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THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND
By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, Project Gutenberg Edition, Volume 94
Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v8, 1617
Ferdinand of Gratz crowned King of Bohemia—His Enmity to
Protestants—Slawata and Martinitz thrown from the Windows of the
Hradschin—Real Beginning of the Thirty Years' War—The Elector-
Palatine's Intrigues in Opposition to the House of Austria—He
supports the Duke of Savoy—The Emperor Matthias visits Dresden—
Jubilee for the Hundredth Anniversary of the Reformation.
When the forlorn emperor Rudolph had signed the permission for hisbrother Matthias to take the last crown but one from his head, he bit thepen in a paroxysm of helpless rage. Then rushing to the window of hisapartment, he looked down on one of the most stately prospects that thepalaces of the earth can offer. From the long monotonous architecturallines of the Hradschin, imposing from its massiveness and its imperialsituation, and with the dome and minarets of the cathedral clusteringbehind them, the eye swept across the fertile valley, through which therapid, yellow Moldau courses, to the opposite line of cliffs crested withthe half imaginary fortress-palaces of the Wyscherad. There, in themythical legendary past of Bohemia had dwelt the shadowy Libuscha,daughter of Krok, wife of King Premysl, foundress of Prague, who, whenwearied of her lovers, was accustomed to toss them from those heightsinto the river. Between these picturesque precipices lay the twoPragues, twin-born and quarrelsome, fighting each other for centuries,and growing up side by side into a double, bellicose, stormy, and mostsplendid city, bristling with steeples and spires, and united by theancient many-statued bridge with its blackened mediaeval entrance towers.
But it was not to enjoy the prospect that the aged, discrowned, solitaryemperor, almost as dim a figure among sovereigns as the mystic Libuschaherself, was gazing from the window upon the imperial city.
"Ungrateful Prague," he cried, "through me thou hast become thusmagnificent, and now thou hast turned upon and driven away thybenefactor. May the vengeance of God descend upon thee; may my cursecome upon thee and upon all Bohemia."
History has failed to record the special benefits of the Emperorthrough which the city had derived its magnificence and deserved thismalediction. But surely if ever an old man's curse was destined to beliterally fulfilled, it seemed to be this solemn imprecation of Rudolph.Meantime the coronation of Matthias had gone on with pomp and populargratulations, while Rudolph had withdrawn into his apartments to passthe little that was left to him of life in solitude and in a state ofhopeless pique with Matthias, with the rest of his brethren, with allthe world.
And now that five years had passed since his death, Matthias, who hadusurped so much power prematurely, found himself almost in the samecondition as that to which he had reduced Rudolph.
Ferdinand of Styria, his cousin, trod closely upon his heels. He wasthe presumptive successo