36 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
which it presented, so that it became one of the regular items in the
litany of complaints presented to the Reichstag by the Palatinate and its
allies.
The Reichstag
The Reichstag itself, although relevant as a forum, was actually of less
practical significance than the courts, and well before the beginning
of the seventeenth century the frequency of its meetings had already
declined significantly. In the hundred years from 1450 to 1549 there
were some forty meetings, but in the following fifty years there were
only eleven, of which only four were in the last quarter of the sixteenth
century. By then, according to Schlaich, ‘the Reichstag had become an
instrument for granting taxes, particularly for the Turkish wars, and
that was the emperor’s real interest in it’.^19 Henri IV of France put it
more bluntly, remarking caustically on the Reichstag meeting of 1608:
‘As always, in the end it will just be hot air, and nothing will be
achieved.’^20
To understand the problem it must be remembered that the Reichstag
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not a parliament, as it
was not a representative institution but an assembly of all those in the
Empire who stood directly below the emperor and also had the right to
a seat and a vote. Its origins were as a consultative and advisory body,
and in the medieval tradition it worked on the basis of consensus, so
that the cumbersome procedure of debating in separate chambers of
electors, princes and cities, and then seeking agreement between the
chambers, was aimed at achieving this. In theory the participants com-
mitted themselves individually and voluntarily to decisions, including
taxation, although they were then bound by the final resolution. The
position of dissenters and absentees became less clear as time went on
and consensus became more difficult to achieve. Formal protests were
a long-established means of registering dissent, occurring frequently at
Reichstag meetings although they had no legal status, and such a protest
in the dispute over the Reformation at the meeting of 1529 was the
source of the name ‘Protestant’ for the new confession. Withdrawing
from the meeting before the final resolution was also used by some,
notably in 1530, as a tactic and an excuse for claiming not to be bound
by the decisions.^21
As consensus became more difficult to achieve the question of major-
ity voting came increasingly to the fore, and from 1582 onwards this
was a central issue in the disputes between the Catholic majority
and the Protestant minority, most particularly its activist and largely