86 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
another Catholic Habsburg prince, Emperor Rudolf II.^8 Even Ferdinand,
however, was sufficiently cautious not to press the issue too far with
the nobility, who were left with the right to practise their Protestant
religion privately within the confines of their own homes. Nevertheless
they lost most of their political power, as in reasserting religious control
Ferdinand also established his own position as something approaching
an absolutist prince at the expense of the Estates. At the same time he
made himself a hero among Catholics and a correspondingbête noirefor
Protestants throughout the Habsburg lands and the wider Empire. His
approach was fully legal in enforcing hisius reformandiin accordance
with the peace of Augsburg of 1555, but he pressed it further, harder
and faster than others in the Habsburg lands felt it prudent to do.
Rudolf II
When Emperor Ferdinand I died in 1564 he divided his possessions
in order to make provision for his younger sons Ferdinand and Karl,
the former inheriting Tyrol and Further Austria, while the latter, as
noted above, inherited Inner Austria. The remainder, the provinces of
Upper and Lower Austria, together with the lands of the Bohemian and
Hungarians crowns, went to his heir and successor, Emperor Maximilian
II, but when the latter died suddenly in October 1576 he left no will
regarding his territories, although he had already secured the election
of his eldest son Rudolf as king of both Hungary and Bohemia. The
need to provide for the latter’s five brothers (one of whom died soon
afterwards) thus led to a negotiation, principally between their respec-
tive advisers, although this did not reach a conclusion until April 1578.
A further division of the lands was quickly rejected because the result-
ing multiple territories would each be too small to support the dignity of
an archduke in accordance with contemporary expectations, so that it
was decided that Rudolf should retain Maximilian’s entire inheritance,
while his brothers were to be compensated with cash annuities. This
family compact was not agreed without dissension, however, particu-
larly over how the payments were to be funded and guaranteed, and in
the event Rudolf was frequently unable to meet the commitments due
to the permanent crisis in his Imperial finances.^9
The accession of the 24-year-old Rudolf II brought an entirely differ-
ent kind of man to the Bohemian, Hungarian, and Imperial thrones.
His mother was a Spanish princess, and at the age of eleven he had
been sent off to the court of Philip II in Spain, remaining there until
he was nineteen and returning both more conventionally Catholic and