cy of the Protestant powers was to be looked for.
They seized, therefore, the present emergency of the troubles in Bohemia
to demand from the Roman Catholics the abolition of their past
grievances, and full security for the future exercise of their religion.
They addressed this demand, which was moreover couched in threatening
language, to the Duke of Bavaria, as the head of the Roman Catholics,
and they insisted on an immediate and categorical answer. Maximilian
might decide for or against them, still their point was gained; his
concession, if he yielded, would deprive the Roman Catholic party of its
most powerful protector; his refusal would arm the whole Protestant
party, and render inevitable a war in which they hoped to be the
conquerors. Maximilian, firmly attached to the opposite party from so
many other considerations, took the demands of the Union as a formal
declaration of hostilities, and quickened his preparations. While
Bavaria and the League were thus arming in the Emperor's cause,
negotiations for a subsidy were opened with the Spanish court. All the
difficulties with which the indolent policy of that ministry met this
demand were happily surmounted by the imperial ambassador at Madrid,
Count Khevenhuller. In addition to a subsidy of a million of florins,
which from time to time were doled out by this court, an attack upon the
Lower Palatinate, from the side of the Spanish Netherlands, was at the
same time agreed upon.

During these attempts to draw all the Roman Catholic powers into the
League, every exertion was made against the counter-league of the
Protestants. To this end, it was important to alarm the Elector of
Saxony and the other Evangelical powers, and accordingly the Union were
diligent in propagating a rumour that the preparations of the League had
for their object to deprive them of the ecclesiastical foundations they
had secularized. A written assurance to the contrary calmed the fears
of the Duke of Saxony, whom moreover private jealousy of the Palatine,
and the insinuations of his chaplain, who was in the pay of Austria, and
mortification at having been passed over by the Bohemians in the
election to the throne, strongly inclined to the side of Austria. The
fanaticism of the Lutherans could never forgive the reformed party for
having drawn, as they expressed it, so many fair provinces into the gulf
of Calvinism, and rejecting the Roman Antichrist only to make way for an
Helvetian one.

W