Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/72

 that the “acceptance” and not the “election” of a King was proposed. He protested, in his own name and in the names of several of his friends, against this proceeding. The chief Burggrave replied: “Heaven keep me from representing such a view, unless I had two heads.” The Chief-Justice, Herr von Talmberg, who belonged to the royal party, answered, nevertheless, that he had understood from his youth that to the Estates of Bohemia appertained the right freely to elect their King. To this the Chancellor replied: “It is indeed true, my good friend, that we boast of special privileges before other peoples, and especially of the right to elect our kings; but if we should aver this right, we should be in a sad case, since among all our charters there is none which establishes our elective right.”

After these words the Chancellor, who was well prepared for Ruppa’s objections, began a detailed statement of the facts in relation to the Bohemian succession. He showed that the crown of Bohemia, since it came into the possession of the house of Hapsburg, in the year 1526, had been transmitted, not by election, but by inheritance, from one possessor to another, and that the evidence of this was to be found in the documents and precedents of the sixteenth century. The natural conclusion from his statement was that the instance of 1608 was an innovation, and could not be cited as an authoritative precedent. The argument of the Chancellor produced a visible effect. Talmberg was the first to acknowledge that he had changed his convictions, and that in Bohemia the crown was simply hereditary. The members of the nobility also, whose opposition found its origin and nutriment in the doubtful sense of documents, and not in the circumstances of the present time, grew hesitating and