of this step, listened to nothing
but the voice of love. Whether it was in consequence of his previous
inclination to the reformed doctrines, or that the charms of his
mistress alone effected this wonder, he renounced the Roman Catholic
faith, and led the beautiful Agnes to the altar.

This event was of the greatest importance. By the letter of the clause
reserving the ecclesiastical states from the general operation of the
religious peace, the elector had, by his apostacy, forfeited all right
to the temporalities of his bishopric; and if, in any case, it was
important for the Catholics to enforce the clause, it was so especially
in the case of electorates. On the other hand, the relinquishment of so
high a dignity was a severe sacrifice, and peculiarly so in the case of
a tender husband, who had wished to enhance the value of his heart and
hand by the gift of a principality. Moreover, the Reservatum
Ecclesiasticum was a disputed article of the treaty of Augsburg; and all
the German Protestants were aware of the extreme importance of wresting
this fourth electorate from the opponents of their faith.--[Saxony,
Brandenburg, and the Palatinate were already Protestant.]--The example
had already been set in several of the ecclesiastical benefices of Lower
Germany, and attended with success. Several canons of Cologne had also
already embraced the Protestant confession, and were on the elector's
side, while, in the city itself, he could depend upon the support of a
numerous Protestant party. All these considerations, greatly
strengthened by the persuasions of his friends and relations, and the
promises of several German courts, determined the elector to retain his
dominions, while he changed his religion.

But it was soon apparent that he had entered upon a contest which he
could not carry through. Even the free toleration of the Protestant
service within the territories of Cologne, had already occasioned a
violent opposition on the part of the canons and Roman Catholic
`Estates' of that province. The intervention of the Emperor, and a
papal ban from Rome, which anathematized the elector as an apostate, and
deprived him of all his dignities, temporal and spiritual, armed his own
subjects and chapter against him. The Elector assembled a military
force; the chapter did the same. To ensure also the aid of a strong
arm, they proceeded forthwith to a new election, and chose the Bishop of
Liege, a prince of Bavaria.

A civil war