CHAPTER XVIII. 

 RUDOLPH'S SOVEREIGNTY AND DEATH. 



"In Rudolph's Landen, weit und breit, 

 Wuchs drum die Unzufriedenheit. 

 Oestreich und Ungarn deshalb gab er 



Mathias, seinem Bruder. 



* * 



* 



Der Tod nur wahrte ihn davor, 

 Dass er die Kaiserkron' verlor." 



IHEN RUDOLPH succeeded to the throne of his wise 

 and tolerant father Maximilian, he found the king- 

 dom of Bohemia in greater civil and religious peace 

 than it had enjoyed for a century. From very 

 early times the inhabitants of Bohemia had manifested pecu- 

 liar aptitude for polemic theology; at first the disputes 

 were confined to the ecclesiastics and to the educated nobil- 

 ity, but the common people being naturally religious joined 

 in the prevailing controversies with savage earnestness ; the 

 unhappy Hussite war, championed by the brave patriot 

 Ziske, had ceased a whole century before Rudolph's reign be- 

 gan, but the country had never been entirely free from intes- 

 tine disturbances. Under Maximilian Bohemia enjoyed com- 

 parative peace, and had Rudolph understood the claims of 

 justice, and had he listened to reason the country might have 

 prospered, but he "inherited all the ambition of his house 

 without any of the nobleness of his father, any of the vigor 



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