50 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
He soon began to exercise a wider influence, not least on the young
elector Friedrich IV, to whom his own princely rank gave him direct
access, and this increased further when a number of his officials from
the Upper Palatinate later obtained important posts in the Heidelberg
government. The elector himself, and in due course his successor, also
went for long stays in Amberg, the Upper Palatinate capital, thus consol-
idating personal relationships as the basis for direct recourse to Christian
for advice.
Christian’s contacts extended far beyond Amberg and Heidelberg. He
travelled frequently, both on diplomatic missions for the Palatinate and
on his own account, including regular visits to Rudolf II’s court in
nearby Prague as well as renewing his acquaintance with Henri IV of
France. He was also an assiduous correspondent, so that Amberg became
the centre of a network of links between like-minded protagonists of
Protestant resistance to the developing Counter-Reformation, to which
Christian brought a European rather than a purely German perspec-
tive. By 1606 he was in touch with opponents of the Habsburgs in their
hereditary lands in Austria, and indeed with almost anyone who was or
might be an enemy of the Habsburgs more widely, from restive nobility
in Moravia and Silesia to contacts in Savoy and Venice.
Christian was closely involved in the formation of the Protestant
Union in 1608, and he was nominated both as the elector of the
Palatinate’s deputy as director of the Union and as prospective second-
in-command of its forces in the event of active hostilities. His opponents
were in no doubt about his aims, and at the foundation of the Catholic
League a year later he was openly branded as a warmonger. He was
certainly an active protagonist of Union military intervention in the
escalating confrontation surrounding the Cleves-Jülich inheritance dis-
pute in 1609, when as well as visiting Henri IV of France to encourage
him to participate he himself took command of Union troops on the
Rhine.
After Henri’s assassination Christian continued trying to build a wider
anti-Habsburg front by personal diplomacy, and although the endeav-
our was fatally weakened by France’s withdrawal from European politics
his efforts contributed to the establishment of defensive alliances for
the Union with the Dutch in 1612 and the English in 1613, the latter
underpinned by the marriage of the sixteen-year-old Elector Friedrich V
to Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of James I. When Friedrich came of age
and took over personal rule Christian became the most influential of
his advisers, and his determined advocacy contributed significantly to
Friedrich’s decision to accept the Bohemian crown, thereby involving