134 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
stand, and Matthias and the new regents obligingly provided one. The
disputes over the Protestant churches at Braunau and Klostergrab had
been quiescent for a considerable time, but now the respective Catholic
prelates involved sought to bring them to a head. A plea from the abbot
at Braunau reached Matthias in December 1617 as he wasen routefrom
Prague to Vienna, and he accordingly summoned the citizens’ repre-
sentatives and issued them with an order to hand over their church
to the abbot, and to report to the regents within four weeks that they
had done so. Back in Braunau the citizens refused to comply, and when
their delegates reported this in Prague they were arrested and impris-
oned, as were further representatives who followed when summoned by
the regents, but without the church keys which they had been ordered
to bring. Despite this the Protestants in Braunau still refused to give
up the church, so Matthias ordered the despatch of a royal commis-
sion to the town, a step which persuaded the councillors, anxious for
their own safety, to advise their fellow citizens to back down. A tense
meeting followed but made no progress, and when the commissioners
attempted to seize the church themselves their way was barred by a mob
wielding sticks and stones. Their final effort to achieve their objective
by threatening the pastor was no more successful, forcing them to aban-
don their mission, and there the matter rested in early March 1618, with
the church still in Protestant hands. However a number of Braunau cit-
izens remained imprisoned in Prague, an apparently arbitrary injustice
which presented both a challenge and an opportunity for the Protestant
leadership.
Matters in Klostergrab had evolved differently. There the archbishop
of Prague had succeeded several years before in locking up the new
church and denying its use to the Protestant citizens. Moreover he had
gone further, applying systematic pressure on them to abandon their
confession and to return to Catholicism, reportedly fining any who
attended Protestant services elsewhere, and even refusing marriages to
those who did not go to Mass. Heartened by his success and by the
spirit of Catholic revival in the months after Ferdinand’s acceptance as
the new king, the archbishop saw the opportunity to settle the matter
once and for all. He too acted in December 1617, sending in workmen
to demolish the Protestant church. They met with no resistance, but the
symbolism of the move created outrage well beyond Bohemia.^2
The Letter of Majesty and associated agreements had provided for
the appointment of a body of defensors to watch over the freedoms
which had been granted to the Protestants. They were also empowered