was spreading fast over
the dominions of the House of Austria. The nobles of their very Duchy
embraced it: Moravia, Silesia, Hungary all but wholly abandoned
Catholicism. Through the earlier reign of Elizabeth it seemed as if by
a peaceful progress of conversion Germany was about to become
Protestant.

[Sidenote: The Catholic reaction.]

German Catholicism was saved by the Catholic revival and by the energy
of the Jesuits. It was saved perhaps as much by the strife which broke
out in the heart of German Protestantism between Lutheran and Calvinist.
But the Catholic zealots were far from resting content with having
checked the advance of their opponents. They longed to undo their work.
They did not question the Treaty of Passau or the settlement made by it;
but they disputed the Protestant interpretation of its silences; they
called for the restoration to Catholicism of all church lands
secularized, of all states converted from the older faith, since its
conclusion. Their new attitude woke little terror in the Lutheran
states. The treaty secured their rights, and their position in one
unbroken mass stretching across Northern Germany seemed to secure them
from Catholic attack. But the Calvinistic states, Hesse, Baden, and the
Palatinate, felt none of this security. If the treaty were strictly
construed it gave them no right of existence, for Calvinism had arisen
since the treaty was signed. Their position too was a hazardous one.
They lay girt in on all sides but one by Catholic territories, here by
the bishops of the Rhineland with the Spaniards in Franche Comte and the
Netherlands to back them, there by Bavaria and by the bishoprics of the
Main. Foes such as these indeed the Calvinists could fairly have faced;
but behind them lay the House of Austria; and the influence of the
Catholic revival was at last telling on the Austrian princes. In 1606 an
attempt of the Emperor Rudolf to force Catholicism again on his people
woke revolt in the Duchy; and though the troubles were allayed by his
removal, his successor Matthias persevered though more quietly in the
same anti-Protestant policy.

[Sidenote: The Union and the League.]

The accession of the House of Austria to the number of their foes
created a panic among the Calvinistic states, and in 1608 they joined
together in a Protestant Union with Christian of Anhalt at its head. But
zeal was at once met by zeal; and the formation of the Union was
answered by the formati