Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/174

 [Wahlcapitulation]. The necessary conditions were first stated, the same to which the Emperors Rudolph and Matthias had to subscribe. Although these reduced the imperial power to the narrowest limits, the representatives of the Palatinate endeavored to restrict it still further, while individual Electors, especially those of Treves and Cologne, attempted utterances looking towards Ferdinand as a candidate. When Count Solms, one of the representatives of the Palatinate, declared, in reply to the Elector of Cologne, that his sovereign, in case Ferdinand should mount the imperial throne, would furnish no aid against the Bohemians, the Elector put him to silence with the remark that there would perhaps be some way of escape, and added: “If it be indeed true that the Bohemians intend to depose Ferdinand and choose another King, a war of twenty, thirty, or forty years may be expected, as Spain and the house of Austria would sooner stake all that they hold in this world on the issue than relinquish Bohemia; indeed, Spain herself would rather let the Netherlands be lost than allow the dominion of the house in Bohemia to be so shamefully and violently wrested from it.” How fully the events which followed confirm this sad prophetic utterance!

For the election itself, the Imperial Chancellor, the Elector Schweikhard, of Mentz, fixed the 28th of August. On that day the Electors who were in attendance, and the envoys of those absent, assembled at 7 o’clock in the morning, in the celebrated old Council House, called The Römer. Here the Archbishops put on garments of red cloth, Ferdinand one of red satin, and placed a new Bohemian crown upon his head, as the one which descended from Charles IV., and generally used in these ceremonies, was kept in Karlstein, and had thus fallen into the hands