130 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
been largely limited to the few days beforehand during which members
started to arrive in Prague. The most obvious problem, however, was
the lack of an alternative candidate. As far as other possible Habsburgs
were concerned the opposition had the same problem as the family
itself, while there had been no time to look more widely, and in any
case the most potentially suitable possibility, the elector of Saxony, had
not responded positively to earlier hypothetical enquiries. Convincing
the nervous majority to take the purely negative step of voting against
Ferdinand would have been difficult without being able to suggest who
might later be elected, and in such circumstances few were prepared to
risk a pointedly personal vote against him when he might well have
ended up as king in any case.
Nevertheless the members of the Estates recovered themselves quickly
enough to seek to limit the damage. Ferdinand had been accepted but
he was not yet crowned, and the principle was well established that
the future king had to make a range of promises to his prospective sub-
jects about his use of his powers before he was enthroned. Hence the
Protestant majority presented a demand that Ferdinand should not only
give the customary undertaking to respect all the rights and privileges
of the Estates, but that he should also specifically guarantee to abide by
the Letter of Majesty. This Ferdinand hesitated to do, not, as has often
been suggested, because he had scruples about making a promise that
he did not intend to keep, but because his own extreme Catholicism
led him to fear that making concessions to heretics would be sinful and
might endanger his personal salvation. Hence he consulted the Jesuits
in Prague, who after due deliberation advised him that although that
would have been the case were he making the concessions in the first
place, as they had already been made he could safely confirm them.
In this judgement they relied on the Catholic doctrine of accepting
the lesser evil in order to prevent a greater one, in this case the pos-
sible loss of Catholic tenure of the Bohemian crown. Hence Ferdinand
promised, and the Estates also extracted from him a promise that he
would take no part in the government of Bohemia on his own account
for as long as Matthias lived.^26 On 29 June he was crowned with all the
usual pomp and ceremony, the whole process having taken three and a
half weeks.
The Hungarians were either better prepared or made of sterner stuff,
or perhaps both. With their strong devolved government controlled by
their own paladin they were less concerned to oppose Ferdinand him-
self, but they were determined to have the process legally recognised as
an election, not the mere acceptance which the Habsburg party again