100 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
groups together and to reach an agreement, the essence of which was a
joint commitment to defend the treaties of 1606 with the Hungarians
and the Turks respectively.
Once again it was Rudolf’s own intervention which led to a further
escalation, as he issued an edict in February 1608 ordering all concerned
to abandon this interference in Imperial affairs, on pain of death and
forfeiture of property, while his accompanying private letter to Matthias
left the latter in no doubt that he had to act himself in order to fore-
stall action against him. For that he needed soldiers and money. The
Hungarian assembly at Pressburg had already voted the raising of both
a tax and the militia, and at the end of February Matthias persuaded the
Estates of Upper and Lower Austria not only to ratify the agreement but
also to vote money and the summoning of their militias. Support from
the lands of the Bohemian crown, however, was more difficult to secure.
Moravia was the exception. The most influential man in the territory
was the wealthy nobleman Karl Zierotin, a member of the Moravian
version of the Calvinist-influenced Brethren and a noted scholar, who
had been in correspondence with Illéshazy and Tschernembl through-
out the events in Hungary. Like them, he was a protagonist of Protestant
and Estates’ rights, and an equally determined opponent of Emperor
Rudolf II. A more surprising ally for Matthias was the wealthiest Catholic
magnate in Moravia, Prince Karl Liechtenstein, a careerist and oppor-
tunist who had held high offices under Rudolf but had more than once
been dismissed as a victim of the latter’s whims. Now he offered to
finance the recruiting of professional soldiers for Matthias, and indeed
he went further, storming into the Imperial governor’s palace with a fol-
lowing of like-minded noblemen and turning him out of office. A hastily
summoned meeting of the Moravian Estates in April appointed a new
government with Liechtenstein at its head, and this promptly took the
territory into the Pressburg alliance.
Events had moved swiftly, as had recruiting, so that by mid-April
Matthias had an army, which in the following weeks grew to a reported
15,000 men as contingents from the various territories and noble sup-
porters joined it. As this force started to move into Moravia in the direc-
tion of Bohemia, however, the irony of Matthias’s position had already
become apparent. He was in principle a strong supporter of the Catholic
church and of the powers of Habsburg princes over their territories, but
he now found himself entirely dependent upon the mainly Protestant
nobility who dominated the Estates, the very people who were seeking
ever-increasing rights and freedoms, both religious and political, at the