It was not strange that the coronation as King of Bohemia of a man of such decided purposes—­a country numbering ten Protestants to one Catholic—­should cause a thrill and a flutter.  Could it be doubted that the great elemental conflict so steadily prophesied by Barneveld and instinctively dreaded by all capable of feeling the signs of the time would now begin?  It had begun.  Of what avail would be Majesty-Letters and Compromises extorted by force from trembling or indolent emperors, now that a man who knew his own mind, and felt it to be a crime not to extirpate all religions but the one orthodox religion, had mounted the throne?  It is true that he had sworn at his coronation to maintain the laws of Bohemia, and that the Majesty-Letter and the Compromise were part of the laws.

But when were doctors ever wanting to prove the unlawfulness of law which interferes with the purposes of a despot and the convictions of the bigot?

“Novus rex, nova lex,” muttered the Catholics, lifting up their heads and hearts once more out of the oppression and insults which they had unquestionably suffered at the hands of the triumphant Reformers.  “There are many empty poppy-heads now flaunting high that shall be snipped off,” said others.  “That accursed German Count Thurn and his fellows, whom the devil has sent from hell to Bohemia for his own purposes, shall be disposed of now,” was the general cry.

It was plain that heresy could no longer be maintained except by the sword.  That which had been extorted by force would be plucked back by force.  The succession of Ferdinand was in brief a warshout to be echoed by all the Catholics of Europe.  Before the end of the year the Protestant churches of Brunnau were sealed up.  Those at Klostergrab were demolished in three days by command of the Archbishop of Prague.  These dumb walls preached in their destruction more stirring sermons than perhaps would ever have been heard within them had they stood.  This tearing in pieces of the Imperial patent granting liberty of Protestant worship, this summary execution done upon senseless bricks and mortar, was an act of defiance to the Reformed religion everywhere.  Protestantism was struck in the face, spat upon, defied.

The effect was instantaneous.  Thurn and the other defenders of the Protestant faith were as prompt in action as the Catholics had been in words.  A few months passed away.  The Emperor was in Vienna, but his ten stadholders were in Prague.  The fateful 23rd of May 1618 arrived.

Slawata, a Bohemian Protestant, who had converted himself to the Roman Church in order to marry a rich widow, and who converted his peasants by hunting them to mass with his hounds, and Martinitz, the two stadholders who at Ferdinand’s coronation had endeavoured to prevent him from including the Majesty-Letter among the privileges he was swearing to support, and who were considered the real authors of the royal letters revoking all religious rights of Protestants, were the most obnoxious of all.  They were hurled from the council-chamber window of the Hradschin.  The unfortunate secretary Fabricius was tossed out after them.  Twenty-eight ells deep they fell, and all escaped unhurt by the fall; Fabricius being subsequently ennobled by a grateful emperor with the well-won title of Baron Summerset.