before this resplendent
assembly the mean and miserable sycophant he ever was in days of
disaster. He was so silly as to try to win them again to his cause. He
coaxed and made the most liberal promises, but all in vain. Their reply
was indignant and decisive, yet dignified.

"We have too long," they replied, "been duped by specious and deceitful
promises. We now demand actions, not words. Let the emperor show us by
the acts of his administration that his spirit is changed, and then, and
then only, can we confide in him."

Matthias was still apprehensive that the emperor might rally the
Catholic forces of Germany, and in union with the pope and the
formidable power of the Spanish court, make an attempt to recover his
Bohemian throne. It was manifest that with any energy of character,
Rhodolph might combine Catholic Europe, and inundate the plains of
Germany with blood. While it was very important, therefore, that
Matthias should do every thing he could to avoid exasperating the
Catholics, it was essential to his cause that he should rally around him
the sympathies of the Protestants.

The ambassadors of Matthias respectfully announced to the congress the
events which had transpired in Bohemia in the transference of the crown,
and solicited the support of the congress. The Protestant princes
received this communication with satisfaction, promised their support in
case it should be needed, and, conscious of the danger of provoking
Rhodolph to any desperate efforts to rouse the Catholics, recommended
that he should be treated with brotherly kindness, and, at the same
time, watched with a vigilant eye.

Rhodolph, disappointed here, summoned an electoral meeting of the
empire, to be held at Nuremburg on the 14th of December, 1711. He hoped
that a majority of the electors would be his friends. Before this body
he presented a very pathetic account of his grievances, delineating in
most melancholy colors the sorrows which attend fallen grandeur. He
detailed his privations and necessities, the straits to which he was
reduced by poverty, his utter inability to maintain a state befitting
the imperial dignity, and implored them, with the eloquence of a
Neapolitan mendicant, to grant him a suitable establishment, and not to
abandon him, in his old age, to penury and dishonor.

The reply of the electors to the dispirited, degraded, downtrodden old
monarch was the unkindest cut of all. Much as Rhodolph is to be
execrated and desp