“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 true Church to be injured.  Ferdinand was no time-server—­no hypocrite.  He was a genuine bigot, sincere and conscientious.  Animated by this spirit, although two thirds of the inhabitants of Styria were Protestants, he banished all their preachers, professors and schoolmasters; closed their churches, seminaries and schools; even tore down the churches and school-houses; multiplied papal institutions, and called in teachers and preachers from other States.

Matthias and Ferdinand now seemed jointly to reign, and the Protestants were soon alarmed by indications that a new spirit was animating the councils of the sovereign.  The most inflexible Catholics were received as the friends and advisers of the king.  The Jesuits loudly exulted, declaring that heresy was no longer to be tolerated.  Banishments and confiscations were talked of, and the alarm of the Protestants became intense and universal:  they looked forward to the commencement of the reign of Ferdinand with terror.