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Updated: May 22, 2025
His friends told him that resistance was unavailing, and that he must come to an accommodation. Still the emperor had now thirty-six thousand troops in and around Prague. They were, however, inspired with no enthusiasm for his person, and it was quite doubtful whether they would fight. A few skirmishes took place between the advance guards with such results as to increase Rhodolph's alarm.
Then ensued some politic matrimonial alliances. Wenceslaus, the boy king, was affianced to Judith, one of the daughters of Rhodolph. The princess Agnes, daughter of Cunegunda, was to become the bride of Rhodolph's second son. These matters being all satisfactorily settled, Rhodolph returned in triumph to Vienna.
Matthias and the States consulted their own honor rather than Rhodolph's merits, in treating him with great magnanimity. Though Rhodolph had lost, one by one, all his own hereditary or acquired territories, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, he still retained the imperial crown of Germany. This gave him rank and certain official honors, with but little real power.
He secretly and treacherously invited the Archduke Leopold, who was also Bishop of Passau and Strasbourg, and one of the most bigoted of the warrior ecclesiastics of the papal church, to invade, with an army of sixteen thousand men, Rhodolph's own kingdom of Bohemia, under the plea that the wages of the soldiers had not been paid.
But all these prospects were blighted by the religious bigotry which had gained a firm hold of the mind of the young emperor. When he was but twelve years of age he was sent to Madrid to be educated. Philip II., of Spain, Rhodolph's uncle, had an only daughter, and no son, and there seemed to be no prospect that his queen would give birth to another child.
Rhodolph's first measure was to prevent the burghers, as they were called, who were those who had in various ways obtained emancipation from vassal service, and in the large cities had acquired energy, wealth and an air of independence, from attending Protestant worship. The nobles were very jealous of their privileges, and were prompt to combine whenever they thought them infringed.
In 1595 Rhodolph's second brother, Ernest, died childless, and thus Matthias became heir presumptive to the crown of Austria. From that time Rhodolph made a change, and intrusted him with high offices. Still the brothers were no nearer to each other in affection. Rhodolph dreaded the ambition and was jealous of the rising power of his brother.
Rhodolph III. The Liberty of Worship. Means of Emancipation. Rhodolph's Attempts against Protestantism. Declaration of a higher Law. Theological Differences. The Confederacy at Heilbrun. The Gregorian Calendar. Intolerance in Bohemia. The Trap of the Monks. Invasion of the Turks. Their Defeat. Coalition with Sigismond. Sale of Transylvania. Rule of Basta. The Empire captured and recaptured.
The Unkindest Cut of All. Rhodolph's Humiliation And Death. And now suddenly arose another question which threatened to involve all Europe in war. The Duke of Cleves, Juliers, and Berg died without issue. This splendid duchy, or rather combination of duchies, spread over a territory of several thousand square miles, and was inhabited by over a million of inhabitants.
Rhodolph's third brother, Matthias, was now forty-nine years of age. He had been educated by the illustrious Busbequias, whose mind had been liberalized by study in the most celebrated universities of Flanders, France and Italy.
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