Mathias, during a reign of seven years, had favored the Catholics, and caused Ferdinand, one of the most cruel Catholics who ever lived, to be elected king of Hungary and Bohemia. The election of Ferdinand was a great blow to Bohemia, and the new king lost no time in trying to destroy all the Protestants in his kingdom. Protestants were persecuted as criminals, and when they appealed to the law of the land, the Jesuits replied that Ferdinand's election as king of Bohemia canceled all laws in favor of Protestants. "_Novus rex, nova lex._" This they declared was what was meant by the _Reservatum Ecclesiasticum_ in the Augsburg Treaty of Peace. The clause stipulated that the people of each State should follow the religion of the ruler of the State. It is true the clause was there, but modified by two things: 1st. Cities were excepted. 2d. The Evangelical princes had not agreed to the clause and had protested against it. Ferdinand's action as king, of course, made an insurrection. How could it fail to do so? The Emperor Mathias became frightened and fled to Vienna, after appointing a regency of four Catholics and three Protestants. The Protestant regents sent a petition to the Emperor, and the Catholic regents at the same time sent a report. Mathias ordered the implicit and instant obedience of the Protestants. While the seven regents were assembled in an upper room in the palace at Prague to announce the Emperor's decision, Count Thurn, chief of the Protestant party, entered the room with a company of armed men. He demanded of each Catholic regent, "Did you advise the Emperor's arbitrary reply?" Two of them answered evasively, the other two said, "Yes, we did." At this point the four Catholic regents were seized and pitched out of the windows from the third story. They fell on a great heap of barnyard manure and were not killed. But by this the Protestants took the responsibility of saying, "By this act we pitch out of our lives the Pope of Rome, the King of Bohemia and the Emperor of Germany." The Emperor was in feeble health and desired to make peace, but Ferdinand dissuaded him, and sent an army against these Protestants. The army was driven by Count Thurn and his men to the very gates of Vienna, and were only there turned back by the regular army of Austria. The winter was coming, and no provision having been made for the Protestant army, the force returned to Prague. This was to the Thirty Years' War what the firing on Fort Sumter was in the Civil War, or the skirmish at Lexington to the Revolutionary War. Just after this Mathias died and Ferdinand, king of Bohemia, became Ferdinand II., Emperor of Germany. He, with his Jesuits, determined to retake all property which before the Reformation belonged to the Catholic Church.