tion of Bohemia was changed: the Czech element eliminated from the upper classes, the aristocracy punished, fortunes confiscated, the gentry driven from the country, the middle classes obliged either to quit their native land or to become Catholic—in a word, the nation was demated, demoralised, and reduced almost to ruin. Adventurers of all kinds came from every part of Europe to help the king in his war against Bohemia, and in place of the ancient Czech nobles a new aristocracy was created by the sovereign, who handed over to them the land of people suspected of heresy. This foreign aristocracy naturally showed itself very ready to fall in with the schemes of the Habsburgs, since its members received grants of land as a recompense for their docility; they made the feudal yoke weigh heavily upon the Czech nation, always using the defence of religion as a pretext for their oppression. There is no other nation known to history which has suffered a like vengeance from the hands of its lawful sovereign.
From the Battle of White Mountain flowed three principal results: the complete victory of the Habsburgs and the establishment of royal absolutism, the setting up of a new and foreign aristocracy, and the final triumph of the Catholic Church. These changes exercised a marked and lasting influence on the after-development of the country, which may easily be discerned to-day.
