the estates of Hungary. Foremost among these was the provision that the
exercise of the reformed religion should be free in all the cities and
villages beneath his sceptre, and that every man in the kingdom was to
worship God according to his conscience.

In the following March, at the very moment accordingly when the
conclusive negotiations were fast ripening at Antwerp, Matthias granted
religious peace for Austria likewise. Great was the indignation of his
nephew Leopold, the nuncius, and the Spanish ambassador in consequence,
by each and all of whom the revolutionary mischief-maker, with his
brother's crown on his head, was threatened with excommunication.

As for Ferdinand of Styria, his wrath may well be imagined. He refused
religious peace in his dominions with scorn ineffable. Not Gomarus in
Leyden could have shrunk from Arminianism with more intense horror than
that with which the archduke at Gratz recoiled from any form of
Protestantism. He wrote to his brother-in-law the King of Spain and to
other potentates--as if the very soul of Philip II. were alive within
him--that he would rather have a country without inhabitants than with a
single protestant on its soil. He strongly urged upon his Catholic
Majesty--as if such urging were necessary at the Spanish court--the
necessity of extirpating heresy, root and branch.

Here was one man at least who knew what he meant, and on whom the dread
lessons of fifty years of bloodshed had been lost. Magnificent was the
contempt which this pupil of the Jesuits felt for any little progress
made by the world since the days of Torquemada. In Ferdinand's view Alva
was a Christian hero, scarcely second to Godfrey of Bouillon, Philip II.
a sainted martyr, while the Dutch republic had never been born.