numerous order of the nobles and knights, and
the deputies from the towns, the voice of a few prelates was powerless;
and the unseemly ridicule and offensive contempt of the former soon
drove them entirely from the provincial diets. Thus the whole of the
Austrian Diet had imperceptibly become Protestant, and the Reformation
was making rapid strides towards its public recognition. The prince was
dependent on the Estates, who had it in their power to grant or refuse
supplies. Accordingly, they availed themselves of the financial
necessities of Ferdinand and his son to extort one religious concession
after another. To the nobles and knights, Maximilian at last conceded
the free exercise of their religion, but only within their own
territories and castles. The intemperate enthusiasm of the Protestant
preachers overstepped the boundaries which prudence had prescribed. In
defiance of the express prohibition, several of them ventured to preach
publicly, not only in the towns, but in Vienna itself, and the people
flocked in crowds to this new doctrine, the best seasoning of which was
personality and abuse. Thus continued food was supplied to fanaticism,
and the hatred of two churches, that were such near neighbours, was
farther envenomed by the sting of an impure zeal.

Among the hereditary dominions of the House of Austria, Hungary and
Transylvania were the most unstable, and the most difficult to retain.
The impossibility of holding these two countries against the
neighbouring and overwhelming power of the Turks, had already driven
Ferdinand to the inglorious expedient of recognizing, by an annual
tribute, the Porte's supremacy over Transylvania; a shameful confession
of weakness, and a still more dangerous temptation to the turbulent
nobility, when they fancied they had any reason to complain of their
master. Not without conditions had the Hungarians submitted to the
House of Austria. They asserted the elective freedom of their crown,
and boldly contended for all those prerogatives of their order which are
inseparable from this freedom of election. The near neighbourhood of
Turkey, the facility of changing masters with impunity, encouraged the
magnates still more in their presumption; discontented with the Austrian
government they threw themselves into the arms of the Turks;
dissatisfied with these, they returned again to their German sovereigns.
The frequency and rapidity of these transitions from one government to
another