But it was not to enjoy the prospect that the aged, discrowned, solitary emperor, almost as dim a figure among sovereigns as the mystic Libuscha herself, was gazing from the window upon the imperial city.

“Ungrateful Prague,” he cried, “through me thou hast become thus magnificent, and now thou hast turned upon and driven away thy benefactor.  May the vengeance of God descend upon thee; may my curse come upon thee and upon all Bohemia.”

History has failed to record the special benefits of the Emperor through which the city had derived its magnificence and deserved this malediction.  But surely if ever an old man’s curse was destined to be literally fulfilled, it seemed to be this solemn imprecation of Rudolph.  Meantime the coronation of Matthias had gone on with pomp and popular gratulations, while Rudolph had withdrawn into his apartments to pass the little that was left to him of life in solitude and in a state of hopeless pique with Matthias, with the rest of his brethren, with all the world.

And now that five years had passed since his death, Matthias, who had usurped so much power prematurely, found himself almost in the same condition as that to which he had reduced Rudolph.

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Matthias, weary of ambitious intrigue, infirm of purpose, and shattered in health, had withdrawn from affairs to devote himself to his gout and to his fair young wife, Archduchess Anna of Tyrol, whom at the age of fifty-four he had espoused.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