ABSTRACT
The religious as well as the political differences that were distracting the Empire had by no means only brought Catholics and Protestants into mutual opposition. To the pervading spirit of religious discord and moral disquietude there was in this age of decline added the general consciousness of a continuous decrease of material prosperity throughout the Empire. The religious question, which more than half a century ago the two-faced agreement of the Peace of Augsburg had sought to regulate, was unsettled; and the aspirations of the Catholic Reaction, together with the ambitions of the militant section of the Protestants, alike ignored in that compact, remained still unsatisfied. The conflict in Bohemia would open under conditions far more favourable for the insurrection if the cooperation of the Austrian Estates could be secured at the outset.
