On the other hand the purpose of the House of Austria was to do away with the elective principle and the prescriptive rights of the Estates in Bohemia first, and afterwards perhaps to send the Golden Bull itself to the limbo of wornout constitutional devices.  At present however their object was to secure their hereditary sovereignty in Prague first, and then to make sure of the next Imperial election at Frankfurt.  Time afterwards might fight still more in their favour, and fix them in hereditary possession of the German throne.

The Elector-Palatine had lost no time.  His counsellors even before the coronation of Ferdinand at Prague had done their best to excite alarm throughout Germany at the document by which Archdukes Maximilian and Albert had resigned all their hereditary claims in favour of Ferdinand and his male children.  Should there be no such issue, the King of Spain claimed the succession for his own sons as great-grandchildren of Emperor Maximilian, considering himself nearer in the line than the Styrian branch, but being willing to waive his own rights in favour of so ardent a Catholic as Ferdinand.  There was even a secret negotiation going on a long time between the new king of Bohemia and Philip to arrange for the precedence of the Spanish males over the Styrian females to the hereditary Austrian states, and to cede the province of Alsace to Spain.

It was not wonderful that Protestant Germany should be alarmed.  After a century of Protestantism, that Spain should by any possibility come to be enthroned again over Germany was enough to raise both Luther and Calvin from their graves.  It was certainly enough to set the lively young palatine in motion.  So soon as the election of Frederic was proclaimed, he had taken up the business in person.  Fond of amusement, young, married to a beautiful bride of the royal house of England, he had hitherto left politics to his counsellors.

Finding himself frustrated in his ambition by the election of another to the seat he had fondly deemed his own, he resolved to unseat him if he could, and, at any rate, to prevent the ulterior consequences of his elevation.  He made a pilgrimage to Sedan, to confer with that irrepressible intriguer and Huguenot chieftain, the Duc de Bouillon.  He felt sure of the countenance of the States-General, and, of course, of his near relative the great stadholder.  He was resolved to invite the Duke of Lorraine to head the anti-Austrian party, and to stand for the kingship of the Romans and the Empire in opposition to Ferdinand.  An emissary sent to Nancy came back with a discouraging reply.  The Duke not only flatly refused the candidacy, but warned the Palatine that if it really came to a struggle he could reckon on small support anywhere, not even from those who now seemed warmest for the scheme.  Then Frederic resolved to try his cousin, the great Maximilian of Bavaria, to whom all Catholics looked with veneration and whom all German Protestants