Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/205

 more persevering resistance to them than could the house of Hapsburg, with its abundant resources? Ambition and the passion for war, however, overcame his misgivings, and determined him to a contest with Ferdinand.

Bethlen was variously judged by his contemporaries. That the Catholics saw in him the embodiment of all evil, was natural; but among the Protestants of Germany and England, too, he has had strong opposers; they regarded him as being in close alliance with the Turks, and half a Mohamme.lan, so asnot to be properly reckoned at all with Christian princes. This view may have been partly owing to the circumstance that Bethlen, in his youth, spent some years in Constantinople, and that he is reported to have been there circumcised. The pedantic King James entertained of him so unfavorable an opinion that he never honored him with a letter, although his son-in-law, Frederic, of the Palatinate, earnestly besought him to do so. In the way which he pursued to attain to his high position, he could not indeed always keep the path of virtue, as those may, but seldom do, who are originally destined to the princely dignity.

Belonging to the lower nobility, Bethlen had, from his seventeenth year, devoted himself to war as a trade, and in the course of his life had taken part in not less than forty-two battles, greater and less. His property was originally so small that, when occasionally embarrassed, he appeared to his creditors not to offer the needed securities, and on this account once applied in vain to a merchant in Kaschau for a loan of 100 florins. He was praised for having, when he attained to the dignity of a prince, a memory and judgment equally excellent, and also a predilection for scientific pursuits. He knew only the Magyar and Latin languages, the latter of which was