Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/69

 ural that the party leaders should place obstacles in the way of Ferdinand’s elevation. It was not a native nobleman, however, who placed himself at their head, but a foreigner, who had never mastered the language of the country, and had nevertheless risen to the highest authority. This man was Count Henry Matthias von Thurn.

The earliest fortunes of the young Henry Matthias supplied nothing from which his later career could be inferred. His father was a wealthy man in Bohemia, and died in 1586; the young man was not, therefore, brought up in his father’s house, but sent, in earliest youth, to Carniola, to his cousin, Count Hans Ambrosius Thurn, provincial governor of Carniola, with whom he grew up. Hans Ambrosius was a zealous Catholic, and one of the most trusted servants and counsellors of the mother of Ferdinand II. It is natural to infer, from these friendly personal relations, that the Styrian line of the Hapsburgs would be mentioned only with respect and love in the house of Count Ambrosius, and that the impressions first made upon the youthful mind of Matthias Thurn could not have been hostile to Ferdinand. Whether, born of Protestant parents as he was, he had, in the course of his religious education, received the faith of his adoptive parents, we are without means of knowing. This is indeed possible; but from his first appearance in public life he was a Protestant. As a young man he was in the imperial military service, fought against the Turks in Hungary, and rose finally to the command of a regiment of cavalry.

After Thurn took up his residence in Bohemia he gave much attention to the religious state of the country. In the Diet of 1609, at which Bohemia obtained the Letter of Majesty, or Royal Charter, as we shall call it, he stood