The Habsburg Brothers’ Feud 103Strife in Austria
It was not long before the Protestant-dominated Estates of Austria and
Moravia presented the bill for their assistance. An indication of what
was to follow came immediately before Matthias’s allies set out for home
from their camp at Sterbohol, just outside Prague. There the representa-
tives of his new territories formed a secret alliance in which they pledged
to support each other in defence of their freedom of conscience and
religious observances. This was to apply specifically to their dealings
with their new prince, from whom guarantees of these freedoms were
to be extracted, failing which they would all refuse to take the oath of
allegiance.
Their solidarity was short-lived, however, as by August Moravia had
reached an accommodation with Matthias, who both here and in
Hungary was prepared to concede more than in the core Habsburg lands
in Austria. Although on the religious question the Moravians contented
themselves with Matthias’s formal assurance that no-one would be per-
secuted because of his confession, they secured a wide range of political
limitations on the new margrave, with most practical power passing to
an indigenous head of government, a post promptly filled by Zierotin.
Explaining why they had gone on to take the oath of allegiance, he
wrote to Tschernembl that ‘as long as we had no prince the way was
open for outsiders to attempt new hostile manoeuvres against us, but
now that we are under a legitimate sovereign the court in Prague has no
further excuse for intrigues or attacks upon us’.^18
In Austria, with its history of thirty years of struggle against Rudolf’s
efforts at counter-Reformation, the nobility were prepared to take noth-
ing on trust, and urged on by Tschernembl the two territories agreed
to act jointly, and to take the initiative by presenting Matthias with
their demands. The essentials of these were firstly that the cities should
have the same freedom of religion as the nobility, secondly that all
the restrictions which had been imposed during Rudolf’s reign on the
original concessions made by Maximilian II should be removed, and
thirdly that high offices in Upper and Lower Austria respectively should
be filled only by those actually born and resident there. In Upper
Austria they went further, preparing to defend themselves if neces-
sary by summoning the militia and commencing troop recruitment
even before the joint demands were presented to Matthias at the
Estates in Vienna in September 1608. He responded with vague assur-
ances and attempts to play for time, maintaining that the oath of
allegiance should come first and that these demands could then be