Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/63

 phatically declared their wish that the succession should be determined without delay. Ceaselessly tormented, and indeed carried by storm, growing more anxious as the Emperor’s symptoms became more threatening, Khlesl finally consented that a Diet should be summoned for the 5th of June. The letters missive were quickly issued; and this was scarcely done when the Emperor recovered. But that which had been done could not be recalled, earnestly as Khlesl may have wished it.

The dangers which led Ferdinand and his party to urge the decision of the succession were not imaginary, as is clear from a report of Baron Christopher von Dohna, whom the Elector of the Palatinate sent, in the beginning of the year 1617, to Bohemia and Austria, as a diplomatic agent, to study the situation there. As early as the year 1608 the party of the Palatinate cherished great hopes from the discords in Austria, had formed intimate relations with the Protestant party leaders there, and desired now to gather the fruits. In Dohna’s report of his journey he pictured the Austrian monarchy as on the eve of dissolution, each of its several lands having its pretender, who waited only for the Emperor’s death that he might raise his head. Hungary had a prince who knew something of the Magyar tongue, and had some prospect of success in the contest for the crown; in Moravia and Austria, Prince Liechtenstein was speculating; the Union of German Protestants enjoyed, however, in these lands the highest confidence, and the wish prevailed that it should be sparing in the use of its resources that, when the sword should once be drawn, it might hold out. At the same time, also, came the Palatine Counsellor Camerarius to Prague, renewed the old alliances, and exhorted the friends not at any price to consent to the