8

On the Brink?

EMPEROR MATTHIAS

The Jülich-Cleves dispute inflicted crippling damage on Rudolf and was swiftly followed by a resumption of the Brothers’ Quarrel. Yet, Rudolf’s death and Archduke Matthias’s succession in 1612 saw many problems being tackled with considerable success. The Liga was dissolved, while the Protestant Union was marginalized and on the point of collapse by 1618. Imperial institutions revived, as the Reichstag met again in 1613, this time concluding a Recess, and the imperial courts resumed their activity. Some confidence had been restored in the Habsburgs and there was little to suggest that the Empire was on the brink of catastrophe. However, the period of recovery was too short to make up the ground that had been lost since the 1570s. Crucially, the imperial dynasty remained relatively weak and therefore vulnerable if its opponents were prepared to take the risk and attack. This weakness was personal, as well as structural. Though more dynamic than his brother, Matthias, now 55, was worn out by the long struggle to gain the throne and had little energy to rule once he became emperor.

The Final Act in the Brothers’ Quarrel

The transition from Rudolf to Matthias came in two stages. Matthias first stripped his brother of his remaining power, and then persuaded the electors to accept him as successor. The first round of their quarrel had left both brothers exhausted and at the mercy of their Estates after 1608 (see Chapter 4, pp.106–15). The deadlock was broken by Archduke Leopold who, though thwarted at Jülich, still had his army, which regrouped in Passau in December 1610. Led by Colonel Ramée, this was increased to 4,000 horse and 8,000 foot by recruiting unemployed veterans from the Turkish War with the covert assistance of the Austrian War Council. Undaunted by his recent setbacks, Leopold saw a new chance now that the Bohemian Estates had disbanded their militia, in February 1610. He believed Rudolf would name him his successor if he delivered the emperor from his semi-imprisonment by the Protestants in the Hradschin palace since 1609. It was a high-risk strategy, because Leopold had not even paid for the Jülich War and could start a new operation only by promising the men Rudolf would reward them once they reached Prague.

The assembly of what became known as the ‘Passauers’ raised fears of a resumption of violence. The moderate princes pressed Rudolf to negotiate. Heinrich Julius of Brunswick managed to convene a meeting with the emperor, but Rudolf merely used this as an opportunity to rail against his feckless relations. Eventually, Archdukes Ferdinand and Maximilian and the representatives of Matthias and Albert apologized to Rudolf, handing him the ripped shreds of their pact against him from April 1606. In return, the emperor promised to pay Leopold to disband his army. Bishop Klesl, Matthias’s adviser, rightly regarded this as worthless, since Rudolf lacked the motive and the means to keep his side of the bargain. Colonel Ramée led his unpaid and increasingly desperate men into Upper Austria on 21 December 1610 where they stayed for five weeks, doing 2 million fl. worth of damage, before crossing into Bohemia with 269 wagons full of booty. Another detachment, still in the bishopric of Strasbourg, meanwhile plundered Archduke Maximilian’s territories in Upper Alsace.

Having got their fingers burnt in 1606–9, neither Rudolf nor Matthias did anything, recognizing that countermeasures would entail further concessions to their Estates who alone had money. Only Heinrich Julius dashed about trying to find funds to bribe Ramée to disband. Leopold, increasingly embarrassed by his army’s behaviour, joined it to enter Prague from the west on 15 February 1611. The Estates had recalled their militia and blocked the Charles Bridge, denying access to the larger part of the city across the Moldau. The Passau cavalry stole the money Heinrich Julius had collected and took off, leaving the infantry, who threatened to defect to the Estates in the hope of being paid. Leopold’s bluff had been called, and Rudolf refused to speak to him. The young archduke scuttled out of the city at night on 10 March.

Matthias seized his chance, and having scraped together 2,500 soldiers, he set out from Vienna, gathering Austrian and Moravian levies in the name of restoring order. He had 18,000 men by the time he entered Prague two weeks later and could now negotiate from a position of strength. A face-saving deal was struck with Leopold, blaming the entire episode on Ramée who was condemned to death (although he managed to escape). The remaining Passau troops were paid off. Matthias was credited by the German and Bohemian Protestants with having saved them from the murderous Passauers. Written confirmation of the Bohemian Protestant privileges also went down well. Meanwhile, Spain dropped Leopold as a liability, backed Matthias as Rudolf’s successor, and gave him a welcome present of 200,000 ducats. The Estates of the Bohemian lands met in a general diet that April and accepted Matthias as their king. The new monarch threatened to cut off food supplies to the Hradschin, until Rudolf surrendered the crown in May 1611. The emperor was confined to his apartments and placed on a strict budget. Matthias now had Austria, Hungary and all Bohemia, while Ferdinand remained ruler of Inner Austria, Archduke Maximilian retained the Tirol and Leopold was still bishop of Strasbourg and Passau.

The Imperial Election of 1612

The electors met in Nuremberg from September to November 1611 to debate the imperial succession. Regardless of confession, they wanted an orderly transition of power to quell the civil war in the Habsburg lands and resolve tension in the Empire. The pushy Leopold was completely unacceptable to them. The ecclesiastical electors favoured the mature, capable Albert who was still in Brussels, but Saxony blocked him as too closely associated with Spain, while Maximilian was reluctant to put himself forward. Matthias was still distrusted as a schemer and considered by the Catholics as too soft towards the Protestants. The delay in accepting him prompted Rudolf to fill his last days with feverish plots to recover his lands. Rumours spread that the elderly emperor would marry the elector Palatine’s widowed mother, join the Protestant Union and create a new army under the margrave of Ansbach.¹

Fearing trouble, the electors agreed to reconvene on 21 May 1612 to elect a king of the Romans. Having been present in Nuremberg as electoral Bohemian representative, Klesl fully appreciated the obstacles facing his master’s election. He made careful preparations, persuading Spain and the other archdukes in December 1611 to make Matthias their only candidate, thus removing Albert from the running. Matthias married his cousin Anna of Tirol on 4 December, raising the prospect of children and an orderly succession from his line. His election motto – ‘concord is stronger than light’ – clearly signalled his determination to foster unity between the confessional parties. The ground was ready when Rudolf’s death on 20 January 1612 made the forthcoming meeting a full imperial election.

The moment was opportune, given Protestant weakness. Elector Johann Georg had only just succeeded his elder brother, Christian II, in Saxony and was eager to get the whole business resolved as rapidly as possible. Palatine policy was hamstrung by Friedrich IV’s death on 8 October 1610 at the height of the Jülich-Cleves crisis and, as in 1583, leaving another under-aged successor. Frederick V was just fourteen and the Calvinist Heidelberg court selected the mature and able Johann II of Zweibrücken as regent. However, Lutheran relations in Pfalz-Neuburg challenged the arrangement, and the rivalry consumed all Johann’s energies and frustrated Anhalt’s plans to use the imperial interregnum to effect constitutional changes.² The electors met in Frankfurt as scheduled and after a discussion in which the Palatine representative was accused of deliberately trying to delay matters, Matthias was elected unanimously on 13 June.

Klesl

The new emperor was already exhausted. While personally inclined towards peace and genuinely wanting to settle the Empire’s problems, he never had a head for detail. He was content simply to enjoy life with his new wife half his age amid the splendour of the imperial court. Policy was left to Bishop Klesl who now emerged fully to the fore as the dominant figure in imperial politics. Klesl’s role remains controversial and was already subject to bitter criticism at the time, enemies casting doubt on his sincerity and accusing him of deliberately leaving problems unresolved to make himself indispensable. Others have been more generous regarding his motives, but still interpret his efforts as a futile struggle against the surge towards war.³

Klesl was unable to do much about the decline in the emperor’s international standing. The growth of Spanish power had overshadowed the Austrian Habsburgs despite their retention of the imperial title. The Empire’s formal neutrality throughout all the major wars in western Europe after 1562 further reduced it as a factor in international relations. Nonetheless, the imperial court had remained an important centre for diplomacy, not least because the emperor had tried to mediate peaceful settlements in those conflicts. The preoccupation with the Turks and Rudolf’s growing aloofness reduced the emperor’s presence in the west from the 1580s. Permanent envoys were no longer maintained in western capitals, leaving the imperial government to rely on the Fugger newsletters (an early equivalent of Reuters) and information supplied by Brussels and Madrid that often gave a misleading impression of events. The failure of the Turkish War further dented imperial prestige; James I of England took a particularly dim view, having believed the initial claims for a new crusade.⁴

Klesl retained the eastern orientation of the Empire, partly because it was initially far from clear that the Turkish truce of 1606 would last and also because the Ottoman menace was a useful device to rally support behind Matthias. This was also used in domestic politics to head off the Estates’ attempt to exploit the transition of power in 1612 to extort further concessions. The Protestants pushed Matthias to convene a general assembly of all Habsburg Estates, intending to use the meeting to forge a closer confederation along the lines of the Upper and Lower Austrian alliance from 1608 (Chapter 4, pp.110–12). Klesl lanced this with a demand for new taxes to repair the Military Frontier. This was backed by the Hungarians who, in any case, were largely satisfied with the autonomy they had obtained in 1608 and abstained from the proposed assembly. Klesl was able to negotiate with each province in turn, securing their agreement to amortize 21 million florins of Rudolf’s 30 million fl. debts in 1615–16. Though the Reichstag voted additional taxes in 1613, there was little enthusiasm for renewed war against the Ottomans and Klesl wisely accepted confirmation and extension of the truce in 1615.

‘Composition’ or Succession?

Any attempts to rebuild international standing had to follow resolution of the Empire’s internal problems. The most urgent task was to dissolve the two confessional alliances, and pave the way for a more general pacification. In addition to the unresolved question of the Jülich-Cleves inheritance, the Empire needed to settle the Guelphs’ dispute with Brunswick and the religious cases in the cities. Not only was the Union still demanding the full restoration of Donauwörth, but Protestants had used the interregnum to seize power from the Catholic council in Aachen. The unrest symbolized the emperor’s declining authority: Aachen was the traditional venue for imperial coronations, but Matthias had been forced to use Frankfurt instead. Klesl was determined to restore imperial prestige and recognized that reviving faith in imperial justice was an essential prerequisite of this. However, his plans went further, to tackle the deeper, underlying problems as well. He intended nothing short of a resolution of confessional tension through a policy known as ‘composition’. This derived from the contemporary concept of amicabilis compositio, or friendly compromise over religion which was to be negotiated outside the formal imperial framework. The idea had been first proposed by the Palatinate at the 1603 Reichstag, when it pressed for Protestants and Catholics to meet in two separate groups, rather than the customary three hierarchical colleges. Whereas the Palatine proposal aimed to fuse religion and politics, Klesl hoped to detach both through a bi-partisan committee of equal numbers of Protestants and Catholics to resolve the contentious issues separately, so as not to disrupt the smooth running of imperial institutions. The plan was encouraged by the imperial treasurer, Geizkofler, a Lutheran who had long favoured an amicable settlement and maintained a long correspondence with Klesl discussing the idea.

The strategy appears strange at first glance. Like many converts, Klesl pursued his new Catholic faith with greater vigour than those born into it, and he had played a major part in stemming the Lutheran advance into Lower Austria. Protestant princes regarded his sudden apparent readiness to compromise with suspicion, while the Catholics grew alarmed, and doubted the wisdom of giving him the cardinal’s hat that he received in December 1615. The new strategy was in fact a continuation of Klesl’s previous policy but applied with greater vigour and coherence now that his master was emperor, and no longer merely archduke. The consolidation of Catholicism within the Habsburg lands was to continue, but it was to be coupled with a more pragmatic approach in the rest of the Empire. He is reported as often telling Protestant princes that he did not believe Catholicism would ever fully recover, and he appears to have accepted the erosion of the imperial church as irreversible, at least in the medium term. It is noticeable that he dropped Rudolf’s earlier opposition to the administrator of Magdeburg taking his seat when the Reichstag reconvened in 1613, arguing that this was a political rather than spiritual office. In short, the intention of composition was to bring Catholics and Protestants sufficiently close together again to make the Empire manageable, and through this, allow them to find common spiritual ground as the tensions ebbed away.

The Catholics were immediately suspicious because of the policy’s similarity with the Palatine political programme and the lack of any constitutional precedent for the proposed bi-partisan committee. They felt Klesl was putting the cart before the horse, given the unresolved question of the imperial succession. The electors had given Matthias and his new wife an elaborately decorated crib as a wedding present in a clear message to produce an heir and end the doubt over the Habsburgs’ future. Anna was only 27, so there was still plenty of ground for hope, but despite rumours of pregnancies, the couple remained childless and it rapidly became obvious that the 1612 election had merely postponed the dominant question from Rudolf’s reign. The matter became pressing, given Matthias’s ill-health and his wife’s growing obesity, which contributed to her death on 15 December 1618. Her loss plunged the gouty, but previously jovial emperor into terminal depression.

Beer George

Klesl was determined to postpone the question of the succession until his composition policy bore fruit, not only to prolong his political influence, but also to negotiate with the rival candidates from a position of strength. He won some support from moderate Catholics like Schweikhard of Mainz, who had long urged compromise. His programme also appealed to Johann Georg of Saxony, because it was intended to stabilize the 1555 settlement. Like Matthias, the new Saxon elector belonged in character to an earlier political era, sharing the emperor’s love of Renaissance display, hunting, good humour and heavy drinking. The latter trait was so pronounced in Johann Georg that it earned him the sobriquets of ‘Beer George’ (Bierjörg) and the ‘Merseberg Beer King’. As the younger brother, he had gone on a fourteen-month educational trip to Italy in 1601, returning with little prospect of inheriting power. His elder brother, Elector Christian II, already sported the characteristic Saxon ‘beer belly’ at the age of 28. Having taken part in a tournament in full armour on 23 July 1611, he climbed off his horse, gulped beer to cool down and was felled by a heart attack.

There seemed little to suggest that Johann Georg would fare better, but he was to reign 45 years, seeing out the entire Thirty Years War. Unlike the industrious Maximilian of Bavaria, Beer George was lazy, spending his time drinking and hunting (he notched up a tally of 113,629 kills between 1611 and 1653), and has entered history as an incompetent who squandered Saxony’s political capital by allowing others to displace him as leader of the German Protestants.⁵ Certainly, the new elector devolved much decision-making to his privy council, but this was in line with his predecessors and the councillors stuck to the existing policy of defending the Augsburg settlement. Saxon government involved lengthy consultations with advisers who offered their opinions orally, making it difficult to reconstruct Johann Georg’s role. He seems to have rarely intervened and generally to have followed their advice that was always presented as a unanimous memorandum masking what must have often been heated preliminary discussions. He certainly loathed papists and Calvinists in roughly equal measure but, like Klesl, distinguished between his personal feelings and pragmatic politics. He greatly enjoyed meeting visiting dignitaries who generally departed favourably impressed. A visit from Matthias was a great success, but Johann Georg even managed to get on well with Catholic hardliners like Ferdinand of Styria who shared his passion for hunting. However, he found it hard to stick to his verbal promises once the bonhomie of the moment faded and harsh political realities intruded once more.

Frederick V

Whereas Johann Georg’s beer culture looked back to the Empire’s past as a network of personal relationships, the wine-drinkers of the Rhenish Palatinate embraced a very different ethos. The regent handed over government to the young Frederick V in July 1614. The new elector was more serious and, in some respects, more talented than his father, but he was also more ambitious and obstinate.⁶ He fully believed in the existence of a Catholic plot to extirpate German Protestantism and convert the Empire into a Habsburg hereditary monarchy. For him, the defence of Protestantism could not be detached from the princes’ German Freedom. His firm Calvinism convinced him of the righteousness of his cause and induced an unshakeable faith in ultimate victory. Certain that God was on his side, his motto was ‘Rule me, Lord, according to your word’. In social and political terms, however, his faith was far from the spartan Puritanism that was then taking root among the inhabitants of English and Dutch towns. He had been chosen for a divine purpose because of his dignity as senior secular elector and his family’s honourable heritage in imperial politics. His lofty outlook was greatly inflated by his marriage to Elizabeth, daughter of James I, negotiated by the regent Johann II in 1611, and intended to link the Protestant Union to the powerful Stuart kingdom. James I agreed a six-year alliance with the Union in April 1612, and was followed by the Dutch who concluded a treaty for fifteen years in May 1613.

Frederick travelled to England to fetch his bride and was entertained at a wedding banquet that cost his father-in-law £53,294. The festivities were presided over by George Abbot, the Puritan archbishop of Canterbury, who remained in correspondence with Elizabeth once she departed for her new home in April 1613. Abbot and Christian of Anhalt saw the world as they wanted, believing James to be firmly committed to an international alliance ready to battle the Antichrist. James was in fact one of the few entirely sensible European monarchs, and much preferred peace to war. For him, the marriage was intended as part of a wider strategy to balance the hostile forces in Europe. Having placed his daughter in the Protestant camp, the king planned to find a Spanish bride for his son, the future Charles I.⁷

The newly-weds travelled in style, accompanied by an entourage of 4,000 in 34 decorated barges up the Rhine to reach Heidelberg on 7 June. Their arrival provided an excuse for more celebrations, including a tournament that had become a feature of Protestant princely gatherings since the wedding of Duke Johann Friedrich of Württemberg to the elector of Brandenburg’s daughter in 1609.⁸ Frederick liked to attend tournaments dressed as figures from classical myth and history chosen to accentuate his challenge to the Habsburgs. He appeared as Jason the Argonaut, the man who stole the golden fleece, the symbol adopted as the Habsburg’s highest chivalric order. He also dressed as Scipio, conqueror of Carthage, a veiled threat to Spain where the modern city of Carthagena lay. The choice of Arminius was more blatant, since he was the first-century German chieftain who trounced the Roman legions. The 1613 celebrations included a theatrical performance in which figures representing Germania, surrounded by nymphs (a.k.a. the Kreise), commented in verse on the recent Reichstag, blaming its unsatisfactory outcome on Spain, the Jesuits and the Capuchins. The message was clear: the Protestant princes stood solidly for German unity and liberty that were threatened by malevolent foreign forces. Lavishly illustrated books depicting the festivities ensured that others further afield got the point, including James who was sent a copy in English translation.

The Heidelberg court now assumed a more regal atmosphere, befitting the new royal relations. French language and culture were already becoming fashionable before 1613, thanks to the young elector’s upbringing at the Huguenot court of the duc de Bouillon in Sedan. It helped set the Palatinate further apart from the bulk of German princes who remained embedded in the late humanist world of Latin and German, and had received their education in German universities teaching the traditions of imperial law. They were more likely to distinguish between person and power than the proto-absolutist French courtly ethos that brooked no criticism of the monarch.⁹

Christian of Anhalt’s influence flourished in the new environment. He had already acquired a freer hand during the regency after 1610 when he began to pursue foreign policy as he saw fit. The increasingly aged group of privy councillors were already too overworked to interfere in his running of the Union. The Dutch Nassau and Wetterau counts who had assumed a prominent place in Palatine government since the 1580s, lost interest when the Twelve Years Truce removed the threat to their region after 1609. Johann VI and Johann VII of Nassau both left Palatine service, leaving Count Johann Albrecht of Solms-Braunfels as court chamberlain and nominal head of government. Their departure created a void that was filled by men without any formal appointment in the administration, like the Dohna brothers from ducal Prussia who played a significant role in Frederick’s education after 1606 and were soon employed as Anhalt’s secret envoys.

Henri IV’s murder convinced Anhalt that God had selected Frederick to smash the Catholic conspiracy. It became increasingly difficult for both of them to see beyond the fantasy bubble of the Heidelberg court, especially after the publication of a series of tracts allegedly by a ‘Christian Rosenkreuz’ in 1614–21. These purported to contain the work of the Rosicrucians, a (fictitious) secret society of wise and benevolent philosophers who had unlocked the mystical keys of divine understanding and were now emerging to guide mankind to a new enlightened age. The entire thing had been fabricated by Johann Valentin Andreae, the son of the orthodox Lutheran superintendent who had organized the Württemberg territorial church. Already deeply involved in cabalistic texts, Anhalt readily believed this nonsense and it reinforced his conviction that the Union had been chosen by God to forge a new age.

The 1613 Reichstag

Frederick and Anhalt searched for an opportunity to recover the initiative lost in the wake of the Jülich-Cleves crisis. Their opportunity came when Matthias summoned his first Reichstag for 1613. This was the first meeting since the disaster of 1608 and offered the chance to rally the Protestants solidly behind the Union by engineering another crisis. It was also the first test of Klesl’s composition policy and he prepared the session by proposing a wide range of concessions intended to isolate the Palatinate by convincing the moderates of his sincerity. He ordered an investigation into all the complaints about imperial justice, including the four monasteries dispute, and suspended the imperial ban against Aachen. The readmission of the Magdeburg administrator in the Reichstag represented a serious attempt to restore faith, since his exclusion had triggered the collapse of the Reichskammergericht Visitation in 1588 and had led to a backlog of 300 outstanding appeals. To ensure no misunderstanding, Klesl wrote personally to many Protestants, including Anhalt, before the meeting opened to stress his desire for an amicable settlement.

These proposals naturally alarmed the Catholics and were opposed by some of his colleagues within the Habsburg administrations. Johann Ludwig von Ulm vehemently rejected what he regarded as appeasement. His criticism was significant, because his office as imperial vice-chancellor made him the link between the Habsburg agencies in Vienna and the imperial chancellery in Mainz that formally oversaw institutions like the Reichstag. Duke Maximilian of Bavaria rightly suspected Klesl’s suggestions as an attempt to isolate the Catholic Liga. He was already struggling to assert his authority over the alliance. In late October 1611 he had sent 10,000 troops into Salzburg and imprisoned Archbishop Raitenau, who had long opposed the Liga and Bavarian influence in general. Maximilian disarmed papal protests that Raitenau was a good Catholic by revealing that the archbishop had ten children by a long-term mistress, Salome Alt. Raitenau remained locked away in his own palace until his death six years later, but the Salzburg canons refused to bow to Bavaria and elected a successor equally determined to avoid joining a confessional alliance.¹⁰ The duke had greater success on the Rhine where, following the death of their uncle Ernst in 1612, he assisted his younger brother Ferdinand to obtain Cologne and Ernst’s other bishoprics. Ferdinand had been educated by the Jesuits from the age of nine and became one of the order’s greatest patrons. His religious views were closer to his post-Tridentine brother than their uncle who remained a Renaissance Catholic. He was also relatively young and inexperienced, and quite prepared to defer to his older brother, provided Maximilian handled him sensitively.¹¹ However, this failed to prevent Schweikhard of Mainz from pushing for Saxony to be admitted as a third Liga director, to end the alliance’s confessional character and open the door to Habsburg membership. Klesl took up this demand from 1612 as a way of either subordinating the Liga or rendering it innocuous. Maximilian was hard-pressed to persuade the members to resist when the Liga convened in Frankfurt in March 1613 to prepare for the coming Reichstag. As soon as he left, Mainz persuaded the others in a separate session to embrace Klesl’s plans.

The Unionists met simultaneously in the Protestant imperial city of Rothenburg in Franconia, where they were cajoled by Anhalt to endorse the radical Palatine programme. They refused to disband as long as the Liga existed, and reiterated the by-now customary demands for religious parity, freedom of conscience and Donauwörth’s restoration. When they reassembled in Regensburg for the Reichstag that opened on 13 August, the members mostly remembered their lines and joined the Palatine representative in another walkout when their demands were not immediately met in full. This time, however, the duke of Pfalz-Neuburg broke ranks by remaining behind, along with Saxony and other moderates who joined the Catholics in agreeing a Recess by the customary majority vote on 22 October. This granted limited aid for Habsburg frontier defence and agreed that the Reichstag would reconvene in May 1614 to resume talks for a compromise. Though meagre, this result at least preserved a semblance of unity and avoided the affront to imperial dignity of the 1608 session. Yet, it was also clear to Klesl that he would achieve nothing so long as the rival alliances existed and he found excuses to delay the Reichstag indefinitely (it did not reconvene until 1640).

The Habsburgs and the Liga

Klesl now tried to undermine the alliances more directly. He already had a foot in the Liga’s door thanks to Schweikhard of Mainz, so he concentrated his efforts in this direction first, to remove the Palatinate’s excuse for prolonging the Union. Schweikhard led the weaker members in rewriting the Liga’s charter when it reconvened in Regensburg after the end of the Reichstag. The Swabians were detached from Bavarian supervision and entrusted to Archduke Maximilian of the Tirol as a third director, while the organization was formally named ‘Christian Defence’ to disassociate it from sectarianism. The new organization was endorsed at a further congress at Augsburg in March 1614 when its charter was renewed for nine years.

The new director favoured irenicist reconciliation between the confessions and had long opposed the Liga. Pushed by his relation Karl, margrave of Burgau, and other Swabian Catholics, the archduke eventually assumed his directorship in April 1615. The hard-line bishops of Augsburg and Ellwangen opted to remain in the Bavarian directory, while the other Swabians failed to pay their contributions. The Tirol government could not fund the organization alone and plans for a new regional militia had to be scrapped. Nonetheless, the Habsburg presence rendered the Liga useless as a separate platform for Bavarian interests. Recognizing that he had been outmanoeuvred, Duke Maximilian formed a shadow alliance with his more immediate neighbours in March 1614 that remained in being when he formally resigned his own directorship on 14 February 1616.¹²Klesl moved swiftly to wind up the remnants of the Liga, which was ordered by Matthias to disband on 3 April 1617. The Liga’s demise indicated the strength of the imperial recovery under Matthias, as well as the impossibility of a separate Bavarian-led Catholic group without Habsburg approval. It also prevented the Catholic princes from becoming involved again in the Jülich inheritance.

Renewed Crisis in Jülich-Cleves, 1614

The Jülich-Cleves inheritance question had remained open since 1610, because Brandenburg and Pfalz-Neuburg possession rested on military victory, not recognized rights, and their administration was not fully accepted by the various Estates. The uncertainty allowed Saxony and other claimants to renew their own demands. The Union was unable to broker agreement because the conflicting claims became entwined in the dispute between Zweibrücken and Pfalz-Neuburg over the Palatine regency in 1610–14. Matthias confirmed Rudolf’s enfeoffment of Saxony with the inheritance in February 1613, but was not in a position to uphold this.

Whereas the first dispute saw two Protestant claimants jointly opposing imperial sequestration, the second was characterized more clearly by confessional polarization. The Brandenburg governor of the duchy, Margrave Ernst, converted to Calvinism in 1610 and actively promoted it in the areas garrisoned by his troops. The public conversion of his brother in Brandenburg three years later stemmed from personal conviction, since the electorate’s association with Calvinism undermined support for its claims to Jülich among the Lutheran princes. Meanwhile, the Pfalz-Neuburg governor, Wolfgang Wilhelm, had grown impatient and already opened secret talks with Archduke Leopold in 1609. Encouraged by Zúñiga, the Spanish ambassador, he turned to his Wittelsbach relations in Munich, converting to Catholicism on 19 July 1613, without telling his father. His marriage to Duke Maximilian’s daughter Magdalena four months later completed his reorientation before his father’s death in 1614 gave him control of Pfalz-Neuburg.¹³

Brandenburg and Pfalz-Neuburg officials were no longer speaking to each other by the beginning of 1614. Wolfgang Wilhelm became convinced the Brandenburgers were plotting a coup with Dutch assistance: 300 Dutch troops reinforced Captain Pithan in Jülich in May, ejecting the Pfalz-Neuburg company, while others stood ready in nearby Moers. Wolfgang Wilhelm retaliated, expelling the Brandenburg administration from Düsseldorf and raising another 900 troops. It was an unfortunate misunderstanding. The new Brandenburg governor, Electoral Prince Georg Wilhelm, was indeed plotting a coup, but the Dutch had no intention of assisting – indeed Oldenbarnevelt had tried to reconcile the two claimants and the reinforcements were intended to enable Pithan to prevent them coming to blows. The Dutch sent another 2,000 men to Jülich in July to stabilize the situation, while using their financial muscle to restrain Brandenburg which had raised 3,900 men it could not afford. Peter Hoefyser, the receiver of the Dutch Admiralty, brokered a 100,000 fl. loan at 8 per cent. Since Brandenburg could not pay even the interest, it was obliged to follow Dutch wishes in the region.¹⁴

Further misunderstandings followed, since Spain interpreted the Dutch military build-up as a challenge to its influence on the Lower Rhine. Archduke Albert and Spinola decided that a show of force was needed to induce the Dutch to stick to the Twelve Years Truce. With Lerma preoccupied with Italy, they mobilized 13,300 infantry and 1,300 cavalry from the Army of Flanders on their own initiative. By the time the men were ready it had become clear that Oldenbarnevelt actually wanted to avoid war, but it was too late to return meekly to barracks without losing face. Spinola set out from Maastricht on 22 August 1614, reaching Aachen two days later where he used the convenient excuse of enforcing a renewed mandate against the Protestant council to justify his presence. He then pressed on to Düren, joining Wolfgang Wilhelm’s men in occupying the duchies of Jülich and Berg. There was little bloodshed, because all parties studiously avoided contact. Spinola did attack the strategic crossing point of Wesel, under Dutch occupation since 1611, but the garrison surrendered after only 36 shots on 5 September. Maurice and a roughly equivalent number of Dutch troops meanwhile secured the rest of Cleves, occupied Mark and reinforced the Jülich garrison.

Talks opened in Xanten (in Cleves) on 13 October, leading to a draft partition treaty under French and English mediation on 12 November. The inheritance was split according to the historic associations of Jülich-Berg and Cleves-Mark. Since the latter were smaller states, Ravensberg and Ravenstein were assigned to them, even though Ravensberg had formally been associated with Jülich. Brandenburg and Pfalz-Neuburg were to draw lots to see who got which half. Since the proposed partition roughly reflected the situation on the ground, it effectively sanctioned the result of the Spanish and Dutch intervention. Brandenburg disbanded its troops by 1616, while those of Pfalz-Neuburg were drastically reduced. Spain and the Republic agreed to withdraw and though they removed most of their men, they left garrisons in the towns they had seized. These were adjusted by further minor operations in 1615–16, while the two claimants negotiated for guarantees against renewed military intervention.

Spanish intervention significantly enhanced its strategic position in north-west Europe, securing 10 Cleves towns, 28 in Jülich and 24 in Berg and Mark. The capture of Wesel along with Rheinberg and Orsoy gave Spain three major Rhine crossings, reopening communications with the other garrisons east of the Ijssel that had been cut by Dutch intervention in 1610. Though reinforced, the Dutch garrison in Jülich was now isolated and the Republic’s gains were less significant. Maurice had taken the Rhine crossing of Emmerich in Cleves, as well as most of the towns in Mark. He went on to build a new fort between Bonn and the city of Cologne, satirically called Pfaffenmütze (Priest’s Cap) to overawe the elector. Nonetheless, his positions were outflanked by Spanish troops to either side. Both Spain and the Dutch had become involved in the Jülich crisis against their will, and though they extracted rewards, they showed little desire to fight. The rival garrisons avoided confrontation until after the Truce expired in April 1621.

The Imperial Recovery

The crisis worked in Klesl’s favour by undermining the Protestant Union for him. Not only did Pfalz-Neuburg defect to the Liga, but other members stopped paying their contributions. Brandenburg alone owed 160,000 fl. by December 1613, refusing to pay, on the ground that its actions in Jülich were for the common cause. Renewed action by the duke of Wolfenbüttel to seize the city of Brunswick in 1615 wrecked any chance of widening the membership to the northern Protestants. The Palatinate was also losing the political argument after the second walkout from the Reichstag isolated the Unionists within the Empire. A Protestant judge took the unprecedented step of resigning from the Reichskammergericht in 1614 when the presiding Catholic judge breached the hallowed procedure of entrusting religious cases to a confessionally balanced review panel.¹⁵ Yet the Palatinate was unable to extract any advantage from this, because Klesl’s efforts had reconciled most Protestants to imperial justice.

The number of complaints about breaches of the religious peace dropped dramatically after 1612, while the Reichshofrat’s caseload soared from under 200 disputes a year to 440 by 1618. The increased business was not so much a sign of mounting tension than one of the princes’ greater willingness to submit their perennial family and feudal disputes to imperial arbitration. Disputes over inheritance, such as those in Jülich, Hessen or Baden, were no longer seen in stark confessional terms, and even the Palatine government dropped its objections to the court’s jurisdiction and let it resolve a border dispute with the bishop of Speyer in 1615. Much of this was due to Matthias’s more relaxed style of rule. Unlike Rudolf, he accepted Saxon advice and ensured that the Reichshofrat consulted the electors in controversial cases before issuing a verdict.

THE USKOK WAR AND THE HABSBURG SUCCESSION 1615–17

The Uskok War 1615–17

The main threat to peace was not confessional tension in the Empire, but the continued uncertainty surrounding the Habsburg succession. Matters were brought to a head by renewed trouble on the Ottoman–Habsburg frontier that led to far more serious fighting than that around Jülich.¹⁶ The unsatisfactory outcome of the Turkish War saw large numbers of refugees joining the already overcrowded Uskok community at Senj in the Adriatic. Ferdinand, as archduke of Styria, was responsible for this sector of the Military Frontier, but was unable to abandon Senj given the loss of nearby Bihač to the Turks in 1592. The renewal of the truce with the sultan in 1615 made it imperative to avoid provoking the Ottomans with cross-border raids, prompting local Habsburg officials to redirect Uskok banditry into Adriatic piracy. The Uskoks were soon a major threat to Venetian and other merchants.

The Venetian Republic already resented the Habsburg presence to its north and east that constrained its landward expansion. The Habsburg acquisition of the county of Görz also gave them the Istrian ports and access to the Adriatic, impinging on Venetian claims to an exclusive dominium culfi. Venice used the excuse of Uskok piracy to impose high tolls on Trieste merchants, hoping to end their irritating commercial rivalry. Ferdinand was keen to settle matters peacefully, but lacked the means to shut down Senj, and so the Venetians tightened their naval blockade and resolved on war. As a trading republic, Venice took a pragmatic attitude to faith, at least when dealing with foreign governments. It signed alliances with the English and Dutch whose ships were also suffering from the Uskok’s piracy, and secured the Union’s agreement to supply soldiers, and that of the Protestant Swiss to block the Alpine passes to Habsburg reinforcements. With Spain distracted with Savoy over Mantua, and Matthias busy in the Empire, Venice felt confident that gunboat diplomacy would bring swift success.

Sabre-rattling escalated into open war on 20 December 1615 when Venetian troops captured the narrow strip of Austrian territory west of the Isonzo river, before being blocked by the small garrison in Gradisca. The offensive had stalled where the front would be exactly 300 years later in the great battles of the First World War between Italy and Austria-Hungary. By February the Venetians had massed 12,000 men and were able to subject Gradisca to a regular siege. They also enjoyed the covert support of the inhabitants of Ottoman Bosnia who were equally tired of the Uskoks. Ottoman raids increased tenfold, tying down the Croatian-Slovenian border militia and preventing Ferdinand redeploying them on the Isonzo. With only 600 Germans and a similar number of Uskoks at the front, the archduke was forced to remain on the defensive. His Estates provided some cash and sent small detachments of militia, but otherwise refused involvement, accusing Ferdinand of bringing the matter upon himself. The situation was critical, since a defeat could open the door for the Estates to challenge Ferdinand’s hard-fought Catholic renewal.

The Gradisca garrison clung on, however, as the Venetians wasted away through disease, relaxing their siege with the onset of winter. The Republic redoubled its efforts for 1617, appointing a new commander and rebuilding its forces with the arrival of 3,000 Dutch mercenaries under Johann Ernst of Nassau-Siegen, to give the Venetians 16,000 men by May 1617. A further 2,000 Dutch arrived, with additional English troops in November, while a powerful Anglo-Dutch squadron joined the 86-ship strong Venetian fleet.

Strong Anglo-Dutch support has been interpreted as bringing ‘a general European conflict perceptibly nearer’ by consolidating mutually hostile international alliances along largely confessional lines.¹⁷ This was certainly how militants of all hues viewed it at the time, yet neither England nor the Dutch wanted an open breach with Spain, while the conflict remained largely an Austro-Venetian affair, despite their presence. The 22 English and Dutch ships were sailing under Venetian flags, having been hired, like the soldiers, rather than sent freely as allies. The troops had come by sea because the Spanish governor of Milan blocked the southern exits from the Alpine passes in line with his government’s official policy of neutrality. Spanish participation was restricted to the viceroy of Naples, Pedro Duke of Osuna, who acted without authorization from Madrid. The Neapolitans resented Venetian mercantile predominance and had already sent privateers to harass the Republic’s shipping in the Adriatic in 1616. The arrival of the Anglo-Dutch squadron forced the privateers to return to port, prompting Osuna to send his regular fleet instead. This fought an inconclusive engagement with the Venetians on 20 November 1617, before retiring.¹⁸ Philip III refused to condone Osuna’s actions, because he had no desire to fight another war in Italy after the struggle over Monferrato.

Spain and the Austrian Succession

Philip’s main interest in the Uskok War was not the presence of the Dutch and English, but the repercussions for the Habsburg succession. Ambassador Zúñiga had raised the question of the succession in the wake of Leopold’s failure at Jülich in 1610. Discussions in Madrid focused on the extent to which Spain itself had claims and which candidate it should back for whatever was left over. Philip III’s advisers believed he had good claims to the Hungarian and Bohemian crowns on the ground that his mother, Anna of Austria, had never renounced her rights.¹⁹ Convinced his reputación would suffer if he relinquished his claims, Philip wanted his Austrian relations to formally recognize him as head of the family.

Spanish ministers were divided over how to achieve this. A few clung to the legacy of Charles V’s pan-European empire, suggesting Philip should claim the entire inheritance and even put himself or his son forward as next emperor. Others were more realistic, advocating trading Spain’s formal claims in return for strategic concessions from Austria. The archdukes should be compelled to honour their obligations according to the Spanish interpretation of the Burgundian Treaty from 1548, which implied the Dutch still belonged to the Empire and should be punished for breaking its public peace. Though less pressing given the Twelve Years Truce, this remained the main legal argument used to demand Austrian assistance against the Dutch during the Thirty Years War. More immediately, the ministers thought Austria should surrender some land to enhance Spanish imperial security, but differed widely on what this should be. One faction doubted whether the archdukes would ever hand over part of their hereditary lands and advocated demanding the imperial jurisdictions over parts of the Ligurian coast to consolidate Spain’s position in Italy. The other, led by Spinola, argued for the cession of Alsace and the Tirol to give control of the middle section of the Spanish Road.

Neither party wanted anything to do with the Empire that was felt to lie outside Spain’s main sphere of interest. Nonetheless, Spain still had to agree a candidate to back as Matthias’s successor to ensure that Central European issues did not trouble either Flanders or Italy. Archduke Leopold’s wild behaviour removed him from the running, while Maximilian surrendered his rights in favour of Ferdinand in October 1612. With the only viable candidate embroiled in war, Spain decided to force Matthias to recognize him as his successor before the electors chose a less congenial alternative.

Spanish intervention frustrated Klesl’s plans to delay consideration of the succession until his composition policy had succeeded. He resorted to dirty tricks to undermine not just Ferdinand but also Albert, who still enjoyed considerable sympathy among German Catholics. In 1616 he leaked details to Anhalt of a plan hatched two years before by the Reichshofrat president that Albert should lead an army into Germany and join the Liga in restoring imperial authority. This left only Ferdinand, whose war effort Klesl covertly undermined by delaying the despatch of aid from Austria. It is possible that he was driven by personal animosity, but more likely by the conviction that open support for Ferdinand would wreck any chance of composition with the Protestants. It is certainly suspicious that the Venetian senate voted him a gift of 8,000 scudi in 1616.

Meanwhile, matters were complicated by the phantom candidacy of Maximilian of Bavaria whose name was already circulated in the 1590s as a possible future emperor. Anhalt misinterpreted Maximilian’s resignation from the Liga directory as a step towards collaboration against the Habsburgs. He approached the duke in May 1616 with a proposal to merge the Union and Liga to block a Habsburg succession. Despite Maximilian’s polite but consistent refusals, Anhalt persisted with this hare-brained scheme, to the point of sending the elector Palatine Frederick V to visit Munich in February 1618. By then, Maximilian was playing along to put pressure on the Habsburgs to make concessions in Bavaria’s favour in various regional disagreements. Frederick left Munich not only under the entirely false impression that Maximilian would stand for election, but even convinced the duke would embrace Protestantism!²⁰

The Oñate Treaty 1617

Klesl’s refusal to cede Austrian territory forced Spain to drop demands for the Tirol and concentrate on seeking the Further Austrian lands of Alsace and the Breisgau that were currently governed by Archduke Maximilian, a man with no direct heirs. Ferdinand’s counter-offer of the Adriatic ports and a large slice of Inner Austria was rejected as remote from Spanish interests. Matthias’s failing health and the Uskok crisis forced Ferdinand to concede a series of agreements collectively known as the Oñate Treaty after the Spanish negotiator.²¹ The public documents from 6 June 1617 contained Philip III’s formal renunciation of his claims to Bohemia and Hungary, but gave his sons precedence in future claims over Ferdinand’s daughters. It was also arranged that Spain would be compensated with an unspecified Austrian province at a later date. Matthias agreed to this when it was shown to him, but neither he nor the other archdukes knew of a further, secret undertaking from March of that year that Ferdinand ratified on 29 July. This specified that Ferdinand would surrender the Austrian parts of Alsace to Spain, together with the Ortenau enclave on the Upper Rhine, once he had inherited them from Archduke Maximilian. In addition, Ferdinand’s eldest son was to marry Philip III’s daughter and vague references were made to Spain being enfeoffed with imperial rights in Italy.

Only Ferdinand and his adviser Eggenberg knew of these terms before February 1619, but they were vital to his bid to secure Matthias’s entire inheritance. Free from the fear that Spain might object, Ferdinand opened talks with the Catholic faction in Bohemia to secure its crown. Chancellor Lobkowitz persuaded the Bohemian Protestants to drop their objections in return for Ferdinand’s apparent confirmation of the Letter of Majesty. Having received permission from Matthias, Ferdinand was crowned Bohemian king on 29 June 1617.

End of the Uskok War

Ferdinand’s concessions to Oñate coincided with the start of the long-awaited Venetian offensive along the Isonzo. As the defenders of Gradisca clung on, Ferdinand frantically appealed for aid. His Bavarian brother-in-law sent some money and gunpowder, while the Inner Austrian Estates finally opened their purse strings and Klesl dropped his opposition to troop recruitment in Matthias’s lands. The Bohemian coronation greatly improved Ferdinand’s credit, and enabled him to collect 4,000 men by the end of the year. As the money became available, Ferdinand called on his contacts from the Turkish War – Marradas, Dampierre and Colloredo. Wallenstein seized the chance to further his career, arriving with 260 men who had plundered their way from Moravia, literally stealing the clothes from the peasants’ backs. Aldringen was also present as an ensign of foot, as were others who would later rise to prominence in the Thirty Years War, like Torquato Conti and Otto Heinrich von Fugger. Many of the same men were to answer Ferdinand’s call again, barely a year later when he faced the Bohemian Revolt.

Despite having a numerical superiority of four to one, the Venetians were not able to crack the Austrian defences along the Isonzo. Ferdinand was keen to end the futile struggle and turn his full attention to the impending succession. He accepted French and Spanish mediation that led to the Treaty of Madrid on 26 September 1617. The Venetians agreed to withdraw in return for the Habsburgs resettling the Uskoks further inland. The Republic reduced its forces, including discharging the now mutinous Dutch and English, while Ferdinand cut his to 1,000, which were used to force the Uskoks to move further north-east along the Military Frontier by June 1618.

Venice was now free to deal with the troublesome Neapolitans who had been plotting to overthrow the Republic. Naval operations were stepped up until Philip III had the duke of Osuna arrested in 1620 and imprisoned on charges of conspiring to make himself independent prince of Naples.

PALATINE BRINKMANSHIP

The Approach of the Apocalypse

While the Habsburg succession was slowly resolving itself in Ferdinand’s favour, Anhalt had been struggling to sustain Protestant militancy in the Empire. The imperial cities rebelled at the Union’s congress in Heilbronn in April 1617, demanding major concessions before agreeing to extend the organization in defiance of an imperial order to disband. In return for a veto over future military action and a prohibition of assistance to princes who were not members, the cities agreed to a three-year extension of the Union from 1618 when the original charter was due to end. Brandenburg resigned in disgust at these concessions, while Landgrave Moritz of Hessen-Kassel refused to attend at all, because the Union appeared to offer him nothing.

The outcome simply drove Anhalt to deeper deception, and though the Union convened another eleven times before 1621, far more frequently than before, these were no longer plenary congresses but personal meetings of the core group of Anhalt, the Palatinate, Württemberg, Ansbach and Baden-Durlach. Anhalt had already widened his secret contacts in 1616 by sending Christoph von Dohna to Prague to talk to the Bohemian radicals, while other emissaries went to Baron Tschernembl in Upper Austria, and to Savoy and Venice.²²

These actions only make sense when viewed from the increasingly fevered perspective of a Palatine court that had become gripped by millenarianism as the new century dawned. Apocalyptic beliefs had a long heritage within Christianity, but the papacy had distanced itself from these traditions in the Tridentine decrees, as had the Lutheran Book of Concord. The Calvinist establishment in Geneva also condemned the belief in a golden age on earth in 1566, but the ideas nonetheless gained ground from the 1580s. They were expressed by ordinary Calvinists, like Christoph Kotter, a tanner from Sprottau who claimed to see visions from 1616. More influential among the Palatine aristocrats were the writings of Johann Heinrich Alsted and Johann Amos Comenius, who were associated with the Calvinist academy Johann VI of Nassau-Dillenburg had founded at Herborn in 1584. Alsted became the academy’s most prominent teacher and Comenius took his ideas back to Bohemia having studied under him. Both believed that their close reading of the Bible identified the Habsburgs with the forces of darkness described in the Revelation of St John. This provided an alternative to the positive ideology of the imperial translation that maintained the Empire was a direct continuation of the last Christian phase of ancient Rome. Alsted transformed the Empire from the benevolent Fourth Monarchy in the Book of Daniel to the nameless fourth beast of Revelation. He was convinced its end was nigh in the battle of the kings (also prophesied in the Book of Daniel) in which the king of the south overruns the sanctuary and forces its people to renounce their faith. The king of the north then intervenes, defeating his rival and delivering the people.

Support from intellectuals like Alsted and Comenius made apocalypticism respectable and chimed with the fluid boundaries between science and the occult. The increased frequency of hailstorms and other natural phenomena caused by climate change during this period, known now as the Little Ice Age, encouraged the view that the world was approaching its end. Witch- and demon-crazes appeared further manifestations of this. It was clear to those that believed that the sanctuary was Protestant Germany, while the Habsburgs and Spain represented the king of the south. Alsted predicted the king of the north would arrive in 1625 (the year Denmark did indeed intervene in the war) and this would lead to a thousand-year reign of the Righteous from 1694 up to the last Judgment in 2694. The use of the lion, the animal associated with the king of the north, in the heraldic devices of the Palatinate, Hessen-Kassel, Bohemia, England and Sweden appeared further corroboration that Alsted had unlocked the divine significance of the holy text.

Millenarianism peaked with the arrival of Halley’s Comet in November 1618. This was followed within a few weeks by 120 pamphlets prophesying disaster, a not unusual consequence of comets. A previous sighting in 1577 led the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe to predict trouble for Spain and the Empire, a pretty safe bet in view of the Dutch Revolt.²³ What made the current bout so dangerous was its grip on the minds of the radical Protestant leaders who commanded the resources to initiate Armageddon.

Protestant Discord

Convinced that a major struggle was approaching, Anhalt intensified efforts to rally the more numerous moderate Protestants into the radicals’ camp. He realized that the Palatinate’s recent setbacks and its Frenchified culture had damaged its standing and set it apart from the hard-drinking camaraderie of Dresden and the other Protestant courts. He sought ways of making Palatine radicalism more attractive by bringing influential Lutherans and Calvinists together in congenial surroundings. He established an aristocratic Order of the Golden Palm at the Upper Palatine capital of Amberg in 1617, and collaborated with his brother Ludwig, who was related by marriage to the Weimar court, to found the influential Fruitful Society (Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft) that year. The Fruitful Society became the most important of a number of contemporary literary societies and rapidly attracted a large membership.²⁴

The Society has generally been interpreted in nationalist terms, given its ostensible aim of the purifying the German language through the exclusion of foreign expressions and the development of new poetic forms. In fact, its membership was international and included Swedes and even six Scots. Though it went on to embrace Bavarian and imperial generals, its initial purpose was to twist the humanist irenicist programme to assist Anhalt’s political agenda of bridging the divide between Lutherans and Calvinists. It was paralleled by attempts by Calvinist theologians to open a dialogue with their Lutheran colleagues. David Pareus published a book in 1614 arguing they had more to unite than divide them. He attracted wide support from Hessian and Brandenburg clergy, as well as from the remaining Philippists who thrived at Weimar and its university of Jena.

The overture fell on deaf ears in Dresden where the orthodox rebuttal was orchestrated by the Saxon court preacher, Matthias Hoë von Hoënegg.²⁵ Like his near contemporary Klesl, Hoë was born in Vienna, though he was from a rather more prosperous background, and attended the local university. Whereas Klesl had converted, Catholic pressure on Hoë had the opposite effect of reinforcing his Lutheran convictions. He left to complete his studies in Speyer and Wittenberg where the orthodox Lutheran atmosphere fostered an abiding hatred of all those who deviated from Luther’s original beliefs. He had published seven books by 1613, mainly attacking the papacy. The Pfalz-Neuburg court chaplain was so impressed he converted to Lutheranism after reading one, and they were reprinted in nineteenth-century Germany during Bismarck’s repression of Catholic culture. However, Calvinists became Hoë’s main target after he assumed the post of senior Saxon preacher in 1613. He viciously rooted them out in Dresden, forcing his deputy out of office by disrupting his sermons and hurling insults. Calvinists retorted by using his Austrian parentage to cast doubt on his integrity, dubbing him the ‘Saxon Pope’ and the ‘New Judas’ who was selling out to the papist Habsburgs.

The mud-slinging reached new depths during the centenary jubilee of the Reformation, celebrated in October 1617. Saxony was determined to use the occasion to assert theological supremacy over German Protestantism from a traditional Lutheran position of defying the pope. The mere act of celebrating was a challenge to Rome, because the papacy claimed a monopoly over jubilees since 1300 and naturally condemned any commemoration of Luther. The great hero was celebrated as the ‘German Moses’ in state decrees, school plays, fireworks, processions, sermons, woodcuts and medals throughout Saxony.²⁶ Elector Johann Georg saw no contradiction between this and his political support for Matthias, because Saxony had always distinguished between honest German Catholics who abided by the Augsburg settlement, and vicious papists elsewhere who conspired to destabilize the Empire. The political distinction was theologically sound, because Luther had only challenged the pope’s misrepresentation of the truth, not the church itself to which his followers felt they still belonged.

Concern for German Catholic sensitivities merely redoubled Saxon bile directed at the Calvinists. Frederick V had used the Union congress at Heilbronn in April 1617 to call for common celebrations, and his court preacher presented the Calvinists as continuing Luther’s tradition of reform. Hoë roundly condemned the Calvinists as cynically trying to pass themselves off as Lutherans in order to enjoy the benefits of the Peace of Augsburg. Anhalt’s cultural initiatives were attacked as a surreptitious drive to suborn Lutherans from their true faith. The Saxon government expressly based its celebrations around texts from the Book of Concord and it became a test of loyalty whether other territories followed suit. Württemberg distanced itself from the Union by following the Saxon format for its commemoration of 1517, condemning Calvinists along with ‘false teachers and bloodthirsty tyrants, Turks and pope, Jesuits, Zwinglians… and other sectarians’ bent on suppressing the true faith.²⁷

The Failure of Composition

Paradoxically, Protestant infighting undermined Klesl’s composition project by reviving Catholic fears that Lutheran and Calvinist disagreement meant neither could be trusted. Having abandoned the Reichstag after 1613, Klesl had pushed for his proposed bi-partisan committee to meet. Lack of any precedent opened numerous questions that ultimately derailed the entire project. There was no agreement on whether it should be an electoral congress, or a wider meeting of an equal number of Protestant and Catholic princes. Klesl wanted Archduke Maximilian to chair it to deflect any blame from Matthias should it fail, but Maximilian was reluctant for that very reason, while others objected to involving any Habsburgs. Above all, the leading Catholics wanted to resolve the succession issue first, whereas the Palatine and Brandenburg electors insisted on prior talks over religion. Klesl seized on their demand as a further excuse to delay the dreaded succession, and it is likely that Anhalt’s promotion of Maximilian of Bavaria’s imperial candidacy was another device to sow dissension among the Catholics and buy more time to rally the ephemeral Protestant international.

Matthias also threw obstacles in Ferdinand’s path, insisting he could not transfer Hungary to Ferdinand without going there in person, and then claiming he was too ill to travel. Ferdinand forced his hand by pointing out that the Hungarian diet could assemble without royal permission, obliging Matthias to call it to save face. The Hungarian magnates insisted on confirmation of their monarchy’s elective character before accepting Ferdinand. Klesl hoodwinked them by recording in the minutes that they had exercised their ‘traditional rights’ after Matthias had recommended Ferdinand as his successor, a move that allowed the Habsburgs to claim later that Ferdinand acceded by hereditary right. Klesl’s role probably reflected his concern at Matthias’s failing health and the consequent urgency of mending fences with Ferdinand. The Estates duly proclaimed Ferdinand as their new sovereign on 16 May 1618, also accepting the Catholic Sigismund Forgách to fill the vacant post of palatine. Ferdinand was still in Hungary having lunch with the archbishop of Gran on 27 May when news arrived that his representatives in Bohemia had been hurled from a window.