I am young. I am 20 years old. It I know nothing of life, but despair, death, fear,

and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against

one another, and in silence, unknowingly,

foolishly, obediently, innocently, slay one another. Eric Maria Remark, all quiet on the Western

Front. No, no Muthias had made good progress.

As his brother Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, continued to deteriorate in his Prague home.

Matthias assumed leadership of the Habsburg-Austrian dynasty and now sought to garner support throughout the empire's lands.

The Protestant estates of Upper Austria and the Hungarian provinces, under Habsburg administration,

all acquired religious toleration in 1608.

And in 1609, Matthias moved to bring the Bohemians to his side too. Although thoroughly Protestant, Bohemia had been ruled continuously by the Catholic Habsburgs as part of the Habsburg crown lands,

and the kings of Bohemia were more often than not, also Holy Roman Emperor, King of the Romans,

and King of Hungary simultaneously.

Matthias had changed the status quo somewhat, since he had begun stripping his ill-behaved brother

Rudolf of his titles since 1606.

Now isolated in Bohemia, all that Rudolf could lay claim to was the Bohemian crown lands,

so Moravia, Silesia and Lusatia.

Mathias wished to fully exact his power over these lands too, and remove what he and his family

saw as the damaging impact of Rudolf's influence over them.

But he must have known that in order to get the Protestant Bohemians on side, he'd have to give them the same things he'd given the rest of his newly acquired subjects too.

Promises of religious freedoms, toleration and equality.

While he was considering this though, Rudolf moved first, and granted his bohemian subjects

what they wanted under the Letter of Majesty. The event is covered by David J. Sturdy in his

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