ABSTRACT
A contemporary chronicler recounts how faithfully the Emperor Ferdinand II labored at the revision of the privileges which the Czech Estates had won from previous Hapsburg kings of Bohemia: after carefully examining each document, he would cut the signatures and the seals off and throw the rest of charter into the fire. The changes that had taken place in the make-up of the population in Bohemia were favorable to this Hapsburg hope. The Czech nobility, that is, what was left of it in Bohemia, had been so interbred with the foreigners who had settled in Bohemia in the seventeenth century, and had come into such close relations with the Austrian nobility, tlJat there was no noticeable difference between the germanized Czech nobility and the Austrian. The mere fact that the Czech kingdom had a long history as an independent state and still retained much the framework of that independent existence was not thought to be any real obstacle to unification.
