Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/185

 canvass for the Bohemian throne. Nothing but the perfect indifference of the Elector to suggestions of this kind caused this subject to be so little mentioned in Bohemian circles.

When, in the year 1618, the insurrection broke out, a few promises and a little service on the side of John George would have sufficed to bring its leaders to seek in him their future head. Thurn, Hohenloe, and Andrew Schlick did not fail to give hints and utterances in this direction. But the Elector was still deaf to all flatteries. There was not the smallest act to justify the conclusion that he was in sympathy with the insurrection. After the battle at Záblat, when the war took so unfavorable a turn for Bohemia, and the want of money and of all the necessaries of war was felt, the Directors sent Count Andrew Schlick to Dresden to prevail upon the Elector to render some aid, and offered him in security, not only such crownlands as he should choose, but also the release of all the Saxon territory which was as yet held as a fief of the Bohemian crown. Schlick did not limit himself to the authorized offers, but used the occasion to indicate to the Elector how great his prospects were for the throne of Bohemia. Nevertheless his answer was adverse to the prayers of the Directors in all their parts and as cold and formal as possible.

If this answer had become generally known, the sympathies of the multitude for Saxony would have been cooled; but the secret was carefully kept, in order not further to depress the feeling already so low. Thus the great multitude, who knew nothing of the transactions with the Palatinate, remained true to their partiality for Electoral Saxony, and were still further strengthened in it by the peculiar bearing of Schlick. This weak-minded man would