History of the Life of Gustavus Adolphus II., the Hero-General of the ReformationMonroe, Harriet Earhart
History
History of the Life of Gustavus Adolphus II., the Hero-General of the Reformation
Monroe, Harriet Earhart
Gustav II Adolf, King of Sweden, 1594-1632
The Emperor Ferdinand II. now placed Maximilian of Germany and the
ferocious General Tilly at the head of the army of the Catholic League,
to attack the city of Prague.
[Illustration:
GERMAN EMPIRE, NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM.
]
On November 8th, 1620, the armies met at White Mountain, near the city,
and the Protestant army, composed of Germans, Hungarians and Bohemians,
lacking first of all a good leader, but also lacking unity in action,
courage and goodwill, were defeated in less than an hour by the superior
numbers of the Imperial army.
Frederick, their king, was dining at leisure at Prague, while his army
was being sacrificed. He availed himself of the short armistice of eight
hours granted him by the Duke of Bavaria, to make a flight by night, in
such haste that even his crown was left behind him.
The battle of White Mountain settled the matter so far as Bohemia was
concerned, and Prague surrendered the next day. The Estates did the same
homage as had been done by Silesia and Moravia, but the Emperor had
another matter to settle with Prague. Tilly, with seven thousand men,
principally Spaniards, entered the city. Twenty-seven Protestant chiefs
were instantly executed, others were less publicly killed, and many more
imprisoned or punished.
All the Protestant churches were confiscated and handed over to the
Jesuits, who now came back in full force. The soldiers drove the country
people into the mass, so that a baron of Oppersheim gloried in having
converted, without a sermon, more people than the Apostle Peter, who
through his Pentecostal sermon, had seen three thousand souls converted.
The Emperor, with his own hands, tore up the Letter of Majesty by which
the Emperor Rudolph had granted religious liberty to the Bohemians.
Thirty thousand families left Bohemia during the next two years, and
Maximilian was made Elector Palatine, in place of Frederick V.
This is a very abbreviated history of the first division of that great
war which laid low the country of John Huss.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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