228 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
Ferdinand’s successive enemies during the next phases of the Thirty
Years War, while those remaining in Bohemia formed a potential fifth
column ready to welcome those enemies when they invaded.
The property of the convicted rebels was automatically forfeit, but
that was only the beginning. In January 1622 a special court was set
up to investigate those accused of complicity in the revolt, and to con-
fiscate the lands of those found guilty. Those who had been executed,
or had died in arms during the revolt, or had fled the country, were
automatically liable to full expropriation. Others less seriously impli-
cated forfeited only a proportion of their property, the most fortunate
as little as a fifth, but even in such cases everything was confiscated,
and the owners were entitled only to monetary compensation for the
balance, most of which proved very difficult to secure in practice. The
scale was staggering, affecting around a thousand families, two-thirds of
them in Bohemia and one-third in Moravia, while half of Bohemia’s
total land area, or even more according to some estimates, changed
hands as a result. Vast areas of land passed into the control of the
Imperial treasury and became available for sale at knock-down prices
to purchasers deemed loyal to the regime, in what constituted not only
massive punishment but also a concerted effort to break the economic
and political power of the landed Protestant nobility and gentry. And of
course the emperor desperately needed the money to meet the costs of
the war.^66
A first draft bill for Maximilian’s expenses is extant in the Munich
archives, and with remarkable precision the total comes to 16,000,771
florins 40 Kreuzer and 1 Heller, the latter being the smallest coin then in
circulation. Part of these costs were offset against supplies provided by
the emperor, so that eventually a sum of 13 million florins, including
interest, was agreed, against which the Upper Palatinate was trans-
ferred to Maximilian in settlement.^67 Even so it was not until 1628
that Ferdinand recovered control of Upper Austria, while he was never
able to pay his corresponding debt to Johann Georg of Saxony, who
consequently retained Lusatia in perpetuity.
For Ferdinand personally the opportunity for a Catholic revival was
one of the principal fruits of victory. He had long before shown his will-
ingness to pursue a policy of militant recatholicisation in Styria, and he
was ready, albeit somewhat more cautiously, to repeat this in Bohemia
and Moravia. The defeated Protestants had been under no illusions
in this respect, as the English ambassadors had reported shortly after
the battle of the White Mountain. The Imperialists, they said, ‘holde
Bohemia now by conquest and all immunityes, priveledges and lettres