Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/179

 Evangelical Confession. They guaranteed to each other the right to put an end to all the evils from which they had hitherto suffered, and to make all arrangements which the common good might require. Finally, it was determined that this alliance should be of perpetual obligation, and that, at intervals of five years, general conventions of deputies from Austria and Bohemia should be held, to take counsel in regard to matters of common concern. The session was closed on the 15th of August, and on the 16th the treaty was formally read to the Diet and confirmed by the oaths of the Directors and the Austrian envoys.

These matters settled, the Directors called the attention of the representatives of the lands of the Bohemian crown to the contemplated deposition of Ferdinand. The business was introduced by reading, in the Bohemian Diet, a biographical sketch, in which the King’s deeds and omissions for twenty years were subjected to a thorough review. He was reproached with having crushed the Protestants in Styria, and with having obtained the Bohemian crown by artifice and deceit, at the peril of the country’s ruin. After exhausting the arguments drawn from Ferdinand’s previous action, a second paper brought forward still other grounds for his deposition; the enormous burden of debt which would fall upon Bohemia, in case it must pay the expenses not only of its own defence, but also the debts contracted for the war brought against the land, was specially emphasized. With the reading of these papers ended the business of August 18th. The next day the Estates were severally called upon to vote upon the question of Ferdinand’s deposition on the grounds which had been brought forward. Every person of the nobility and knighthood, and after them also the deputies of the