Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/138



The consequence of this was that in the first three months of the year 1619 the war was at an end. Both parties must think either of winning new strength by armaments and alliances, or of mutual negotiations for adjustment. In Bohemia the chief thought was of new preparations for war, while the Emperor labored to prepare the way of adjustment by mediation. The Elector of the Palatinate worked against the peace movement. He set forth with increased zeal the efforts which he had begun without the knowledge of the Bohemians to connect the Duke of Savoy with the Bohemian contest.

Let us see what was done in this respect in Heidelberg in the month of October.

When the Duke Charles Emanuel, by the sending of Count Mansfeld, furnished essential aid to the insurrection, there was extraordinary rejoicing in Heidelberg. In the conviction that the moment had arrived for carrying out the plan for the rule of Protestantism in Germany, which had been much mooted in the year 1608, but afterwards delayed, the statesmen of the Palatinate advised their sovereign to send an ambassador to Turin to negotiate the conditions of a more intimate alliance with the Duke. In pursuance of this counsel, Christopher von Dohna was sent into Italy in October, 1618, instructed to offer the Duke of Savoy the crown of the German Empire on the death of the Emperor Matthias, and to assure him that the Elector would, beyond doubt, secure for him the majority of the electoral votes. In return for this he desired that the Duke should support the Bohemian insurrection more largely than he had done, suggesting 7,000 to 8,000 men.

Doubtful as was at that time the triumph of the Em-