alas! is great on every side,) their triumphing will be short. In such circumstances, conscious uprightness is a great support.-Some, I trust, have been enlightened by means of our instructions-which would have been more unexceptionable, but for the confusions of the times.I have thus written briefly to you, to relieve your anxiety for me... Events, we may be assured, will be different from what either one party or the other anticipates."1 Melancthon had, no doubt, numbers throughout reformed Germany to sympathise with him in these pious sentiments, and in his sighs and prayers for the church-which, as his numerous epistles testify, he was never weary of offering: and such persons were the true "chariots and horsemen" of their Israel,' who did more for the cause in which they were embarked, than the troops of the elector and the landgrave could effect; and, when the latter were defeated and dispersed, these persons still prevailed to bring about happy events, "different from what had been anticipated.by either party." A. D. 1546. The actual commencement of hostilities on Parties in the part of the emperor was an event calculated the War. to try the principle and steadiness of all professed protestants: and accordingly, while it displayed the firmness of the elector of Saxony and many chief members of the league, it detected the weakness of some, and the wickedness of others, who still avowed attachment to the protestant cause. The emperor's protestations that he made not war on account of religion, but only to put down insubordination and to punish rebellion, imposed upon some, and 'Mel. Epist. iv. 703. 22 Kings ii. 12. CHAP. X. 1 furnished to others, who ought, upon every principle of honour and religion, to have appeared on the other side, a pretext for attaching themselves to him. Among those who weakly took part with the emperor we may reckon John of Brandenburg, Eric of Brunswick, and George of Mecklenburg. Ulric of Würtemberg and the city of Frankfort were also, at an early period, so far overawed as to join them; while Joachim elector of Brandenburg and Frederic elector Palatine professed to stand neuter; and Maurice of Saxony, having, with deliberate and too successful villainy, formed the plan of possessing himself, by means of these troubles, of the dominions and dignities of the elector, avowed his reliance on the emperor's word for the safety of religion, and secretly entered into a treaty to support him in the contest.2 In the archbishop of Cologne, an aged ecclesiastic, who, though a sincere protestant, had never joined the league, and was now also under sentence of deposition for his religion, the observance of neutrality, in obedience to the emperor's command, might well be excused.-On the other part, besides the elector of Saxony and the landgrave of Hesse, with the brother and the eldest son of the former; Philip duke of Brunswick-Calenberg and his four sons, Francis duke of Lunenburg, Wolfgang prince of Anhalt, Christopher count Henneberg, and Albert count Mansfeld openly ranged themselves. The city of Strasburg also did itself immortal honour by the part it acted, both at the commencement of the war, and after its conclusion.5 To it, in common with the 3 1 Vol. i. 261. • Robertson, iii. 353, 354. 3 Vol. i. 385. other free cities in the protestant interest, the emperor addressed an insidious letter, professing to separate their cause from that of the princes of the same persuasion; representing that there existed a conspiracy against their liberties and those of Germany; and exhorting them to join him in putting down those traitorous persons, who were their common enemies. The senate replied in dutiful but decided terms, advocating the cause of the reformation, asserting the fidelity of the princes, (of which the emperor, they said, had had large experience in the wars against the Turks,) and insisting that he had been taught to think injuriously of them by the pope and his adherents-the real authors of the present counsels; and imploring him to pause and reflect before he involved Germany in all the horrors of civil war.1 A. D. 1546. After all the artifice practised and the secret Conduct of preparations made by the emperor, the zeal the War. of the protestants, when they saw war to be inevitable, anticipated him. They were first ready, and in great force, 2 to take the field: and, had it not been for the hesitation with which men, and especially conscientious men, strike the first blow in the civil war, it seems not improbable that they might have stormed his August, camp at Ingoldstadt, and dispersed his halfcollected army at the very outset.3 Before this also Schertel, a soldier of fortune, and an ancestor of the historian Seckendorf, at the head of some troops raised by the city of Augsburg, had the prospect of cutting off, at Inspruck, mention Strasburg as a city which yielded a prompt and weak submission. Sleid. 376, 378-390. * 70,000 foot, and 15,000 horse. 3 Thuanus, i. 154. CHAP. Invasion of Maurice. the pope's forces on their way to join the emperor: but he was timidly or injudiciously recalled by the elector and the landgrave. These were only specimens of the manner in which the whole of the war was misconducted, in great measure in consequence of that divided and coordinate authority vested in two chiefs, and those of such different characters, which has ever been found fatal to military operations. The great object pursued by the emperor was to decline a battle, and wearying out the patience of the confederates, to induce them to separate; when his victory over each in succession would be sure. And in this design he eventually succeeded by the aid of Maurice of Saxony. When the elector quitted his own country Saxony by to join the confederates, he committed his dominions to the protection of that prince, his next neighbour and his near relative, who had received great obligations from him, and professed, in common with himself, a zeal for the protestant faith and Maurice, who had concealed his engagements to the emperor, with an artful appearance of friendship, undertook the charge. No sooner, however, had the emperor informally and illegally put the elector and the landgrave to the ban of the empire, than he sent Maurice a copy of his 1 "6 2 They will soon be in difficulties," said he, " for want of two things, money and counsel." Joac. Camerar. in Freher's Germ. Rer. Script. iii. 408. It was an express article of the capitulation which Charles had ratified before he was admitted to the imperial dignity, that he should put no one to the ban of the empire, who had not been previously condemned by the diet or the imperial chamber." Coxe, House of Austria, i. 453. A. D. 1546. decree, and required him, on pain of incurring similar penalties, to seize, and retain in his hands, the forfeited estates of the elector; and Maurice, with whom it is probable the whole plan had been previously concerted, did not scruple, after some formalities observed for a decent shew of reluctance, to march into his kinsman's territories, and, with aid received from Ferdinand king of the Romans, to attack November. and defeat his troops, and to take all things under his own administration. testant This diversion had the desired effect. The Separation elector indignant at such treachery, and afflicted of the proat the accounts which he received of the suf- army. ferings endured by his subjects from licentious Hungarian soldiers, accustomed to the merciless modes of warfare practised against the Turks, became impatient to return home. In consequence, about the end of the year, the army of the confederates divided, and the greater part returned into their own countries under their respective leaders. The elector indeed succeeded in immediately rescuing his territories from the invaders, and in stripping Maurice for a time of nearly all his own dominions: but the separation of the army was the ruin of the cause. The emperor availed himself to the utmost of the advantage given him, and, with the exception of the elector and the landgrave, almost all the protestant princes and states were compelled to submit, to implore pardon in the most humiliating manner, and to pay heavy fines for the part they had taken. They were not allowed to make any stipulation with regard to their religion: indeed the subject was not per4to. Yet he now took upon him to do it by his own proclamation alone. Robertson, iii. 339, 340, 1547. |