Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/144

 evasions towards the Elector of Saxony, who sought through an ambassador to win them to the measure of an armistice, and labored earnestly for a peace with security of their religious rights. When the Heidelberg cabinet was informed of these efforts on the part of Saxony, it attempted to defeat them by advising the Directors to encumber the armistice with conditions which the Emperor could not concede. Thus the imperial side would be compelled to abandon the attempt to open the negotiations with the conclusion of an armistice and rest satisfied with simply fixing the time when these negotiations should begin. The 14th of April was fixed as the day and Eger as the place for the meeting of the imperial and Bohemian envoys to discuss the points of difference and prepare the way of an adjustment under the mediation of the four princes named above.

It required the most strenuous effort of the Emperor, and especially of King Ferdinand, to persuade the Duke of Bavaria to act the part of a mediator. Maximilian at first promptly declined, declaring plainly and without reserve that his conscience forbade him to take part in a transaction tending to give force or rather enlargement to the Royal Charter, by which he would pollute his soul and become partaker of the sin of others. Nor would he enter into any discussion of the question as to whether the Royal Charter ought to have been granted, or, having been granted, should be suspended. If in the negotiations an extension of the Royal Charter in relation to the ecclesiastical domains should be demanded, he could never consent to this invasion of the Church property, and thus cause himself to be looked upon as a disturber of the peace and the occasion of further strife, and but injure his own reputation. He had for years