spread from
one province to another; and as it was chiefly the disunion among the
Austrian princes that had enabled the Protestants so materially to
improve their advantages, they now hastened to effect a reconciliation
between the Emperor and the King of Hungary.

But the reconciliation could not be sincere. The wrong was too great to
be forgiven, and Rodolph continued to nourish at heart an
unextinguishable hatred of Matthias. With grief and indignation he
brooded over the thought, that the Bohemian sceptre was finally to
descend into the hands of his enemy; and the prospect was not more
consoling, even if Matthias should die without issue. In that case,
Ferdinand, Archduke of Graetz, whom he equally disliked, was the head of
the family. To exclude the latter as well as Matthias from the
succession to the throne of Bohemia, he fell upon the project of
diverting that inheritance to Ferdinand's brother, the Archduke Leopold,
Bishop of Passau, who among all his relatives had ever been the dearest
and most deserving. The prejudices of the Bohemians in favour of the
elective freedom of their crown, and their attachment to Leopold's
person, seemed to favour this scheme, in which Rodolph consulted rather
his own partiality and vindictiveness than the good of his house. But
to carry out this project, a military force was requisite, and Rodolph
actually assembled an army in the bishopric of Passau. The object of
this force was hidden from all. An inroad, however, which, for want of
pay it made suddenly and without the Emperor's knowledge into Bohemia,
and the outrages which it there committed, stirred up the whole kingdom
against him. In vain he asserted his innocence to the Bohemian Estates;
they would not believe his protestations; vainly did he attempt to
restrain the violence of his soldiery; they disregarded his orders.
Persuaded that the Emperor's object was to annul the Letter of Majesty,
the Protectors of Liberty armed the whole of Protestant Bohemia, and
invited Matthias into the country. After the dispersion of the force he
had collected at Passau, the Emperor remained helpless at Prague, where
he was kept shut up like a prisoner in his palace, and separated from
all his councillors. In the meantime, Matthias entered Prague amidst
universal rejoicings, where Rodolph was soon afterwards weak enough to
acknowledge him King of Bohemia. So hard a fate befell this Emperor; he
was compelled, during his life, to abdicate in