158 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
work of the directorate but have left little personal impression in the
records, Fruewein being the most notable among them. As for the mil-
itary commanders, Thurn had served in the Imperial army, rising to
the rank of colonel during the Long Turkish War, but although he
was an experienced officer he was clearly over-promoted as a general,
a fact demonstrated by his service later in the Thirty Years War with the
Swedish army, and it was not long before the directors also brought in
Count Georg Friedrich of Hohenlohe from Germany to serve with equal
rank alongside him. Of Fels little more need be said than that he was, as
usual, Thurn’s loyal shadow. Unlike the earlier revolt in the Netherlands
or the later one in England, no William of Orange or Oliver Cromwell
emerged in Bohemia to provide the quality of leadership the situation
demanded.
One other weakness which should not be overlooked is the religious
tension among the Protestant leaders themselves in a period when,
as was noted in Chapter 1, Lutherans and Calvinists were inclined to
regard each other as even worse enemies than the Catholics. Smiˇrický
attracted attention early in the revolt by distributing badges which
were to be worn by his own co-religionists, thus distinguishing them
from Lutherans, ‘mere Calvinist childishness’, as Schlick later called it,
adding disdainfully that he had not accepted one, although he knew
that many others had.^7 Two other directors later testified that they were
not trusted and were kept in the dark by their colleagues because they
were Lutherans rather than members of the Bohemian Brethren, while
Budowetz chose to go to his death on the scaffold without the conso-
lation of religion rather than accept it from a Lutheran pastor.^8 Ruppa
and Fruewein too belonged to the Brethren, which thus had a tight hold
on the effective leadership, offering another possible reason why Schlick
and Thurn were kept on the political sidelines.
The three immediate priorities were raising troops, looking for allies,
and publicising an explanation of their actions, although the directorate
also lost no time in ordering the expulsion of the Jesuits from Bohemia,
as well as confiscating the property of various of their Catholic oppo-
nents, a precedent which would be extensively used in return after
the defeat of the revolt.^9 The explanation took the form not so much
of Ruppa’s ‘letter of apology’ but of an extensive self-justification in
which all the Protestant grievances were rehearsed, accompanied by an
exhausting volume of supporting documentation, which was not only
sent to the emperor but promptly and widely published.^10 Numerous let-
ters also passed between Prague and Vienna, and from each to the rulers
of neighbouring territories or prospective allies further afield. In these