Thus fared it with the Reformed religion and its professors in Bohemia, till Ferdinand I. ascended the throne. There was tranquillity, at least, and toleration, under Ladislaus of Poland, and an anxiety expressed everywhere, that the language of controversy might cease; and that the cultivation of letters, which more than a century of civil strife had interrupted, might again occupy men's minds, and soften and humanize their spirits. But Ferdinand had no part in this virtuous longing. Whether it was the influence of his brother, the Emperor Charles V., or his own innate hatred of the institutions of Bohemia, that swayed him, is a question not easily answered, if, indeed, it were worth asking,--but it is not. The promises which he had given so liberally when elected, were all disregarded so soon as he felt himself secure; and Bohemia, which ought to have thrown her weight into the scale of the Protestant princes, was kept, at the period of the league of Smalcalde, in a state of fatal neutrality. She could not wield her power against men to whom she was bound by all the ties of sympathy and communion of principle; for by this time, the Lutheran doctrines were taught in her churches, and openly maintained in her university. Neither would the diet consent that an army should be marched into Saxony. It was a balance of antagonist principles which proved fatal in its results to her own liberties, both civil and religious. The battle of Muehlberg gave to Charles and Ferdinand a superiority which they failed not to improve. The Bloody Diet sat in Prague; and nobles, and knights, and even cities forfeited their privileges and their property; and the two former, at least, in many instances, their lives.