Count Thurn, with sixteen thousand men, marched into Moravia.  The people rose simultaneously to greet him.  He entered Brunn, the capital, in triumph.  The revolution was immediate and entire.  They abolished the Austrian government, established the Protestant worship, and organized a new government similar to that which they had instituted in Bohemia.  Crossing the frontier, Count Thurn boldly entered Austria and, meeting no foe capable of retarding his steps, he pushed vigorously on even to the very gates of Vienna.  As he had no heavy artillery capable of battering down the walls, and as he knew that he had many partisans within the walls of the city, he took possession of the suburbs, blockaded the town, and waited for the slow operation of a siege, hoping thus to be able to take the capital and the person of the sovereign without bloodshed.

Ferdinand had brought such trouble upon the country, that he was now almost as unpopular with the Catholics as with the Protestants, and all his appeals to them for aid were of but little avail.  The sudden approach of Count Thurn had amazed and discomfited him, and he knew not in what direction to look for aid.  Cooped up in his capital, he could hold no communication with foreign powers, and his own subjects manifested no disposition to come to his rescue.  The evidences of popular discontent, even in the city, were every hour becoming more manifest, and the unhappy sovereign was in hourly expectation of an insurrection in the streets.

The surrender of Vienna involved the loss of Austria.  With the loss of Austria vanished all hopes of the imperial crown.  Bohemia, Austria, and the German scepter gone, Hungary would soon follow; and then, his own Styrian territories, sustained and aided by their successful neighbors, would speedily discard his sway.  Ferdinand saw it all clearly, and was in an agony of despair.  He has confided to his confessor the emotions which, in those terrible hours, agitated his soul.  It is affecting to read the declaration, indicative as it is that the most cruel and perfidious man may be sincere and even conscientious in his cruelty and crime.  To his Jesuitical confessor, Bartholomew Valerius, he said,

“I have reflected on the dangers which threaten me and my family, both at home and abroad.  With an enemy in the suburbs, sensible that the Protestants are plotting my ruin, I implore that help from God which I can not expect from man.  I had recourse to my Saviour, and said, ’Lord Jesus Christ, Thou Redeemer of mankind, Thou to whom all hearts are opened, Thou knowest that I seek Thy honor, not my own.  If it be Thy will, that, in this extremity, I should be overcome by thy enemies, and be made the sport and contempt of the world, I will drink of the bitter cup.  Thy will be done.’  I had hardly spoken these words before I was inspired with new hope, and felt a full conviction that God would frustrate the designs of my enemies.”