106 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
three Protestant electors and the Estates of Silesia and Lusatia. Rudolf’s
order forbidding the proposed assembly was ignored, while his attempts
to detach more moderate members from the militants were equally
unavailing. On the due date the Protestants assembled first at Prague cas-
tle, meeting in the open air as the rooms had been barred against them,
where they elected Budowetz as their spokesman in place of the more
moderate Schlick, who had previously served in this capacity. Twice
Rudolf received delegations, but on each occasion he merely confirmed
his prohibition of the assembly, offering instead to call a new Estates
meeting but refusing to specify any date.
With no compromise in sight it was time for the Estates to open their
meeting in the city hall. As the members streamed down from the cas-
tle and across the river bridge a large crowd of sympathetic townsmen
gathered around them, but as they reached the hall an Imperial offi-
cial attempted to read out an order forbidding the assembly. He was
hooted and whistled down, but frayed nerves and volatile tempers were
evident three days later, when a messenger came to warn the delegates
that Imperial troops were assembling to attack them. In fact it was only
a guard of honour meeting a Spanish ambassador, but panic ensued as
members, many of them already heavily armed as though in a mili-
tary camp rather than at a committee meeting, rushed to get out into
the street in order to defend themselves. The large number of retain-
ers they had brought with them were quickly assembled, joined by
many hotheads from the city with whatever weapons they could lay
hands on, until eventually an Imperial messenger arrived with assur-
ances that no attack was planned. It was in this mood that a large
armed crowd gathered again in the New Town the following morn-
ing, while the leaders prepared to submit a new document to Rudolf.
Six delegates were selected to go to the castle, led by Budowetz, but
when they did not return angry rumours that they had been arrested
spread quickly, only stilled by their final reappearance late in the
evening.
The document itself was carefully drafted by Prague’s leading lawyers,
and it began by declaring the Estates’ loyalty and goodwill towards
Rudolf as their king. They intended, they claimed, nothing detrimental
to his standing or authority, noting that they had only been driven to
holding their own assembly by the unjustified termination of the Estates
meeting before the religious issue had been resolved. Their sole wish was
to obtain peaceably the freedom to exercise their religion, and to this
end they requested that a new Estates meeting be held immediately,
adding that all those entitled to attend were already in Prague.