CHARLES V. AND THE REFORMATION.
From 1531 to 1552.
Determination to crush Protestantism.--Incursion of the Turks.--Valor of
the Protestants.--Preparations for renewed Hostilities.--Augmentation of
the Protestant Forces.--The Council of Trent.--Mutual Consternation.--
Defeat of the Protestant Army.--Unlooked for Succor.--Revolt in the
Emperor's Army.--The Fluctuations of Fortune.--Ignoble Revenge.--Capture
of Wittemberg.--Protestantism Apparently Crushed.--Plot against
Charles.--Maurice of Saxony.--A Change of Scene.--The Biter Bit.--The
Emperor humbled.--His Flight.--His determined Will.
The intolerant decrees of the diet of Augsburg, and the evident
determination of the emperor unrelentingly to enforce them, spread the
greatest alarm among the Protestants. They immediately assembled at
Smalkalde in December, 1530, and entered into a league for mutual
protection. The emperor was resolved to crush the Protestants. The
Protestants were resolved not to be crushed. The sword of the Catholics
was drawn for the assault--the sword of the reformers for defense. Civil
war was just bursting forth in all its horrors, when the Turks, with an
army three hundred thousand strong, like ravening wolves rushed into
Hungary. This danger was appalling. The Turks in their bloody march had,
as yet, encountered no effectual resistance; though they had experienced
temporary checks, their progress had been on the whole resistless, and
wherever they had planted their feet they had established themselves
firmly. Originating as a small tribe on the shores of the Caspian, they
had spread over all Asia Minor, had crossed the Bosphorus, captured
Constantinople, and had brought all Greece under their sway. They were
still pressing on, flushed with victory. Christian Europe was trembling
before them. And now an army of three hundred thousand had crossed the
Danube, sweeping all opposition before them, and were spreading terror
and destruction through Hungary. The capture of that immense kingdom
seemed to leave all Europe defenseless.
The emperor and his Catholic friends were fearfully alarmed. Here was a
danger more to be dreaded than even the doctrines of Luther. All the
energies of Christendom were requisite to repel this invasion. The
emperor was compelled to appeal to the Protestant princes to coöperate
in this great emergence. But they had more to fear from the fiery
persecution of the papal church than from the cimeter of the infidel,
and they refused any coöperation with the emperor so long as the menaces
of the Augsburg decrees were suspended over them. The emperor wished the
Protestants to help him drive out the Turks, that then, relieved from
that danger, he might turn all his energies against the Protestants.
After various negotiations it was agreed, as a temporary arrangement,
that there should be a truce of the Catholic persecution until another
general council should be called, and that until then the Protestants
should be allowed freedom of conscience and of worship. The German
States now turned their whole force against the Turks. The Protestants
contributed to the war with energy which amazed the Catholics. They even
trebled the contingents which they had agreed to furnish, and marched to
the assault with the greatest intrepidity. The Turks were driven from
Hungary, and then the emperor, in violation of his pledge, recommenced
proceeding against the Protestants. But it was the worst moment the
infatuated emperor could have selected. The Protestants, already armed
and marshaled, were not at all disposed to lie down to be trodden upon
by their foes. They renewed their confederacy, drove the emperor's
Austrian troops out of the territories of Wirtemberg, which they had
seized, and restored the duchy to the Protestant duke, Ulric. Civil war
had now commenced. But the Protestants were strong, determined, and had
proved their valor in the recent war with the Turks. The more moderate
of the papal party, foreseeing a strife which might be interminable,
interposed, and succeeded in effecting a compromise which again secured
transient peace.
Charles, however, had not yet abandoned his design to compel the
Protestants to return to the papal church. He was merely temporizing
till he could bring such an array of the papal powers against the
reformers that they could present no successful resistance. With this
intention he entered into a secret treaty with the powerful King of
France, in which Francis agreed to concentrate all the forces of his
kingdom to crush the Lutheran doctrines. He then succeeded in concluding
a truce with the Turks for five years. He was now prepared to act with
decision against the reformed religion.
But while Charles had been marshaling his party the Protestants had been
rapidly increasing. Eloquent preachers, able writers, had everywhere
proclaimed the corruptions of the papacy and urged a pure gospel. These
corruptions were so palpable that they could not bear the light. The
most intelligent and conscientious, all over Europe, were rapidly
embracing the new doctrines. These new doctrines embraced and involved
principles of civil as well as religious liberty. The Bible is the most
formidable book which was ever penned against aristocratic usurpation.
God is the universal Father. All men are brothers. The despots of that
day regarded the controversy as one which, in the end, involved the
stability of their thrones. "Give us light," the Protestants said. "Give
us darkness," responded the papacy, "or the submissive masses will rise
and overthrow despotic thrones as well as idolatrous altars."
Several of the ablest and most powerful of the bishops who, in that day
of darkness, had been groping in the dark, now that light had come into
the world, rejoiced in that light, and enthusiastically espoused the
truth. The emperor was quite appalled when he learned that the
Archbishop of Cologne, who was also one of the electors of the empire,
had joined the reformers; for, in addition to the vast influence of his
name, this conversion gave the Protestants a majority in the electoral
diet, so many of the German princes had already adopted the opinions of
Luther. The Protestants, encouraged by the rapidity with which their
doctrines were spreading, were not at all disposed to humble themselves
before their opponents, but with their hands upon the hilts of their
swords, declared that they would not bow their necks to intolerance.
It was indeed a formidable power which the emperor was now about to
marshal against the Protestants. He had France, Spain, all the roused
energies of the pope and his extended dominions, and all the Catholic
States of the empire. But Protestantism, which had overrun Germany, had
pervaded Switzerland and France, and was daily on the increase. The pope
and the more zealous papists were impatient and indignant that the
emperor did not press his measures with more vigor. But the sagacious
Charles more clearly saw the difficulties to be surmounted than they
did, and while no less determined in his resolves, was more prudent and
wary in his measures.
With the consent of the pope he summoned a general council to meet at
Trent on the confines of his own Austrian territories, where he could
easily have every thing under his own control. He did every thing in his
power, in the meantime to promote division among the Protestants, by
trying to enter into private negotiations with the Protestant princes.
He had the effrontery to urge the Protestants to send their divines to
the council of Trent, and agreed to abide by its decisions, even when
that council was summoned by the pope, and was to be so organized as to
secure an overwhelming majority to the papists. The Protestants, of
course, rejected so silly a proposition, and refused to recognize the
decrees of such a council as of any binding authority.
In preparation for enforcing the decrees which he intended to have
enacted by the council of Trent, Charles obtained from the pope thirteen
thousand troops, and five hundred thousand ducats (one million one
hundred thousand dollars). He raised one army in the Low Countries to
march upon Germany. He gathered another army in his hereditary States of
Austria. His brother Ferdinand, as King of Hungary and Bohemia, raised a
large army in each of those dominions. The King of France mustered his
legions, and boasted of the condign punishment to which he would consign
the heretics. The pope issued a decree offering the entire pardon of all
sins to those who should engage in this holy war for the extirpation of
the doctrines of the reformers.
The Protestants were for a moment in consternation in view of the
gatherings of so portentous a storm. The emperor, by false professions
and affected clemency, had so deceived them that they were quite
unprepared for so formidable an attack. They soon, however, saw that
their only salvation depended upon a vigorous defense, and they
marshaled their forces for war. With promptness and energy which even
astonished themselves, they speedily raised an army which, on the
junction of its several corps, amounted to eighty thousand men. In its
intelligence, valor, discipline and equipments, it was probably the best
army which had ever been assembled in the States of Germany. Resolutely
they marched under Schartlin, one of the most experienced generals of
the age, toward Ratisbon, where the emperor was holding a diet.
Charles V. was as much alarmed by this unexpected apparition, as the
Protestants had been alarmed by the preparations of the emperor. He had
supposed that his force was so resistless that the Protestants would see
at once the hopelessness of resistance, and would yield without a
struggle. The emperor had a guard of but eight thousand troops at
Ratisbon. The Duke of Bavaria, in whose dominions he was, was wavering,
and the papal troops had not commenced their march. But there was not a
moment to be lost. The emperor himself might be surrounded and taken
captive. He retired precipitately about thirty miles south to the strong
fortress of Landshut, where he could hold out until he received succor
from his Austrian territories, which were very near, and also from the
pope.
Charles soon received powerful reinforcements from Austria, from the
pope, and from his Spanish kingdom. With these he marched some forty
miles west to Ingolstadt and intrenched himself beneath its massive
walls. Here he waited for further reinforcements, and then commencing
the offensive, marched up the Danube, taking possession of the cities on
either bank. And now the marshaled forces of the emperor began to crowd
the Protestants on all sides. The army became bewildered, and instead of
keeping together, separated to repel the attack at different points.
This caused the ruin of the Protestant army. The dissevered fragments
were speedily dispersed. The emperor triumphantly entered the Protestant
cities of Ulm and Augsburg, Strasbourg and Frankfort, compelled them to
accept humiliating conditions, to surrender their artillery and military
stores, and to pay enormous fines. The Archbishop of Cologne was deposed
from his dignities. The emperor had thrown his foes upon the ground and
bound them.
All the Protestant princes but two were vanquished, the Elector of
Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse. It was evident that they must soon
yield to the overwhelming force of the emperor. It was a day of
disaster, in which no gleam of light seemed to dawn upon the Protestant
cause. But in that gloomy hour we see again the illustration of that
sentiment, that "the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to
the strong." Unthinking infidelity says sarcastically, "Providence
always helps the heavy battalions." But Providence often brings to the
discomfited, in their despair, reinforcements all unlooked for.
There were in the army of Ferdinand, gathered from the Austrian
territories by the force of military conscription, many troops more or
less influenced by the reformed religion. They were dissatisfied with
this warfare against their brothers, and their dissatisfaction increased
to murmurs and then to revolt. Thus encouraged, the Protestant nobles in
Bohemia rose against Ferdinand their king, and the victorious Ferdinand
suddenly found his strong battalions melting away, and his banners on
the retreat.
The other powers of Europe began to look with alarm upon the vast
ascendency which Charles V. was attaining over Europe. His exacting and
aggressive spirit assumed a more menacing aspect than the doctrines of
Luther. The King of France, Francis I., with the characteristic perfidy
of the times, meeting cunning with cunning, formed a secret league
against his ally, combining, in that league, the English ministry who
governed during the minority of Edward VI., and also the coöperation of
the illustrious Gustavus Vasa, the powerful King of Sweden, who was then
strongly inclined to that faith of the reformers which he afterwards
openly avowed. Even the pope, who had always felt a little jealous of
the power of the emperor, thought that as the Protestants were now put
down it might be well to check the ambition of Charles V. a little, and
he accordingly ordered all his troops to return to Italy. The holy
father, Paul III., even sent money to the Protestant Elector of Saxony,
to enable him to resist the emperor, and sent ambassadors to the Turks,
to induce them to break the truce and make war upon Christendom, that
the emperor might be thus embarrassed.
Charles thus found himself, in the midst of his victories, suddenly at a
stand. He could no longer carry on offensive operations, but was
compelled to prepare for defense against the attacks with which he was
threatened on every side.
Again, the kaleidoscope of political combination received a jar, and all
was changed. The King of France died. This so embarrassed the affairs of
the confederation which Francis had organized with so much toil and
care, that Charles availed himself of it to make a sudden and vigorous
march against the Elector of Saxony. He entered his territories with an
army of thirty-three thousand men, and swept all opposition before him.
In a final and desperate battle the troops of the elector were cut to
pieces, and the elector himself, surrounded on all sides, sorely wounded
in the face and covered with blood, was taken prisoner. Charles
disgraced his character by the exhibition of a very ignoble spirit of
revenge. The captive elector, as he was led into the presence of his
conqueror, said--
"Most powerful and gracious emperor, the fortune of war has now rendered
me your prisoner, and I hope to be treated--"
Here the emperor indignantly interrupted him, saying--
"I am _now_ your gracious emperor! Lately you could only vouchsafe me
the title of Charles of Ghent!"
Then turning abruptly upon his heel, he consigned his prisoner to the
custody of one of the Spanish generals. The emperor marched immediately
to Wittemberg, which was distant but a few miles. It was a well
fortified town, and was resolutely defended by Isabella, the wife of the
elector. The emperor, maddened by the resistance, summoned a court
martial, and sentenced the elector to instant death unless he ordered
the surrender of the fortress. He at first refused, and prepared to die.
But the tears of his wife and his family conquered his resolution, and
the city was surrendered. The emperor took from his captive the
electoral dignity, and extorted from him the most cruel concessions as
the ransom for his life. Without a murmur he surrendered wealth, power
and rank, but neither entreaties nor menaces could induce him in a
single point to abjure his Christian faith.
Charles now entered Wittemberg in triumph. The great reformer had just
died. The emperor visited the grave of Luther, and when urged to
dishonor his remains, replied--
"I war not with the dead, but with the living. Let him repose in peace;
he is already before his Judge."
The Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, now the only member of the Protestant
league remaining in arms, was in a condition utterly hopeless, and was
compelled to make an unconditional submission.
The landgrave, ruined in fortune, and crushed in spirit, was led a
captive into the imperial camp at Halle, in Saxony, the 19th of June,
1547. He knelt before the throne, and made an humble confession of his
crime in resisting the emperor; he resigned himself and all his
dominions to the clemency of his sovereign. As he rose to kiss the hand
of the emperor, Charles turned contemptuously from him and ordered him
to be conveyed to one of the apartments of the palace as a prisoner.
Most ignobly the emperor led his two illustrious captives, the Elector
of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, as captives from city to
city, exhibiting them as proofs of his triumph, and as a warning to all
others to avoid their fate. Very strong jealousies had now sprung up
between the emperor and the pope, and they could not cooperate. The
emperor, consequently, undertook to settle the religious differences
himself. He caused twenty-six articles to be drawn up as the basis of
pacification, which he wished both the Catholics and the Protestants to
sign. The pope was indignant, and the Catholics were disgusted with this
interference of the emperor in the faith of the Church, a matter which
in their view belonged exclusively to the pope and the councils which he
might convene.
The emperor, however, resolutely persevered in the endeavor to compel
the Protestants to subscribe to his articles, and punished severely
those who refused to do so. In his Burgundian provinces he endeavored to
establish the inquisition, that all heresy might be nipped in the bud.
In his zeal he quite outstripped the pope. As Julius III. had now
ascended the pontifical throne, Charles, fearful that he might be too
liberal in his policy towards the reformers, and might make too many
concessions, extorted from him the promise that he would not introduce
any reformation in the Church without consulting him and obtaining his
consent. Thus the pope himself became but one of the dependents of
Charles V., and all the corruptions of the Church were sustained by the
imperial arm. He then, through the submissive pope, summoned a council
of Catholic divines to meet at Trent. He had arranged in his own mind
the decrees which they were to issue, and had entered into a treaty with
the new King of France, Henry II., by which the French monarch agreed,
with all the military force of his kingdom, to maintain the decrees of
the council of Trent, whatever they might be.
The emperor had now apparently attained all his ends. He had crushed the
Protestant league, vanquished the Protestant princes, subjected the pope
to his will, arranged religious matters according to his views, and had
now assembled a subservient council to ratify and confirm all he had
done. But with this success he had become arrogant, implacable and
cruel. His friends had become alienated and his enemies exasperated.
Even the most rigorous Catholics were alarmed at his assumptions, and
the pope was humiliated by his haughty bearing.
Charles assembled a diet of the States of the empire at Augsburg, the
26th of July, 1550. He entered the city with the pomp and the pride of a
conqueror, and with such an array of military force as to awe the States
into compliance with his wishes. He then demanded of all the States of
the empire an agreement that they would enforce, in all their dominions
the decrees of the council of Trent, which council was soon to be
convened. There is sublimity in the energy with which this monarch
moved, step by step, toward the accomplishment of his plans. He seemed
to leave no chance for failure. The members of the diet were as
obsequious as spaniels to their imperious master, and watched his
countenance to learn when they were to say yes, and when no.
In one thing only he failed. He wished to have his son Philip elected as
his successor on the imperial throne. His brother Ferdinand opposed him
in this ambitious plan, and thus emboldened the diet to declare that
while the emperor was living it was illegal to choose his successor, as
it tended to render the imperial crown hereditary. The emperor,
sagacious as he was domineering, waived the prosecution of his plan for
the present, preparing to resume it when he had punished and paralyzed
those who opposed.
The emperor had deposed Frederic the Elector of Saxony, and placed over
his dominions, Maurice, a nephew of the deposed elector. Maurice had
married a daughter of the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel. He was a man of
commanding abilities, and as shrewd, sagacious and ambitious as the
emperor himself. He had been strongly inclined to the Lutheran
doctrines, but had been bought over to espouse the cause of Charles V.
by the brilliant offer of the territories of Saxony. Maurice, as he saw
blow after blow falling upon his former friends; one prince after
another ejected from his estates, Protestantism crushed, and finally his
own uncle and his wife's father led about to grace the triumph of the
conqueror; as he saw the vast power to which the emperor had attained,
and that the liberties of the German empire were in entire subjection to
his will, his pride was wounded, his patriotism aroused, and his
Protestant sympathies revived. Maurice, meeting Charles V. on the field
of intrigue, was Greek meeting Greek.
Maurice now began with great guile and profound sagacity to plot against
the despotic emperor. Two circumstances essentially aided him. Charles
coveted the dukedoms of Parma and Placentia in Italy, and the Duke
Ottavia had been deposed. He rallied his subjects and succeeded in
uniting France on his side, for Henry II. was alarmed at the
encroachments the emperor was making in Italy. A very fierce war
instantly blazed forth, the Duke of Parma and Henry II. on one side, the
pope and the emperor on the other. At the same time the Turks, under the
leadership of the Sultan Solyman himself, were organizing a formidable
force for the invasion of Hungary, which invasion would require all the
energies of Ferdinand, with all the forces he could raise in Austria,
Hungary and Bohemia to repel.
Next to Hungary and Bohemia, Saxony was perhaps the most powerful State
of the Germanic confederacy. The emperor placed full reliance upon
Maurice, and the Protestants in their despair would have thought of him
as the very last to come to their aid; for he had marched vigorously in
the armies of the emperor to crush the Protestants, and was occupying
the territories of their most able and steadfast friend. Secretly,
Maurice made proposals to all the leading Protestant princes of the
empire, and having made every thing ready for an outbreak, he entered
into a treaty with the King of France, who promised large subsidies and
an efficient military force.
Maurice conducted these intrigues with such consummate skill that the
emperor had not the slightest suspicion of the storm which was
gathering. Every thing being matured, early in April, 1552, Maurice
suddenly appeared before the gates of Augsburg with an army of
twenty-five thousand men. At the same time he issued a declaration that
he had taken up arms to prevent the destruction of the Protestant
religion, to defend the liberties of Germany which the emperor had
infringed, and to rescue his relatives from their long and unjust
imprisonment. The King of France and other princes issued similar
declarations. The smothered disaffection with the emperor instantly
blazed forth all over the German empire. The cause of Maurice was
extremely popular. The Protestants in a mass, and many others, flocked
to his standard. As by magic and in a day, all was changed. The imperial
towns Augsburg, Nuremberg and others, threw open their gates joyfully to
Maurice. Whole provinces rushed to his standard. He was everywhere
received as the guardian of civil and religious liberty. The ejected
Protestant rulers and magistrates were reinstated, the Protestant
churches opened, the Protestant preachers restored. In one month the
Protestant party was predominant in the German empire, and the Catholic
party either neutral or secretly favoring one who was humbling that
haughty emperor whom even the Catholics had begun to fear. The prelates
who were assembling at Trent, alarmed by so sudden and astounding a
revolution, dissolved the assembly and hastened to their homes.
The emperor was at Innspruck seated in his arm chair, with his limbs
bandaged in flannel, enfeebled and suffering from a severe attack of the
gout, when the intelligence of this sudden and overwhelming reverse
reached him. He was astonished and utterly confounded. In weakness and
pain, unable to leave his couch, with his treasury exhausted, his armies
widely scattered, and so pressed by their foes that they could not be
concentrated from their wide dispersion, there was nothing left for him
but to endeavor to beguile Maurice into a truce. But Maurice was as much
at home in all the arts of cunning as the emperor, and instead of being
beguiled, contrived to entrap his antagonist. This was a new and a very
salutary experience for Charles. It is a very novel sensation for a
successful rogue to be the dupe of roguery.
Maurice pressed on, his army gathering force at every step. He entered
the Tyrol, swept through all its valleys, took possession of all its
castles and its sublime fastnesses, and the blasts of his bugles
reverberated among the cliffs of the Alps, ever sounding the charge and
announcing victory, never signaling a defeat. The emperor was reduced to
the terrible humiliation of saving himself from capture only by flight.
The emperor could hardly credit his senses when told that his conquering
foes were within two days' march of Innspruck, and that a squadron of
horse might at any hour appear and cut off his retreat. It was in the
night when these appalling tidings were brought to him. The tortures of
the gout would not allow him to mount on horseback, neither could he
bear the jolting in a carriage over the rough roads. It was a dark and
stormy night, the 20th of May, 1552. The rain fell in torrents, and the
wind howled through the fir-trees and around the crags of the Alps. Some
attendants wrapped the monarch in blankets, took him out into the
court-yard of the palace, and placed him in a litter. Attendants led the
way with lanterns, and thus, through the inundated and storm-swept
defiles of the mountains, they fled with their helpless sovereign
through the long hours of the tempestuous night, not daring to stop one
moment lest they should hear behind them the clatter of the iron hoofs
of their pursuers. What a change for one short month to produce! What a
comment upon earthly grandeur! It is well for man in the hour of most
exultant prosperity to be humble. He knows not how soon he may fall.
Instructive indeed is the apostrophe of Cardinal Wolsey, illustrated as
the truth he utters is by almost every page of history:
"This is the state of man; to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms,
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost;
And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a ripening--nips his root,
And then he falls as I do."
The fugitive emperor did not venture to stop for refreshment or repose
until he had reached the strong town of Villach in Carinthia, nearly one
hundred and fifty miles west of Innspruck. The troops of Maurice soon
entered the city which the emperor had abandoned, and the imperial
palace was surrendered to pillage. Heroic courage, indomitable
perseverance always commands respect. These are great and noble
qualities, though they may be exerted in a bad cause. The will of
Charles was unconquerable. In these hours of disaster, tortured with
pain, driven from his palace, deserted by his allies, impoverished, and
borne upon his litter in humiliating flight before his foes, he was just
as determined to enforce his plans as in the most brilliant hour of
victory.
He sent his brother Ferdinand and other ambassadors to Passau to meet
Maurice, and mediate for a settlement of the difficulties. Maurice now
had no need of diplomacy. His demands were simple and reasonable. They
were, that the emperor should liberate his father-in-law from captivity,
tolerate the Protestant religion, and grant to the German States their
accustomed liberty. But the emperor would not yield a single point.
Though his brother Ferdinand urged him to yield, though his Catholic
ambassadors intreated him to yield, though they declared that if he did
not they should be compelled to abandon his cause and make the best
terms for themselves with the conqueror that they could, still nothing
could bend his inflexible will, and the armies, after the lull of a few
days, were again in motion. The despotism of the emperor we abhor; but
his indomitable perseverance and unconquerable energy are worthy of all
admiration and imitation. Had they but been exerted in a good cause!