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