favorable for the designs of the emperor.  Charles I. of England was struggling against that Parliament which soon deprived him both of his crown and his head.  France was agitated, from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, by civil war, the Catholics striving to exterminate the Protestants.  Insurrections in Turkey absorbed all the energies of the Ottoman court, leaving them no time to think of interfering with the affairs of Europe.  The King of Denmark was humiliated and prostrate.  Sweden was too far distant and too feeble to excite alarm.  Sigismond of Poland was in intimate alliance with the emperor.  Gabriel Bethlehem of Hungary was languishing on a bed of disease and pain, and only asked permission to die in peace.

The first step which the emperor now took was to revoke all the concessions which had been granted to the Protestants.  In Upper Austria, where he felt especially strong, he abolished the Protestant worship utterly.  In Lower Austria he was slightly embarrassed by engagements which he had so solemnly made, and dared not trample upon them without some little show of moderation.  First he prohibited the circulation of all Protestant books; he then annulled all baptisms and marriages performed by Protestants; then all Protestants were excluded from holding any civil or military office; then he issued a decree that all the children, without exception, should be educated by Catholic priests, and that every individual should attend Catholic worship.  Thus coil by coil he wound around his subjects the chain of unrelenting intolerance.

In Bohemia he was especially severe, apparently delighting to punish those who had made a struggle for civil and religious liberty.  Every school teacher, university professor and Christian minister, was ejected from office, and their places in schools, universities and churches were supplied by Catholic monks.  No person was allowed to exercise any mechanical trade whatever, unless he professed the Roman Catholic faith.  A very severe fine was inflicted upon any one who should be detected worshiping at any time, even in family prayer, according to the doctrines and customs of the Protestant church.  Protestant marriages were pronounced illegal, their children illegitimate, their wills invalid.  The Protestant poor were driven from the hospitals and the alms-houses.  No Protestant was allowed to reside in the capital city of Prague, but, whatever his wealth or rank, he was driven ignominiously from the metropolis.

In the smaller towns and remote provinces of the kingdom, a military force, accompanied by Jesuits and Capuchin friars, sought out the Protestants, and they were exposed to every conceivable insult and indignity.  Their houses were pillaged, their wives and children surrendered to all the outrages of a cruel soldiery; many were massacred; many, hunted like wild beasts, were driven into the forest; many were put to the torture, and as their bones were crushed and quivering nerves were torn, they were required to give in their adhesion to the Catholic faith.  The persecution to which the Bohemians were subjected has perhaps never been exceeded in severity.