Rhodolph, disappointed here, summoned an electoral meeting of the
empire, to be held at Nuremburg on the 14th of December, 1711. He hoped
that a majority of the electors would be his friends. Before this body
he presented a very pathetic account of his grievances, delineating in
most melancholy colors the sorrows which attend fallen grandeur. He
detailed his privations and necessities, the straits to which he was
reduced by poverty, his utter inability to maintain a state befitting
the imperial dignity, and implored them, with the eloquence of a
Neapolitan mendicant, to grant him a suitable establishment, and not to
abandon him, in his old age, to penury and dishonor.
The reply of the electors to the dispirited, degraded, downtrodden old
monarch was the unkindest cut of all. Much as Rhodolph is to be
execrated and despised, one can hardly refrain from an emotion of
sympathy in view of this new blow which fell upon him. A deputation sent
from the electoral college met him in his palace at Prague. Mercilessly
they recapitulated most of the complaints which the Protestants had
brought against him, declined rendering him any pecuniary relief, and
requested him to nominate some one to be chosen as his successor on the
imperial throne.
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