claim of any man. It was instinctively felt throughout Christendom that
the great duel between the ancient church and the spirit of the
Reformation was now to be renewed upon that narrow, debateable spot.

The Emperor at once proclaimed his right to arbitrate on the succession
and to hold the territory until decision should be made; that is to say,
till the Greek Kalends. His familiar and most tricksy spirit,
Bishop-Archduke Leopold, played at once on his fears and his resentments,
against the ever encroaching, ever menacing, Protestantism of Germany,
with which he had just sealed a compact so bitterly detested.

That bold and bustling prelate, brother of the Queen of Spain and of
Ferdinand of Styria, took post from Prague in the middle of July.
Accompanied by a certain canon of the Church and disguised as his
servant, he arrived after a rapid journey before the gates of Julich,
chief city and fortress of the duchies. The governor of the place,
Nestelraed, inclined like most of the functionaries throughout the
duchies to the Catholic cause, was delighted to recognize under the
livery of the lackey the cousin and representative of the Emperor.
Leopold, who had brought but five men with him, had conquered his capital
at a blow. For while thus comfortably established as temporary governor
of the duchies he designed through the fears or folly of Rudolph to
become their sovereign lord. Strengthened by such an acquisition and
reckoning on continued assistance in men and money from Spain and the
Catholic League, he meant to sweep back to the rescue of the perishing
Rudolph, smite the Protestants of Bohemia, and achieve his appointment to
the crown of that kingdom.

The Spanish ambassador at Prague had furnished him with a handsome sum of
money for the expenses of his journey and preliminary enterprise. It