38 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
truce with the Turks agreed in 1606. The war had provided a prac-
tical impetus towards agreement at the earlier meetings, as even the
most extreme anti-Catholic, anti-Habsburg prince was not ready to see
Christendom, even Austria, invaded by the Turks. Without such an
external pressure the meetings quickly descended into a dialogue of the
deaf between the militant Palatinate-led wing of the Protestants deter-
mined to parade their grievances, and the entrenched Catholic majority
equally determined to avoid or at least to limit concessions to them.
In 1608 the atmosphere was further embittered by the fact that the
participants were already assembling in Regensburg as Maximilian of
Bavaria’s troops marched into Donauwörth on 16 December 1607, so
that the meeting opened on 12 January against a background of up-to-
the-minute and doubtless sensational accounts of the seizure of the city.
Hence on this single occasion Saxony not only supported the Palatine
approach but took the initiative in pressing Protestant demands.
In both 1608 and 1613 the activists debated at length as to how
to respond to the pressure from the Catholic side for majority deci-
sions. Would the conventional protests suffice, or should they resort to
a walk-out, as in 1530? In 1608 some took the harder line and the most
militant departed. Saxony and others of their persuasion remained, but
they would not support decision-taking, particularly on taxation, in the
absence of those who had left. The Catholic side decided not to press
the issue, and the meeting was prorogued without a concluding resolu-
tion. It could be said that the Reichstag had broken down at that point,
except for the fact that they all came back in 1613 and continued the
arguments.
Those who were members of the Protestant Union met beforehand in
1613 to discuss whether or not to participate in the Reichstag, and it is
significant that they decided to do so, albeit with the intention of pre-
senting their demands in the form of an ultimatum. Equally noteworthy
is that some progress was in fact made. The emperor’s brother, Archduke
Maximilian, led a series of negotiations, in course of which it was agreed
that consideration of some of the problems could be deferred, including
the call for the ‘four cloisters’ cases to be removed from the jurisdiction
of the Kammergericht and its appeals committees. The three remaining
demands were firstly that a revised structure and area of competence
should be established for the Hofrat, secondly that all politically sensi-
tive cases then before that court, including action against the Protestant
council in Aachen, should in the meantime be suspended and referred
to confessionally balanced arbitration, and thirdly that Donauwörth
should be restored to its status as a free Imperial city.