immediately left Vienna and visited the most influential of the German princes to secure their support for his election.  The Catholics all over Germany, alarmed by the vigor and energy which had been displayed by the Protestants, laid aside their several preferences, and gradually all united upon Ferdinand.  The Protestants, foolishly allowing their Lutheran and Calvinistic differences to disunite them, could not agree in their candidate.  Consequently Ferdinand was elected, and immediately crowned emperor, the 9th of September, 1619.

The Bohemians, however, remained firm in their resolve to repudiate him utterly as their king.  They summoned a diet of the States of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Lusatia to meet at Prague.  Delegates also attended the diet from Upper and Lower Austria, as also many nobles from distant Hungary.  The diet drew up a very formidable list of grievances, and declared, in view of them, that Ferdinand had forfeited all right to the crown of Bohemia, and that consequently it was their duty, in accordance with the ancient usages, to proceed to the election of a sovereign.  The Catholics were now so entirely in the minority in Bohemia that the Protestants held the undisputed control.  They first chose the Elector of Saxony.  He, conscious that he could maintain his post only by a long and uncertain war, declined the perilous dignity.  They then with great unanimity elected Frederic, the Elector of Palatine.

The Palatinate was a territory bordering on Bohemia, of over four thousand square miles, and contained nearly seven hundred thousand inhabitants.  The elector, Frederic V., was thus a prince of no small power in his own right.  He had married a daughter of James I. of England, and had many powerful relatives.  Frederic was an affable, accomplished, kind-hearted man, quite ambitious, and with but little force of character.  He was much pleased at the idea of being elevated to the dignity of a king, and was yet not a little appalled in contemplating the dangers which it was manifest he must encounter.  His mother, with maternal solicitude, trembling for her son, intreated him not to accept the perilous crown.  His father-in-law, James, remonstrated against it, sternly declaring that he would never patronize subjects in rebellion against their sovereign, that he would never acknowledge Frederic’s title as king, or render him, under any circumstances, either sympathy or support.  On the other hand the members of the Protestant league urged his acceptance; his uncles united strongly with them in recommending it, and above all, his fascinating wife, whom he dotingly loved, and who, delighted at the idea of being a queen, threw herself into his arms, and plead in those persuasive tones which the pliant heart of Frederic could not resist.  The Protestant clergy, also, in a strong delegation waited upon him, and intreated him in the name of that Providence which had apparently proffered to him the crown, to accept it in fidelity to himself, to his country and to the true religion.