Excerpt from Young Folks History of France

Austrians, entered Bohemia, and Count Tilly, the chief Austrian general, encamped on the White Hill above Prague. It was a Sunday morning, and the Gospel read for the day was Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. The soldiers took it as a good omen, and Tilly gave battle as soon as mass was over.

Friedrich was at dinner with the English envoys when he heard that his men were flying, and Anhalt fled into the town bare-headed to say that all was lost. The gates were opened, a carriage brought to the door, Fried rich and Elizabeth hurried into it, little Rupert was thrown into the bottom of it, and they drove away, to find a refuge at last at the Hague, among the Dutch. The Bohemians were at the mercy of the Catholic League under Maximilian and Tilly. The whole country was ravaged, multitudes of peasants were slain, the nobles were beheaded, and all the old Hussite churches given to the Catholics, while their ministers were banished. Priests, friars, and Jesuits were sent to instruct the people, and before the end of the reign the Hussite and Lutheran doctrine had been trampled out in Bohemia.

Friedrich of the Rhine was put to the ban of the Empire, and Maxi milian of Bavaria was made Elector in his stead. He might have saved the remains of his County Palatine if he would have taken the advice of King James, who tried to mediate for him, and have ceased to call himself King of Bohemia; but he would not do this, and Count Peter Mansfeld still held two Bohemian towns for him, and having no money, his soldiers lived by horrible pillage and rapine. The Protestant Union, though they had dis approved of the attack on Bohemia, did not choose to lose an Elector from their number, and undertook the defence of Friedrich. Moreover, Elizabeth was so beautiful and spirited, that the young princes who saw her grew ardent in her cause, and the young Christian of Brunswick called himself her knight, and wore her glove in his helmet, with the inscription, For God and for her. He was a younger son of the Duke of Brunswick, but a Lutheran, and had been provided for with a bishopric for the sake of the estates, though he was nothing but a soldier. But this was the way Ln theran princes dealt with the old bishoprics.

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