122 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
Zierotin ruled the land as though he were himself its prince, but his own
orders carried no weight unless he were prepared to accept all kinds of
conditions for having them carried out.^10
Even so Matthias was able to benefit from the divisions among his sub-
jects, which were well illustrated when he finally called the promised full
joint meeting in Prague in June 1615. The original idea of the Bohemian
Protestants in 1611, with the dangerous episode of the Passau army fresh
in mind, had been to use the meeting to formalise a confederation of
the Habsburg lands, and thus to provide for mutual defence of their
religious and political privileges against their overlord. Four years later
this no longer seemed urgent enough to bring about the necessary com-
promises between territories more jealous of their independence than
they were afraid of princely power. The Hungarians did not attend at all,
while the Moravians, Silesians and Lusatians exhibited their traditional
antipathy to what they saw as Bohemian ambitions to secure the leading
role, and the Austrians too kept their distance. Meanwhile Matthias and
Khlesl sought to limit any joint venture to military cooperation directed
against external enemies, particularly the Turks, and they were probably
more relieved than disappointed when the meeting broke up after two
months of wrangling without achieving anything.^11
One other division, the social division, was also to play a part in the
course of the Bohemian revolt. The practical politician Liechtenstein
recognised this well beforehand, leading him to advise Matthias that
efforts should be made to win the favour of the ordinary people and
to separate them from the nobility, thus strengthening the position of
the government.^12 Whether or not this was feasible, it does draw atten-
tion to an important distinction, that the developing crisis was not one
between the prince and the people, but between the prince and the priv-
ileged classes, the aristocracy and gentry. Many of the champions of
freedom, including Tschernembl and Wilhelm Kinsky, were neverthe-
less determined advocates of keeping the lower orders in their place, as
was evident during the peasants’ revolt in Austria in 1597, and in the
omission of religious freedom for the peasants in the Estates agreement
made in parallel to the Letter of Majesty in 1609.^13 Burkhardt also notes
the irony that during the social unrest after 1618 the Bohemian estates
executed peasant rebels ‘as though they were themselves the authorities
rather than the next group who were to suffer this fate’.^14
Historians have often seen the contacts during this period between
later leaders of the Bohemian revolt and like-minded people in
Germany, particularly in the Palatinate, as a preparation for the event
itself. This may be valid at a theoretical level, insofar as it concerned the