The Thirty Years' War - James Aitken Wylie

the monarch by the button, and exclaimed,
"Ferdinand, wilt thou sign it?" But Ferdinand was
immovable. In spite of the extremity in which he
stood, he would neither flee from his capital nor
make concessions to the Protestants. Suddenly, and
while the altercation was still going on, a trumpetblast
was heard in the court of the palace. Five
hundred cuirassiers had arrived at that critical
moment, under General Dampierre, to defend the
monarch. This turned the tide. Vienna was
preserved to the Papacy, and with Vienna the
Austrian dominions and the imperial throne. There
followed the retreat of the Bohemian host from
under the walls of the capital; the election of
Ferdinand, at the Diet of Frankfort, to the dignity
of emperor; the equipment of an army to crush the
insurrection in Bohemia; and, in fine, the battle of
the Weissenburg under the walls of Prague, which
by a single stroke brought the "winter kingdom" of
Frederick to an end, laid the provinces of Bohemia,
Silesia, and Moravia at the feet of Ferdinand, and
enabled him to inaugurate an iron era of
persecution by setting up the scaffold at Prague, on
which the flower of the country's rank and genius
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