CHAPTER XXI.

THE EMPIRE UNDER RUDOLF II.

THROUGHOUT more than a generation, covering the greater part of the long succession of years during which the Empire, disturbed within and menaced from without, drifted on towards the Thirty Years' War, the reigning Emperor was Rudolf II. The utter impotence of his rule, ending in collapse, directly contributed to render inevitable the outbreak of the European struggle of which Germany was the principal theatre. Before his downfall the condition of the Empire, and the progress of the intersecting religious and territorial questions that agitated it, had been materially affected by his policy and by that of other members of his dynasty. A few words thus seem called for as to his personality, and as to those of his brothers and principal German kinsmen.

The testamentary dispositions of Maximilian II, dictated by a desire of avoiding the dissipation of territorial power, left each of Rudolfs four brothers who grew to man's estate with nothing but an appanage and his ambition. Rudolf's celibacy, and in course of time his mental collapse, made the question of the succession the chief dynastic problem of his reign ; and it continuously occupied the attention of his brothers and kinsmen from 1581 onwards, when, on the occasion of a serious illness of the Emperor, it was first mooted by Archduke Charles of Styria.

Of Maximilian's sons the next in age to Rudolf, Archduke Ernest, who had been his companion in Spain, seems, though not flawless in character, throughout to have found more favour there than his elder brother. After missing the Polish throne, he was, on Rudolf's accession, entrusted with the government of Upper and Lower Austria, where his steady enforcement of the principles of the Counter-Reformation obtained for him the Golden Fleece from Philip, and a consecrated hat and sword from Pope Sixtus V. Later, Philip appointed him Governor-General of the " loyal " Provinces of the Netherlands, where, however, he died a few months after his arrival (February, 1595).

Very different was the career of the third brother, Archduke Matthias. He began it as if in religious questions he was minded, like his father before him, to be of no party. In truth, he was incapable of entering far into the principles or of taking up the policy of either side; though in a long period of expectancy he cast his eye upon sees that might provide him with a suitable income, and repressed the Protestants when he had a chance. His mind was shallow and his selfishness transparent ; but he had in his favour, besides a lightheartedness which made him ready for anything, a certain bonhomie that stood him in excellent stead, and a docility under skilful guidance so long as he deemed it in his interest to submit to it. Thus, after he had ultimately become the inevitable alternative to the existing anarchy, he was carried to the top, but speedily surrendered the control of the Imperial policy placed in his hands.

The fifth son, Archduke Albert, had in his eleventh year been received at the Court of Philip II, whose goodwill he never afterwards lost. Created a Cardinal at the age of eighteen, and soon afterwards named Archbishop of Toledo (though it was not till long afterwards that he assumed the administration of his Province), he was in 1593 charged with the Viceroyalty of Portugal, and in 1596, as has been narrated elsewhere, was appointed his brother Ernest's successor in the government of the Spanish Netherlands. His marriage with the Infanta was not actually concluded till after her father's death ; nor is there any reason for holding Albert accountable for the Spanish design which seven years later sought to place him on the Imperial throne.

It may be worth remembering that the eldest daughter of Maximilian II, Anne, became in 1570 the fourth wife of Philip II, and thus transmitted to their son (afterwards Philip III of Spain) pretensions to the Austrian succession which had to be bought off. After her death in 1580, the widower with characteristic promptitude offered his hand to her younger sister Elizabeth, in the opinion of her late husband Charles IX of France the most virtuous woman in the world. A third daughter, Margaret, died at Madrid, in a Carmelite nunnery, whither half a century before she had retired with her mother, as to a customary dynastic retreat.

Of the side-lines of the House of Austria, the Tyrolese, as already noted, expired in 1595 with Archduke Ferdinand. On the other hand, at that date a sufficiency of male successors was assured to the Styrian line, whose head was Archduke Charles, the third and favourite son of Ferdinand I. Obviously, the succession to the hereditary dominions of the House of Austria must be expected ultimately to pass to this Styrian line. Archduke Charles died in 1590 ; but till 1596 his widow Maria, Albert of Bavaria's sister, acted as regent for her son Ferdinand, while he was pursuing his studies with the Jesuits at Ingolstadt. Ferdinand's younger brother Leopold came in 1607 to unite in his hands the bishoprics of Strassburg and Passau ; and his ambition suggested to Rudolf II in his last years a scheme of reaction and revenge. Their sister Anna's marriage in 1592 to .Sigismund III of Poland (Archduke Maximilian's former competitor) marked the reconciliation of Austrian and Polish interests, not only as against the Turk, but also in the cause of Rome.

No immediate break is perceptible in the policy of the Imperial government after Maximilian's mantle had fallen on Rudolf's shoulders. Like his father, he was primarily intent on saving the Netherlands for the House of Habsburg. To this end more especially Rudolf, again like his father before him, desired to be on good terms with the Estates of the Empire itself, to whom moreover he had constantly to appeal for aid against the Turks. But the good- or ill-will of the Estates depended on the treatment of the religious difficulty ; and towards this Rudolf stood in a different position from his father, both by reason of his own close connexion with the Catholic interest, and because of changes on the Protestant side which occurred at the very beginning of his reign.

The existing peace with the Turks was at the time of Rudolfs accession renewed on the same humiliating conditions, and, largely by means of superadded bribes, was nominally preserved till 1593-4. The frontier warfare had never stopped ; and the tension with the Turkish government had increased since the close of its Persian war (1589-90). In 1593 the rout of Hassan, Governor of Bosnia, who was slaughtered with some 18,000 of his troops at Sissek on the Kulpa, called forth an irresistible cry for vengeance, and a war began which lasted till 1606. The Türkenglocke was rung in every town and village of the Empire, and every effort was made to put its whole defensive power in action, though the thought had to be abandoned of making the Christian armament a matter of general European concern. In 1594 Archdukes Matthias and Maximilian both took the field; and the Voivods of Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia entered into an alliance with the Emperor. But in October, 1596, the new Sultan Mohammad III in person defeated Archduke Maximilian's forces in a three days' battle, with the awful loss of 50,000 men ; and a sort of general mourning was proclaimed by the Emperor in his Austrian dominions. In 1599 there was some talk of peace ; but the war continued till Mohammad's death in 1603, and went on under his successor Ahmad I.

Szerenes proclaimed Bocskai King, and his coronation followed. But there was no solidity in the movement ; and in the following year Archduke Matthias on the Emperor's behalf, with the aid of the patriotic Magyar Stephen Illeshazi, satisfied the Hungarian Estates by granting to them the administrative concessions desired by them, with full freedom of exercising both the Lutheran and the Calvinist forms of faith. Bocskai died in the same year. The fact that the Turkish Power was hard pressed both by a Persian war and by a formidable insurrection in Asia Minor further accounts for the peace which in November, 1606, the Imperial government was enabled to conclude with the Porte at Zsitva-Torok. Its real significance lies not so much in the territorial arrangements, as to which there was no real change, as in the abolition of the tribute, and in the recognition of the political and diplomatic equality of the two contracting Powers. Though more or less transitory in its effects, it was the first "peace with honour" concluded by a Habsburg Emperor with his arch-foe.

It was this Styrian Counter-Reformation that encouraged Rudolf II in his attempts to enforce a religious reaction in Hungary and Bohemia. In the latter kingdom he had so early as 1581 issued an edict of banishment against the Bohemian Brethren. The nobles, many of whom belonged to the Brotherhood, were not accustomed to such a royal command: it remained a dead letter; and Rudolf's need of the Estates in the wars against the Turks long left it such. In 1602, however, he resolved to go back upon the letter of the Basel Compactâtes, allow no alternative in Bohemia to the Catholic Faith besides Utraquism, and reissue the ordinance of 1581, which was now extended to the Calvinists. Some Protestant churches were hereupon closed ; Catholic clergy were introduced into others ; and the school of Jungbunzlau, the hallowed "Carmel" of the Bohemian Brethren and a kind of later Deventer in its mingled traditions of piety and learning, was destroyed. These proceedings more than sufficed to set in flame the national spirit of Bohemian Protestantism ; and when in 1605 (rather late in the day) a Catholic Synod adopted the decrees of the Council of Trent, the various forms of Bohemian Protestantism, which collectively commanded an indisputable majority among the Estates, drew more closely together than ever. The success, about this time, of the Hungarian Protestants in obtaining the acceptance of their demands further encouraged the Bohemians in their determination to oppose an organised national resistance to the Catholic Reaction.

The short-lived recovery of the Palatinate to Lutheranism gave much satisfaction to the Electors John George of Brandenburg, a very practical politician, and Augustus of Saxony. The latter was now intent upon bringing about a Lutheran union based upon a doctrinal exclusion of Calvinism, by means of a Formula Concordiae drawn up by the orthodox Lutheran divines in whom he confided-Martin Chemnitz, David Chytraens, and above all the indefatigable Württemberger Jacob Andreae, and, after a preliminary conference at Torgau in May, 1576,, communicated by the Saxon to the other Protestant governments. When in June, 1580, this Formula Concordiae was at last promulgated, the new test was found to divide the Protestant governments into-two unequal halves-the majority who had accepted it comprising,, with the three temporal Electors, the Houses of Brunswick, Mecklenburg, and Ernestine Saxony, and in the south Württemberg, Ansbach, the Neuburg Palatines and Baden ; the minority, who refused, Pomerania, Holstein, Anhalt, and Hesse, with John Casimir, Zweibrücken, and Nassau in the south. The Wetterau Counts also declined, and the majority of/ the Imperial town?. Thus, the adoption of the Formula Concordiae made patent the split among the Protestant Estates, and at the same time showed the preponderance among them of religious opinions which to all intents and purposes implied a conservative policy.

December the solemn mockery was over; and the final answer to Rudolf's futile attempt was the abjuration, in July, 1581, of the sovereignty of Philip by the United Provinces.

But though the Empire had accomplished less than nothing by its formal intervention in the affairs of the Netherlands, it could not in its turn remain unaffected by the progress of their war of liberation. Parma's campaign of 1579, which culminated in the capture of Maestricht, led to a succession of raids by both Spanish and Dutch soldiery across the German frontier; and, owing to the enterprise of Dutch privateers on the Rhine, the river was no longer safely navigable below Cologne, the chief waterway of trade with the south being thus practically stopped. Even more unsettling, however-for governments and populations alike were in this age more troubled by religious than by economic disturbances-was the continuous influx of Calvinist refugees from the Low Countries into the German border-lands, and the propaganda which they carried on there. These aliens, whom Alva had tried to induce the governments of Jiilich and Cologne to expel, were mostly laborious and peaceable artisans ; but they were uniformly full of bitter hatred against the Church of Rome. The centres of this immigration were Wesel in Cleves, Aachen, Cologne, and the prosperous sea-port of Emden, which had been the cradle of Anabaptism, and where in 1571 was held a Synod of all the Dutch Churches in Germany.

The duchies of Jiilich and Cleves were of course immediately exposed to the influence of this Dutch immigration, with whose aid a Reformed congregation established itself at Düsseldorf. In his religious opinions, as well as in his tolerant disposition Duke William resembled the Emperor Maximilian ; and he had married his eldest three daughters to» Protestant Princes. But he had secured the bishopric of Münster for his surviving son John William, and from about 1578 his views began to» take a Catholic turn. He issued some strong edicts against the DutcK refugees ; but they avoided persecution by keeping quiet.

The Diet of Augsburg, which met in July, 1582, had been summoned by Rudolf to enable him to put in order the eastern frontier fortresses against the Turks, and to advise with him on the danger in the west, where the Netherlands seemed about to become a dependency of France, and where by way of warning the Imperial town of Cambray had just been handed over to Anjou. But in addition to the Aachen difficulty another religious question of typical significance thrust itself to the front. As has been seen, the great archiépiscopal see of Magdeburg had since 1566 been held by Prince Joachim Frederick of Brandenburg; but neither Maximilian nor Rudolf had in this instance been found willing to resort to the convenient arrangement of an indulgence (Induit), whereby the temporalities of a see might provisionally be granted to its occupant, although his election had not yet received the papal confirmation. Joachim Frederick now claimed to sit and vote at the Diet as administrator of the archbishopric. This unprecedented demand was resolutely resisted by the Catholic Estates ; and the new Elector of Mainz, Wolfgang von Dalberg, and Duke William V of Bavaria, who had succeeded in 1579, declared that they would quit the Diet if the claim were allowed. The administrator hereupon withdrew from Augsburg; and the Emperor was henceforth less ready than before to resort to the subterfuge of indulgences.

Protestant worship abolished, the execution of this sentence was carried out five years later-sixteen after the matter had been first brought before the Diet. That Diet ended characteristically with a quarrel about the new Calendar, introduced by Pope Gregory XIII. Rudolf had at last found an occasion on which he led the party of progress ; but the age was too full of religious polemics for any Protestant to raise his voice in favour of the change, except the mathematician Kepler of Graz.

The failure of the Diet of 1582 to settle the religious difficulty in the north-west was immediately made manifest by the outbreak of serious troubles in the Electorate of Cologne. Here the capable and tolerant Salentin of Isenburg had in 1577 resigned his Archbishopric ; the noble House to which he belonged seemed likely to become extinct ; and he preferred a papal dispensation to marrying without one, and thus furnishing a test case as to the valuelessness of the reservatum ecclesiasticum. In his place Gebhard (II) of the noble Swabian family of Waldburg, a nephew of the zealous Cardinal Otto of Augsburg, was elected Archbishop and at once confirmed by Gregory XIII. The Protestant party in the Chapter, headed by Count Hermann von Neuenaar, a nephew of Archbishop Hermann von Wied, had carried Gebhard, calculating on his dissolute habits of life, for in the year after his election he was living with the Countess Agnes von Mansfeld. Early in 1582 her brothers made a raid in approved fashion on the Electoral Palace at Bonn, and obtained from Archbishop Gebhard a promise of marriage, which he appears to have made with the intention of resigning his Archbishopric. But Hermann von Neuenaar and his faction now represented to Gebhard that marriage was reconcilable with the retention of his see. The Protestantisation of the see, which must necessarily follow, would involve a defiance of the reservatum ecclesïastïcum, and with it of the whole Catholic party in the Empire. If successfully carried out it would effectually break up the north-western group of Catholic States, in which the defection of Aachen had already made a gap, and throw this portal of the Empire entirely open to the ingress of Dutch Protestant influence.

Meanwhile Gebhard, who in March, 1583, had held a Diet of his own in Westphalia, and then set on foot as much of a Protestant reformation as was feasible, sought in his turn for outside support. The Protestant Princes were quite aware of the directness with which the problem of respecting the reservation ecclesiasticum, or of ignoring it in the interests of Protestant expansion, was now presented to them. But athwart any possibility of a combined Protestant movement of aggression lay the Formula Concordiae, and the unwillingness of its adherents to act with the Calvinists. In April, Gebhard formally conferred the chief command of his forces upon John Casimir, who in the summer executed a series of marches up and down the Rhine, while Henry of Navarre's emissary, Ségur, was soliciting the cooperation of the German Protestant Courts in his great combination with England and the Dutch, and promising pecuniary aid for the Cologne design. Such proceedings were little to the taste of the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg ; yet John Casimir might have defied the Imperial threat of the ban of the Empire (October), for not one of the Circles whom the Emperor had ordered to support the Cologne Chapter had stirred in response to his mandate. But about the same time the death of the Elector Palatine Lewis called his brother home to assume the regency on behalf of the young Elector Frederick IV ; and John Casimir's army was disbanded, though portions of it found their way back to Westphalia.

In January, 1584, Gebhard gained a victory at Alost over Duke Frederick of Saxe-Lauenburg, the commander of the capitular troops; but in the same month Bonn, which was still held for Gebhard, was surrendered by mutineers to a Spanish and Bavarian force. There now only remained to recover the Westphalian portion of the Electoral dominions, where with some pecuniary assistance from the States General Gebhard still stood his ground. In March Duke Ferdinand of Bavaria nearly succeeded in cutting him off' with all his forces ; but he contrived to escape with a thousand horse into the Netherlands, where he and his wife were received by William of Orange at Delft. In Gebhard's rear Westphalia was speedily re-catholicised under the eyes of the Bavarian commander ; but events in the Netherlands, the assassination of Orange (July) in particular, put any further Dutch support of Gebhard out of the question, and after some further hesitation Ernest was admitted into, the body of Electors of the Empire {Kurfürstenverein) of which, as his nephew's guardian, John Casimir was now a member.

The recognition of Ernest of Bavaria at Cologne had in 1585 been followed by his election as Prince-Bishop of Munster, John William of Cleves having by his elder brother's death become heir to his father's duchies. In the same year the sees of Paderborn and Osnabrück, and not long afterwards that of Minden, were restored to Catholic occupancy. Of greater importance was the progress of the Counter-Reformation in the see of Würzburg under the high-minded and strenuous Bishop Julius Echter von Mespelbronn. He made over to the Jesuits the theological and philosophical faculties of the University of Würzburg, founded by him in 1582 ; and from 1585-7 reformed his diocese root and branch. His example was more or less effectively followed in other sees of the south-west and south, notably in Bamberg and in Salzburg.

While the Baden-Baden Margraves had been educated as Catholics under Bavarian guardianship, Margrave Jacob III of Baden-Hochberg was brought over from Lutheranism to the Church of Rome through the efforts of Johannes Pistorius, himself a convert and afterwards confessor of the Emperor Rudolf (1590). But Jacob, who thus applied the principle of the reservatum ecclesiasticum by immediately imposing his faith upon his dominions, died a few months later-some said from poison, others from excess.

The progress of the Counter-Reformation was favoured in varying measure by the long succession of Popes beginning with Pius V and Gregory XIII. Sixtus V (1585-90) was more occupied with French and Spanish than with German affairs ; and in his differences with the Jesuits the Emperor Rudolf refused to join Duke William V of Bavaria in intervening. Gregory XIV (1590-1) during his brief pontificate unhesitatingly fell in both with the principles of the Catholic Restoration and with the Spanish policy which had caused so much searching of heart to Sixtus. The ascendancy of the Jesuits was temporarily obscured under the politic rule of Clement VIII (1592-1605) ; but in Paul V (1605-21) a Pontiff of fiery determination once more ascended the papal throne, under none of whose occupants during the whole of this period the struggle against heresy had ceased.

The event was of great significance for the peace of the Empire abroad and at home. The desire for an active foreign policy was growing wider and warmer among the Protestant Princes of all shades of religious opinion. Much therefore depended on the line of religious policy which the new Elector of Saxony might elect to follow. It is quite unlikely that the young Christian I had formed any deliberate design of introducing Calvinism into his Electorate, or that his chief minister, Nicolas Krell, was an instrument in the hands of John Casimir and the Palatine Councillors. It is more probable that under Krell's influence Christian inclined to the broader "Philippist" theological views which had maintained themselves in opposition to the Formula Concordiae in spheres of Saxon society at all times open to academical inspiration. So early as 1587 he announced his intention of dispensing with the adherence to the Formula imposed on clergy and teachers ; and in 1589 he appointed Krell Chancellor, abolishing his Privy Council as a permanent authority. In 1590 the ecclesiastical change was made definite by the abolition of the sacramental rite of exorcism (the conjuration of the Devil to depart from the baptised and regenerate), which the Calvinists had long discontinued and to the retention of which Melanchthon had declared himself indifferent.

With regard to foreign policy, however, though Christian I was on the friendliest of terms with John Casimir, caution was still thought desirable. In October, 1586, the German Protestant embassy to Henry III of France, after being kept waiting for two months, had been unceremoniously sent home; and in November Krell, though in sympathy with the Huguenots, drew up a memorandum against the participation of Protestant Estates of the Empire in foreign religious wars. But John Casimir was not to be held back, and early in 1587 concluded a treaty of alliance, drawn up in the grand style, with Navarre. John Casimir's actual resources, however, were limited to 150,000 florins from Queen Elizabeth, and a third of the sum from Denmark and Navarre ; and the German army, commanded by the Duke of Bouillon, were after a useful campaign cut up by Guise (November).

Thus, on the Lower Rhine, a chronic state of foreign invasion had come to prevail, while higher up, and in Elsass, the continued French wars had led to a perpetual ingress and egress of armed forces. Foreign intervention must before long seek to determine the future of the western borderlands. Meanwhile, the course of the struggle against Spain and Rome reached its most critical stage in 1588 and '89, the years of the destruction of the Armada, and of the height of the religious and political conflict in France. Henry IV now once more sought the aid of the German Protestant Princes ; and in 1590 Christian I and John Casimir at Flauen agreed upon a list of grievances to be laid before the Emperor, which included the Strassburg and Aachen cases, and the reservatum ecclesiasticum. Brandenburg joined the two other Electors ; but Rudolf turned a deaf ear to their remonstrance. After withdrawing from a Deputationstag held at Frankfort (September, 1590), where complaints had been made in vain of the Spanish violations of the frontier, the representatives of the three Temporal Electors, together with those of the Administrator of Magdeburg, the three Landgraves of Hesse, and the rest of the party of movement, met at Torgau (February, 1591). Here, an aid to Henry IV of 8000 foot and 6000 horse, to be partly paid by English money, was voted, and the young Prince Christian of Anhalt was appointed to the command. Within the Empire the Torgau Alliance was to be purely defensive; but it marked unmistakably the advance of the Calvinist interest. The House of Anhalt was known to incline that way ; and already in 1588 the Duke of Zweibrücken had established Calvinism, with a catechism of his own on the Heidelberg model.

Concordiae. They at once ordered a visitation, which, with the general approbation of nobility and people, uprooted Calvinism-or crypto-Calvinism-throughout the electorate. Krell was after a long enquiry put to death (1601). The domination of the Formula Concordiae was reasserted in the electorate, where for many generations to come it remained a rule of faith as free from loopholes as the Decrees of the Council of Trent. When Christian II grew into manhood he seems to have become a type of too many of the German Princes of his day ; entirely given up to the delights of show, sport, and drinking-bout, devoid of all mental vigour and shrinking from the ghost of an initiative. He kept wholly aloof from cooperation with the Protestant party in the Empire ; and the day-dream of a union between Saxony and the Palatinate as the two leaders of that party was over.

Not long afterwards (January, 1592) John Casimir's unquiet spirit passed away. Only a few weeks were wanting to the coming of age of the Elector Palatine Frederick IV ; but John Casimir had taken care to name a species of committee (Oberrath) of the Privy Council, which conducted affairs both before and after his nephew's actual accession. It was, of course, thoroughly Calvinist and in sympathy with the Huguenots; and in the following year the Elector married Louisa Juliana, daughter of the murdered William of Orange. Frederick IV steadily adhered to the far-sighted policy of John Casimir, whose death nevertheless was a serious loss to the cause of which he had long been the foremost champion. The Amberger Händel (a Lutheran agitation in the Upper Palatinate, provoked by the old Count Palatine Richard) hampered the outset of the new rule; and, owing to his profuse expenditure, Frederick's finances soon fell into disorder. Not all his pleasures were, however, unrefined ; and his respect for intellectual power raised the University of Heidelberg and its library to unprecedented renown.

In the same year (September, 1592), died Landgrave William * the Wise " of Hesse-Cassel, leaving behind him a son, Landgrave Maurice, only twenty years of age, but destined to become a guiding spirit of the Calvinist party of action. Thus, though the Torgau Alliance seemed forgotten almost so soon as it had been formed, the time could not fail to arrive for resuming the idea which that compact had embodied.

Such was the political situation in the Empire when a crisis seemed to announce itself on its western as well as on its eastern borders. In July, 1593, Henry IV abjured Protestantism; but he speedily made it clear that his conversion would only leave him more free than before to carry on his struggle with the Spanish Power, and that he had never been more anxious to secure the cooperation of the German Protestant Princes. And, before the year was out, a Turkish alarm arose such as had not been previously experienced in this reign.

He had to bring forward a more urgent demand for aid against the Turks than on any previous occasion ; but in his hereditary dominions, on whose levies the defence of the frontier must in the first instance depend, nobility, towns, and peasantry were banding together against his authority. It was well that in 1592 he had made his peace with Poland by Archduke Maximilian's final renunciation of his claims to the throne, and by marrying Ferdinand of Styria's sister Anne to King Sigismund III. On the other hand, Rudolfs western policy, in which Austrian and Imperial interests had more or less coincided, had been wholly unsuccessful; and he could only fall back upon a general support of Spanish action, provided the government of the Netherlands were entrusted to Austrian Archdukes.

Though the majority at the Diet was prepared to vote the Turkish grant, and though Saxony went with the majority, the Protestant opposition, inspired by Palatine counsellors, were resolved to utilise the opportunity for their purposes. On March, 1594, a meeting was held at Heilbronn, which was attended in person by the young Elector Palatine, Frederick IV, Duke Frederick of Württemberg, a Prince of eager dynastic ambition, the Calvinist Duke of Zweibrücken, and the Margraves of Ansbach and Baden-Durlach. They drew up a list of grievances of unprecedented completeness, and formulated a distinct statement of the Palatine reading of the Religious Peace. A free right of change of religion was claimed for ecclesiastical States and foundations, and for Imperial towns ; the right of Catholic rulers to expel their Protestant subjects, and the validity of the Dedaratio Ferdinandea, were denied ; and a protest was added against the jurisdiction of the Rekhshqfrath as concurrent with that of the paralysed Reichskammergericht.

In the end the Turkish grant-an unusually large one, calculated to suffice till 1600-was made over the heads of the minority, which did not venture to protest.

But, as has been seen, the campaigns against the Turks were unsuccessful (1594-6) ; and a new Diet therefore had to be summoned, which met at Ratisbon in December, 1597. Rudolf, who was becoming more and more unwilling to appear in public, was represented by Matthias, unadorned by any Hungarian laurels ; and the same game was played over again, with increased determination, by the Palatines and their allies, the " Corresponding " Princes (die Correspondirenden), as about this time the party came to be called. It comprised the Heilbronn group, with the addition of Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel, the Hessian Landgraves, the Anhalt Princes, and the Wetterau Counts, together with, shortly after the close of the Diet, the Administrator Joachim Frederick of Brandenburg, who in 1598 succeeded as Elector of Brandenburg. The towns-as usual Lutheran and to some extent Imperialist in their sympathies, and pre-eminently timid-held aloof at the last. In the face of an Imperial demand for an enormous grant, they not only protested against its exorbitancy, but declared the minority not bound by the vote of the majority. A majority vote was, however, actually passed in favour of a grant half as large again as that to which the Corresponding Estates were prepared to assent. When, hereupon, the ban of the Empire was, according to usage, proclaimed against defaulters, the minority protested (April, 1598). Shortly after the dissolution of the Diet the Kammergericht summoned certain of the defaulters (May) ; and though nearly five years elapsed before, on the attempted enforcement of judgment, payment by composition was made, a serious constitutional conflict had thus been added to the thickening difficulties of the Empire-at Aachen, in the Strassburg diocese, and in the Jiilich-Cleves duchies.

The primary question to be settled, when the old Duke William should pass away, was that of the government of the duchies. The Emperor at once issued a mandate entrusting it to the ducal Council, which was mainly Catholic; but the Estates held a meeting at Düsseldorf (the Jlilich capital) for the assertion of their rights. Duke John William's ambitious consort, the Catholic Jacobaea, was likewise preparing to assert her pretensions. On Duke William's solicitation the principle of indivisibility had been established for his dominions by Imperial privileges granted by Ferdinand I and Maximilian II ; and as far back as 1546 he had obtained from Charles V a further privilege, granting the right of succession to his female line in case of the extinction of his male. It was, however, uncertain whether these grants could be held to extinguish an older privilege, dating back to Frederick III and Maximilian I, which in the event of the extinction of the male line of Julich-Berg reserved the succession in these two duchies to the whole House of Saxony. It is true that this older privilege had been twice ignored: once when Maximilian had made Maria of Julich-Berg capable of succeeding and thus of bringing these duchies as a dowry to Duke John III of Cleves (1516), and again when in 1544 the right of succession had been granted to John Ill's daughter Sibylla, who had married the Elector John Frederick of Saxony. In the troublous days of 1546 the Ernestine claim had gone to the wall ; and now there seemed a prospect of a revival, with the goodwill of the Emperor, of the pretensions of the whole Saxon House, represented by the Albertine Elector.

The female line of Duke William of Julich-Cleves-Berg consisted of four daughters. Of these the eldest, Maria Eleonora, was married to the mad Duke Albert Frederick of Prussia ; which duchy was administered for him by Margrave George Frederick of Brandenburg-Ansbach, one of the leaders of the advanced Protestant party in the Empire. Her sons having died young, her claims were by their supporters declared to pass to her youngest daughter Anna, who had married John Sigismund, eldest son of Joachim Frederick, Administrator of Magdeburg and from 1598 Elector of Brandenburg. But this was disputed by the husband of Duke William's second daughter Anna, Count Palatine Philip Lewis of Neuburg, to whose son by her, Wolfgang Wilhelm, it was contended that the female claim to the duchy would ultimately pass. The husbands of the third daughter, Magdalena, and the fourth, Sibylla,-Count Palatine John of Zweibrücken and the Catholic Margrave Philip of Baden-Baden-were of no immediate importance.

But many changes were to take place on the shifting scene of European politics before the Julich-Cleves difficulty brought the great contending forces to the very brink of a collision. The war which in 1595 Henry IV had with the support of England and the United Provinces declared against Spain ended in 1598 with the Peace of Vervins and the liberation of the soil of France; and, though the struggle in the Netherlands was not yet over, Philip II had made up his mind to sacrifice the Spanish rule over them in order that they should not be wholly lost to the House of Habsburg. In the very month of his death (September, 1598) a large and ill-paid Spanish army flooded the north-western parts of the Empire, took Calvinist Wesel, and commenced an irregular Counter-Reformation in the Westphalian and neighbouring Circles. Such was the indignation created by these proceedings that in March, 1599, the Corresponding Princes at Frankfort voted the raising of 16,000 men against the Spaniards. Some of the contingents were actually levied; but the new Elector of Brandenburg was too much hampered by home difficulties to come forward, and even the Palatines were unprepared for immediate action. The command over the force voted at Frankfort was offered to Prince Christian of Anhalt, but declined by him.

Christian of Anhalt, as a Palatine official, had, in pursuance of the Palatine policy of the hour, declined to take charge of an insufficient army and an immature movement ; and, though not long after this the Spaniards withdrew from the Empire except from the fortress of Rheinberg, both the Aachen and Strassburg difficulties were, as has been seen, settled against the Protestant interest. Much anxiety was therefore felt as to the revisions of four recent judgments of the Kammergericht, awaited about this time (1600) from the Deputationstag assembled at Speier, in accordance with powers conferred upon that body by the Diet of 1594. These judgments, ranging in their dates from 1593 to 1599, ordered the restitution of four convents of the southwest-Christgarten, Frauenalb, St Margaret's at Strassburg, and Hirschhorn-which had been appropriated by the territorial lords of their respective districts, on the principle that the provisions of the Religious Peace were not applicable to ecclesiastical foundations appropriated after the Treaty of Passau. This view seemed likely to be accepted by the Committee of revision ; but the move was checkmated by the Palatines and their adherents at Speier, who objected in limine to any revision involving a point disputed between Catholics and Protestants by any other body than the Diet. In the following year the " Corresponding " Estates agreed at Friedberg (July) to allow no further visitations of the Kammergericht. As they at the same time resolved to oppose the execution of any judgment of the Reichshofrath, this issue of the so-called Vierklosterstreit amounted, as it had been intended to amount, to a collapse of the supreme judicial machinery of the Empire.

Nor were the Catholics able to remedy this breakdown at the Diet which the continued expenditure of the Turkish War once more made it necessary to summon to Ratisbon for 1603. The Emperor obtained his grant, though the minority adhered to their new principle that it was not bound on this head by the vote of the majority. But on what proved the main question of debate, the " Corresponding " Estates, rather than listen to the renewed proposal that the revisions of Kammergericlit judgments should be committed to a Deputationstag, withdrew from the sittings of the Diet; whereupon Archduke Matthias simply postponed the whole question (July, 1603). Beyond a doubt the advanced Protestant party had rightly apprehended the wish of the Catholics to recover all the ecclesiastical foundations confiscated since 1552 ; but, as an alternative to recovery by judicial process, the Protestants proposed a course which, as Maximilian of Bavaria pointed out, could hardly but lead to anarchy.

In the interval between the Diets of 1603 and 1608 a more definite shape was gradually assumed by the struggle between the party of movement among the Protestants, of which Christian of Anhalt was the soul, and the determined Catholic resistance, led by Maximilian of Bavaria. But the new feature in the situation was the reluctant surrender by Rudolf II into the wavering hands of his brother Matthias of the remnant of Imperial responsibility for the maintenance of peace among the contending forces. The tribunals of the Empire had broken down ; and now followed a wholly unprecedented personal humiliation of the head of the Empire himself. During the earlier and longer part of Rudolf IPs reign it was not so much want of insight as an utter weakness in action which had caused his impotence at home and abroad. Now, his insane suspiciousness and perversity of judgment retarded action of any sort, and frequently ended in sheer inaction. Though he never permanently lost his wits, he sank into a hypochondria which he neither controlled nor was capable of controlling. He feared assassination, and (it is said under the nightmare of a prediction that his murderer would be a monk) conceived a violent prejudice against clergy and Church, and fell into a special distrust of the Jesuits.

These tasks, as we have seen, were actually accomplished by Matthias- the former by means of concessions to the Hungarian Protestants, which could not but exercise a contagious effect upon Bohemia and the Austrian duchies. Matthias, however, though he had in him no really Protestant vein like his father's, ran the risk of offending not only the Emperor, but Spain and the new Pope, Paul V, and went counter to the counsel of Klesl, with which in his heart he agreed. The safety of Austria, and secondarily of the Empire, outweighed all other arguments ; and on April 25,1606, the Archdukes had at Vienna concluded a family compact, which decided the situation. On the ground of the Emperor's mental incapacity Matthias was in the name of the entire House of Austria appointed its head ; and the Archdukes agreed that, should an Imperial election be rendered necessary by the same cause, they would use their best endeavours to secure the choice of Matthias.

It was in these circumstances that Matthias resolved on carrying further the policy of the Treaty of Vienna, and, rashly or otherwise, entered on a course of action fraught with the most momentous consequences. He entered into close relations with the Hungarian leaders, and placed himself in touch with the league between them and their friends and sympathisers in Moravia and Austria, which after long negotiations had been concluded at Rossitz in December, 1607. Having made up his mind to a policy of concession to the Estates in all the dominions of the House, he on his own authority opened at Pressburg (January, 1608) a meeting of the Hungarian Estates, in which committees of the Austrian Estates took part. The leader of the Hungarians was Stephen Illeshazy; the foremost among the Austrians was Baron Erasmus von Tschernembl, who had thrown in his lot with the Protestants and was in frequent correspondence with Christian of Anhalt. At Pressburg Matthias progressed from the simple demand of a Turkish grant and the establishment of order in Austria to what was in effect a confederation between himself and the Hungarian and Austrian Estates against his brother's authority. On February 1-3,1608, the Pressburg alliance was concluded for upholding the treaties of 1606 (Vienna and Zsitva-Torok, which Rudolf was scheming to overthrow), and to this it was further agreed to invite the adherence of all the Estates which had joined in the Vienna compact. In other words, a general alliance of the Estates of Rudolfs dominions was to subvert his policy and government in favour of those of Matthias.

Ignoring a prohibitory mandate from the Emperor, Matthias hereupon with some difficulty secured the approval of the Pressburg alliance at a meeting of the Upper and Lower Austrian Diets, and more easily that of the Moravian Estates, largely through the exertions of Karl von Zerotin, a member of the Moravian Brotherhood, and akin in spirit to Illeshazy and Tschernembl. Matthias now levied taxes and troops, and set forth for the Bohemian frontier, issuing a manifesto in which he completely identified himself with the demands of the associated Estates, including that for the deposition of Rudolf II. On the frontier he met envoys from Philip III and Pope Paul V, who proposed to him that he should content himself with Hungary and Austria, and leave Bohemia to his brother. But Matthias was no longer his own master. On May 4, 1608, the Bohemian Estates, with those of Silesia and Moravia, were to meet the committees of the Pressburg allies ; and on the decision of Bohemia the solution of the whole problem must depend.

Sigismund was actually to introduce Calvinism in 1608, was now bound to the Palatine party. Of the return, on the other hand, of the Elector Christian to the policy of his father there was no hope; and the political influence of Saxony was on the wane. Still even in Lutheran Saxony as in Lutheran Württemberg there was a growing sense of uneasiness at the growth of Jesuit influence, and the Universities of Wittenberg and Tübingen continued to supply Austria with Protestant preachers and to flood it with anti-papal literature.

Thus Anhalt continued his manoeuvres and intrigues for the formation of a Protestant union which should in the first place direct its efforts to breaking the tenure of the Imperial throne by the House of Austria- perhaps beginning by securing the succession of the celibate Archduke Maximilian. With this most recent draft from his Chancery in his hands, Anhalt in 1606 repaired to Paris, where Henry IV now offered, in the event of a strong alliance of German Princes being brought about, to contribute two-thirds of the cost of the forces to be jointly raised by it and himself. But on Christian's return the plan, which would have amounted to a direct cooperation on the part of the proposed union in Henry's action against Spain on behalf of the United Provinces, fell through once more, owing to the unwillingness of both Brandenburg «nd the Palatinate to venture so far (1607). Thus the prospect of a union for which Christian of Anhalt had been labouring seemed once more remote when the time approached for the meeting of the Diet, io be presided over in the Emperor's name by Ferdinand of Styria, the pupil of the Jesuits. At last-immediately before the meeting of the Diet-an event occurred which abruptly brought the religious parties face to face, and through the effect of which the combination which Henry IV and Christian of Anhalt had in vain sought to bring about was actually accomplished.

Donauwörth was a small Imperial town in the Swabian Circle, where at the time of the Religious Peace both Catholicism and Protestantism had been professed, but which now contained less than a score of Catholic households. But the younger generations of the Benedictines of the Holy Cross at Donauwörth, most of whom had been trained at Dillingen, had resolved to stem the tide ; and many years since had to this end revived the use of processions. In 1603 they had added the waving of banners ; whereupon the Protestant town council had intervened ; so that in 1605 Bishop Henry of Augsburg obtained from the Reichshqfrath a summary mandate. On the strength of this in September, 1606, a procession of special provocativeness was held ; and a riot of corresponding vehemence ensued, which the town council was unable to restrain. Duke Maximilian of Bavaria was now commissioned by the Emperor to inspect the case, and protect the conventual clergy and other Catholics at Donauwörth in the exercise of their religion.

When in January, 1608, the Diet was opened at Ratisbon, the importance of the Donauwörth incident very speedily became manifest. At a meeting of all the Protestant Estates the principle of making the large Turkish grant demanded by Archduke Ferdinand conditional on the redress of the Protestant grievances, and on the confirmation of the Religious Peace and the Treaty of Passau, was unanimously adopted. The Protestants refused to have a vote taken on the Catholic counter proposal that the Religious Peace should be confirmed with a clause restoring the exact condition of things in 1555; and, when the Catholics insisted, they withdrew for further instructions (February). When hereupon Ferdinand proposed a simple confirmation of the Peace, the Palatines demanded an express rejection of the proposed Catholic addition, and finally withdrew from the Diet, together with the Branden- burg ambassadors and those of most of the " Corresponding " Princes. The Saxons, who had accepted the concession, remained, with the representatives of a minority among the Protestant Princes and of the always timorous towns (April).

On May 16, 1608, a few weeks after the collapse of the Diet, while Maximilian of Bavaria was keeping a firm hold on Donauwörth and Archduke Matthias was marching upon Prague, the Union of the Evangelical Estates was formally concluded at Anhausen in the margra-vate of Ansbach. Its original members were the Elector Palatine, the Duke of Württemberg, the Count Palatine of Neuburg, and the Margraves of Ansbach, Culmbach, and Baden; Zweibrücken and the Houses of Oettingen and Anhalt soon acceded ; then came in Strassburg, Nürnberg and Ulm, respectively at the head of the Alsatian, Franconian and Swabian towns, with several others ; in 1609 the new Elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg joined, together with Landgrave Maurice of Hesse-Cassel, who in 1607 had openly adopted Calvinism and was a pensioner of France. Hesse-Darmstadt, on the other hand, had been lost to the Protestant party, as had Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel in the north, by reason of the Imperialism of Duke Henry Julius, due to dynastic and personal motives. Saxony too stood persistently aloof.

The slow birth of the Protestant Union had at last been expedited by a craving for political security rather than for religious expansion ; and it defined its primary purpose as the defence of any of its members if attacked in contravention of the laws of the Empire-which of course included the Religious Peace. At its head was to stand a Director, who for the first three years was to be the Elector Palatine ; the military command was to appertain to the Estate attacked, but that of troops employed outside the territory of the Union to the Director, who was to name a Lieutenant-General. The contributions for the first five years were to produce a sum of not much more than half a million of florins ; so that only a very large development of the Union and its resources could furnish the means for undertaking a serious war. As for Donauwörth, Maximilian retained it as a redeemable pledge; and in July, 1609, a provisional oath of homage to him was administered to the civic authorities. The retention of Donauwörth became a standing Protestant grievance ; but, with brief interruptions, the town henceforth remained Bavarian, and strictly Catholic.

Protestant Prince, such as the Elector of Saxony ; and they were much offended by the self-reliance of the Estates of Moravia, a dependency of the Bohemian Crown. Thus though many Bohemian lords appeared at Czaslau, to listen to Matthias' proposals, the Bohemian Estates as such gathered at Prague, upon which Matthias now gradually advanced with his army. When he had reached Böhmisch Brod, some twenty miles' march from the capital, Rudolf confirmed the Treaties of Vienna and Zsitva-Torok ; while a few days later (May 25, 1608) he sought to gain the goodwill of the Bohemian Estates by allowing to all adherents of the Confession of 1575-that is, practically to all Protestants-the free exercise of their religion, until a new Diet should have made a final religious settlement. But these concessions to pressure from within and from without proved of no avail ; and on June 25, when Matthias was only five miles from Prague, Rudolf was at last prevailed upon to cede to his brother the Hungarian Crown, together with the territorial dominion in Austria and Moravia. Bohemia, with Silesia and Lusatia, were, with the reversion of the Tyrol, to remain to Rudolf, who, however, agreed to confirm the "free election" by the Bohemian Estates of Matthias as his successor. Thereupon Matthias and his army quitted Bohemia, where it left no good name behind. The Austrian and Moravian representatives had meanwhile bound themselves by a secret covenant to refuse homage to Matthias, should he withhold religious freedom from their lands. His own victory had been one of neither creed nor principle; but it had given a tremendous shock to the authority of the Emperor, while taking from him the greater part of his territorial dominions ; and it had added proportionately to the self-consciousness of the Estates, who were mainly Protestant in their sympathies and aspirations.

Matthias had to thank Anhalt for nothing; and the resolution passed at a meeting of the Union at Rothenburg (August) inviting the accession of the Austrian dominions could not be expected to lead to any result. Indeed, under the advice of Klesl, once more in favour, Matthias was evidently veering in a Catholic direction, while the Estates in the lands surrendered to him were still looking for the fulness of their reward. The Moravian Estates, led by Zerotin, were so far encouraged by his promises as to do homage to Matthias (August) ; but in Austria the majority, headed by Tschernembl, formulated a demand of unrestricted religious liberty for the towns as well as the nobles, and of official parity; and on this being resisted by Matthias, withdrew from the Vienna Diet to Horn, whence they issued a declaration refusing homage before redress of grievances. In March, 1609, an embassy from the Union appeared at Linz and Vienna ; but it brought to the Austrian Estates nothing but vague undertakings for the future.

In Bohemia, as was seen, Rudolf had saved himself by postponing a final settlement to another Diet ; and of this he contrived to delay the meeting till the end of January, 1609. When it met, the majority showed itself intent upon establishing a comprehensive ecclesiastical and educational system under the protection of a Committee of Defensors. The uncompromising resistance of Rudolf enabled the broad-minded Wenceslas von Budowee, chief of the association of Brethren, to maintain among all the Protestant sections a unity of purpose and action which found full expression in the Remonstrance, drafted by him and read in the Diet, against Rudolfs threat of dissolution. The threat was, however, carried into execution (April 1, 1609). During these proceedings only a small minority, of whom the chief members were the Chancellor von Lobkowitz, William von Slawata, and Jaroslav von Martinitz, had stood by the Crown.

The Protestant majority in the Bohemian Diet had agreed to meet again on May 4 in an assembly of their own. The intervening month they devoted to stirring up the country and to appeals for outside support, while Rudolf, afraid to resort to force, remained inactive. When the time of the meeting drew near, the Protestant nobles who had flocked to Prague sent deputation upon deputation to him, but he refused to yield. On May 4 the Protestant Estates opened their sittings in the Neustadt town-hall in the midst of a kind of popular panic ; and after a Justification had been drawn up, the Emperor was at last terrified into summoning the Diet which was to formulate the religious settlement.

The Letter of Majesty granted to all inhabitants of Bohemia freedom of choice between the Catholic faith and the Confession of 1575, "which some call the Augustinian"; but the building of churches or of schools was to be permissible only to the three Estates-that is, to the Nobles, Knights, and Royal towns. In the supplementary agreement the concession was added, that if on any royal domain-whether in a town or elsewhere-the Protestants should be without a church or churchyard, these might there be provided by them. Inasmuch as according to Bohemian law ecclesiastical domains stood directly under the administration of the royal treasury, they were commonly spoken of as "royal," as well as royal domains proper. It is clear that in concluding the agreement which supplemented the Letter of Majesty the Protestants understood " royal " domains as including ecclesiastical ; and that the subsequent proceedings, which were to lead to the actual outbreak of the Thirty Years1 War, were based on a bonâ flde interpretation of an accepted term.

Once more, on the eve of its long eclipse, the Bohemian nation seemed to have gained a great religious and a great national victory in one. Well might Archduke Leopold bitterly lament to Maximilian of Bavaria, that the Emperor had been driven not only to grant everything but to confirm it with a privilegium. A Silesian Letter of Majesty had rapidly followed on the Bohemian ; and through the length and breadth of their dominions Rudolf and Matthias had alike been obliged to yield to the demands of their Estates. Even the Styrian Estates, with those of Carinthia and Carniola, sent a deputation to Archduke Ferdinand to demand the restoration of their religious liberties. But his reply was a direct refusal. The Catholic cause was not yet lost.

On March 25, 1609, the Jülich-Cleves question had at last forced itself to the front on the death of the childless Duke John William. Hitherto the Imperial (and Spanish) policy had prevailed as to the government of the duchies ; but as to the succession it had been wholly wanting in resolution. So late as August, 1608, the Reichshqfrath had declared that without the assent of the Electors none of the privileges were valid on which the claims of the several pretenders were based ; if so, the whole of the inheritance escheated to the Emperor. There was a general notion that he favoured the Saxon claim ; but nothing had been done towards either recognising it or buying it up in the interests of Sibylla, Duke John William's fourth sister, who had married as her second husband Margrave Charles of Burgau (son of Archduke Ferdinand of the Tyrol), and whom Philip II had at one time advised putting forward as the Austrian and Catholic claimant.

To this Austro-Spanish inaction, largely no doubt due to the Truce with the United Provinces and to fear of French intervention, the Protestant side had opposed a greater measure of vigour. But while John Sigismund, now Elector of Brandenburg, who represented the claims of the eldest sister as descending to his wife, obtained promises of aid from the leading personages in the Dutch Republic, his claims were at the Court of Henry IV and in the counsels of the Union, more especially after Maria Eleonora's death in 1608, crossed by those of Neuburg, on behalf of which no exertion was spared by Wolfgang William, as the second sister's eldest son.

A difficulty which had already become a European question was not to be solved by a conflict conducted on such a scale. Of the ulterior purposes of the foreign policy of Henry IV there could be little doubt, though his immediate intentions were carefully veiled. He had from the first encouraged the "Possessing" Princes, and, when the news of the entry of Archduke Leopold into Jülich reached him, at once increased his armaments. But he had good reason for avoiding precipitation. The Union, at its meeting, held at Schwäbisch-Hall (May) had only harked back to the old Protestant grievances ; and, when Christian of Anhalt hereupon repaired to the Emperor's presence at Prague, to menace him with the open revolt of the Princes of the Union, Rudolf had merely promised the restitution of Donauwörth, which had of course remained unaccomplished. On his return Anhalt had at last taken up the Jülich-Cleves question in earnest; and after the forces of the "Possessing" Princes had by contributions from the Elector Palatine and others been raised to a total of 5000 foot and 1200 horse, he was himself offered the command (October). He made his acceptance dependent on French support, and armed with proposals adopted by a meeting of Princes at Stuttgart, betook himself to Paris, where he had two audiences of the King (December).

At another meeting of the Union held at Schwäbisch-Hall (February, 1610), it was agreed to accept the French proposal as to an attack upon Jiilich; and an agreement on these lines was speedily confirmed by Henry IV. But as to the larger scheme more hesitation was shown. It must be remembered that the Princes only outnumbered the more timorous towns by a couple of votes. In the end, Anhalt was authorised to offer to Henry IV the aid of the Union forces, provided that the invasion of the Spanish Netherlands should have been begun by the French and Dutch ; that Jiilich should have been captured; and that the members of the Union should not be engaged in any hostilities within the Empire. Henry IV hereupon once more received Anhalt in Paris (March-April), where they agreed that he should at once proceed to Düsseldorf to prepare for a German attack on Jiilich, while the King should ascertain the willingness of the States General to cooperate with him in the march upon the Meuse. Thus matters stood in April, 1610 ; and during the next few weeks there can be no doubt that Protestant Europe was in expectation, more or less assured, of the opening of a campaign which might perhaps not begin, and would certainly not end, with the capture of the fortress of Jiilich. This feeling of friendly interest extended to the Scandinavian north ; while James I of England, after characteristically offering to participate in an arbitration, had promised to furnish in aid a force of 4000 men.

Meanwhile the Empire was in a worse state of defence on its western frontier than on its eastern ; and its helpless head could only authorise Archduke Leopold, glad to escape from Jiilich, to raise a military force in his sees of Passau and Strassburg. No sooner had the news of these latter levies reached the Elector Palatine and other of the "Corresponding" Princes, than they immediately raised a large body of troops of their own, and by March had sent them " in self-defence " into Elsass.

On May 8, Henry IV announced to Archduke Albert and the Archbishop of Cologne (as Bishop of Liege) that he would be obliged to march through a portion of their territories, in order to assist his ancient allies in Jiilich, Cleves, and Berg. Albert, whose preparations for resistance were incomplete, on May 15 reluctantly granted leave of transit. But he had reckoned without the luck of his House. On May 14 Henry IV was assassinated at Paris. Whatever part he might have intended to play, or actually have played, in the affairs of Europe, the western peril of the Habsburgs had for the time passed away. Instead of an armed combination between the chief Powers of Protestant Europe, the House of Austria had in the first instance only to face an alliance of German Estates, disheartened by the catastrophe which had delayed the outbreak of a great European war, and had perhaps saved the Empire from speedy disruption.

But though with the death of Henry IV the Jiilich-Cleves question lost its European interest, it was not yet at an end. The government of Maria de' Medici, notwithstanding the almost immediate change in its general foreign policy, resolved to satisfy the amour-propre of the French nation by furnishing the aid promised at Schwäbisch-Hall. In July a French army marched from Metz upon Jülich, before which already lay a large force of Dutch and English troops under Maurice of Nassau, and the troops of the Possessing Princes, with others sent by the Union, under Anhalt. On September 1 the 2000 defenders of the fortress capitulated to a besieging force of 30,000 ; and a handful of troops occupied Jiilich for the Possessing Princes. Archduke Leopold's levies had been unable to come to the rescue ; for so early as June the Union had despatched from 8000 to 9000 men under Margrave Joachim Ernst of Ansbach into Elsass. The excesses committed by this soldiery led the Emperor to issue a mandate against the entire Union and to charge |' Duke Maximilian of Bavaria with its execution. Maximilian judiciously | ascertained at Prague that the Emperor was unlikely to adhere to so f bold a line of conduct ; but at a meeting of the League at Munich a I levy of nearly 20,000 troops was agreed upon, and in August the Union | withdrew its troops from Strassburg territory, while Leopold's forces | there were in turn reduced and finally disbanded. In November, Union and League mutually agreed to dismiss their forces.

Meanwhile, the Emperor at Prague had striven to gain the assent of the Convention of loyal Princes to his designs of recovery and revenge. They actually called upon Matthias to restore the ceded lands to the Emperor, and signified their willingness to accept his favourite Archduke Leopold as Roman King. But they were not prepared to go to war with Matthias and the united Hungarian, Moravian, and Austrian Estates, all of whom were arming. The Bohemian Estates too were in agitation ; at the end of January, 1611, they obliged Rudolf to assemble a Diet, which levied troops in addition to the militia called out by the Crown officiais. A surprise on the Emperor's part was apprehended; and the Hussite spirit of the people was once more up. Their fears had not been vain, for on February 15 Archduke Leopold at the head of the soldiery (between 5000 and 7000 men), levied by him in the see of Passau, which the Emperor had promised to order him to disband, but had left him without the money for disbanding, occupied the Kleinseite of Prague, after a short conflict with the troops of the Estates. From the two sides of the Moldau the armies confronted one another ; and in the Altstadt a savage riot, in which the mob devastated four convents and murdered some of their inmates, was with difficulty suppressed by the Estates, who hereupon, without consulting the Emperor, established a Committee of Thirty Directors for the government and defence of the country.

Matthias now summoned a Diet, of whose intentions to himself he had previously been made aware, and placed a garrison in the Castle, where the Emperor was now a mere prisoner. The ambassadors of the loyal Electors of Saxony and Mainz were still using their good offices with Matthias, and the faithful Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick still remained with the Emperor. When the Diet assembled in April, Rudolf tried delay as his last resource ; but in the end menaces, or what came very near to them, forced him to resign conditionally the Bohemian Crown. The coronation of Matthias followed on May 23, after he had promised on the preceding day to confirm all the rights and liberties of the Bohemians and to sanction the alliance concluded by them with the Silesians. But as Rudolf's intention of revoking his conditional resignation was known, further proceedings became necessary ; and at last, on August 11, he was coerced into a clear and certain bargain. Rudolf, retaining private rights of property, formally resigned the Bohemian Crown to his brother, and undertook to "commend him to the Electors" At their approaching meeting.

Lewis of Neuburg. Now, at the last, Rudolf again entered into communications with the agents of the Union, thereby, it seems, actually giving rise to an apprehension "ne Caesar ad apostasiam declinaret.'" When the Margrave of Ansbach found his way to Prague, it is said that the Emperor adopted him as his son and charged him to watch the Imperial interests at the Kurfürstentag. At other times grotesque marriage projects occupied the Emperor's bewildered brain ; and carriages were kept ready to carry him off into safety in the lands of the Union.

In October, 1611, the preliminary meeting of Electors actually took place at Nürnberg. The preference oscillated between Matthias and Albert, Leopold being left unmentioned ; and it was resolved that, on the hypothesis of the Emperor's assent being accorded, the final meeting for the election of a Roman King should be held on May 21, 1612. Rudolf, when pressed for his assent, gave way in principle, but ordered the immediate summoning of a Diet to Ratisbon. Here the madman seems to have hoped, by throwing himself on the side of the Protestants, to divide the Electors, to ruin the chances of Matthias, and perhaps himself to regain all that he had lost. In December, 1611, the Archdukes held another family meeting at Vienna, where they entered into an engagement to preserve the Imperial Crown, so far as in them lay, to the House of Habsburg, and to secure it for Matthias. At Prague the Emperor had already donned his travelling clothes for his journey to Ratisbon. But the end was at hand. About the new year he was seized with a mortal malady, and he had other reasons for knowing that his death was near. It came on January 12, 1612. His servants were cruelly treated ; most of his bastard children were at a distance or in obscurity. No tragic catastrophe was ever more complete.

The long years of Rudolf's misrule had terribly intensified the religious hatreds which made the Thirty Years' War inevitable; but he had benefited no cause, as he left behind him barely a friend. In his powerless hands the political and judicial authority of the Empire had alike collapsed ; its eastern frontier-line would have been effaced had he not surrendered his guardianship ; the western had been preserved only by the assassin's dagger from an irruption which must almost inevitably have ended in dismemberment. But all comments on such a reign and life are swallowed up by compassion for the poor human being, by nature neither bad nor ignoble, whose doom would not have been darker or drearier had he during the latter half of his sixty years been the inmate of a madhouse instead of the occupant of an Imperial throne.

The reign of Rudolf II had been the seed-time of war ; the prospects of peace which his death brought with it could be only partial and temporary ; for he at least had exercised no control over the destinies of the peoples under his territorial rule, or over those of the Empire of which he was the elected chief.