223. A Scandal in Bohemia
(Conan Doyle)
The Bohemian revolt, when it came, was a badly bungled affair, and
even before it started the protagonists had missed their best opportu-
nity. In the spring of 1617 Emperor Matthias’s health was such that
he reluctantly acceded to Habsburg pressure to make preparations for
the succession, starting with the crown of Bohemia. The Estates were
accordingly summoned, and Matthias put forward Archduke Ferdinand
of Styria as his nominated successor. The precise legalities of Bohemia’s
elective monarchy were not clear, but it was at least well established that
a candidate had to be approved by the Estates, and had the assembled
Bohemian grandees refused to support Ferdinand he would in principle
have been denied the succession. In the event they did no such thing,
and faced in June 1617 with a candidate who, to the majority, was
probably the most undesirable possible choice they voted almost unani-
mously to accept him. Organisation was not one of the strengths of
the Bohemian nobility, and the Habsburg management of the election
caught them unprepared, but they were probably deterred principally
by the fact that a veto would have been unprecedented and no-one
knew what would have happened next. They were soon to regret their
lack of determination.
With his family duty done Matthias said farewell to Prague and moved
to Vienna to live out his remaining year and a half, leaving Bohemia
in the care of a Catholic-dominated council of regents. Matthias’s aim
in the preceding years had been to claw back in practice as much as
possible from the freedoms theoretically granted to the Bohemians,
and particularly to the mainly Protestant nobility, in the Letter of
Majesty of 1609, so that there had been tensions enough smouldering
away before he left. Soon these regents, through a series of provocative
decrees and actions, fanned them into flames. One flashpoint was the