ready to defend its interests to the death against the encroachments of the Counter-Reformation. Nor were the Catholics far behind in their preparations for war. [Sidenote: =Formation of the Catholic League, 1609.=]In 1609 the Catholic League was formed among the Catholic bishops of south Germany, under the leadership of Maximilian of Bavaria, to defend Catholic interests. The Pope gave it his approval and Spain promised assistance. With the long head of Maximilian to direct its policy, with his long purse to provide the sinews of war, with his trained army under Tilly to fight its battles, and with Spain and the Pope to fall back upon, the Catholic League bid fair to distance its rival in the game for leadership in South Germany, which was being played. [Sidenote: =Weakness of the Emperor.=] But just at this moment occurred two events which rapidly swung the balance to the opposite side. The disputed succession to Cleves and Jülich--followed as it was by the intervention of the Emperor and the occupation of Jülich on his behalf, while the elector of Brandenburg and the count palatine of Neuburg made themselves joint masters of Cleves--brought about, as we have seen, a most formidable combination of Protestant powers under the leadership of France, to overthrow the House of Austria and put a stop to the progress of Catholicism in Germany. At the very moment when he was thus threatened by foreign attack, the unfortunate Rudolf found himself at the mercy of his own revolted subjects. Already in 1606 his brother Matthias had taken advantage of the unpopularity caused by the forcible restoration of Catholicism in Austria and Hungary, especially among the nobility, to put himself at the head of a combination of the estates of those countries, in order to win for himself the sovereignty over them at the price of granting religious toleration. The revolt was completely successful. [Sidenote: =Religious toleration in Austria and Bohemia, 1608–1609.=] In 1608 Rudolf made over to his brother the government of Austria and Hungary, and Matthias, in his turn, appointed a Protestant to be palatine in Hungary, and guaranteed the free exercise of their religion, public and private, to all his subjects. The Emperor was thus left with Bohemia and Moravia alone faithful to him, but the Bohemians were no less quick than the Austrians had been to see the profit that might be made out of the weakness of their king. In 1609 the Bohemian estates extorted from him the Royal Charter (_Majestätsbrief_) as the price of their loyalty, by which freedom of conscience was secured to all who belonged to certain specified creeds, and freedom of worship granted on all Crown lands; but on private estates, and in towns, the consent of the landowner and the town authorities was made necessary to the erection of any church or the establishment of any religious worship. An arrangement so one-sided as this, by which the king was obliged to grant freedom