22 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
Protestant councils involved, while in one case, that of Kaufbeuren
in 1604, Duke Maximilian I of Bavaria had been authorised to inter-
vene to enforce the order. Nevertheless these had been relatively minor
incidents without any significant repercussions.
Despite its modest size Donauwörth too was a free Imperial city, and it
was also one of the small number in which both main confessions had
established rights under the terms of the peace of Augsburg. However
it was situated uncomfortably on the border of the large and important
duchy of Bavaria, and not far from the substantial territory of the bish-
opric of Augsburg. The Protestant-controlled council had for a number
of years been applying irksome restrictions to the small Catholic minor-
ity, and the proximity of these powerful co-religionist neighbours seems
to have encouraged the latter eventually to assert their rights, perhaps in
turn provoking the council to act correspondingly firmly against them.
In any event, when the monks of the nearby Heilig-Kreuz (Holy Cross)
monastery proposed to hold a procession through the city on St Mark’s
Day, 25 April 1606, the council refused to allow them to enter with their
banners flying, and in the resulting scuffle the parade was broken up and
the banners were destroyed. The bishop of Augsburg complained to the
Hofrat, leading the emperor to threaten the city with the Imperial ban if
Catholic rights were not respected in the future. Despite this, much the
same happened in April 1607, when as well as the monks two Bavarian
representatives who had been sent as observers were also unceremoni-
ously turned out of the city. Consequently in August of that year the
Hofrat placed Donauwörth under the ban for a breach of the peace in
the Empire.
Instead of making immediate submission the city council unwisely
decided to wait for action to be taken against it, and Emperor Rudolf
II and the Hofrat then appointed Maximilian of Bavaria to carry out
an enforcement. This was a breach of procedure, as the director of the
Swabian circle, to which Donauwörth belonged, should have been given
this responsibility, but he, the duke of Württemberg, was a Lutheran.
The council rejected Maximilian’s initial approach, in response to which
he occupied the city with an unnecessarily large number of troops
on 16 December 1607, informing the council that these would only
be withdrawn when they had paid his military expenses. As these
amounted to many times the city’s total revenues, and it was already
heavily indebted, this was something which they would never be able
to do. The Swabian circle and many Protestant principalities objected
strongly, complaining to the emperor about the unlawful procedure
in enforcing the judgement and the effective take-over of the town