The Cambridge modern history. Vol. IV, The Thiry Years' War / planned by the late Lord Acton ; edited by A.W. Ward, G.W. Prothero, Stanley Leathes.

Date:
1906
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Cambridge modern history. Vol. IV, The Thiry Years' War / planned by the late Lord Acton ; edited by A.W. Ward, G.W. Prothero, Stanley Leathes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    1619] Means having been found for ascertaining that Frederick was “in principle ” prepared to accept, he was on August 26 all but unanimously elected King by the General Diet, and on the following day proclaimed at Prague. The momentous tidings found him at Amberg, where he was anxiously waiting in the company of his adviser, Christian von Anhalt. No doubt the greatness at which he trembled had been thrust upon him as the inheritor of the policy not less than of the religious faith and princely dignity of his predecessors. But his “ I dare not ” was as prolonged as his “I would” was manifest through it all. At first he had in vain entreated the Directors to postpone the initial step of the deposition of Ferdinand. Then he had openly wondered what course he would take if he were chosen, and before his election had, as has been seen, sent Christopher von Dohna to England to sound his father-in-law. He could take scant comfort from a meeting of the Union hastily summoned to Rothenburg (September 12), where only Baden and Ansbach were warmly for acceptance. From his councillors at Heidelberg he obtained an opinion in which they only contrived to adduce four reasons for acceptance as against fourteen for refusal. Maximilian of Bavaria openly warned him of the risk which by accepting he would run for both himself and his House. Similar advice, of which it is unnecessary to analyse the motives too nicely, reached him from John George of Saxony and other Electors; on the other hand he was encouraged to proceed by John Sigismund of Brandenburg, who was before long to marry his daughter Maria Eleonora to Gustavus Adolphus (1620), and some years later (1625) another daughter, Catharine, to Bethlen Gabor. Maurice of Orange likewise advised compliance. Frederick's mother Louisa Juliana, the highminded daughter of William the Silent, was overwhelmed with forebodings of disaster when she heard of his acceptance. That he was urged to accept by his wife is a baseless legend, but one which continues to survive; her mind was not at this time occupied with high political issues, though on the news of the election she asked her father’s support and promised her own readiness to share whatever the future might have in store for her consort. It was not the persuasions of Elizabeth, born though she was to be a Queen, nor was it any religious admonition on the part of his spiritual adviser, Scultetus, which convinced the hesitating Frederick; it was rather, we may feel assured, the steady pressure of Anhalt’s counsel that he had gone too far to retreat, which finally shaped itself in his mind as the belief that his acceptance of the proffered Bohemian Crown was the will of God. In this sense, on September 28, Frederick wrote secretly in the affirmative to the Directors, who had already thrice asked from him an answer. Two days earlier Dohna had taken his departure fiom the Court of James I, whose final pronouncement, made four days before, had been merely a refusal to decide on his own course of action until he should have convinced himself of the justice of Frederick’s