surrounding districts to help in the defence; while they cut off and killed all the supporters of the Passauer whom they could find in the outskirts of the town. Budovĕc returned from Moravia at this crisis, and encouraged the Praguer by promises of fresh help, and it soon became known that Matthias was on his march to Prague. Leopold, as cowardly as he was cruel, now proposed to desert the cause of Rudolf, and offered his services to Matthias. The latter, however, would have nothing to say to him; and Ramée, in his turn becoming alarmed, tried to make sure of his spoil by sending it in waggons out of the city. The Praguer, however, succeeded in intercepting these waggons, and in arresting, at the same time, one of Leopold’s intriguers. The prisoner at once confessed the whole plot; and Ramée, fearing the results of the discovery, secretly marched away from the city. In order to persuade his troops to go the more readily, he produced a portion of their long withheld pay. This suddenly revealed to them the base intrigue of which they had been at once the victims and the tools; and they called upon their colonel to lead them back to Prague, to execute vengeance on Leopold. Leopold however, succeeded in escaping secretly from the city, and went to Budejóvice, where he still hoped to make a stand; but when the Pope himself wrote to tell him that he had injured and disgraced the Catholic cause, the miserable creature felt the helplessness of his position, and tried to convince the Pope that he had been in no way responsible for the march of the Passauer. In the meantime, Matthias was welcomed as a deliverer. On April 12, 1611, the Bohemian Assembly once more met; and, after some wrangling between the Estates of the different provinces, about the language to be used and the methods to be followed, they deposed Rudolf from the throne of Bohemia; and on May 22nd he himself consented to free his subjects from their allegiance, and to allow Matthias to be crowned in his place. Even now the unfortunate Emperor still hoped to redeem his position by fresh intrigues; and he seems actually to have entertained the idea of appealing to Christian of Anhalt, and the Protestants, against Matthias; but ill health, misfortunes, and growing old age interfered to cut short any further plots; and his miserable life at last ended in January, 1612. XVII. FROM THE DEATH OF RUDOLF II. TO THE BATTLE OF THE WHITE HILL. (1612-1620.) Although Matthias seemed now to be securely seated on the throne of Bohemia, he was quite aware that his difficulties were by no means at an end. He had been put forward, originally, as the candidate rather of his family than of the Bohemian people; and his necessary concessions to popular feeling, in the matter of civil and religious liberty, had often roused the opposition of his kinsmen.