170 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
have given his Bohemian supporters sufficient encouragement not to
abandon him as a prospect.
Hence when Schlick visited Dresden in late June 1619, officially in
order to plead yet again for Saxon support for the revolt in the form
of money and munitions, he was privately more interested in pursuing
the question of the crown. In an audience with Johann Georg and in
the presence of the Saxon council he told the elector that the Bohemian
estates were not minded to accept Ferdinand as their king, thus con-
firming information the Saxon agent in Prague had already gathered.
Schlick’s objective was clearly to prepare the ground for the elector to be
a candidate for the throne, but how explicit he was is not known. On his
return to Prague he reported to the directors that his mission had been
completely successful, praising the elector as an ‘Estates-friendly’ prince,
but he could hardly have said otherwise if he was to further his aim of
securing a Lutheran candidate to oppose the Calvinist aspirations of his
colleagues Ruppa and Budowetz.^33
If Johann Georg was the obvious candidate for the Lutherans then
Friedrich, the Calvinist elector of the Palatinate, was the corresponding
natural preference for the members of the Bohemian Brethren. Although
his main territory was far away in central and south-west Germany, with
its capital in Heidelberg, the large detached Upper Palatinate also bor-
dered on Bohemia, while the Palatinate as a whole was, like Saxony, one
of the leading territories of the Empire. The 22-year-old elector himself,
however, was something of an unknown quantity, as despite having
inherited at the age of fourteen he had been subject first to a regency
and then to the tutelage of Christian of Anhalt. He had married well,
though, to Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of James I of England, and
both this important political connection and the attractive image of the
romantic young couple added to his appeal as a candidate. Approaches
to him had been made by some of the leading Bohemian rebels at an
early stage, but he had responded cautiously, as his council were well
aware of the risks surrounding the Bohemian crown, while they later
avoided any open indication of a Palatine candidature because of the
dealings with Savoy.
In a contemporary pamphlet, the Acta consultatoria Bohemica,
reprinted in theTheatrum Europaeum, the arguments for and against
possible candidates for the crown which were circulating at the time
in Prague were summarised.^34 The duke of Savoy, the elector of Saxony
and King Christian IV of Denmark were also considered, but by far the
strongest case was made for Friedrich of the Palatinate. He was a mod-
est and sympathetic character; he was rich and could provide plenty