the people of all their liberties, and particularly of the "Letter of Majesty"; then would they become faithful and submissive subjects. Should the Emperor show any mercy, greater evils would befall him than those which he had recently undergone. "This moment," the friar continued, "is a decisive one. If the Emperor does not now act with energy the words of the prophet will be applied to him, who said: 'Because thou hast let go out of thy hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruction, therefore thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his people.'"[1] These words greatly impressed the Emperor. As Gindely has well said, the friar here expounded unconsciously the system according to which Ferdinand henceforth ruled Bohemia.
The expulsion from Bohemia of all who did not entirely conform to the Church of Rome was decided as soon as the news of the victory of the White Mountain reached Vienna. Circumstances, however, rendered it necessary that the measures to this purpose should be carried out gradually and consecutively. The members of the Lutheran Church were under the immediate protection of the Lutheran Elector of Saxony, who had been a faithful ally of Ferdinand during the recent campaign. Political reasons rendered an immediate expulsion of the Bohemian Lutherans very difficult, and some of Ferdinand's councillors who became known as the "Politicians" strongly advised moderation. Their influence, however, only occasionally succeeded in persuading the Emperor to delay some of his extreme measures. The principal agents employed by the Emperor to carry out the "Catholic Reformation" were John Lobelius, Archbishop of Prague, and Caspar Questenberg, Abbot of the Strahov Monastery. They were both Germans, and were inspired by a hatred of the Bohemian nation that was founded on racial as well as on religious motives. The first measure suggested by these men was the expulsion from Bohemia of all preachers who professed the Calvinist doctrine or belonged to the community of the Bohemian Brethren. This measure was immediately carried out, and in May 1621, 200 preachers had already been expelled from Bohemia. It would lead too far to enumerate all the consecutive steps of this relentless persecution, by means of which the complete extirpation of all creeds differing from the Church of Rome
