“ Having decided that Ferdinand should succeed Matthias as emperor, the Habsburgs had secured his election as king of Bohemia in June 1617, but were unable to stem the rising tide of disorder in that country. Matthias and Klesl were in favour of concessions, but Ferdinand and Maximilian met this move by seizing and imprisoning Klesl. Ferdinand had just secured his coronation as king of Hungary when there broke out in Bohemia those struggles which heralded the Thirty Years’ War; and on the 20th of March 1619 the emperor died at Vienna. ”

“ Rudolph, however, was successful in preventing the election of Matthias as German king, or king of the Romans, and when he died, in January 1612, no provision had been made for a successor. Already king of Hungary and Bohemia, however, Matthias obtained the remaining hereditary dominions of the Habsburgs, and in June 1612 was crowned emperor, although the ecclesiastical electors favoured his younger brother, the archduke Albert (1559–1621) . ”

“ Klesl, on the one hand, wished the settlement of the religious difficulties to precede any arrangement about the imperial succession; the Habsburgs, on the other, regarded the question of the succession as urgent and vital. ”