and if, in any case, it was important for the Catholics to enforce the clause,
it was so especially in the case of electorates. On the other hand,
the relinquishment of so high a dignity was a severe sacrifice,
and peculiarly so in the case of a tender husband, who had wished to enhance
the value of his heart and hand by the gift of a principality.
Moreover, the Reservatum Ecclesiasticum was a disputed article
of the treaty of Augsburg; and all the German Protestants were aware
of the extreme importance of wresting this fourth* electorate
from the opponents of their faith. The example had already been set
in several of the ecclesiastical benefices of Lower Germany,
and attended with success. Several canons of Cologne had also
already embraced the Protestant confession, and were on the elector's side,
while, in the city itself, he could depend upon the support
of a numerous Protestant party. All these considerations,
greatly strengthened by the persuasions of his friends and relations,
and the promises of several German courts, determined the elector
to retain his dominions, while he changed his religion.

* Saxony, Brandenburg, and the Palatinate were already Protestant.

But it was soon apparent that he had entered upon a contest which he
could not carry through. Even the free toleration of the Protestant service
within the territories of Cologne, had already occasioned a violent opposition
on the part of the canons and Roman Catholic `Estates' of that province.
The intervention of the Emperor, and a papal ban from Rome,
which anathematized the elector as an apostate, and deprived him of all
his dignities, temporal and spiritual, armed his own subjects and chapter
against him. The Elector assembled a military force;
the chapter did the same. To ensure also the aid of a strong arm,
they proceeded forthwith to a new election, and chose the Bishop of Liege,