which the German princes had to

resist the pretensions of the House of Austria, naturally did not extend

to their subjects. It is only immediate advantages or immediate evils

that set the people in action, and for these a sound policy cannot wait.

Ill then would it have fared with these princes, if by good fortune

another effectual motive had not offered itself, which roused the

passions of the people, and kindled in them an enthusiasm which might be

directed against the political danger, as having with it a common cause

of alarm.

This motive was their avowed hatred of the religion which Austria

protected, and their enthusiastic attachment to a doctrine which that

House was endeavouring to extirpate by fire and sword. Their attachment

was ardent, their hatred invincible. Religious fanaticism anticipates

even the remotest dangers. Enthusiasm never calculates its sacrifices.

What the most pressing danger of the state could not gain from the

citizens, was effected by religious zeal. For the state, or for the

prince, few would have drawn the sword; but for religion, the merchant,

the artist, the peasant, all cheerfully flew to arms. For the state, or

for the prince, even the smallest additional impost would have been

avoided; but for religion the people readily staked at once life,

fortune, and all earthly hopes. It trebled the contributions which

flowed into the exchequer of the princes, and the armies which marched

to the field; and, in the ardent excitement produced in all minds by the

peril to which their faith was exposed, the subject felt not the

pressure of those burdens and privations under which, in cooler moments,

he would have sunk exhausted. The terrors of the Spanish Inquisition,

and the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s, procured for the Prince of

Orange, the Admiral Coligny, the British Queen Elizabeth, and the

Protestant princes of Germany, supplies of men and money from their

subjects, to a degree which at present is inconceivable.

But, with all their exertions, they would have effected little against a

power which was an overmatch for any single adversary, however powerful.

At this period of imperfect policy, accidental circumstances alone could

determine distant states to afford one another a mutual support. The

differences of government, of laws, of language, of manners, and of

character, which hitherto had kept whole nations and countries as it

were insulated, and raised a lasting barrier between them, rendered one

state insensible to the distresses of another, save where national

jealousy could indulge a malicious joy at the reverses of a rival. This

barrier the Reformation destroyed. An interest more intense and more

immediate than national aggrandizement or patriotism, and entirely

independent of private utility, began to animate whole states and

individual citizens; an interest capable of uniting numerous and distant

nations, even while it frequently lost its force among the subjects of

the same government. With the inhabitants of Geneva, for instance, of

England, of Germany, or of Holland, the French Calvinist possessed a

common point of union which he had not with his own countrymen. Thus,

in one important particular, he ceased to be the citizen of a single

state, and to confine his views and sympathies to his own country alone.

The sphere of his views became enlarged. He began to calculate his own

fate from that of other nations of the same religious profession, and to

make their cause his own. Now for the first time did princes venture to

bring the affairs of other countries before their own councils; for the

first time could they hope for a willing ear to their own necessities,

and prompt assistance from others. Foreign affairs had now become a

matter of domestic policy, and that aid was readily granted to the

religious confederate which would have been denied to the mere

neighbour, and still more to the distant stranger. The inhabitant of

the Palatinate leaves his native fields to fight side by side with his

religious associate of France, against the common enemy of their faith.

The Huguenot draws his sword against the country which persecutes him,

and sheds his blood in defence of the liberties of Holland. Swiss is

arrayed against Swiss; German against German, to determine, on the banks

of the Loire and the Seine, the succession of the French crown. The

Dane crosses the Eider, and the Swede the Baltic, to break the chains

which are forged for Germany.

It is difficult to say what would have been the fate of the Reformation,

and the liberties of the Empire, had not the formidable power of Austria

declared against them. This, however, appears certain, that nothing so

completely damped the Austrian hopes of universal monarchy, as the

obstinate war which they had to wage against the new religious opinions.

Under no other circumstances could the weaker princes have roused their

subjects to such extraordinary exertions against the ambition of

Austria, or the States themselves have united so closely against the

common enemy.

The power of Austria never stood higher than after the victory which

Charles V. gained over the Germans at Muehlberg. With the treaty of

Smalcalde the freedom of Germany lay, as it seemed, prostrate for ever;

but it revived under Maurice of Saxony, once its most formidable enemy.

All the fruits of the victory of Muehlberg were lost again in the

congress of Passau, and the diet of Augsburg; and every scheme for civil

and religious oppression terminated in the concessions of an equitable

peace.

The diet of Augsburg divided Germany into two religious and two

political parties, by recognizing the independent rights and existence

of both. Hitherto the Protestants had been looked on as rebels; they

were henceforth to be regarded as brethren--not indeed through

affection, but necessity. By the Interim, the Confession of Augsburg

was allowed temporarily to take a sisterly place alongside of the olden

religion, though only as a tolerated neighbour.

[A system of Theology so called, prepared by order of the Emperor

Charles V. for the use of Germany, to reconcile the differences

between the Roman Catholics and the Lutherans, which, however, was

rejected by both parties--Ed.]

To every secular state was conceded the right of establishing the

religion it acknowledged as supreme and exclusive within its own

territories, and of forbidding the open profession of its rival.

Subjects were to be free to quit a country where their own religion was

not tolerated. The doctrines of Luther for the first time received a

positive sanction; and if they were trampled under foot in Bavaria and

Austria, they predominated in Saxony and Thuringia. But the sovereigns

alone were to determine what form of religion should prevail within

their territories; the feelings of subjects who had no representatives

in the diet were little attended to in the pacification. In the

ecclesiastical territories, indeed, where the unreformed religion

enjoyed an undisputed supremacy, the free exercise of their religion was

obtained for all who had previously embraced the Protestant doctrines;

but this indulgence rested only on the personal guarantee of Ferdinand,

King of the Romans, by whose endeavours chiefly this peace was effected;

a guarantee, which, being rejected by the Roman Catholic members of the

Diet, and only inserted in the treaty under their protest, could not of

course have the force of law.

If it had been opinions only that thus divided the minds of men, with

what indifference would all have regarded the division! But on these

opinions depended riches, dignities, and rights; and it was this which

so deeply aggravated the evils of division. Of two brothers, as it

were, who had hitherto enjoyed a paternal inheritance in common, one now

remained, while the other was compelled to leave his father’s house, and

hence arose the necessity of dividing the patrimony. For this

separation, which he could not have foreseen, the father had made no

provision. By the beneficent donations of pious ancestors the riches of

the church had been accumulating through a thousand years, and these

benefactors were as much the progenitors of the departing brother as of

him who remained. Was the right of inheritance then to be limited to

the paternal house, or to be extended to blood? The gifts had been made

to the church in communion with Rome, because at that time no other

existed,--to the first-born, as it were, because he was as yet the only

son. Was then a right of primogeniture to be admitted in the church, as

in noble families? Were the pretensions of one party to be favoured by

a prescription from times when the claims of the other could not have

come into existence? Could the Lutherans be justly excluded from these

possessions, to which the benevolence of their forefathers had

contributed, merely on the ground that, at the date of their foundation,

the differences between Lutheranism and Romanism were unknown? Both

parties have disputed, and still dispute, with equal plausibility, on

these points. Both alike have found it difficult to prove their right.

Law can be applied only to conceivable cases, and perhaps spiritual

foundations are not among the number of these, and still less where the

conditions of the founders generally extended to a system of doctrines;

for how is it conceivable that a permanent endowment should be made of

opinions left open to change?

What law cannot decide, is usually determined by might, and such was the

case here. The one party held firmly all that could no longer be

wrested from it--the other defended what it still possessed. All the

bishoprics and abbeys which had been secularized BEFORE the peace,

remained with the Protestants; but, by an express clause, the unreformed

Catholics provided that none should thereafter be secularized. Every

impropriator of an ecclesiastical foundation, who held immediately of

the Empire, whether elector, bishop, or abbot, forfeited his benefice

and dignity the moment he embraced the Protestant belief; he was obliged

in that event instantly to resign its emoluments, and the chapter was to

proceed to a new election, exactly as if his place had been vacated by

death. By this sacred anchor of the Ecclesiastical Reservation,

(`Reservatum Ecclesiasticum’,) which makes the temporal existence of a

spiritual prince entirely dependent on his fidelity to the olden

religion, the Roman Catholic Church in Germany is still held fast; and

precarious, indeed, would be its situation were this anchor to give way.

The principle of the Ecclesiastical Reservation was strongly opposed by

the Protestants; and though it was at last adopted into the treaty of

peace, its insertion was qualified with the declaration, that parties

had come to no final determination on the point. Could it then be more

binding on the Protestants than Ferdinand’s guarantee in favour of

Protestant subjects of ecclesiastical states was upon the Roman

Catholics? Thus were two important subjects of dispute left unsettled

in the treaty of peace, and by them the war was rekindled.

Such was the position of things with regard to religious toleration and

ecclesiastical property: it was the same with regard to rights and

dignities. The existing German system provided only for one church,

because one only was in existence when that system was framed. The

church had now divided; the Diet had broken into two religious parties;

was the whole system of the Empire still exclusively to follow the one?

The emperors had hitherto been members of the Romish Church, because

till now that religion had no rival. But was it his connexion with Rome

which constituted a German emperor, or was it not rather Germany which

was to be represented in its head? The Protestants were now spread over

the whole Empire, and how could they justly still be represented by an

unbroken line of Roman Catholic emperors? In the Imperial Chamber the

German States judge themselves, for they elect the judges; it was the

very end of its institution that they should do so, in order that equal

justice should be dispensed to all; but would this be still possible, if

the representatives of both professions were not equally admissible to a

seat in the Chamber? That one religion only existed in Germany at the

time of its establishment, was accidental; that no one estate should

have the means of legally oppressing another, was the essential purpose

of the institution. Now this object would be entirely frustrated if one

religious party were to have the exclusive power of deciding for the

other. Must, then, the design be sacrificed, because that which was

merely accidental had changed? With great difficulty the Protestants,

at last, obtained for the representatives of their religion a place in

the Supreme Council, but still there was far from being a perfect

equality of voices. To this day no Protestant prince has been raised to

the imperial throne.

Whatever may be said of the equality which the peace of Augsburg was to

have established between the two German churches, the Roman Catholic had

unquestionably still the advantage. All that the Lutheran Church gained

by it was toleration; all that the Romish Church conceded, was a

sacrifice to necessity, not an offering to justice. Very far was it

from being a peace between two equal powers, but a truce between a

sovereign and unconquered rebels. From this principle all the

proceedings of the Roman Catholics against the Protestants seemed to

flow, and still continue to do so. To join the reformed faith was still

a crime, since it was to be visited with so severe a penalty as that

which the Ecclesiastical Reservation held suspended over the apostacy of

the spiritual princes. Even to the last, the Romish Church preferred to

risk to loss of every thing by force, than voluntarily to yield the

smallest matter to justice. The loss was accidental and might be

repaired; but the abandonment of its pretensions, the concession of a

single point to the Protestants, would shake the foundations of the

church itself. Even in the treaty of peace this principle was not lost

sight of. Whatever in this peace was yielded to the Protestants was

always under condition. It was expressly declared, that affairs were to

remain on the stipulated footing only till the next general council,

which was to be called with the view of effecting an union between the

two confessions. Then only, when this last attempt should have failed,

was the religious treaty to become valid and conclusive. However little

hope there might be of such a reconciliation, however little perhaps the

Romanists themselves were in earnest with it, still it was something to

have clogged the peace with these stipulations.

Thus this religious treaty, which was to extinguish for ever the flames

of civil war, was, in fact, but a temporary truce, extorted by force and

necessity; not dictated by justice, nor emanating from just notions

either of religion or toleration. A religious treaty of this kind the

Roman Catholics were as incapable of granting, to be candid, as in truth

the Lutherans were unqualified to receive. Far from evincing a tolerant

spirit towards the Roman Catholics, when it was in their power, they

even oppressed the Calvinists; who indeed just as little deserved

toleration, since they were unwilling to practise it. For such a peace

the times were not yet ripe--the minds of men not yet sufficiently

enlightened. How could one party expect from another what itself was

incapable of performing? What each side saved or gained by the treaty of

Augsburg, it owed to the imposing attitude of strength which it

maintained at the time of its negociation. What was won by force was to

be maintained also by force; if the peace was to be permanent, the two

parties to it must preserve the same relative positions. The boundaries

of the two churches had been marked out with the sword; with the sword

they must be preserved, or woe to that party which should be first

disarmed! A sad and fearful prospect for the tranquillity of Germany,

when peace itself bore so threatening an aspect.

A momentary lull now pervaded the empire; a transitory bond of concord

appeared to unite its scattered limbs into one body, so that for a time

a feeling also for the common weal returned. But the division had

penetrated its inmost being, and to restore its original harmony was

impossible. Carefully as the treaty of peace appeared to have defined

the rights of both parties, its interpretation was nevertheless the

subject of many disputes. In the heat of conflict it had produced a

cessation of hostilities; it covered, not extinguished, the fire, and

unsatisfied claims remained on either side. The Romanists imagined they

had lost too much, the Protestants that they had gained too little; and

the treaty which neither party could venture to violate, was interpreted

by each in its own favour.

The seizure of the ecclesiastical benefices, the motive which had so

strongly tempted the majority of the Protestant princes to embrace the

doctrines of Luther, was not less powerful after than before the peace;

of those whose founders had not held their fiefs immediately of the

empire, such as were not already in their possession would it was

evident soon be so. The whole of Lower Germany was already secularized;

and if it were otherwise in Upper Germany, it was owing to the vehement

resistance of the Catholics, who had there the preponderance. Each

party, where it was the most powerful, oppressed the adherents of the

other; the ecclesiastical princes in particular, as the most defenceless

members of the empire, were incessantly tormented by the ambition of

their Protestant neighbours. Those who were too weak to repel force by

force, took refuge under the wings of justice; and the complaints of

spoliation were heaped up against the Protestants in the Imperial

Chamber, which was ready enough to pursue the accused with judgments,

but found too little support to carry them into effect. The peace which

stipulated for complete religious toleration for the dignitaries of the

Empire, had provided also for the subject, by enabling him, without

interruption, to leave the country in which the exercise of his religion

was prohibited. But from the wrongs which the violence of a sovereign

might inflict on an obnoxious subject; from the nameless oppressions by

which he might harass and annoy the emigrant; from the artful snares in

which subtilty combined with power might enmesh him--from these, the

dead letter of the treaty could afford him no protection. The Catholic

subject of Protestant princes complained loudly of violations of the

religious peace--the Lutherans still more loudly of the oppression they

experienced under their Romanist suzerains. The rancour and animosities

of theologians infused a poison into every occurrence, however

inconsiderable, and inflamed the minds of the people. Happy would it

have been had this theological hatred exhausted its zeal upon the common

enemy, instead of venting its virus on the adherents of a kindred faith!

Unanimity amongst the Protestants might, by preserving the balance

between the contending parties, have prolonged the peace; but as if to

complete the confusion, all concord was quickly broken. The doctrines

which had been propagated by Zuingli in Zurich, and by Calvin in Geneva,

soon spread to Germany, and divided the Protestants among themselves,

with little in unison save their common hatred to popery. The

Protestants of this date bore but slight resemblance to those who, fifty

years before, drew up the Confession of Augsburg; and the cause of the

change is to be sought in that Confession itself. It had prescribed a

positive boundary to the Protestant faith, before the newly awakened

spirit of inquiry had satisfied itself as to the limits it ought to set;

and the Protestants seemed unwittingly to have thrown away much of the

advantage acquired by their rejection of popery. Common complaints of

the Romish hierarchy, and of ecclesiastical abuses, and a common

disapprobation of its dogmas, formed a sufficient centre of union for

the Protestants; but not content with this, they sought a rallying point

in the promulgation of a new and positive creed, in which they sought to

embody the distinctions, the privileges, and the essence of the church,

and to this they referred the convention entered into with their

opponents. It was as professors of this creed that they had acceded to

the treaty; and in the benefits of this peace the advocates of the

confession were alone entitled to participate. In any case, therefore,

the situation of its adherents was embarrassing. If a blind obedience

were yielded to the dicta of the Confession, a lasting bound would be

set to the spirit of inquiry; if, on the other hand, they dissented from

the formulae agreed upon, the point of union would be lost.

Unfortunately both incidents occurred, and the evil results of both were

quickly felt. One party rigorously adhered to the original symbol of

faith, and the other abandoned it, only to adopt another with equal

exclusiveness.

Nothing could have furnished the common enemy a more plausible defence

of his cause than this dissension; no spectacle could have been more

gratifying to him than the rancour with which the Protestants

alternately persecuted each other. Who could condemn the Roman

Catholics, if they laughed at the audacity with which the Reformers had

presumed to announce the only true belief?--if from Protestants they

borrowed the weapons against Protestants?--if, in the midst of this

clashing of opinions, they held fast to the authority of their own

church, for which, in part, there spoke an honourable antiquity, and a

yet more honourable plurality of voices. But this division placed the

Protestants in still more serious embarrassments. As the covenants of

the treaty applied only to the partisans of the Confession, their

opponents, with some reason, called upon them to explain who were to be

recognized as the adherents of that creed. The Lutherans could not,

without offending conscience, include the Calvinists in their communion,

except at the risk of converting a useful friend into a dangerous enemy,

could they exclude them. This unfortunate difference opened a way for

the machinations of the Jesuits to sow distrust between both parties,

and to destroy the unity of their measures. Fettered by the double fear

of their direct adversaries, and of their opponents among themselves,

the Protestants lost for ever the opportunity of placing their church on

a perfect equality with the Catholic. All these difficulties would have

been avoided, and the defection of the Calvinists would not have

prejudiced the common cause, if the point of union had been placed

simply in the abandonment of Romanism, instead of in the Confession of

Augsburg.

But however divided on other points, they concurred in this--that the

security which had resulted from equality of power could only be

maintained by the preservation of that balance. In the meanwhile, the

continual reforms of one party, and the opposing measures of the other,

kept both upon the watch, while the interpretation of the religious

treaty was a never-ending subject of dispute. Each party maintained

that every step taken by its opponent was an infraction of the peace,

while of every movement of its own it was asserted that it was essential

to its maintenance. Yet all the measures of the Catholics did not, as

their opponents alleged, proceed from a spirit of encroachment--many of

them were the necessary precautions of self-defence. The Protestants

had shown unequivocally enough what the Romanists might expect if they

were unfortunate enough to become the weaker party. The greediness of

the former for the property of the church, gave no reason to expect

indulgence;--their bitter hatred left no hope of magnanimity or

forbearance.

But the Protestants, likewise, were excusable if they too placed little

confidence in the sincerity of the Roman Catholics. By the treacherous

and inhuman treatment which their brethren in Spain, France, and the

Netherlands, had suffered; by the disgraceful subterfuge of the Romish

princes, who held that the Pope had power to relieve them from the

obligation of the most solemn oaths; and above all, by the detestable

maxim, that faith was not to be kept with heretics, the Roman Church, in

the eyes of all honest men, had lost its honour. No engagement, no

oath, however sacred, from a Roman Catholic, could satisfy a Protestant.

What security then could the religious peace afford, when, throughout

Germany, the Jesuits represented it as a measure of mere temporary

convenience, and in Rome itself it was solemnly repudiated.

The General Council, to which reference had been made in the treaty, had

already been held in the city of Trent; but, as might have been

foreseen, without accommodating the religious differences, or taking a

single step to effect such accommodation, and even without being

attended by the Protestants. The latter, indeed, were now solemnly

excommunicated by it in the name of the church, whose representative the

Council gave itself out to be. Could, then, a secular treaty, extorted

moreover by force of arms, afford them adequate protection against the

ban of the church; a treaty, too, based on a condition which the

decision of the Council seemed entirely to abolish? There was then a

show of right for violating the peace, if only the Romanists possessed

the power; and henceforward the Protestants were protected by nothing

but the respect for their formidable array.

Other circumstances combined to augment this distrust. Spain, on whose

support the Romanists in Germany chiefly relied, was engaged in a bloody

conflict with the Flemings. By it, the flower of the Spanish troops

were drawn to the confines of Germany. With what ease might they be

introduced within the empire, if a decisive stroke should render their

presence necessary? Germany was at that time a magazine of war for

nearly all the powers of Europe. The religious war had crowded it with

soldiers, whom the peace left destitute; its many independent princes

found it easy to assemble armies, and afterwards, for the sake of gain,

or the interests of party, hire them out to other powers. With German

troops, Philip the Second waged war against the Netherlands, and with

German troops they defended themselves. Every such levy in Germany was

a subject of alarm to the one party or the other, since it might be

intended for their oppression. The arrival of an ambassador, an

extraordinary legate of the Pope, a conference of princes, every unusual

incident, must, it was thought, be pregnant with destruction to some

party. Thus, for nearly half a century, stood Germany, her hand upon

the sword; every rustle of a leaf alarmed her.

Ferdinand the First, King of Hungary, and his excellent son, Maximilian

the Second, held at this memorable epoch the reins of government. With

a heart full of sincerity, with a truly heroic patience, had Ferdinand

brought about the religious peace of Augsburg, and afterwards, in the

Council of Trent, laboured assiduously, though vainly, at the ungrateful

task of reconciling the two religions. Abandoned by his nephew, Philip

of Spain, and hard pressed both in Hungary and Transylvania by the

victorious armies of the Turks, it was not likely that this emperor

would entertain the idea of violating the religious peace, and thereby

destroying his own painful work. The heavy expenses of the perpetually

recurring war with Turkey could not be defrayed by the meagre

contributions of his exhausted hereditary dominions. He stood,

therefore, in need of the assistance of the whole empire; and the

religious peace alone preserved in one body the otherwise divided

empire. Financial necessities made the Protestant as needful to him as

the Romanist, and imposed upon him the obligation of treating both

parties with equal justice, which, amidst so many contradictory claims,

was truly a colossal task. Very far, however, was the result from

answering his expectations. His indulgence of the Protestants served

only to bring upon his successors a war, which death saved himself the

mortification of witnessing. Scarcely more fortunate was his son

Maximilian, with whom perhaps the pressure of circumstances was the only

obstacle, and a longer life perhaps the only want, to his establishing

the new religion upon the imperial throne. Necessity had taught the

father forbearance towards the Protestants--necessity and justice

dictated the same course to the son. The grandson had reason to repent

that he neither listened to justice, nor yielded to necessity.

Maximilian left six sons, of whom the eldest, the Archduke Rodolph,

inherited his dominions, and ascended the imperial throne. The other

brothers were put off with petty appanages. A few mesne fiefs were held

by a collateral branch, which had their uncle, Charles of Styria, at its

head; and even these were afterwards, under his son, Ferdinand the

Second, incorporated with the rest of the family dominions. With this

exception, the whole of the imposing power of Austria was now wielded by

a single, but unfortunately weak hand.

Rodolph the Second was not devoid of those virtues which might have

gained him the esteem of mankind, had the lot of a private station

fallen to him. His character was mild, he loved peace and the sciences,

particularly astronomy, natural history, chemistry, and the study of

antiquities. To these he applied with a passionate zeal, which, at the

very time when the critical posture of affairs demanded all his

attention, and his exhausted finances the most rigid economy, diverted

his attention from state affairs, and involved him in pernicious

expenses. His taste for astronomy soon lost itself in those

astrological reveries to which timid and melancholy temperaments like

his are but too disposed. This, together with a youth passed in Spain,

opened his ears to the evil counsels of the Jesuits, and the influence

of the Spanish court, by which at last he was wholly governed. Ruled by

tastes so little in accordance with the dignity of his station, and

alarmed by ridiculous prophecies, he withdrew, after the Spanish custom,

from the eyes of his subjects, to bury himself amidst his gems and

antiques, or to make experiments in his laboratory, while the most fatal

discords loosened all the bands of the empire, and the flames of

rebellion began to burst out at the very footsteps of his throne. All

access to his person was denied, the most urgent matters were neglected.

The prospect of the rich inheritance of Spain was closed against him,

while he was trying to make up his mind to offer his hand to the Infanta

Isabella. A fearful anarchy threatened the Empire, for though without

an heir of his own body, he could not be persuaded to allow the election

of a King of the Romans. The Austrian States renounced their

allegiance, Hungary and Transylvania threw off his supremacy, and

Bohemia was not slow in following their example. The descendant of the

once so formidable Charles the Fifth was in perpetual danger, either of

losing one part of his possessions to the Turks, or another to the

Protestants, and of sinking, beyond redemption, under the formidable

coalition which a great monarch of Europe had formed against him. The

events which now took place in the interior of Germany were such as

usually happened when either the throne was without an emperor, or the

Emperor without a sense of his imperial dignity. Outraged or abandoned

by their head, the States of the Empire were left to help themselves;

and alliances among themselves must supply the defective authority of

the Emperor. Germany was divided into two leagues, which stood in arms

arrayed against each other: between both, Rodolph, the despised

opponent of the one, and the impotent protector of the other, remained

irresolute and useless, equally unable to destroy the former or to

command the latter. What had the Empire to look for from a prince

incapable even of defending his hereditary dominions against its

domestic enemies? To prevent the utter ruin of the House of Austria,

his own family combined against him; and a powerful party threw itself

into the arms of his brother. Driven from his hereditary dominions,

nothing was now left him to lose but the imperial dignity; and he was

only spared this last disgrace by a timely death.

At this critical moment, when only a supple policy, united with a

vigorous arm, could have maintained the tranquillity of the Empire, its

evil genius gave it a Rodolph for Emperor. At a more peaceful period

the Germanic Union would have managed its own interests, and Rodolph,

like so many others of his rank, might have hidden his deficiencies in a

mysterious obscurity. But the urgent demand for the qualities in which

he was most deficient revealed his incapacity. The position of Germany

called for an emperor who, by his known energies, could give weight to

his resolves; and the hereditary dominions of Rodolph, considerable as

they were, were at present in a situation to occasion the greatest

embarrassment to the governors.

The Austrian princes, it is true were Roman Catholics, and in addition

to that, the supporters of Popery, but their countries were far from

being so. The reformed opinions had penetrated even these, and favoured

by Ferdinand’s necessities and Maximilian’s mildness, had met with a

rapid success. The Austrian provinces exhibited in miniature what

Germany did on a larger scale. The great nobles and the ritter class or

knights were chiefly evangelical, and in the cities the Protestants had

a decided preponderance. If they succeeded in bringing a few of their

party into the country, they contrived imperceptibly to fill all places

of trust and the magistracy with their own adherents, and to exclude the

Catholics. Against the numerous order of the nobles and knights, and

the deputies from the towns, the voice of a few prelates was powerless;

and the unseemly ridicule and offensive contempt of the former soon

drove them entirely from the provincial diets. Thus the whole of the

Austrian Diet had imperceptibly become Protestant, and the Reformation

was making rapid strides towards its public recognition. The prince was

dependent on the Estates, who had it in their power to grant or refuse

supplies. Accordingly, they availed themselves of the financial

necessities of Ferdinand and his son to extort one religious concession

after another. To the nobles and knights, Maximilian at last conceded

the free exercise of their religion, but only within their own

territories and castles. The intemperate enthusiasm of the Protestant

preachers overstepped the boundaries which prudence had prescribed. In

defiance of the express prohibition, several of them ventured to preach

publicly, not only in the towns, but in Vienna itself, and the people

flocked in crowds to this new doctrine, the best seasoning of which was

personality and abuse. Thus continued food was supplied to fanaticism,

and the hatred of two churches, that were such near neighbours, was

farther envenomed by the sting of an impure zeal.

Among the hereditary dominions of the House of Austria, Hungary and

Transylvania were the most unstable, and the most difficult to retain.

The impossibility of holding these two countries against the

neighbouring and overwhelming power of the Turks, had already driven

Ferdinand to the inglorious expedient of recognizing, by an annual

tribute, the Porte’s supremacy over Transylvania; a shameful confession

of weakness, and a still more dangerous temptation to the turbulent

nobility, when they fancied they had any reason to complain of their

master. Not without conditions had the Hungarians submitted to the

House of Austria. They asserted the elective freedom of their crown,

and boldly contended for all those prerogatives of their order which are

inseparable from this freedom of election. The near neighbourhood of

Turkey, the facility of changing masters with impunity, encouraged the

magnates still more in their presumption; discontented with the Austrian

government they threw themselves into the arms of the Turks;

dissatisfied with these, they returned again to their German sovereigns.

The frequency and rapidity of these transitions from one government to

another, had communicated its influences also to their mode of thinking;

and as their country wavered between the Turkish and Austrian rule, so

their minds vacillated between revolt and submission. The more

unfortunate each nation felt itself in being degraded into a province of

a foreign kingdom, the stronger desire did they feel to obey a monarch

chosen from amongst themselves, and thus it was always easy for an

enterprising noble to obtain their support. The nearest Turkish pasha

was always ready to bestow the Hungarian sceptre and crown on a rebel

against Austria; just as ready was Austria to confirm to any adventurer

the possession of provinces which he had wrested from the Porte,

satisfied with preserving thereby the shadow of authority, and with

erecting at the same time a barrier against the Turks. In this way

several of these magnates, Batbori, Boschkai, Ragoczi, and Bethlen

succeeded in establishing themselves, one after another, as tributary

sovereigns in Transylvania and Hungary; and they maintained their ground

by no deeper policy than that of occasionally joining the enemy, in

order to render themselves more formidable to their own prince.

Ferdinand, Maximilian, and Rodolph, who were all sovereigns of Hungary

and Transylvania, exhausted their other territories in endeavouring to

defend these from the hostile inroads of the Turks, and to put down

intestine rebellion. In this quarter destructive wars were succeeded

but by brief truces, which were scarcely less hurtful: far and wide the

land lay waste, while the injured serf had to complain equally of his

enemy and his protector. Into these countries also the Reformation had

penetrated; and protected by the freedom of the States, and under the

cover of the internal disorders, had made a noticeable progress. Here

too it was incautiously attacked, and party spirit thus became yet more

dangerous from religious enthusiasm. Headed by a bold rebel, Boschkai,

the nobles of Hungary and Transylvania raised the standard of rebellion.

The Hungarian insurgents were upon the point of making common cause with

the discontented Protestants in Austria, Moravia, and Bohemia, and

uniting all those countries in one fearful revolt. The downfall of

popery in these lands would then have been inevitable.

Long had the Austrian archdukes, the brothers of the Emperor, beheld

with silent indignation the impending ruin of their house; this last

event hastened their decision. The Archduke Matthias, Maximilian’s

second son, Viceroy in Hungary, and Rodolph’s presumptive heir, now came

forward as the stay of the falling house of Hapsburg. In his youth,

misled by a false ambition, this prince, disregarding the interests of

his family, had listened to the overtures of the Flemish insurgents, who

invited him into the Netherlands to conduct the defence of their

liberties against the oppression of his own relative, Philip the Second.

Mistaking the voice of an insulated faction for that of the entire

nation, Matthias obeyed the call. But the event answered the

expectations of the men of Brabant as little as his own, and from this

imprudent enterprise he retired with little credit.

Far more honourable was his second appearance in the political world.

Perceiving that his repeated remonstrances with the Emperor were

unavailing, he assembled the archdukes, his brothers and cousins, at

Presburg, and consulted with them on the growing perils of their house,

when they unanimously assigned to him, as the oldest, the duty of

defending that patrimony which a feeble brother was endangering. In his

hands they placed all their powers and rights, and vested him with

sovereign authority, to act at his discretion for the common good.

Matthias immediately opened a communication with the Porte and the

Hungarian rebels, and through his skilful management succeeded in

saving, by a peace with the Turks, the remainder of Hungary, and by a

treaty with the rebels, preserved the claims of Austria to the lost

provinces. But Rodolph, as jealous as he had hitherto been careless of

his sovereign authority, refused to ratify this treaty, which he

regarded as a criminal encroachment on his sovereign rights. He accused

the Archduke of keeping up a secret understanding with the enemy, and of

cherishing treasonable designs on the crown of Hungary.

The activity of Matthias was, in truth, anything but disinterested; the

conduct of the Emperor only accelerated the execution of his ambitious

views. Secure, from motives of gratitude, of the devotion of the

Hungarians, for whom he had so lately obtained the blessings of peace;

assured by his agents of the favourable disposition of the nobles, and

certain of the support of a large party, even in Austria, he now

ventured to assume a bolder attitude, and, sword in hand, to discuss his

grievances with the Emperor. The Protestants in Austria and Moravia,

long ripe for revolt, and now won over to the Archduke by his promises

of toleration, loudly and openly espoused his cause, and their

long-menaced alliance with the Hungarian rebels was actually effected.

Almost at once a formidable conspiracy was planned and matured against

the Emperor. Too late did he resolve to amend his past errors; in vain

did he attempt to break up this fatal alliance. Already the whole

empire was in arms; Hungary, Austria, and Moravia had done homage to

Matthias, who was already on his march to Bohemia to seize the Emperor

in his palace, and to cut at once the sinews of his power.

Bohemia was not a more peaceable possession for Austria than Hungary;

with this difference only, that, in the latter, political

considerations, in the former, religious dissensions, fomented

disorders. In Bohemia, a century before the days of Luther, the first

spark of the religious war had been kindled; a century after Luther, the

first flames of the thirty years’ war burst out in Bohemia. The sect

which owed its rise to John Huss, still existed in that country;--it

agreed with the Romish Church in ceremonies and doctrines, with the

single exception of the administration of the Communion, in which the

Hussites communicated in both kinds. This privilege had been conceded

to the followers of Huss by the Council of Basle, in an express treaty,

(the Bohemian Compact); and though it was afterwards disavowed by the

popes, they nevertheless continued to profit by it under the sanction of

the government. As the use of the cup formed the only important

distinction of their body, they were usually designated by the name of

Utraquists; and they readily adopted an appellation which reminded them

of their dearly valued privilege. But under this title lurked also the

far stricter sects of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren, who differed

from the predominant church in more important particulars, and bore, in

fact, a great resemblance to the German Protestants. Among them both,

the German and Swiss opinions on religion made rapid progress; while the

name of Utraquists, under which they managed to disguise the change of

their principles, shielded them from persecution.

In truth, they had nothing in common with the Utraquists but the name;

essentially, they were altogether Protestant. Confident in the strength

of their party, and the Emperor’s toleration under Maximilian, they had

openly avowed their tenets. After the example of the Germans, they drew

up a Confession of their own, in which Lutherans as well as Calvinists

recognized their own doctrines, and they sought to transfer to the new

Confession the privileges of the original Utraquists. In this they were

opposed by their Roman Catholic countrymen, and forced to rest content

with the Emperor’s verbal assurance of protection.

As long as Maximilian lived, they enjoyed complete toleration, even

under the new form they had taken. Under his successor the scene

changed. An imperial edict appeared, which deprived the Bohemian

Brethren of their religious freedom. Now these differed in nothing from

the other Utraquists. The sentence, therefore, of their condemnation,

obviously included all the partisans of the Bohemian Confession.

Accordingly, they all combined to oppose the imperial mandate in the

Diet, but without being able to procure its revocation. The Emperor and

the Roman Catholic Estates took their ground on the Compact and the

Bohemian Constitution; in which nothing appeared in favour of a religion

which had not then obtained the voice of the country. Since that time,

how completely had affairs changed! What then formed but an

inconsiderable opinion, had now become the predominant religion of the

country. And what was it then, but a subterfuge to limit a newly

spreading religion by the terms of obsolete treaties? The Bohemian

Protestants appealed to the verbal guarantee of Maximilian, and the

religious freedom of the Germans, with whom they argued they ought to be

on a footing of equality. It was in vain--their appeal was dismissed.

Such was the posture of affairs in Bohemia, when Matthias, already

master of Hungary, Austria, and Moravia, appeared in Kolin, to raise the

Bohemian Estates also against the Emperor. The embarrassment of the

latter was now at its height. Abandoned by all his other subjects, he

placed his last hopes on the Bohemians, who, it might be foreseen, would

take advantage of his necessities to enforce their own demands. After

an interval of many years, he once more appeared publicly in the Diet at

Prague; and to convince the people that he was really still in

existence, orders were given that all the windows should be opened in

the streets through which he was to pass--proof enough how far things

had gone with him. The event justified his fears. The Estates,

conscious of their own power, refused to take a single step until their

privileges were confirmed, and religious toleration fully assured to

them. It was in vain to have recourse now to the old system of evasion.

The Emperor’s fate was in their hands, and he must yield to necessity.

At present, however, he only granted their other demands--religious

matters he reserved for consideration at the next Diet.

The Bohemians now took up arms in defence of the Emperor, and a bloody

war between the two brothers was on the point of breaking out. But

Rodolph, who feared nothing so much as remaining in this slavish

dependence on the Estates, waited not for a warlike issue, but hastened

to effect a reconciliation with his brother by more peaceable means. By

a formal act of abdication he resigned to Matthias, what indeed he had

no chance of wresting from him, Austria and the kingdom of Hungary, and

acknowledged him as his successor to the crown of Bohemia.

Dearly enough had the Emperor extricated himself from one difficulty,

only to get immediately involved in another. The settlement of the

religious affairs of Bohemia had been referred to the next Diet, which

was held in 1609. The reformed Bohemians demanded the free exercise of

their faith, as under the former emperors; a Consistory of their own;

the cession of the University of Prague; and the right of electing

`Defenders’, or `Protectors’ of `Liberty’, from their own body. The

answer was the same as before; for the timid Emperor was now entirely

fettered by the unreformed party. However often, and in however

threatening language the Estates renewed their remonstrances, the

Emperor persisted in his first declaration of granting nothing beyond

the old compact. The Diet broke up without coming to a decision; and

the Estates, exasperated against the Emperor, arranged a general meeting

at Prague, upon their own authority, to right themselves.

They appeared at Prague in great force. In defiance of the imperial

prohibition, they carried on their deliberations almost under the very

eyes of the Emperor. The yielding compliance which he began to show,

only proved how much they were feared, and increased their audacity.

Yet on the main point he remained inflexible. They fulfilled their

threats, and at last resolved to establish, by their own power, the free

and universal exercise of their religion, and to abandon the Emperor to

his necessities until he should confirm this resolution. They even went

farther, and elected for themselves the DEFENDERS which the Emperor had

refused them. Ten were nominated by each of the three Estates; they

also determined to raise, as soon as possible, an armed force, at the

head of which Count Thurn, the chief organizer of the revolt, should be

placed as general defender of the liberties of Bohemia. Their

determination brought the Emperor to submission, to which he was now

counselled even by the Spaniards. Apprehensive lest the exasperated

Estates should throw themselves into the arms of the King of Hungary, he

signed the memorable Letter of Majesty for Bohemia, by which, under the

successors of the Emperor, that people justified their rebellion.

The Bohemian Confession, which the States had laid before the Emperor

Maximilian, was, by the Letter of Majesty, placed on a footing of

equality with the olden profession. The Utraquists, for by this title

the Bohemian Protestants continued to designate themselves, were put in

possession of the University of Prague, and allowed a Consistory of

their own, entirely independent of the archiepiscopal see of that city.

All the churches in the cities, villages, and market towns, which they

held at the date of the letter, were secured to them; and if in addition

they wished to erect others, it was permitted to the nobles, and

knights, and the free cities to do so. This last clause in the Letter

of Majesty gave rise to the unfortunate disputes which subsequently

rekindled the flames of war in Europe.

The Letter of Majesty erected the Protestant part of Bohemia into a kind

of republic. The Estates had learned to feel the power which they

gained by perseverance, unity, and harmony in their measures. The

Emperor now retained little more than the shadow of his sovereign

authority; while by the new dignity of the so-called defenders of

liberty, a dangerous stimulus was given to the spirit of revolt. The

example and success of Bohemia afforded a tempting seduction to the

other hereditary dominions of Austria, and all attempted by similar

means to extort similar privileges. The spirit of liberty spread from

one province to another; and as it was chiefly the disunion among the

Austrian princes that had enabled the Protestants so materially to

improve their advantages, they now hastened to effect a reconciliation

between the Emperor and the King of Hungary.

But the reconciliation could not be sincere. The wrong was too great to

be forgiven, and Rodolph continued to nourish at heart an

unextinguishable hatred of Matthias. With grief and indignation he

brooded over the thought, that the Bohemian sceptre was finally to

descend into the hands of his enemy; and the prospect was not more

consoling, even if Matthias should die without issue. In that case,

Ferdinand, Archduke of Graetz, whom he equally disliked, was the head of

the family. To exclude the latter as well as Matthias from the

succession to the throne of Bohemia, he fell upon the project of

diverting that inheritance to Ferdinand’s brother, the Archduke Leopold,

Bishop of Passau, who among all his relatives had ever been the dearest

and most deserving. The prejudices of the Bohemians in favour of the

elective freedom of their crown, and their attachment to Leopold’s

person, seemed to favour this scheme, in which Rodolph consulted rather

his own partiality and vindictiveness than the good of his house. But

to carry out this project, a military force was requisite, and Rodolph

actually assembled an army in the bishopric of Passau. The object of

this force was hidden from all. An inroad, however, which, for want of

pay it made suddenly and without the Emperor’s knowledge into Bohemia,

and the outrages which it there committed, stirred up the whole kingdom

against him. In vain he asserted his innocence to the Bohemian Estates;

they would not believe his protestations; vainly did he attempt to

restrain the violence of his soldiery; they disregarded his orders.

Persuaded that the Emperor’s object was to annul the Letter of Majesty,

the Protectors of Liberty armed the whole of Protestant Bohemia, and

invited Matthias into the country. After the dispersion of the force he

had collected at Passau, the Emperor remained helpless at Prague, where

he was kept shut up like a prisoner in his palace, and separated from

all his councillors. In the meantime, Matthias entered Prague amidst

universal rejoicings, where Rodolph was soon afterwards weak enough to

acknowledge him King of Bohemia. So hard a fate befell this Emperor; he

was compelled, during his life, to abdicate in favour of his enemy that

very throne, of which he had been endeavouring to deprive him after his

own death. To complete his degradation, he was obliged, by a personal

act of renunciation, to release his subjects in Bohemia, Silesia, and

Lusatia from their allegiance, and he did it with a broken heart. All,

even those he thought he had most attached to his person, had abandoned

him. When he had signed the instrument, he threw his hat upon the

ground, and gnawed the pen which had rendered so shameful a service.

While Rodolph thus lost one hereditary dominion after another, the

imperial dignity was not much better maintained by him. Each of the

religious parties into which Germany was divided, continued its efforts

to advance itself at the expense of the other, or to guard against its

attacks. The weaker the hand that held the sceptre, and the more the

Protestants and Roman Catholics felt they were left to themselves, the

more vigilant necessarily became their watchfulness, and the greater

their distrust of each other. It was enough that the Emperor was ruled

by Jesuits, and was guided by Spanish counsels, to excite the

apprehension of the Protestants, and to afford a pretext for hostility.

The rash zeal of the Jesuits, which in the pulpit and by the press

disputed the validity of the religious peace, increased this distrust,

and caused their adversaries to see a dangerous design in the most

indifferent measures of the Roman Catholics. Every step taken in the

hereditary dominions of the Emperor, for the repression of the reformed

religion, was sure to draw the attention of all the Protestants of

Germany; and this powerful support which the reformed subjects of

Austria met, or expected to meet with from their religious confederates

in the rest of Germany, was no small cause of their confidence, and of

the rapid success of Matthias. It was the general belief of the Empire,

that they owed the long enjoyment of the religious peace merely to the

difficulties in which the Emperor was placed by the internal troubles in

his dominions, and consequently they were in no haste to relieve him

from them.

Almost all the affairs of the Diet were neglected, either through the

procrastination of the Emperor, or through the fault of the Protestant

Estates, who had determined to make no provision for the common wants of

the Empire till their own grievances were removed. These grievances

related principally to the misgovernment of the Emperor; the violation

of the religious treaty, and the presumptuous usurpations of the Aulic

Council, which in the present reign had begun to extend its jurisdiction

at the expense of the Imperial Chamber. Formerly, in all disputes

between the Estates, which could not be settled by club law, the

Emperors had in the last resort decided of themselves, if the case were

trifling, and in conjunction with the princes, if it were important; or

they determined them by the advice of imperial judges who followed the

court. This superior jurisdiction they had, in the end of the fifteenth

century, assigned to a regular and permanent tribunal, the Imperial

Chamber of Spires, in which the Estates of the Empire, that they might

not be oppressed by the arbitrary appointment of the Emperor, had

reserved to themselves the right of electing the assessors, and of

periodically reviewing its decrees. By the religious peace, these

rights of the Estates, (called the rights of presentation and

visitation,) were extended also to the Lutherans, so that Protestant

judges had a voice in Protestant causes, and a seeming equality obtained

for both religions in this supreme tribunal.

But the enemies of the Reformation and of the freedom of the Estates,

vigilant to take advantage of every incident that favoured their views,

soon found means to neutralize the beneficial effects of this

institution. A supreme jurisdiction over the Imperial States was

gradually and skilfully usurped by a private imperial tribunal, the

Aulic Council in Vienna, a court at first intended merely to advise the

Emperor in the exercise of his undoubted, imperial, and personal

prerogatives; a court, whose members being appointed and paid by him,

had no law but the interest of their master, and no standard of equity

but the advancement of the unreformed religion of which they were

partisans. Before the Aulic Council were now brought several suits

originating between Estates differing in religion, and which, therefore,

properly belonged to the Imperial Chamber. It was not surprising if the

decrees of this tribunal bore traces of their origin; if the interests

of the Roman Church and of the Emperor were preferred to justice by

Roman Catholic judges, and the creatures of the Emperor. Although all

the Estates of Germany seemed to have equal cause for resisting so

perilous an abuse, the Protestants alone, who most sensibly felt it, and

even these not all at once and in a body, came forward as the defenders

of German liberty, which the establishment of so arbitrary a tribunal

had outraged in its most sacred point, the administration of justice.

In fact, Germany would have had little cause to congratulate itself upon

the abolition of club-law, and in the institution of the Imperial

Chamber, if an arbitrary tribunal of the Emperor was allowed to

interfere with the latter. The Estates of the German Empire would

indeed have improved little upon the days of barbarism, if the Chamber

of Justice in which they sat along with the Emperor as judges, and for

which they had abandoned their original princely prerogative, should

cease to be a court of the last resort. But the strangest

contradictions were at this date to be found in the minds of men. The

name of Emperor, a remnant of Roman despotism, was still associated with

an idea of autocracy, which, though it formed a ridiculous inconsistency

with the privileges of the Estates, was nevertheless argued for by

jurists, diffused by the partisans of despotism, and believed by the

ignorant.

To these general grievances was gradually added a chain of singular

incidents, which at length converted the anxiety of the Protestants into

utter distrust. During the Spanish persecutions in the Netherlands,

several Protestant families had taken refuge in Aix-la-Chapelle, an

imperial city, and attached to the Roman Catholic faith, where they

settled and insensibly extended their adherents. Having succeeded by

stratagem in introducing some of their members into the municipal

council, they demanded a church and the public exercise of their

worship, and the demand being unfavourably received, they succeeded by

violence in enforcing it, and also in usurping the entire government of

the city. To see so important a city in Protestant hands was too heavy

a blow for the Emperor and the Roman Catholics. After all the Emperor’s

requests and commands for the restoration of the olden government had

proved ineffectual, the Aulic Council proclaimed the city under the ban

of the Empire, which, however, was not put in force till the following

reign.

Of yet greater importance were two other attempts of the Protestants to

extend their influence and their power. The Elector Gebhard, of

Cologne, (born Truchsess--[Grand-master of the kitchen.]--of Waldburg,)

conceived for the young Countess Agnes, of Mansfield, Canoness of

Gerresheim, a passion which was not unreturned. As the eyes of all

Germany were directed to this intercourse, the brothers of the Countess,

two zealous Calvinists, demanded satisfaction for the injured honour of

their house, which, as long as the elector remained a Roman Catholic

prelate, could not be repaired by marriage. They threatened the elector

they would wash out this stain in his blood and their sister’s, unless

he either abandoned all further connexion with the countess, or

consented to re-establish her reputation at the altar. The elector,

indifferent to all the consequences of this step, listened to nothing

but the voice of love. Whether it was in consequence of his previous

inclination to the reformed doctrines, or that the charms of his

mistress alone effected this wonder, he renounced the Roman Catholic

faith, and led the beautiful Agnes to the altar.

This event was of the greatest importance. By the letter of the clause

reserving the ecclesiastical states from the general operation of the

religious peace, the elector had, by his apostacy, forfeited all right

to the temporalities of his bishopric; and if, in any case, it was

important for the Catholics to enforce the clause, it was so especially

in the case of electorates. On the other hand, the relinquishment of so

high a dignity was a severe sacrifice, and peculiarly so in the case of

a tender husband, who had wished to enhance the value of his heart and

hand by the gift of a principality. Moreover, the Reservatum

Ecclesiasticum was a disputed article of the treaty of Augsburg; and all

the German Protestants were aware of the extreme importance of wresting

this fourth electorate from the opponents of their faith.--[Saxony,

Brandenburg, and the Palatinate were already Protestant.]--The example

had already been set in several of the ecclesiastical benefices of Lower

Germany, and attended with success. Several canons of Cologne had also

already embraced the Protestant confession, and were on the elector’s

side, while, in the city itself, he could depend upon the support of a

numerous Protestant party. All these considerations, greatly

strengthened by the persuasions of his friends and relations, and the

promises of several German courts, determined the elector to retain his

dominions, while he changed his religion.

But it was soon apparent that he had entered upon a contest which he

could not carry through. Even the free toleration of the Protestant

service within the territories of Cologne, had already occasioned a

violent opposition on the part of the canons and Roman Catholic

`Estates’ of that province. The intervention of the Emperor, and a

papal ban from Rome, which anathematized the elector as an apostate, and

deprived him of all his dignities, temporal and spiritual, armed his own

subjects and chapter against him. The Elector assembled a military

force; the chapter did the same. To ensure also the aid of a strong

arm, they proceeded forthwith to a new election, and chose the Bishop of

Liege, a prince of Bavaria.

A civil war now commenced, which, from the strong interest which both

religious parties in Germany necessarily felt in the conjuncture, was

likely to terminate in a general breaking up of the religious peace.

What most made the Protestants indignant, was that the Pope should have

presumed, by a pretended apostolic power, to deprive a prince of the

empire of his imperial dignities. Even in the golden days of their

spiritual domination, this prerogative of the Pope had been disputed;

how much more likely was it to be questioned at a period when his

authority was entirely disowned by one party, while even with the other

it rested on a tottering foundation. All the Protestant princes took up

the affair warmly against the Emperor; and Henry IV. of France, then

King of Navarre, left no means of negotiation untried to urge the German

princes to the vigorous assertion of their rights. The issue would

decide for ever the liberties of Germany. Four Protestant against three

Roman Catholic voices in the Electoral College must at once have given

the preponderance to the former, and for ever excluded the House of

Austria from the imperial throne.

But the Elector Gebhard had embraced the Calvinist, not the Lutheran

religion; and this circumstance alone was his ruin. The mutual rancour

of these two churches would not permit the Lutheran Estates to regard

the Elector as one of their party, and as such to lend him their

effectual support. All indeed had encouraged, and promised him

assistance; but only one appanaged prince of the Palatine House, the

Palsgrave John Casimir, a zealous Calvinist, kept his word. Despite of

the imperial prohibition, he hastened with his little army into the

territories of Cologne; but without being able to effect any thing,

because the Elector, who was destitute even of the first necessaries,

left him totally without help. So much the more rapid was the progress

of the newly-chosen elector, whom his Bavarian relations and the

Spaniards from the Netherlands supported with the utmost vigour. The

troops of Gebhard, left by their master without pay, abandoned one place

after another to the enemy; by whom others were compelled to surrender.

In his Westphalian territories, Gebhard held out for some time longer,

till here, too, he was at last obliged to yield to superior force.

After several vain attempts in Holland and England to obtain means for

his restoration, he retired into the Chapter of Strasburg, and died dean

of that cathedral; the first sacrifice to the Ecclesiastical

Reservation, or rather to the want of harmony among the German

Protestants.

To this dispute in Cologne was soon added another in Strasburg. Several

Protestant canons of Cologne, who had been included in the same papal

ban with the elector, had taken refuge within this bishopric, where they

likewise held prebends. As the Roman Catholic canons of Strasburg

hesitated to allow them, as being under the ban, the enjoyment of their

prebends, they took violent possession of their benefices, and the

support of a powerful Protestant party among the citizens soon gave them

the preponderance in the chapter. The other canons thereupon retired to

Alsace-Saverne, where, under the protection of the bishop, they

established themselves as the only lawful chapter, and denounced that

which remained in Strasburg as illegal. The latter, in the meantime,

had so strengthened themselves by the reception of several Protestant

colleagues of high rank, that they could venture, upon the death of the

bishop, to nominate a new Protestant bishop in the person of John George

of Brandenburg. The Roman Catholic canons, far from allowing this

election, nominated the Bishop of Metz, a prince of Lorraine, to that

dignity, who announced his promotion by immediately commencing

hostilities against the territories of Strasburg.

That city now took up arms in defence of its Protestant chapter and the

Prince of Brandenburg, while the other party, with the assistance of the

troops of Lorraine, endeavoured to possess themselves of the

temporalities of the chapter. A tedious war was the consequence, which,

according to the spirit of the times, was attended with barbarous

devastations. In vain did the Emperor interpose with his supreme

authority to terminate the dispute; the ecclesiastical property remained

for a long time divided between the two parties, till at last the

Protestant prince, for a moderate pecuniary equivalent, renounced his

claims; and thus, in this dispute also, the Roman Church came off

victorious.

An occurrence which, soon after the adjustment of this dispute, took

place in Donauwerth, a free city of Suabia, was still more critical for

the whole of Protestant Germany. In this once Roman Catholic city, the

Protestants, during the reigns of Ferdinand and his son, had, in the

usual way, become so completely predominant, that the Roman Catholics

were obliged to content themselves with a church in the Monastery of the

Holy Cross, and for fear of offending the Protestants, were even forced

to suppress the greater part of their religious rites. At length a

fanatical abbot of this monastery ventured to defy the popular

prejudices, and to arrange a public procession, preceded by the cross

and banners flying; but he was soon compelled to desist from the

attempt. When, a year afterwards, encouraged by a favourable imperial

proclamation, the same abbot attempted to renew this procession, the

citizens proceeded to open violence. The inhabitants shut the gates

against the monks on their return, trampled their colours under foot,

and followed them home with clamour and abuse. An imperial citation was

the consequence of this act of violence; and as the exasperated populace

even threatened to assault the imperial commissaries, and all attempts

at an amicable adjustment were frustrated by the fanaticism of the

multitude, the city was at last formally placed under the ban of the

Empire, the execution of which was intrusted to Maximilian, Duke of

Bavaria. The citizens, formerly so insolent, were seized with terror at

the approach of the Bavarian army; pusillanimity now possessed them,

though once so full of defiance, and they laid down their arms without

striking a blow. The total abolition of the Protestant religion within

the walls of the city was the punishment of their rebellion; it was

deprived of its privileges, and, from a free city of Suabia, converted

into a municipal town of Bavaria.

Two circumstances connected with this proceeding must have strongly

excited the attention of the Protestants, even if the interests of

religion had been less powerful on their minds. First of all, the

sentence had been pronounced by the Aulic Council, an arbitrary and

exclusively Roman Catholic tribunal, whose jurisdiction besides had been

so warmly disputed by them; and secondly, its execution had been

intrusted to the Duke of Bavaria, the head of another circle. These

unconstitutional steps seemed to be the harbingers of further violent

measures on the Roman Catholic side, the result, probably, of secret

conferences and dangerous designs, which might perhaps end in the entire

subversion of their religious liberty.

In circumstances where the law of force prevails, and security depends

upon power alone, the weakest party is naturally the most busy to place

itself in a posture of defence. This was now the case in Germany. If

the Roman Catholics really meditated any evil against the Protestants in

Germany, the probability was that the blow would fall on the south

rather than the north, because, in Lower Germany, the Protestants were

connected together through a long unbroken tract of country, and could

therefore easily combine for their mutual support; while those in the

south, detached from each other, and surrounded on all sides by Roman

Catholic states, were exposed to every inroad. If, moreover, as was to

be expected, the Catholics availed themselves of the divisions amongst

the Protestants, and levelled their attack against one of the religious

parties, it was the Calvinists who, as the weaker, and as being besides

excluded from the religious treaty, were apparently in the greatest

danger, and upon them would probably fall the first attack.

Both these circumstances took place in the dominions of the Elector

Palatine, which possessed, in the Duke of Bavaria, a formidable

neighbour, and which, by reason of their defection to Calvinism,

received no protection from the Religious Peace, and had little hope of

succour from the Lutheran states. No country in Germany had experienced

so many revolutions in religion in so short a time as the Palatinate.

In the space of sixty years this country, an unfortunate toy in the

hands of its rulers, had twice adopted the doctrines of Luther, and

twice relinquished them for Calvinism. The Elector Frederick III.

first abandoned the confession of Augsburg, which his eldest son and

successor, Lewis, immediately re-established. The Calvinists throughout

the whole country were deprived of their churches, their preachers and

even their teachers banished beyond the frontiers; while the prince, in

his Lutheran zeal, persecuted them even in his will, by appointing none

but strict and orthodox Lutherans as the guardians of his son, a minor.

But this illegal testament was disregarded by his brother the Count

Palatine, John Casimir, who, by the regulations of the Golden Bull,

assumed the guardianship and administration of the state. Calvinistic

teachers were given to the Elector Frederick IV., then only nine years

of age, who were ordered, if necessary, to drive the Lutheran heresy out

of the soul of their pupil with blows. If such was the treatment of the

sovereign, that of the subjects may be easily conceived.

It was under this Frederick that the Palatine Court exerted itself so

vigorously to unite the Protestant states of Germany in joint measures

against the House of Austria, and, if possible, bring about the

formation of a general confederacy. Besides that this court had always

been guided by the counsels of France, with whom hatred of the House of

Austria was the ruling principle, a regard for his own safety urged him

to secure in time the doubtful assistance of the Lutherans against a

near and overwhelming enemy. Great difficulties, however, opposed this

union, because the Lutherans’ dislike of the Reformed was scarcely less

than the common aversion of both to the Romanists. An attempt was first

made to reconcile the two professions, in order to facilitate a

political union; but all these attempts failed, and generally ended in

both parties adhering the more strongly to their respective opinions.

Nothing then remained but to increase the fear and the distrust of the

Evangelicals, and in this way to impress upon them the necessity of this

alliance. The power of the Roman Catholics and the magnitude of the

danger were exaggerated, accidental incidents were ascribed to

deliberate plans, innocent actions misrepresented by invidious

constructions, and the whole conduct of the professors of the olden

religion was interpreted as the result of a well-weighed and systematic

plan, which, in all probability, they were very far from having

concerted.