And now Matthias appeared upon the scene.  The Estates had already been in communication with him, better hopes, for the time at least, being entertained from him than from the flaccid Rudolph.  Moreover a kind of compromise had been made in the autumn between Matthias and the Emperor after the defeat of Leopold in the duchies.  The real king had fallen at the feet of the nominal one by proxy of his brother Maximilian.  Seven thousand men of the army of Matthias now came before Prague under command of Colonitz.  The Passauers, receiving three months pay from the Emperor, marched quietly off.  Leopold disappeared for the time.  His chancellor and counsellor in the duchies, Francis Teynagel, a Geldrian noble, taken prisoner and put to the torture, revealed the little plot of the Emperor in favour of the Bishop, and it was believed that the Pope, the King of Spain, and Maximilian of Bavaria were friendly to the scheme.  This was probable, for Leopold at last made no mystery of his resolve to fight Protestantism to the death, and to hold the duchies, if he could, for the cause of Rome and Austria.

Both Rudolph and Matthias had committed themselves to the toleration of the Reformed religion.  The famous “Majesty-Letter,” freshly granted by the Emperor (1609), and the Compromise between the Catholic and Protestant Estates had become the law of the land.  Those of the Bohemian confession, a creed commingled of Hussism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism, had obtained toleration.  In a country where nine-tenths of the population were Protestants it was permitted to Protestants to build churches and to worship God in them unmolested.  But these privileges had been extorted by force, and there was a sullen, dogged determination which might be easily guessed at to revoke them should it ever become possible.  The House of Austria, reigning in Spain, Italy, and Germany, was bound by the very law of their being to the Roman religion.  Toleration of other worship signified in their eyes both a defeat and a crime.

Thus the great conflict, to be afterwards known as the Thirty Years’ War, had in reality begun already, and the Netherlands, in spite of the truce, were half unconsciously taking a leading part in it.  The odds at that moment in Germany seemed desperately against the House of Austria, so deep and wide was the abyss between throne and subjects which religious difference had created.  But the reserved power in Spain, Italy, and Southern Germany was sure enough to make itself felt sooner or later on the Catholic side.

Meantime the Estates of Bohemia knew well enough that the Imperial house was bent on destroying the elective principle of the Empire, and on keeping the crown of Bohemia in perpetuity.  They had also discovered that Bishop-Archduke Leopold had been selected by Rudolph as chief of the reactionary movement against Protestantism.  They could not know at that moment whether his plans were likely to prove fantastic or dangerous.