Joachim Frederick, afterwards elector of Brandenburg, to sit and vote in
the imperial diet; it was not admitted, and the administrator retired
from Augsburg, a similar fate befalling a similar claim made by several
other administrators some years later.
The Protestant grievances.
After the death of Augustus of Saxony in February 1586 there was another
brief alliance between the Protestant parties, although on this occasion
the lead was taken not by the Saxon, but by the Palatine prince. Less
strict in his adherence to the tenets of Lutheranism than Augustus, the
new elector of Saxony, Christian I., fell under the influence of John
Casimir. The result was that Protestant princes, including the three
temporal electors, united in placing their grievances before the
emperor; obtaining no redress they met at Torgau in 1591 and offered
help to Henry IV. of France, a proceeding which was diametrically
opposed to the past policy of Saxony. But this alliance, like its
forerunner, was of very short duration. Christian I. died in 1591, and
under Christian II. electoral Saxony re-established a rigid Lutheranism
at home and pursued a policy of moderation and neutrality abroad. A
short time afterwards the militant party among the Protestants suffered
a heavy loss by the death of their leader, John Casimir, whose policy,
however, was continued by his nephew and pupil, the elector Frederick
IV. But neither desertion nor death was able to crush entirely the
militant Protestants, among whom Christian, prince of Anhalt
(1568-1630), was rapidly becoming the most prominent figure. They made
themselves very troublesome at the diet of Regensburg in 1593, and also
at the diet held in the same city four years later, putting forward
various demands for greater religious freedom and seeking to hinder, or
delay, the payment of the grant for the Turkish war. Moreover, in 1598
they put forward the theory that the vote of a majority in the diet was
not binding upon the minority; they took up the same position at
Regensburg in 1603, when they raised strong objections to the decisions
of the _Reichshofrat_ and afterwards withdrew from the diet in a body.
Thus, under Maximilian of Bavaria and Christian of Anhalt respectively
the two great parties were gaining a better idea of their own needs and
of each other's aims and were watching vigilantly the position in the
duchies of Cleves, Jülich and Berg, where a dispute over the succession
was impending. While wars and rumours of wars were disturbing the peace
in the west of Germany the Turks were again harassing the east. The war
between them and the Empire, which was renewed in 1593, lasted almost
without interruption until November 1606, when peace was made, the
tribute long paid by the emperor to the sultan being abandoned. This
peace was concluded not by Rudolph, but by his brother, the archduke
Matthias, who owing to the emperor's mental incapacity had just been
declared by his kinsman the head of the house of Habsburg.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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