Matthias’s Reign, Ferdinand’s Succession 121had formed the Sterbohol alliance against Matthias immediately after
their success, this had quickly fallen apart, with first the Moravians and
then the Hungarians agreeing their own terms with him and leaving
the Austrians to fend for themselves. During the confrontation of 1609
which led eventually to the Letter of Majesty the Bohemians received
little more than polite messages of support from their co-religionists
in the other Habsburg lands, and although the Austrians, Hungarians
and Moravians joined Matthias’s army to meet the danger from the
Passau invaders in 1611 the Silesians and Lusatians again made no
practical moves to help. With Rudolf gone and the immediate threat
removed, parochial interests and long-standing rivalries among the terri-
tories reasserted themselves. Leading individuals such as Tschernembl in
Austria and Zierotin in Moravia continued to see the need for unity, and
to maintain contacts both among themselves and with potential allies
in the Empire, notably Christian of Anhalt, but the failure to establish
any effective links with the Protestant Union is a more telling indicator
of wider sentiment.
One clear reason why the majority saw no overriding need to form
a united front was the weakened state in which the confrontations of
Rudolf’s last decade had left the Habsburg monarchy. Matthias him-
self provided one of the best assessments of the situation in a letter he
wrote to Archduke Ferdinand of Styria in November 1613, pessimisti-
cally enumerating the problems province by province. These might be
contained during his lifetime, he thought, but after his death crisis and
collapse might well follow. In Upper and Lower Austria he had up to
now, by showing the greatest flexibility and willingness to make conces-
sions, avoided an open uprising, but the Estates were only looking for
an opportunity to free themselves from his lordship, and they were con-
spiring with the Hungarians and with the Protestant Union in Germany.
In Hungary he was completely powerless, as the paladin, the head of the
government, did as he pleased and took no notice of his own orders or
prohibitions. The Hungarians too were aiming to depose the House of
Habsburg, which the paladin himself had openly declared, and he was
allying himself with the nobility in preparation for seizing the crown
either for himself or for his successor. As for Bohemia, he could not
summon the Estates unless he allowed a joint meeting of the Estates
of all the Habsburg lands (which he had been obliged to promise the
Bohemians before becoming king in 1611), but without summoning
them he could raise no taxes from the province. In Silesia the lead-
ing noble, the margrave of Jägerndorf, was agitating furiously against
the Habsburgs, while in Moravia the situation was similar to Hungary.