The prisoners were terrified into the immediate ratification of these hard terms. They were then all released, excepting forty, who were reserved for more rigorous punishment. In the same manner the king sent a summons to all the towns of the kingdom; and by the same terrors the same terms were extorted. All the rural nobles, who had manifested a spirit of resistance, were also summoned before a court of justice for trial. Some fled the kingdom. Their estates were confiscated to Ferdinand, and they were sentenced to death should they ever return. Many others were deprived of their possessions. Twenty-six were thrown into prison, and two condemned to public execution. The king, having thus struck all the discontented with terror, summoned a diet to meet in his palace at Prague. They met the 22d of August, 1547. A vast assemblage was convened, as no one who was summoned dared to stay away. The king, wishing to give an intimation to the diet of what they were to expect should they oppose his wishes, commenced the session by publicly hanging four of the most illustrious of his captives. One of these, high judge of the kingdom, was in the seventieth year of his age. The Bloody Diet, as it has since been called, was opened, and Ferdinand found all as pliant as he could wish. The royal discipline had effected wonders. The slightest intimation of Ferdinand was accepted with eagerness. The execrable tyrant wished to impress the whole kingdom with a salutary dread of incurring his paternal displeasure. He brought out the forty prisoners who still remained in their dungeons. Eight of the most distinguished men of the kingdom were led to three of the principal cities, in each of which, in the public square, they were ignominiously and cruelly whipped on the bare back. Before each flagellation the executioner proclaimed-- "These men are punished because they are traitors, and because they excited the people against their _hereditary_ master."