128 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
Bohemian Estates were summoned to meet on 5 June 1617. Expecting
opposition, Matthias’s officials laid their plans carefully, but even they
were probably astounded by the ease, speed and completeness of their
success.
Why the Bohemian Protestants allowed themselves to be so easily
induced to accept Ferdinand as their king is a question which has often
been asked, but the most likely answer is the simplest. The leading oppo-
nents came to the meeting ill-prepared, and they were comprehensively
outmanoeuvred by the royal officials. On the day prior to the opening
of the Estates the latter invited most of the higher-ranking members
to a meeting, ostensibly to discuss aspects of the royal finances, but
from that they moved on to probe the attitude of those present to the
forthcoming debate on the succession. It was, they said, a foregone con-
clusion, and thus it would be better not to incur royal displeasure by
causing an unseemly wrangle. Anyone who did so had better have two
heads, as he was likely to lose one. Some, it is reported, took this warn-
ing so much to heart that they quietly left Prague to avoid having to
declare their position on the following day.
Early next morning the royal councillors called another pre-meeting
of office-holders and other leading figures, both Catholic and Protes-
tant, with Thurn the only notable absentee. Here, as they had expected,
some objected that the terms of the summons referred to Ferdinand’s
‘acceptance’, whereas they contended that they had a right to elect their
future king. This opened the way for the chancellor, Zden ̆ek Lobkowitz,
to deliver a carefully prepared analysis of the history of the Bohemian
crown, in which he argued that it had never been elective but had passed
by hereditary right, and as was well known both Maximilian II and
Rudolf II had been specifically accepted, not elected, by the Estates. The
situation in 1608, when Rudolf and Matthias had referred to the latter’s
‘election’ as prospective successor to the throne, was, said Lobkowitz,
exceptional. Most of those present had also been present in 1608, and
they were well aware that Matthias’s election had been that of a single
candidate with a large army at his back encamped immediately outside
Prague, while Lobkowitz’s other legal arguments were persuasive enough
to convince some of those who had expressed reservations to confirm a
change of mind.
The Estates meeting opened shortly afterwards, with Matthias pre-
siding, flanked by the archdukes Ferdinand and Maximilian. Here it
was formally proclaimed that because of his increasing age and infir-
mity Matthias required the appointment of a successor as king of
Bohemia, and that as his two brothers were also of similar age the chosen