the morning of May 23d, the "beginning and cause," as a
contemporary calls it, "of all the coming evil," the first day, though
men as yet knew it not, of thirty years of war, Thurn sallied forth at
the head of a band of noblemen and their followers, all of them with
arms in their hands. Trooping into the room where the Regents were
seated, they charged the obnoxious two with being the authors of the
King's reply. After a bitter altercation both Martinitz and Slavata were
dragged to a window which overlooked the fosse below from a dizzy height
of some seventy feet. Martinitz, struggling against his enemies, pleaded
hard for a confessor. "Commend thy soul to God," was the stern answer.
"Shall we allow the Jesuit scoundrels to come here?" In an instant he
was hurled out, crying, "Jesus, Mary!" "Let us see," said someone
mockingly, "whether his Mary will help him." A moment later he added,
"By God, his Mary has helped him." Slavata followed, and then the
secretary Fabricius. By a wonderful preservation, in which pious
Catholics discerned the protecting hand of God, all three crawled away
from the spot without serious hurt.

There are moments when the character of a nation or party stands
revealed as by a lightning flash, and this was one of them. It is not in
such a way as this that successful revolutions are begun.

The first steps to constitute a new government were easy. Thirty
directors were appointed, and the Jesuits were expelled from Bohemia.
The Diet met and ordered soldiers to be levied to form an army. But to
support this army money would be needed, and the existing taxes were
insufficient. A loan was accordingly thought of, and the nobles resolved
to request the towns to make up the sum, they themselves contributing
nothing. The project falling dead upon the resistance of the towns, new
taxes were voted, but no steps were taken to collect them, and the army
was left to depend in a great measure upon chance.

Would the princes of Germany come to the help of the directors? John
George of Saxony told them that he deeply sympathized with them, but
that rebellion was a serious matter. To one who asked him what he meant
to do he replied, "Help to put out the fire."

There was more help for them at Heidelberg than at Dresden. Frederick IV
had died in 1610, and his son, the young Frederick V, looked up to
Christian of Anhalt as the first statesman of his age. By his marriage
with Elizabeth, the daughter of James I of