In 1600 a mutinous project for the surrender of the fortress Papa was detected and suppressed by summary execution, and fifteen of the leaders were reserved for a more terrible example at Vienna, twelve of whom were quartered and three impaled. It would be tedious and disgusting to pursue the list of similar atrocities perpetrated both at Vienna and in the frontier fortresses. The Austrian authorities would appear to have considered that the devices of Oriental cruelty were the only remedies or preventives for treason and cowardice, and to have overlooked the fact that many of the misdemeanours so savagely punished were attributable to their own maladministration, to the inactivity of the Emperor, and to the maltreatment and non-payment of the soldiery. In 1609 the Archduke Mathias assumed the practical exercise of sovereignty, and on his formal succession to the imperial throne on the death of Rodolph in 1612, he transferred the imperial residence from Prague to Vienna. Under his administration better measures were applied to the existing evils than those which had, by their use and their failure, disgraced the reign of Rodolph. Mathias found himself shortly after his coronation compelled to prepare for a renewal of hostilities with the Turks, who were now in possession of the whole of Hungary and Transylvania, in addition to Moldavia and Wallachia. When, however, he made application to the states of the empire, the Protestants, by far the majority, excused themselves on the allegation that no powers had been delegated to them to furnish aid to a Turkish war, and they recommended forbearance and delay in dealing with the hereditary enemy of Christendom. Mathias had no resource but to conclude an armistice for twenty years, which the Turks, on their part, exhausted by the long previous struggle, and no longer led by such a ruler as Soliman, were not reluctant to accept. They retained, however, their conquests. This truce was observed with scrupulous and unshaken fidelity by the Turks under five feeble successors of Selim II., (Murad III., Mohammed III., Achmet I., Mustapha I., Osman II.) By this honourable forbearance, practised under strong temptation of advantage from its infraction and in resistance to the allurements of Christian powers, especially of France, Austria during the thirty years’ war enjoyed immunity from attack on the most assailable portion of her frontier. Even Amurath IV., who ascended the throne in 1623, and was the first of Soliman’s successors who showed symptoms of a warlike spirit, concluded a fresh truce with Austria, and thus the Turks remained tranquil through the first half of the seventeenth century. In fact, the moral energy of their race had declined while civilization and attendant power had progressed in Christian Europe, and no exertion could have raised them to their former elevation. Amurath’s son and successor Ibrahim, notorious for his vices and cruel actions, was strangled in 1648.