e was the
presumptive successor to all his crowns, had not approved of the
movements of Matthias in the lifetime of his brother, and hated the
Vienna Protestant baker's son, Cardinal Clesel, by whom all those
movements had been directed. Professor Taubmann, of Wittenberg,
ponderously quibbling on the name of that prelate, had said that he was
of "one hundred and fifty ass power." Whether that was a fair measure of
his capacity may be doubted, but it certainly was not destined to be
sufficient to elude the vengeance of Ferdinand, and Ferdinand would soon
have him in his power.

Matthias, weary of ambitious intrigue, infirm of purpose, and shattered
in health, had withdrawn from affairs to devote himself to his gout and
to his fair young wife, Archduchess Anna of Tyrol, whom at the age of
fifty-four he had espoused.

On the 29th June 1617, Ferdinand of Gratz was crowned King of Bohemia.
The event was a shock and a menace to the Protestant cause all over the
world. The sombre figure of the Archduke had for years appeared in the
background, foreshadowing as it were the wrath to come, while throughout
Bohemia and the neighbouring countries of Moravia, Silesia, and the
Austrias, the cause of Protestantism had been making such rapid progress.
The Emperor Maximilian II. had left five stalwart sons, so that there had
seemed little probability that the younger line, the sons of his brother,
would succeed. But all the five were childless, and now the son of
Archduke Charles, who had died in 1590, had become the natural heir after
the death of Matthias to the immense family honours--his cousins
Maximilian and Albert having resigned their claims in his favour.

Ferdinand, twelve years old at his father's death, had been placed under
the care of his maternal uncle, Duke William of Bavaria. By him the boy
was placed at the high school of Ingolstadt, to be brought up by the
Jesuits, in company with Duke William's own son Maximilian, five years
his senior. Between these youths, besides the tie of cousinship, there
grew up the most intimate union founded on perfect sympathy in religion
and politics.

When Ferdinand entered upon the government of his paternal estates of
Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, he found that the new religion, at which
the Jesuits had taught him to shudder as at a curse and a crime, had been
widely spreading. His father had fought against heresy with all his
might, and had died disappointed and broken-hearted a