renounced their allegiance, Hungary and Transylvania threw off his supremacy,
and Bohemia was not slow in following their example. The descendant of
the once so formidable Charles the Fifth was in perpetual danger,
either of losing one part of his possessions to the Turks,
or another to the Protestants, and of sinking, beyond redemption,
under the formidable coalition which a great monarch of Europe had formed
against him. The events which now took place in the interior of Germany
were such as usually happened when either the throne was without an emperor,
or the Emperor without a sense of his imperial dignity. Outraged or abandoned
by their head, the States of the Empire were left to help themselves;
and alliances among themselves must supply the defective authority
of the Emperor. Germany was divided into two leagues,
which stood in arms arrayed against each other: between both, Rodolph,
the despised opponent of the one, and the impotent protector of the other,
remained irresolute and useless, equally unable to destroy the former
or to command the latter. What had the Empire to look for
from a prince incapable even of defending his hereditary dominions against
its domestic enemies? To prevent the utter ruin of the House of Austria,
his own family combined against him; and a powerful party threw itself
into the arms of his brother. Driven from his hereditary dominions,
nothing was now left him to lose but the imperial dignity;
and he was only spared this last disgrace by a timely death.

At this critical moment, when only a supple policy, united with
a vigorous arm, could have maintained the tranquillity of the Empire,
its evil genius gave it a Rodolph for Emperor. At a more peaceful period
the Germanic Union would have managed its own interests, and Rodolph,
like so many others of his rank, might have hidden his deficiencies
in a mysterious obscurity. But the urgent demand for the qualities
in which he was most deficient revealed his incapacity.