took command of Gebhard's troops in the spring of 1583. Later that summer, after fruitlessly marching the troops up and down the Rhine, a process of intimidation, he disbanded his army to administer the Palatinate of the Rhine for his ten-year-old nephew, the new Elector Palatine, Frederick IV. Ernest had the support of the previous Elector, now Salentin IX of Isenburg-Grenzau, Frederick, Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, and, probably most important, several thousand Spanish troops hired by the pope. While representatives from the cathedral chapter, the seven imperial electors, the emperor, and the pope tried to resolve differences around the negotiating table, first in Frankfurt am Main, and then in Mühlhausen in Westphalia, the armies of both sides rampaged throughout the southern portion of the Electorate, called the Oberstift, plundering abbeys and convents, burning villages and small cities, and destroying crops, bridges, and roads. None of the combatants were prepared to commit their troops in a fixed battle; it was far more lucrative, and safer as well, to use them in a show of force, intimidating the peasantry, besieging walled towns and small cities, and limiting trade and the sale of food-stuffs in the marketplaces. By the end of March, Salentin, Frederick, and the few thousand Spanish troops drove Gebhard from Bonn, then from Bad Godesberg; he and his wife took refuge into Vest Recklinghausen, a fiefdom of the electorate. There, he and Agnes encouraged a spurt of iconoclasm by their troops, alienating many heretofore supporters, including Hermann von Hatzfeld, seneschal of Balve. Ferdinand, the brother of the rival archbishop, drove Gebhard and Agnes into the Netherlands; they escaped with approximately 1000 cavalry and some infantry. Initially, they sought refuge in Delft, with William I of Orange. Living in the Netherlands, they became acquainted with Elizabeth's envoy, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, and entered into lengthy negotiations with Elizabeth's Court to obtain support for his cause; these efforts failed to garner assistance for renewing the war either from the English queen or in any other quarter. By 1588, Gebhard's joint pain (Gelenkenschmerz) prevented him from riding a horse; the climate of Cologne, damp and cold, made his condition worse, so he relinquished his claim on the Electorate to the protection of Adolf von Neuenahr and Martin Schenck, which they pursued until their deaths later that year. In the summer 1588, Gebhard established his residence at Strassburg, where he had held the