Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/173

 battalion of 500 men, which had been enlisted in the lands of the Rhenish Bishops, and had entered upon their march to Bohemia, was attacked near the village of Roden by a force three times as great, and dispersed. The intelligence of this occurrence, when brought to the King, produced no depressing effect upon him, but confirmed him only in his determination to confide the present matters of dispute to the sword for solution.

In the latter part of August the instructions for the envoys of Saxony and Brandenburg arrived, authorizing them to take part in the imperial election, if the majority of the Electors should declare themselves in favor of doing this before negotiating peace for Bohemia. The instructions of the ambassadors of the Palatinate were even yet not changed; but as they were in the minority, their opposition effected nothing. Before they proceeded to the election itself, the Elector of Treves went to Ferdinand and officially put to him the question whether he would, after the election, admit the mediation of the Electoral College in the Bohemian dispute. The King would answer affirmatively only on condition that Duke Maximilian of Bavaria should also be added. When the Elector of Treves declined to accept this condition, on the ground that other princes, and especially the King of England, could not be excluded if Maximilian were admitted, and the settlement of this matter was a home affair, Ferdinand finally handed in the written declaration that he would consent to the mediation of the Electoral College. A few days later the Bohemians were informed of this decision, and set down the opening of the negotiations for the 10th of November, an appointment which was prevented, by the following events, from being kept.

Now began the business of the election-capitulation