with his brother could not protect it, the weaving of diplomatic webs would not have impeded the Turkish advance. No Hungarian wizard could have revived the Crusades; and Hungary fell a victim not so much to faults of her own, as to the misfortune of her geographical position, and to the absorption of Christian Europe in its internecine warfare.
But Hungary's necessity was the Habsburgs' opportunity. For at least a century that ambitious race had dreamt of the union of Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary under its sway. Under Albrecht II and his son Wladislav the dream enjoyed a twenty years' realisation (1437-57); but after the latterY death Bohemia found a national King in Podiebrad and Hungary in Corvinus. On the extinction of these two lines the realms were again united, but not under Austrian rule; and for more than a generation two Polish princes of the House of Jagello successively sat on the Cech and Magyar thrones. The Emperor Maximilian, however, never ceased to grasp at the chance which his feeble father had missed; and before his death two of his grandchildren were betrothed to Louis II and his sister Anna, while the Austrian succession, in default of issue to Louis, was secured by solemn engagements on the part of both the kingdoms.
The death of Louis at Mohâcs hastened the crucial hour. Both kingdoms prided themselves on their independence and right to elect their monarchs, and in both there was national antagonism to German encroachment. In Hungary, where the Reformation had made some slight progress, the Catholic national party was led by John Zapolya, who had earned a reputation by his cruel suppression of a Hungarian peasant revolt in 1514, and had eagerly sought the hand of the Princess Anna. His object throughout had been the throne, and the marriage of Anna to Ferdinand enraged him to such an extent that he stood idly by while the Turk triumphed over his country at Mohâcs. He would rather be King by the grace of Solyman than see Hungary free under Ferdinand. The nobles' hatred of German rule came to Zapolya's aid, and on November 10, 1526, disregarding alike Ferdinand's claims through his wife and their previous treaty-engagements, they chose Zapolya King at Stuhlweissenburg, and crowned him the following day.
Had Ferdinand had only one rival to fear in Bohemia the result might have been similar, but a multitude of candidates divided the opposition. Sigismund of Poland, Joachim of Brandenburg, Albrecht of Prussia, three Saxon Princes, and two Bavarian Dukes, all thought of entering the lists, but Ferdinand's most serious competitors were his Wittelsbach rivals, who had long intrigued for the Bohemian throne. But if the Cechs were to elect a German King, a Wittelsbach possessed no advantages over a Habsburg, and Ferdinand carried the day at Prague on October 23, 1526. The theory that he owed his success to a Catholicism which was moderate compared with that of the Bavarian Dukes ignores the Catholic reaction which had followed the Hussite movement; and the Articles
