182 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
von Hoënegg, a well-known polemicist who had previously served in
Prague, likewise preferred the Catholics to the Calvinists, attacking the
latter in furious sermons which met with the approval of Johann Georg
and his councillors.^6 The election of the Calvinist Friedrich as king of
Bohemia thus distanced Saxony further from the revolt, while the sub-
sequent Calvinist ‘cleansing’ of the Prague churches was badly received
not only there but in other Lutheran territories in Germany. Johann
Georg’s growing hostility to the revolt and his eventual participation
in its suppression have frequently been criticised on the grounds that
he should have supported his co-religionists rather than their oppo-
nents, but this argument erroneously regards the Protestants of the time
as a monolithic block, like the Catholics, rather than being comprised
of two or more distinct and often mutually hostile confessions. The
point is well made by a decree issued in Württemberg in 1617, which
‘lumped Calvinists and Zwinglians along with Jesuits, the pope, tyrants,
and Turks as common threats to the faith’.^7
There were also political considerations. A close association with the
emperor and the house of Austria was a long-standing fundamental of
Saxon external policy, and Johann Georg in particular took a firmly con-
stitutionalist position in respect of the Empire. Significant parts of Saxon
territory were also fiefs of the Bohemian crown, adding a strong polit-
ical reason for standing aloof from the revolt to the elector’s personal
view that he was in duty bound to the lawful king and emperor.^8 As the
Bohemians went on first to depose Ferdinand as their king and then to
elect a replacement, Johann Georg and his councillors increasingly came
to view the revolt not as a religious issue but as a rebellion against the
established order. Moreover Saxony and the Palatinate had long been
polar opposites in their attitudes to the major issues in the Empire, so
that Friedrich’s election added political as well as religious obstacles to
Saxon support for the Bohemians.
Germany – Union and League
The Protestant Union
As the members of the Protestant Union assembled in Heilbronn in early
May 1618 it was very much business as usual in the Empire, with no
sense of immediate crisis, and indeed although the political arguments
were continuing the general state of Germany was calmer than it had
been for decades. The main issues of the day were Khlesl’s efforts to find
aKompositionin the Empire and the question of the prospective suc-
cession to Matthias as emperor. Predictably the Union members, led by