This was enough.  The emperor published the ban of the empire, and sent the Duke of Bavaria with an army to execute the decree.  Resistance was hopeless.  The troops took possession of the town, abolished the Protestant religion, and delivered the churches to the Catholics.

The Protestants now saw that there was no hope for them but in union.  Thus driven together by an outward pressure which was every day growing more menacing and severe, the chiefs of the Protestant party met at Aschhausen and established a confederacy to continue for ten years.  Thus united, they drew up a list of grievances, and sent an embassy to present their demands to the emperor.  And now came a very serious turn in the fortunes of Rhodolph.  Notwithstanding the armistice which had been concluded with the Turks by Rhodolph, a predatory warfare continued to rage along the borders.  Neither the emperor nor the sultan, had they wished it, could prevent fiery spirits, garrisoned in fortresses frowning at each other, from meeting occasionally in hostile encounter.  And both parties were willing that their soldiers should have enough to do to keep up their courage and their warlike spirit.  Aggression succeeding aggression, sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other, the sultan at last, in a moment of exasperation, resolved to break the truce.

A large army of Turks invaded Croatia, took several fortresses, and marching up the valley of the Save, were opening before them a route into the heart of the Austrian States.  The emperor hastily gathered an army to oppose them.  They met before Siseck, at the confluence of the Kulpa and the Save.  The Turks were totally defeated, with the loss of twelve thousand men.  Exasperated by the defeat, the sultan roused his energies anew, and war again raged in all its horrors.  The advantage was with the Turks, and they gradually forced their way up the valley of the Danube, taking fortress after fortress, till they were in possession of the important town of Raab, within a hundred miles of Vienna.

Sigismond, the waivode or governor of Transylvania, an energetic, high-spirited man, had, by his arms, brought the provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia under subjection to him.  Having attained such power, he was galled at the idea of holding his government under the protection of the Turks.  He accordingly abandoned the sultan, and entered into a coalition with the emperor.  The united armies fell furiously upon the Turks, and drove them back to Constantinople.

The sultan, himself a man of exceedingly ferocious character, was thoroughly aroused by this disgrace.  He raised an immense army, placed himself at its head, and in 1596 again invaded Hungary.  He drove the Austrians everywhere before him, and but for the lateness of the season would have bombarded Vienna.  Sigismond, in the hour of victory, sold Transylvania to Rhodolph for the governorship of some provinces in Silesia, and a large annual pension.  There was some fighting before the question was fully settled in favor of the emperor, and then he placed the purchased and the conquered province under the government of the imperial general Basta.