Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/204

 obliged to dissolve the Diet without having obtained anything. If he had not sent the Estates home, he might perhaps have had the worse experience of the Protestant nobility moving to support the Bohemians. At least the Moravian colonel, von Tiefenbach, who had come for this purpose to Presburg, labored hard for the alliance, and it is said that several of the foremost Protestant families were gained for this measure.

The dissolution of the Diet lessened for the time Ferdinand's danger; but this helped him little, since a new danger was in preparation for him in Transylvania. The Hungarian Protestants had sent from Presburg a certain Herr Zmeskal to Bethlen, at the court of which Prince Thurzo and Zmeskal probably met and united their efforts to induce him to join the Bohemian movement. This was an important moment for Bethlen; should he follow this call and enter upon a contest with Ferdinand, or content himself with the power already gained? In a confidential interview with some Bohemian envoys, held a year later, at a banquet, when he was half drunk, he stated, with an air of profound confidence, that he had not under-estimated the perils of his decision; in Hungary there was indeed a settled peace when he marched against the Emperor, and he could not know with certainty that the country would not oppose him; he had, nevertheless, taken the risks of the war. It is not to be supposed, however, that he was much tormented with anxiety about any resistance from the Hungarians, since he, as a Magyar and a Protestant, felt secure of the sympathies of most of the people: what troubled him was the Turks, who certainly would not have allowed, without hoping to reap some advantage from it, a change in the rule over Hungary; and how could he hope to oppose a stronger and