58 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
and when the latter died in 1610 Neuburg expected to be appointed
as regent for the under-age heir. He was forestalled by a coup staged
by his Calvinist nephew, the prince of Pfalz-Zweibrücken, and worse
still, acting in his capacity as regent, Zweibrücken also took over the
Palatine directorate of the Union, so that in protest Neuburg took no fur-
ther active part in the alliance. When his son converted to Catholicism
in pursuance of his Cleves-Jülich claim in 1614, and then inherited
Neuburg three months later, the membership effectively terminated.
Brandenburg’s particular self-interest was apparent when it belatedly
joined the Union in 1610, during the first phase of the Cleves-Jülich
dispute, and its membership then and later centred on hopes for Union
support for the elector’s claim. When this fell short of its expectations
Brandenburg stopped paying its contributions and played little further
part in Union affairs, although as late as 1615 it was continuing to link
any payment against its arrears to support in Cleves-Jülich. The debts
were still outstanding in 1617, when the Brandenburg representative
to the Union protested to his masters: ‘No-one believes me any more.
The princes just laugh at me, while the delegates from the cities shuf-
fle their feet derisively when I make the same promise [about payment]
yet again.’^62 In the end Brandenburg paid nothing, and its membership
lapsed in 1617.
One other crucial division was that between the princes and the
cities, as the former sought to determine the Union’s actions in accor-
dance with their own policies and interests while requiring the latter
to foot most of the bill. The procedural rules even stipulated that irre-
spective of the actual balance of membership the princes would always
have two more votes than the cities. Often they took no vote at all,
as in the case of the alliance with France in 1610, which was signed
by representatives of the princes alone, while the cities were left to
complain that they had never paid so much in taxes to any emperor
as to the Union in this one year.^63 Their dissatisfaction was increased
by the disproportionate share of the financial burden which they bore,
whereas a number of the princes were already well in arrears with their
payments.
Wilson notes that ‘confessional issues had to be pushed to the fore
to rally support for the Protestant Union. Only through fostering a cli-
mate of fear and suspicion were the Palatinate’s leaders able to convince
some of their co-religionists to join the alliance.’^64 For a while this had
some success, but 1610 was the high-water mark for the Union, as the
Cleves-Jülich conflict brought in its last new members and the agree-
ment with Henri IV briefly seemed to give it real significance. On the