The Letter of Majesty erected the Protestant part of Bohemia
into a kind of republic. The Estates had learned to feel the power
which they gained by perseverance, unity, and harmony in their measures.
The Emperor now retained little more than the shadow of
his sovereign authority; while by the new dignity of the so-called
defenders of liberty, a dangerous stimulus was given to the spirit of revolt.
The example and success of Bohemia afforded a tempting seduction
to the other hereditary dominions of Austria, and all attempted
by similar means to extort similar privileges. The spirit of liberty spread
from one province to another; and as it was chiefly the disunion
among the Austrian princes that had enabled the Protestants so materially
to improve their advantages, they now hastened to effect a reconciliation
between the Emperor and the King of Hungary.

But the reconciliation could not be sincere. The wrong was too great
to be forgiven, and Rodolph continued to nourish at heart
an unextinguishable hatred of Matthias. With grief and indignation
he brooded over the thought, that the Bohemian sceptre was finally to descend
into the hands of his enemy; and the prospect was not more consoling,
even if Matthias should die without issue. In that case, Ferdinand,
Archduke of Graetz, whom he equally disliked, was the head of the family.
To exclude the latter as well as Matthias from the succession to the throne
of Bohemia, he fell upon the project of diverting that inheritance
to Ferdinand's brother, the Archduke Leopold, Bishop of Passau,
who among all his relatives had ever been the dearest and most deserving.
The prejudices of the Bohemians in favour of the elective freedom
of their crown, and their attachment to Leopold's person,
seemed to favour this scheme, in which Rodolph consulted rather
his own partiality and vindictiveness than the good of his house.