Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v8, 1617



CHAPTER XIII.

Ferdinand of Gratz crowned King of Bohemia--His Enmity to
Protestants--Slawata and Martinitz thrown from the Windows of the
Hradschin--Real Beginning of the Thirty Years' War--The Elector-
Palatine's Intrigues in Opposition to the House of Austria--He
supports the Duke of Savoy--The Emperor Matthias visits Dresden--
Jubilee for the Hundredth Anniversary of the Reformation.

When the forlorn emperor Rudolph had signed the permission for his
brother Matthias to take the last crown but one from his head, he bit the
pen in a paroxysm of helpless rage. Then rushing to the window of his
apartment, he looked down on one of the most stately prospects that the
palaces of the earth can offer. From the long monotonous architectural
lines of the Hradschin, imposing from its massiveness and its imperial
situation, and with the dome and minarets of the cathedral clustering
behind them, the eye swept across the fertile valley, through which the
rapid, yellow Moldau courses, to the opposite line of cliffs crested with
the half imaginary fortress-palaces of the Wyscherad. There, in the
mythical legendary past of Bohemia had dwelt the shadowy Libuscha,
daughter of Krok, wife of King Premysl, foundress of Prague, who, when
wearied of her lovers, was accustomed to toss them from those heights
into the river. Between these picturesque precipices lay the two
Pragues, twin-born and quarrelsome, fighting each other for centuries,
and growing up side by side into a double, bellicose, stormy, and most
splendid city, bristling with steeples and spires, and united by the