90 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
later to rise to high office as a cardinal and as Emperor Matthias’s first
minister and chief adviser. Beginning in 1587, a dozen years before
Archduke Ferdinand’s similar offensive in Styria, this commission pro-
gressed methodically through the Austrian countryside, town by town,
forcing first the office-holders and councillors and then the ordinary
people to return to Catholicism or face banishment. A parallel cam-
paign against the nobility proceeded through the courts, obliging them
one by one to relinquish control over parish churches which they
had gained beyond the strict limits of Emperor Maximilian II’s orig-
inal concessions, and some of their pastors were expelled. Even so
success was far from universal, particularly in Upper Austria, as on a
number of occasions the attempts to displace Protestant ministers were
met with determined resistance, mainly from the free peasantry, and
in the resulting disturbances the Catholic authorities were obliged to
retreat.
Both internal opposition and the looming threat of an external war
hindered further progress. Since 1568 a truce with the Turks had been
regularly renewed, but in 1590 Sultan Murad III concluded an advanta-
geous peace to end his long-running war with Persia, enabling him to
turn his attentions westwards again. Localised hostilities had been a con-
tinuous feature of the ill-defined border between Habsburg and Turkish
territory in Hungary even during the truce, and in the changed situa-
tion these soon developed into open war, the Long Turkish War which
began in 1593, so that for a time the internal religious conflict had to
take second place. Nevertheless the divisions remained, while discon-
tent was further increased by the burdens of war, not only taxation and
the conscription of feudal levies, but also the cost, damage and violence
inflicted by the movement of Imperial troops from Germany through
Austria to the Hungarian front.
In 1595 this discontent led to a peasants’ revolt in Upper Austria.
Again religion was the initial issue, as the authorities, prompted by the
emperor, sought to resume their counter-Reformationary efforts. Trou-
ble started when the citizens of a small town expelled first the newly
appointed Catholic priest, and then the official sent to restore order,
following which a meeting of representatives from like-minded towns
in the neighbourhood decided to band together to defend themselves
and to demand redress for their other grievances, principally the burden
of their feudal obligations to their lords. Support from other areas was
quickly forthcoming, so that much of Upper Austria joined in while the
authorities were still wondering how to respond. Eventually they sent
a small military force to suppress the revolt, but when confronted by a