Matthias I
Matthias I
emperor of Germany, son of Maximilian II and Mary, daughter of Charles V, deserves a place here because of his relation to one of the most eventful periods in the earliest stages of modern history. He was born in 1557. In 1578 he was invited by the Romanists of the Netherlands to assume the government of that country, but he held the position only a short time. He was appointed stadtholder of Austria in 1595, and in 1611 was invited by the Bohemians to become their ruler. On the death of his brother Rudolf, emperor of Germany, in 1612, he succeeded to the throne, and was called upon to sit in judgment between Protestant and Romanist in the ensuing contest between these two factions of his empire. He pursued a vacillating policy, and, while striving to direct, made himself distrusted by both. He concluded a disadvantageous treaty with the Turks, then in possession of Hungary (1615), and soon after caused his cousin Ferdinand to be proclaimed king of Bohemia and Hungary. In the midst of the dissensions which preceded the Thirty Years' War he died, in 1619. — See Khevenhuller, Annales Ferdinandei; P. Santoric, Vite di Ridolfo e Mattia Imperatori (1664); Vehse, Memoirs of the Court of Austria. 1:240 sq.; Coxe, House of Austria, 2:95 sq.; Kohlrausch, Hist. of Germany, p. 311 sq. SEE THIRTY YEARS WAR.
