An Inevitable War? 55Maximilian was overall military commander, the League had been
organised from the outset into two directorates, one for south Germany
under Maximilian and the other for the Rhine region with the elec-
tor of Mainz as director, and the two had worked independently on
their different and sometimes conflicting plans. Matters came to a head
at a meeting in March 1613, at which Mainz again raised the ques-
tion of attempting to recruit Saxony and made other proposals which
would have introduced Habsburg influence and reduced Maximilian’s
own standing and control. Added to this was the failure of members
to pay the contributions previously due, so that much of Maximilian’s
expenditure in 1610 had not been refunded, and moreover they agreed
to less than half of his proposal for a new levy. Hence he again gave
notice of resignation of his leading position in the League.
The accession of Emperor Matthias and the more conciliatory pol-
icy of Cardinal Khlesl favoured Mainz’s approach of seeking to broaden
the League and to align it more closely with the emperor. Hence at a
further general meeting in October 1613 changes were agreed which
amounted to a reconstitution of the League into a more political and less
confessional association, with names and terminology carefully chosen
to leave open the possibility of Protestants joining. It was also to be
reorganised into three rather than two directorates, with action in the
event of a crisis to be decided by majority vote of the directorates rather
than being left to Maximilian as sole head. The third directorate was to
be Austrian, but as this included the detached Habsburg territories in
south-west Germany the neighbouring members were given a choice of
which directorate to join, the result of which left Bavaria with only a
small number of its traditional local adherents. Moreover the Austrian
director was to be Archduke Maximilian, a Habsburg and the emperor’s
brother, even though he himself had not yet decided to join the League.
This meeting in October 1613 was effectively the end of the League
(although it was re-established in 1619 as a consequence of the
Bohemian revolt). In January 1614 Maximilian also resigned as direc-
tor of the Bavarian division, complaining that under the influence of
Khlesl and Archduke Maximilian the Catholic interest would always
take second place to considerations of Imperial politics.^54 Instead he
convened a meeting of his supporters, and in March 1614 they formed a
new Bavarian association with substantially the same constitution and
membership as at the original foundation of the League in 1609. Efforts
were later made to re-integrate this with the remainder of the League,
but they dragged on for almost two years, a period largely taken up with
disputes about money and membership.