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. But