against Austria; just as ready was Austria to confirm to any adventurer
the possession of provinces which he had wrested from the Porte,
satisfied with preserving thereby the shadow of authority,
and with erecting at the same time a barrier against the Turks.
In this way several of these magnates, Batbori, Boschkai, Ragoczi, and Bethlen
succeeded in establishing themselves, one after another,
as tributary sovereigns in Transylvania and Hungary;
and they maintained their ground by no deeper policy
than that of occasionally joining the enemy, in order to render themselves
more formidable to their own prince.

Ferdinand, Maximilian, and Rodolph, who were all sovereigns
of Hungary and Transylvania, exhausted their other territories
in endeavouring to defend these from the hostile inroads of the Turks,
and to put down intestine rebellion. In this quarter
destructive wars were succeeded but by brief truces,
which were scarcely less hurtful: far and wide the land lay waste,
while the injured serf had to complain equally of his enemy and his protector.
Into these countries also the Reformation had penetrated;
and protected by the freedom of the States, and under the cover
of the internal disorders, had made a noticeable progress.
Here too it was incautiously attacked, and party spirit thus became
yet more dangerous from religious enthusiasm. Headed by a bold rebel,
Boschkai, the nobles of Hungary and Transylvania raised the standard
of rebellion. The Hungarian insurgents were upon the point of making
common cause with the discontented Protestants in Austria, Moravia,
and Bohemia, and uniting all those countries in one fearful revolt.
The downfall of popery in these lands would then have been inevitable.

Long had the Austrian archdukes, the brothers of the Emperor,