y
war.

From the very close of the Bohemian troubles, Ferdinand had carried on a
counter reformation in his hereditary dominions, in which, however, from
regard to some of the Protestant Estates, he proceeded, at first, with
moderation. But the victories of his generals in Lower Germany
encouraged him to throw off all reserve. Accordingly he had it
intimated to all the Protestants in these dominions, that they must
either abandon their religion, or their native country,--a bitter and
dreadful alternative, which excited the most violent commotions among
his Austrian subjects. In the Palatinate, immediately after the
expulsion of Frederick, the Protestant religion had been suppressed, and
its professors expelled from the University of Heidelberg.

All this was but the prelude to greater changes. In the Electoral
Congress held at Muehlhausen, the Roman Catholics had demanded of the
Emperor that all the archbishoprics, bishoprics, mediate and immediate,
abbacies and monasteries, which, since the Diet of Augsburg, had been
secularized by the Protestants, should be restored to the church, in
order to indemnify them for the losses and sufferings in the war. To a
Roman Catholic prince so zealous as Ferdinand was, such a hint was not
likely to be neglected; but he still thought it would be premature to
arouse the whole Protestants of Germany by so decisive a step. Not a
single Protestant prince but would be deprived, by this revocation of
the religious foundations, of a part of his lands; for where these
revenues had not actually been diverted to secular purposes they had
been made over to the Protestant church. To this source, many princes
owed the chief part of their revenues and importance. All, without
exception, would be irritated by this demand for restoration. The
religious treaty did not expressly deny their right to these chapters,
although it did not allow it. But a possession which had now been held
for nearly a century, the silence of four preceding emperors, and the
law of equity, which gave them an equal right with the Roman Catholics
to the foundations of their common ancestors, might be strongly pleaded
by them as a valid title. Besides the actual loss of power and
authority, which the surrender of these foundations would occasion,
besides the inevitable confusion which would necessarily attend it, one
important disadvantage to which it would lead, was, that the restoration
of the Roman Catholic bishops would i