Episode 330: House Austria

The Czech historian Joseph Pulenski experienced the Nazi occupation firsthand and explicitly compared the failure of the Western powers to assist the Bohemian rebels in sixteen eighteen with the Munich Crisis over three centuries later. There's a German perspective and old historical tradition that portrays the Emperor with his Catholic tyranny,

seeking to extinguish forces of light and historical progress. It's also unfortunate that the best writing in English on this period concentrates mostly on Spain, neglecting the Austrian branch, whose problems were central to the causes and of course the conclusion of the conflict. Now, the House of Austria's fortunes had been a long time in the making. For much of the later Middle Ages, they had trailed behind the more powerful competitors in the struggle for influence within the Empire.

Finally getting the imperial title in fourteen thirty eight thrust the Habsburgs into center stage, but their real power actually derived from the rapid accumulation of additional provinces and kingdoms between fourteen seventy seven and fifteen twenty six. Chief among these was Spain, inherited in fifteen sixteen, as it was on the cusp of conquering a new World empire. Upon the death of Charles the Fifth, the Habsburg domains were

permanently divided. Charles's brother Ferdinand became Ferdinand the First, the Holy Roman Emperor, Duke of Austria, King of Bohemia, and King of Hungary. Charles's son, Philip, as we know, became the King of Spain, the Netherlands, and a smattering of other territories in northern Italy, and of course, a vast

empire in the New World. Ferdinand faced a complex problem inherited in the empire, most of which he only ruled indirectly, and which contributed comparatively little against the Turks, who had by now overrun much of Hungary. The Austrian state debt rose five times over Ferdinand's reign to reach ten million florins by his death in fifteen sixty four, equivalent to about five years worth of revenue. The cost of servicing the sum consumed one point five million florins per year,

while defense of the eastern frontier required another million. The emperor left a further one point five million in personal debts, as well as owing his soldiers a million in pay arrears. Ferdinand's somewhat posthumous solution was further devolution. In his will, he entrusted the imperial title to his senior line, while establishing two junior branches for his younger sons. In the short term, this allowed the dynasty to intensify its rule

by sharing the burden of government between the three archdukes. However, the costs of economy were lost as debts were lit between the branches, forcing each to raise taxes to pay

off its share. As eldest son, Maximilian received Austria together with the Bohemian and Hungarian crowns, and was accepted by the electors as the new emperor, but only the provinces of Upper and Lower Austria were directly inherited, and though they had a combined population of nine hundred thousand, they produced less revenue than the more populous kingdom of Bohemia. The Habsburgs succeeded to Bohemia only after the death of

their relations, the Jegalian dynasty in fifteen twenty six. The new rulers regarded their crown as hereditary, but had been unable to persuade the local nobility to formally renounce the theory of elective monarchy. Bohemia was a patchwork of five district provinces, each with its own laws and government. As a kingdom, Bohemia itself claimed precedents, including denying the other

four from participating and choosing their monarch. With around six hundred and five twty thousand inhabitants, the Margravate of Moravia was around half the size of Bohemia, but shared more with it than other provinces, including the predominance of the Czech language and, of course, the legacy of the hugh Sites.

Habsburg authority was the weakest in Hungary. Hungary had only been acquired in fifteen twenty six, when the last representative of another branch of the Gegalians, died along with three quarters of his army at the Battle of Mohawks against the Turks. The surviving Hungarian nobles divided sharply over whether

to accept habsburg claims to the crumbling kingdom. The majority opposed a foreign ruler, preferring one of their own, whom they proclaimed king in accordance with their theory of elected monarchy, but the others accepted the Habsburgs, who granted wide concessions to buy support. United resistance against the Turks collapsed, and the Ottomans captured over one hundred and twenty thousand square kilometers of the country, acquiring almost a million new subjects.

By fifteen forty one, the elected Hungarian king retreated northeast, creating his own state by combining largely autonous principalities of Transylvania and ruth Ninia, a region that today is actually part of Ukraine but was then known as Petranium and consisted of eight Hungarian counties east of the Zira River. This gave him around eighty thousand square kilometers of territory

with perhaps three quarters of a million subjects. He managed to secure Habsburg recognition as prince on the condition that Transylvania would pass to them on his death. However, Transylvania is going to be continued to be a problem throughout the beginning of this story. Transylvania would emerge as an autonomous axis between Ottoman and Hungary, governed from Buddha and

the rumps Habsburg Kingdom based in Pratzlava. The influx of refugees fleeing the Islamic advance gave the Habsburgs marginally more subjects than either of the two parts, but the split deprived them of over two thirds of their former kingdom. Only the Croatians fully accepted the dynasty as their new ruler, using this opportunity to enhance their own authority from the Hungarians.

The latter remained royalists, accepting Habsburg possession of the ancient crown of Saint Stephen, but insisting only on their rights not only to elect the king, but to oppose him if he broke the constitution. As a result, what we did see throughout the sixteenth century was yes, increased Habsburg power over certain parts of the kingdom, but all of that came at a cost, as the Habsburgs consistently granted concessions as they tried to amalgamate a larger kingdom for themselves.

All of those concessions are going to play a role in the Thirty Years War to come. Now, state's early modern form of representative government could be found throughout all the Habsburg provinces and in many of the German territories of the Empire. These were made up of the principal nobles, clergy, and important urban elites. You probably know the phrase estates from the Estates general because of the role that that will play in the French Revolution, and these were pretty similar.

To be honest with you, The estate's purpose was to give these groups of voice who might not otherwise have one in the government. Depending upon your perspective, the estates were either an impediment to good government or they were the liberal precursors to modern parliaments. To some, particularly Czech and Hungarian writers, these were also the guardians of national traditions. The question, of course, was which was the better form

of government, monarchy or estate representation. To answer that, however, we need to put aside our modern bias, given that the monarchy was a reality that was not going away. The question then becomes whether the estates were a benefit or a cost for the Habsburg monarchy. I think they were a benefit. The estates allowed the monarch to meet with his most important but non peer subjects. The estates, along with the courts, also allowed a better avenue for

settling disputes than the battlefield. Estates were corporate groups, not individuals, and they mirrored the three part organization of medieval society to that extent, they were kind of a carryover, which, of course I mean the tripart priests, nobles and peasants, those who pray, those who fight, those who work. Normally, clerical membership was expressed through the heads of major monastic

houses and the bishops, not your run of the mill priests. Altogether, clerics represented less than two percent of the total population of the Habsburg domains, so just the fact that they were given one whole estate meant that they were massively over represented in the government. Noble representation was through qualifying manorial estates. Commoner representation was generally limited to several crown

towns and cities. Thus, with the sole exception of Tyrol, commoner representation in the estates was limited to urban dwellers in tyrole. Rural villages were allowed to send representatives, but again that was very much the exception to the rule. The Habsburg estates initially emerged as a way for impartial members of the kingdom to advise the king on matters of policy. However, the Habsburg monarchs quickly grew tired of

being told unpleasant truths. As a consequence, they developed their own advisory bodies to tell them what they wanted to hear. King Ferdinand created a new Privy Council in fifteen twenty seven, and he appointed men of ability as well as status. Recognizing some good advice was necessary for a functioning kingdom, he broke this council into two one section from Bohemia and another for Austria, which allowed the councilors the ability

to deal with local issues much much more effectively. This was important because the ability of central agencies to reach into localities was severely restricted by the very way in which the Empire had been constructed. The Habsburgs could appoint a governor in those presidents without archduke, but had to consult the estates when naming what was called a lord lieutenant and his deputy, who were really in charge of

the militia or military in the area. They could appoint bailiffs and crown towns and stewards to manage the economic assets of their domains, but these rarely constituted more than five percent of each province. Virtually all other local administration remained in the hands of the nobility. In Bohemia, for example, the nobles ran the provincial court that resolved disputes between them, They passed laws, and the exercised jurisdiction over the entire

rural population. The situation was even more extreme and hungry, where half the villages were owned by fifty aristocratic families and most of the rest belonged to the five thousand or so gentry families. Only the royal towns fell under habsburg jurisdiction, but even the largest of these depocrine had

fewer than twenty thousand inhabitants. The king could not even name a governor, known here as a Palatin, but simply propose a candidate to the diet that chose who was to exercise royal prerogatives whenever the monarch was not physically present, which of course was most of the time. With the majority of subjects living outside of crown lands and therefore outside of crown jurisdictions, The estates become this vital link

between the dynasty and the bulk of the population. It was difficult to achieve anything without the estate's assistance, or at the very least acquiescence. In particular, a state help was essential to raising taxes. Since domain income covered only a fraction of habsburg expenditures, Medieval monarchs had been expected to quote unquote, live off their own They were only supposed to draw on their subject's resources in critical situations,

really war and massive natural disasters. The states emerged in Central Europe to facilitate these grants at a time when

rulers were assuming wider responsibilities. Throughout the fifteenth century, the growing permanence of royal governments and the complexity of the government problems that it was facing led to more frequent assemblies, gradually transforming intermittent taxation into regular, annual levies were compelled to create their own institutions, forming standing committees to liaison with the ruler when the diet was not in session, as well as a secretary to maintain records and a

treasury to administer the taxes. Really what we're seeing here is the stress that gets put on these governments as we transition from a medieval structure to a modern structure. That's why this period is called the early Modern period. The problem is we still very much have a medieval ethos that's governing how we think about what government is supposed to do, even as the problems that face those governments have changed dramatically in the last hundred years. Now.

The other thing that we have to talk about with the Habsburgs is of course religion. Despite Protestant hopes that this or that archduke might convert, the Habsburgs remained uniformly Catholic. Protestantism thus lacked the political support that produced the territorial churches elsewhere throughout the Empire. Converts in Habsburg domains were forced to build their organizations from the bottom up, making the nobility, not the dynasty, the key players there. But

Catholicism was also under severe pressure in many provinces. Nine to ten Lower Austrian nobles had embraced Lutheranism, as had eighty five percent of those living in Upper Austria, where three quarters of the urban population and half of the peasants were Protestants. Around seventy percent of Inner Austria's population had also abandoned Catholicism, and only five out of one

hundred and thirty five Styrian nobles remained Catholic. Though largely the Slovian peasantry rejected what they saw as a German religion, sixteen of twenty two Styrian towns had accepted Lutheranism by fifteen seventy two. Now, the situation was quite different in Bohemia, where agreements from fourteen thirty six and fourteen eighty five

already recognized Utraquism alongside Catholicism. Remember this is sort of an offshoot of yang Hus Utrichism was a modern development of the Husite faith, so called because it insisted that the faithful received the Eucharist in both the bread and the wine, which in Latin is sub utrachai spasi, rather than the latter, the wine being exclusively reserved for the clergy.

Services were in Czech and the church lay outside episcopal jurisdiction, though the Utriquists compromised with Rome by sending their priests to Venice to be ordained. The Habsburgs confirmed these privileges when they acquired Bohemia in fifteen twenty six, not least of which because Utrichism was at the time losing momentum and most Catholics hoped that its followers would soon rejoin them.

Although a radical minority of Utricus split to become what we called the Unity of Breadth, refusing to submit to Rome or abandon the Hughsite's social ordeals and programs. Utruchism's close ties to Czech culture restricted the spread of Lutheranism in the German speaking population and even to some of the nobles. When the Czech nobility refused to back the Habsburgs and the Schmacaldic War back in fifteen forty seven, Ferdinand cracked down on the radical Revlin and initiated a

program to revitalize the Catholic Church throughout Bohemia. A Jesuit college was founded in Prague in fifteen fifty six, and an archbishop appointed there five years later after a vacancy of a century and a half. The purpose of all this, and the reason that it matters, is to point out that while the Habsburgs themselves might have remained really quite viciously Catholic, the population at large, even in their ancestral

domains is a lot more varied. In Bohemia, in particular, the religious spectrum was a lot more varied than it was in Austria. Catholics were less than fifteen percent of the population. The rest were divided between all these various sects of Protestantism. Calvinists, however, only made up three percent of the population. They were more entrenched to be fair amongst the elites, and so they did have a disproportionate

level of influence. Calvinism was stronger in Hungary, though, where Lutheranism had long been regarded as just frankly to German to be accepted. Wherever you saw new faiths spreading throughout the empire, that meant that the nobility was open to change. Without the support of the nobility, evangelical movements had little to no chance. Interestingly, to use a modern term. In

many areas, the Protestants split the vote. By that, I mean that there were so many Protestant faiths that, even though compared to the whole Catholics were in the minority, compared to any one other Protestant faith, Catholics were still the majority party. The rights of those Protestant minorities depended upon those estates, and more than anything else, on the power of the purse. The emperor needed the money that these communities could vote him, and he did not forget that.

Protestant nobles, however, faced not only opposition from Catholics but from other Protestant groups, and to really lay it on from changing economic times. The wealth of the nobility largely came from the agrarian economy that produced rye oates, wheat and barley. Mining was somewhat significant in Tyrol and part of Inner Austria, but the Habsburgs remained in control of

a lot of that. Textile production continued to grow in Upper Austria, Bohemia and western Moravia, while horse breeding was important in other parts of Moravia and obviously in Hungary. All these activities required land in labor, and these, in turn were controlled through various feudal jurisdictions. Like the Habsburgs, most lords managed only a small part of their property directly as domains, leasing the rest to tenant farmers in

return for fixed rents. Rising inflation made this less attractive in the later sixteenth century, but it was difficult to force peasants to just pay more, since they often owed obligations to multiple landlords, and they could play one off against the other. The Habsburgs were also extending the right of appeal to peasants as a means of inserting themselves as arbitras of the rural world, intervening between landlords and peasants, except in Hungary, where the diet which was sort of

their representative government, prevented this outright. In fifteen fifty six, the rising urban population of northwestern Europe stimulated the demand for grain, creating new opportunities for Eastern and Central European landlords. In the sixteenth century, they expanded their domains by purchase for closing or just simple eviction, while intensifying feudal jurisdiction to force dependent peasants to work for them. This is similar to what we saw in Russia, which was kind

of almost a re entrenchment of serfdom. It's not going to go quite that far in a lot of Central Europe, but certainly the peasantry in Central Europe was much, much, much less free than it was in Western now. This process, as I mentioned, has been labeled second serfdom since it emerged around fifteen hundred, just as medieval serfdom declined elsewhere in Europe. It was very pronounced in Poland, Hungary, Bohemia,

parts of Austria and northeastern Germany, but it was never uniform. Nonetheless, when combined with inflation, demographic and environmental change, the spread of this new I'll call it a manorial economy grew increasingly oppressive, and it symbolized almost a commercialization of the rural world. Lords began to exploit forests and other assets in their domains in new ways, for example, charging peasants for collecting firewood or letting their pigs root in the

forest for food. The changes fueled tensions within the elite, as some lords were just better placed to seize these new opportunities than others. The situation was the most extreme and hungry, where around fifty magnate families accumulated forty one percent of the entire country, creating economies of scale, winning clients among the gentry and peasants through their ability to pay for private armies to combat banditry, and honestly, at times even act as a bulwark against the Ottoman Turks.

The decline of the Hungarian gentry was paralleled in Bohemia, where the number of knights fell by nearly a third in the five decades before sixteen eighteen, the year the war begins, wealth became increasingly concentrated, to the point where a quarter of the country was held by only eleven aristocratic families. Peasant resentment exploded first in Austria in fifteen ninety five, and then this unrest spread to western parts

of Lower Austria the following year. Heavy Handed attempts to reimpose Catholic priests in some Protestant parish provided a trigger, but the underlying causes were honestly economic, and protests were soon directed against the Lutheran nobles who dominated the estates. So it's clearly at this stage at least was not a religion thing. Peasants called for what they referred to as Swiss freedom, demanding representation in the estates as well

as the abolition of taxes and dews. Now, the key to this is that the emergency that was prompted by all of these various peasant rebellions and the inability of the local nobles to deal with these, only highlighted the nobility's growing dependence on the Habsburg monarchy. The Habsburgs duly put down all these rebellions, executing the ring leaders while rewarding those who had protested through quote unquote proper legal channels.

But honestly, nor was the king deaf to the peasant's complaints. He went ahead and restricted peasant label service to two weeks per year in fifteen ninety eight. There was actually, by the way, a lot of cooperation between Catholic and Protestant peasants throughout the uprising, underscoring the difficulty of linking religious and political liberty. Now Ultimately, one of the driving factors of the Thirty Years War was the Habsburg relationship

to Catholicism. The leading members of the Habsburg family essentially became convinced that the future of the dynasty depended on restoring Catholicism as the basis of their political power and political loyalty. The goal was not unrealistic given the continued presence of a Catholic minority in the estates and deep divisions amongst the Protestants, the majority of whom remained loyal

subjects despite the religious differences. The religious freedoms that were put out in the fifteen seventies had been granted as special privileges to the nobles and towns of individual provinces, and had yet to be accepted by all members of each estate as integral parts of their corporate rights. The estates lacked a platform to coordinate a response to the dynasty because there was no such thing as the Estates

General in the Holy Roman Empire. There was no such thing as a grand General Assembly, and that, my friends, is going to be key now here. The partition of fifteen sixty four actually worked the dynasty's advantage because it reinforced the practice of negotiating with each province of the empire separately, and it ensured that the General Austrian Diet

never reassembled until after the early sixteenth century. Ultimately, why the Habsburgs were successful, and what they really realized more than anything else, was that the disparate parts of the empire could be made to work against each other. The Habsburgs could be a united corporate power, a united front, and then they could deal with each portion of the empire separately, and by doing that they could maximize their power.

And by preventing the provinces from coordinating with one another, which they didn't want to do anyway, it limited the ability of different parts of the Empire to fight back against expanding sovereignty on the part of the Habsburgs, so getting into the machinations of the dynasty a little bit, Rudolph I succeeded the Emperor max Amilion to the Holy Roman Empire throne in fifteen seventy six. Rudolph was an

unfortunate leader. He was indecisive. Now by all accounts, he was extremely intelligent and very cultured, but all this left with him an inflated sense of his own majesty and a personality that could be described as nicely aloof. He was an avid art collector and keenly interested in the sciences, but he grew frustrated quickly if his initiatives failed to

achieve immediate success. He refused to marry Philip the Second's daughter in Spain, and instead lived his entire life with his mistress Katrina Estrada, with whom he had at least six children, as an art and Catholic. In fifteen seventy seven, he decided he would make a big show of his faith by supporting a planned Corpus Christie procession throughout Vienna. Protestant shopkeepers who refused to move their stalls were simply shoved aside by imperial bodyguards when a jug of milk

was knocked over. The resulting milk war, which lasted from fifteen seventy nine to fifteen eighty, left the emperor permanently altered. Look. He may never have been clinically insane, certainly, there's some sources that say that he was. But Rudolf was close at times throughout the rest of his life to mental instability. At the very very least, what we can say is

Rudolf suffered from severe and acute bouts of depression. Two years later, Rudolf got even more isolated when he moved his court to Prague, shutting himself away in the palace there, high above the city, refusing to see anyone for days and leaving important documents unsigned. In September fifteen ninety one, as he was experimenting with a variety of chemicals, something

went wrong. He burned his cheek and his beard. He killed his master of horse, who had the mass fortune of being standing next to him, and the accident plunged him deeper into depression, and he shut himself way now for months at a time. His persistent refusal to marry

caused mounting discontent among his relations. Philip the Second arranged the betrothal of his daughter Isabella to another of the emperor's brother, the Archduke Albert, in fifteen ninety seven, in order to try to maintain some sort of contact and some sort of hope that the dynasty would move forward. Their marriage two years later only deepened Rudolph's suspicions towards Spain and finally forced him to confront the frustrations of

his own personal life. He grew obsessed with astrology, and his paranoia continued to expand as the new century dawned, especially as Rudolph interpreted Tico Brahe's predictions for September of sixteen hundred to mean that there was a plot to assassinate him. Rudolf's mood swings became increasingly violent, and he lashed out at his courtiers, even injuring one of them. Rudolf's moved to Pra and the subsequent nervous breakdown heightened

the forces that were holding the empire together. As the Austrian government steadily devolved, neither he nor his successor Matthias after fifteen ninety five was able to devote really any time to the Catholic renewal, which now fell ironically to the son of a Lutheran baker from Vienna, Melchior Kessel.

Kessel converted to Catholicism while a student at Vienna University and rose, thanks to Jesuit and Habsburg patronage, to become chief chancellor of his former college by fifteen eighty and then the Bishop of Werner Neustadt in fifteen eighty eight and that of Vienna a decade later. Kessel is an important figure in the path to the Thirty Years War because it's his efforts to drive Catholicism that are going to make some of the confessional differences more acute when

the war breaks out. Vessel targeted Vienna as its first location for this Catholic revival because that's where Protestant at the moment was spreading the most. The milk Wore riot that I mentioned earlier was used as a pretext to install a Catholic city council and withdraw permission to use the Assembly Hall for Lutheran services, while those worshiping outside the city were fined. A year after he was formally appointed chancellor of the university, of Vienna, Kessel ruled that

only Catholics could graduate. He then worked with new councilors to transfer to the Church around ninety of the twelve hundred houses within the city walls for use as places of worship or education. The Catholic presence in the city was further boosted by the return of court after Rudolph

died in sixteen twelve. Courtiers, nobles and their servants squeezed the city dwellers for the more desirable properties around the more central portions of the town, especially in the inflationary years of the sixteen twenties, when rich Catholics were able to purchase homes throughout Vienna depaced coins. The number of Catholics had already quadrupled from the time of Rudolph's ascension

to about eight thousand by fifteen ninety four. The collapse of the peasant protests by fifteen ninety eight encouraged Kessel to extend his activities of proselytizing Catholicism all the way into the countryside. Upper Austrian lord lieutenants were sent with an armed escorts to install forcibly Catholic parish priests and to close Protestants estates throughout the countryside. The following year, Kessel led twenty three thousand Lower Austrian pilgrims to Styria,

initiating what by sixteen seventeen became an annual event. Impressive as these efforts may seem to change the faith of Austria and to effectively turn back the clock, they did little good. As late as sixteen hundred, seventy five percent of the fifty thousand people living in Vienna were still Protestant. Catholic efforts to evangelies were more successful in Inner Austria,

their religious and political loyalty developed more systematically. The Catholic strategy was really one of trying to explain that all the concessions that had been made previously during the time of Luther in around fifteen forty seven were essentially temporary, that those were the limits of any new rights that would be granted to Protestantism. This wasn't an evolving thing. They had been granted those rights temporarily and they could

be taken back. Really, rather than revoking existing privileges for the Protestants, what the Archdukes of Austria would do was insist on a strictly Catholic interpretation of them, banning all Protestant activities that were not expressly written and sanctioned under the law. They had no desire to crush the estates since they couldn't govern without them. Instead, Protestant members were to be isolated by denying them for their favors, while

loyal Catholic subjects were to be rewarded and promoted. Here, the Habsburgs could draw on their uncontested archducal, royal and imperial prerogatives to simply ennoble and legitimize children and confer degrees and honors upon Catholic families, while they didn't do

the same to Protestant ones. The estates were effectively self governing corporations and could choose who they wanted to admit to them, but it was up to the Habsburgs to ennoble people, and so if they didn't create someone as a knight, they weren't eligible for the estate, and as a result, by controlling the regulations for membership, what the Austrian Habsburgs were able to do was essentially limit the pool who could apply to be part of the Estates.

It was a very effective strategy a significant number of Austria and noble families died out during the sixteen century, creating a further opportunity for the Habsburgs to increase the proportion of loyal Catholic subjects. For example, forty new families joined the inner Austrian nobility between sixteen sixty and sixteen twenty, mainly from Italy actually, and sixteen of these were able

to get a states membership. Further efforts were made to make Catholicism more attractive by ensuring a better educated, disciplined, and more numerous clergy that paid more attention to the needs of ordinary folk. This is actually what Luther had just wanted when he started the Reformation in the first place. Pope Gregory was persuaded to support this plan and began

to encourage other rulers throughout Europe to participate. Now, if the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph the Second was an important player in the lead up to the Thirty Years War, which he was, so was the Archduke of Austria Ferdinand, who came of age in fifteen ninety five. Ferdinand was an arch an ultra Catholic, and he also fancied himself a bit of a legal scholar. Thus, his desire to expand the Catholic faith was tempered a little bit by

his reluctant to violate the Constitution. He believed that he was an quote unquote absolute prince, but refused Machiavelli's suggestion that the ends justify the means. Ferdinand believed that princes should rule through Christian principles, not by those he meant Catholic principles. When he ascended the throne, Ferdinand reverted to the old princely oath rather than the fifteen sixty four modified version, which had been adopted because it was less

offensive to Protestants. Then, in sixteen oh nine, Ferdinand modified the law so that public offices could only be held by Catholics. Clearly, as we can already see, the battle lines are being drawn, this change in attitude was felt acutely in bohem where the powder keg would ultimately explode in sixteen eighteen. Between fifteen fifty and sixteen hundred, so many Bohemian noble families went extinct that the share of

crown lands expanded from around one percent to ten percent. Moreover, seven major Catholic land owning families died out between fifteen ninety seven and sixteen eleven, and their wealth passed to largely more militant Catholics, determined to use their power to advance their faith. Like in Austria, these militant Catholics use their power and influence to exclude Protestants to positions of power. For example, in fifteen ninety four, all key government posts

in Moravia had been occupied by Protestants. A decade later, however, the entire government was Catholic. The problem with this was that in Bohemia, Catholics were outnumbered in most areas three to one, so they were becoming a ruling minority, and an unpopular one at that. The people look to their emperor for guidance, but Rudolph, secluded and increasingly depressed, was

no help in the end. As we're going to see next week, it was the long war with the Ottomans that's going to finally provoke crisis after sixteen oh six. If you've enjoyed the show, check out the links in the show notes to Western SIB two point zero, and if you'd like to help other people find the program, I'd very much appreciate rating or review. It is the number one way to guide people to our show