ong in their
fortresses, would accept no monarch whom they did not approve. To secure
also the electoral vote for Emperor of Germany, while parties were so
divided and so bitterly hostile to each other, required the most adroit
application of bribes and menaces.

Matthias made his first movement in Bohemia. Having adopted previous
measures to gain the support of the principal nobles, he summoned a diet
at Prague, which he attended in person, accompanied by Ferdinand. In a
brief speech he thus addressed them.

"As I and my brothers," said the king, "are without children, I deem it
necessary, for the advantage of Bohemia, and to prevent future contests,
that my cousin Ferdinand should be proclaimed and crowned king. I
therefore request you to fix a day for the confirmation of this
appointment."

Some of the leading Protestants opposed this, on the ground of the known
intolerance of Ferdinand. But the majority, either won over by the arts
of Matthias, or dreading civil war, accepted Ferdinand. He was crowned
on the 10th of June, 1616, he promising not to interfere with the
government during the lifetime of Matthias. The emperor now turned to
Hungary, and, by the adoption of the same measures, secured the same
results. The nobles accepted Ferdinand, and he was solemnly crowned at
Presburg.

Ferdinand was Archduke of Styria, a province of Austria embracing a
little more than eight thousand square miles, being about the size of
the State of Massachusetts, and containing about a million of
inhabitants. He was educated by the Jesuits after the strictest manner
of their religion. He became so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his
monastic education, that he was anxious to assume the cowl of the monk,
and enter the order of the Jesuits. His devotion to the papal church
assumed the aspect of the most inflexible intolerance towards all
dissent. In the administration of the government of his own duchy, he
had given free swing to his bigotry. Marshaling his troops, he had
driven all the Protestant preachers from his domains. He had made a
pilgrimage to Rome, to receive the benediction of the pope, and another
to Loretto, where, prostrating himself before the miraculous image, he
vowed never to cease his exertions until he had extirpated all heresy
from his territories. He often declared that he would beg his bread from
door to door, submit to every insult, to every calamity, sacrifice even
life itself, rather than suffer the