Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/96

82 the crown of Bohemia was offered to Frederick the palgrave, and he fatally accepted it. He was a mere youth of twenty, with more ambition than ability; and he was spurred on by his wife, Elizabeth of England, who told him he had courage enough to aspire to the hand of a king's daughter, but not to grasp a crown when offered, and who, when reminded by him of the electoral province which they possessed in safety, exclaimed, "Better a crown with a crust, than a petty electorate with abundance."



This fatal crown, which Elizabeth came to wear, and to have the crust speedily afterwards, had been already offered to George, elector of Saxony, who was too shrewd to accept it. Court Thurn had for a time carried all before him, and had even marched into Austria and besieged the emperor in Vienna; but this success was soon over. The catholic princes had armed in defence of the emperor; the students of Vienna and fifteen hundred citizens volunteered in his cause; the distinguished Spanish general Spinola was already on his march to invade the palgrave's hereditary state, so despised by the princess Elizabeth; and count Mansfield, the general of the German protestants, was defeated on the Bohemian soil, when Frederick the palgrave was crowned king of that country in Prague, on the 25th of October, 1619. He reigned only till the 8th of November of the following year, when he was expelled from his capital by the Austrian and Bavarian forces under Maximilian and general Boucquoi. They had defeated the protestant generals in Upper Austria and Bohemia, whilst Frederick, who obtained the name of the "winter king," because he only reigned one winter, had lost the confidence of his subjects by his luxurious effeminacy, his inattention to government, his impolitic treatment of the native nobles and generals, and his bigoted partiality to the Calvinistic party. Even the protestant George of Saxony, who had refused the crown, allied himself to the catholic emperor against him. He was roused from table only by the news of the battle before his walls, rushed out only to see his army scattered, and fled. The counts Thurn and Hohenlohe counselled him still to make a stand in Glaz, but he was no hero to fight even for a kingdom; he continued his flight to Breslau, thence to Berlin, and did not stop till he reached Holland. Elizabeth, his queen, now reduced to the crust, accompanied him in his ignominious flight, far advanced in pregnancy, and deeply pitied by all generous and chivalric minds.

Meantime, James had been a prey to the most conflicting interests. His protestant subjects, as ill-informed of the