Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/159

 most fearful agitation. The prospect of a siege of itself threw the citizens into consternation; but their alarm was greatly increased by the stories of those who had fled for refuge before the Hungarians and Bohemians out of the neighboring villages and towns, and who could make the hair of listeners stand up by descriptions of the invaders’ appearance, and all the better if these had not come in sight of them. The situation became one of extreme peril for Ferdinand’s personal safety; for he had not only external, but internal, enemies to guard against, and could not know whether the Protestant Estates and their adherents had come to an understanding, and, if so, what this might be, with the enemy. In fervent prayer he sought the needed consolation. His confessor, coming in one day to visit him, found him stretched before a crucifix. “I have,” so said he to the astonished father, “weighed the perils which beset me on all sides, and as I know of no human help, I besought God for help; if it be, however, God’s will, so let me perish in this struggle.”

While Ferdinand was doubling his pious exercises, and at the same time not neglecting the needed care for strengthening the garrisons of the city, the Catholics of Lower Austria were making efforts to meet the threatening danger by new negotiations. On the 3d of June they sent a message to the Protestants, inviting them to an interview upon the existing points of difference. It may well be supposed that they were now ready to make the broadest concessions, but it may also be conceived that they would wish, first of all, to know whether the Protestants would enter into a league with them against the further advance of Thurn. The hope of an arrangement was cut off when the latter declared that they should maintain their alliance with the Bohemians, and they de-