56 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
Duke Maximilian, for his part, demanded that those who had opted
for the Austrian division should first pay the arrears of their contribu-
tions towards the debt due to Bavaria since 1610, whereas the members
concerned were unwilling or unable to pay at all. Archduke Maximilian
in turn demanded that the rich bishopric of Augsburg and the abbey
of Ellwangen should be transferred to the Austrian division, making
this a precondition of taking up his own membership and the direc-
torship. This would have left the Bavarian division unworkably small,
while the bishop and abbot concerned were unwilling to transfer, so a
stalemate developed and the Austrian division was never formed. The
elector of Mainz still had ideas of involving Saxony, but this was now
opposed by the new elector of Cologne, Maximilian’s brother. Disagree-
ments also arose over proposals to organise the Rhine directorate into
two sub-divisions, although they did get as far as nominating a general,
another move aimed at reducing Maximilian’s influence. Eventually in
December 1615 Maximilian resigned as director even of his own recon-
stituted Bavarian division, effectively dissolving it, while complaining
that his involvement with the League had brought him nothing but
hate, enmity and accusations that he was pursuing not the preserva-
tion of the Catholic religion and the emperor’s authority, but his own
interests.^55
Khlesl had long seen the confessional alliances as an obstacle to
his policy of seeking some form of accommodation in the Empire, so
that the virtual demise of the League provided him with an opportu-
nity. Accordingly the emperor wrote to the elector of Mainz in April
1617 referring to his powers under the Golden Bull and requiring the
dissolution of the League, although in practice it simply lapsed there-
after. Albrecht concludes that this history ‘shows that only certain of
the ecclesiastical territories could be persuaded, and those only with
difficulty, to contribute sufficiently to the League to make it viable’.^56
The Protestant Union
The history of the Protestant Union exhibits many parallels to that of
the League. Although founded in the aftermath of the failed Reichstag
meeting of 1608 it too had been under discussion previously, and indeed
the Palatinate had been attempting to rally support for such an organi-
sation for decades. Others had been wary, but earlier in 1608 the rulers
of Baden, Pfalz-Neuburg and Württemberg had debated the possibility
of extending their defensive alliance to form a specifically Lutheran
union, either independently or to give their confession due weight
within a wider Protestant body.^57 This illustrates from the outset one of