Descartes : his life and times / by Elizabeth S. Haldane.

  • Elizabeth Haldane
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Descartes : his life and times / by Elizabeth S. Haldane. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    1619] inhabitants were ranged along the route of the proces- sion to the church, where the ecclesiastical electors had assumed their episcopal array, and at eight in the morning, Ferdinand was there crowned and led away on horseback, preceded by a long procession of officers and gentlemen. The ceremony itself was associated with all the pomp and ceremony that the Catholic Church knows so well how to bestow upon its functions ; Baillet, in the account he gives of it, omits no detail. Descartes, he says, was curious, once for all, to see this pompous exhibition carried out by the most famous actors of the day ; and truly, could he have realised how the land was to be bathed in blood for so many long years under the leadership of many of the notabilities who in person or by deputy played their part that day at Frankfort, he might in reason have felt deeply moved. Ferdinand took his solemn oaths, well knowing what they meant to him. After the subsequent gaieties had ended and the ambassadors had left, Descartes found himself con- fronted with the question of what his next step was to be. He had no special call in one direction rather than another, excepting his desire for seeing service under the best conditions possible. His own country did not involve itself in the long war for many years after this, but her hands were fully occupied with the rising of the Huguenots. Descartes’ prejudices might be against taking part in another internal religious war; and in addition to this, he must have been impressed by the ceremonies he had been witnessing, and made more disposed to lend his assistance to the allies of the newly crowned emperor. Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria, was chief of the great Catholic League, an able states- man and the ablest and most determined leader of his party, venerated by his own religionists and respected by his opponents ; therefore, we do not wonder that his was the army Descartes preferred to join, even although he did not know the enemy he was to be called upon to fight. Ten days before Ferdinand was crowned at Frankfort he was deposed at Prague; and on August