218

Turkish invasion repelled

[1532

reckoned one of the anti-Habsburg powers in Europe; its agents sought alliance with France, England, Denmark, and Venice; and it began to regard itself as a League not merely for self-defence within the Empire, but for the furtherance of the Protestant cause all over Europe. Nor were its aims exclusively religious; theology merged into politics, and Protestantism sometimes laboured under the suspicion of being merely anti-imperialism. France and Venice had few points in common with Luther; and Philip of Hesse's plan to utilise a Turkish invasion for the restoration of Ulrich of Württemberg outraged patriotic sentiment. On the Catholic side Bavarian objects were no less selfish; and the Wittelsbachs endeavoured to undermine Ferdinand's supports against the Turk in Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary. In both professedly religious camps there was political double-dealing; Hesse was ready to side with either Austria or Bavaria; while the Wittelsbachs fomented Charles' hostility to the Lutherans and denounced his concessions as treason to the faith, at the same time that they were hand in glove with Hesse for an attack on the Habsburg power.

These extreme and unpatriotic schemes were defeated by a tacit understanding between Catholic and Protestant moderates; and Germany presented a fairly united front to its infidel foe. Saxony and cities like Ulm and Nürnberg convinced Charles that the coming of the Turk would be used for no sectional purposes; and the Emperor in return promised the Lutherans at least a temporary peace. He turned a deaf ear to the demands at the Diet of Ratisbon (April, 1532) for the execution of the Augsburg Recess, while Luther denounced the claims of his forward friends to toleration for all future Protestants even in Catholic territories as impossible and unreasonable. At Nürnberg (July 23, 1532) an agreement was reached by which all suits against the Protestants before the Reichskammergericht were quashed and they were guaranteed peace until the next Diet or a General Council. The understanding was to be kept secret for fear of offending the Catholics, but it sufficed to open to Charles the armouries of the Protestant cities, and Nürnberg sent double its quota to serve in the Turkish campaign.

Ferdinand had in vain sought to stave off the attack by which Solyman hoped to revenge his defeat at Vienna. He offered first to pay tribute for Hungary, and then to cede it to Zapolya on condition that it return to the Habsburgs on Zapolya's death. These terms were rejected with scorn, and on April 26 the Sultan commenced his march. His army was reckoned at a quarter of a million men, the stereotyped estimate of Turkish invading forces, but half of these were non-combatants; the Emperor's troops did not exceed eighty thousand, but they were well equipped and eager for the fray. The same enthusiasm was not conspicuous in the Turkish ranks; they were foiled by the heroic resistance of Güns (August 7-28) and made no serious attempt either to take Vienna or to come to close quarters with the imperial forces; in

1530-3]

Failure of Charles' intervention

219

September they commenced their retreat through Carinthia and Croatia, which they ravaged on their way.

The precipitate withdrawal of the Turks was followed by an equally sudden abandonment of the campaign by Charles V. After all his brave words it was a shock to his friends and admirers when he made no effort to seize the fruits of victory and recover Hungary for his brother; for a vigorous prosecution of the war in 1532 might have restored to Christendom lands which remained under Turkish rule for nearly two centuries longer. There are explanations enough for his course; the German levies refused to pass the imperial frontiers, regarding self-defence as the limit of their duty; the Spaniards and Italians confined their efforts mainly to pillaging German villages; and Cranmer, who accompanied Charles' Court, describes how they spread greater desolation than the Turks themselves and how the peasants in revenge fell upon and slew the Emperor's troops whenever opportunity offered; so that delay in disbanding his army might have fanned the enmity between Charles' German and Spanish subjects into war. But other reasons accounted for the Emperor's departure from Germany, which was once more sacrificed to the exigencies of Charles' cosmopolitan interests. The Pope, irritated alike by the Emperor's bestowal of Modena and Reggio on the Duke of Ferrara, and by his persistence in demanding a General Council, was proposing to marry his niece Catharine de' Medici to Henry, Duke of Orleans; and a union between Clement and Francis I would again have threatened Charles' position in Italy. He regarded two objects as then of transcendent importance, the reconciliation of the Pope and the convocation of a General Council. They were quite incompatible, yet to them Charles sacrificed the chance of regaining Hungary.

The result can only be described as a comprehensive failure. The Emperor's interviews with Clement in February, 1533, did not prevent the Pope's alliance with France, nor his sanction of Cranmer's appointment to the see of Canterbury, which enabled Henry VIII to complete his divorce from Catharine of Aragon. Charles' two years' stay in Germany had effected little; Ferdinand, indeed, was King of the Romans but his influence was less than before, while the power of the Protestants had been greatly increased. The Emperor had crossed the Alps in the spring of 1530 with a record of almost unbroken success; he recrossed them in the autumn of 1532 having added a list of failures; the German labour had proved herculean, but Charles had proved no Hercules. For another decade Germany was left to fight out its own political and religious quarrels with little help or hindrance from its sovereign. His intervention in 1530-2 had brought peace to no one; the Protestants had little security against the attacks of the Reichskummergericht; the Catholics were unable to prevent the progress of heresy; and while Charles was journeying farther and farther away from Germany the

220 Scheme to restore Ulrich in Württemberg

[1532-4

Habsburg authority in the Empire was threatened with one of the most serious checks it experienced.

The restoration of Duke Ulrich of Württemberg was not merely a favourite design of the Protestants for the extension of the Reformation in South Germany; it was regarded by German Catholic Princes and by the Emperor's foreign foes as an invaluable means of undermining the Habsburg power. It is even believed that Clement VII himself in his anger at Charles' persistent demand for a General Council, discussed the execution of this plan at his interview with Francis I at Marseilles in the autumn of 1533. At any rate the French King went from Marseilles to Bar-le-duc, where in January, 1534, he agreed with Philip of Hesse to give the enterprise extensive financial support, cloaked under a fictitious sale of Montbéliard (the property of Ulrich) to the French King. The moment was opportune. Ferdinand was busy in Bohemia and Hungary; the outbreak of the Anabaptist revolution gave Philip of Hesse an excuse for arming; and the decrepitude of the Swabian League neutralised the force by which Württemberg had been won and maintained for the Austrian House. Religious divisions had impaired the harmony of the League, and political jealousies had transformed it from a willing tool of the Habsburgs into an almost hostile power. In November, 1532, the Electors of Trier and the Palatinate and Philip of Hesse had agreed to refuse a renewal of the League; and in May, 1533, some of its most important city members, Ulm, Nürnberg, and Augsburg, formed a separate alliance for the defence of freedom of conscience. The strictly defensive Catholic confederation established at Halle in ducal Saxony in the following November between the Elector Joachim of Brandenburg, Dukes George of Saxony, Eric and Henry of Brunswick, was neither a match for the Schmalkaldic League, nor had it any interest in the perpetuation of Austrian rule in Württemberg. Joachim told Philip that Ferdinand would get no help from the Electors; and his words proved true indeed. The Archbishops of Mainz and Trier observed a strict neutrality; the Elector Palatine's promise of aid was delusive; while the Catholic bishop of Münster and Duke Henry of Brunswick, possibly on the understanding that Philip would assist them to put down the Münster Anabaptists, consented to help him in Württemberg, and assurances of support were also forthcoming from Henry VIII, Christian III of Denmark, and Zapolya.

In 1532 Ulrich's son Christopher, alarmed at the prospect of being carried off to Spain, escaped from the Emperor's Court during the Turkish campaign, and in the following year appeared at a meeting of the Swabian League at Augsburg. His cause was warmly advocated by a French envoy and almost unanimously approved by the League. Bavaria, indeed, wished to restore Christopher, who had been educated as a Catholic, instead of his father, a strenuous Protestant, and on this score quarrelled with Philip of Hesse. But French aid enabled Philip

1534]

Peace of Cadan

221

to dispense with Bavarian assistance. In April, 1534, he mustered a well-equipped army of 20,000 foot and 4000 horse, and on the 12th a manifesto was issued to the people of Württemberg, who, disgusted with Ferdinand's rule, were eager to rise on Ulrich's behalf. It was in vain that Luther and Melanchthon prophesied woe for this contempt of their doctrine of passive obedience. Philip knew the feebleness of the foe; Ferdinand's appeals to Charles had met with a cold response, and his lieutenant in Württemberg, Count Philip of the Palatinate, could hardly raise 9000 foot and 400 horse. With this little army he waited at Lauffen, where on May 12-13 an encounter, which can scarcely be called a battle, was decided against him, mainly by the excellence of the Hessian horse and artillery. Before the end of June the whole of Württemberg had been overrun by the invaders, and Luther had discerned the hand of God in the victors' triumph.

Nor was there any hope of retrieving the disaster; rather, Ferdinand dreaded lest Philip should with the help of the Anabaptists raise a general insurrection against the Habsburgs, and seize the imperial crown for himself, the Dauphin of France, or Duke William of Bavaria. Francis I regarded Württemberg as only a beginning, and was urging Philip on to fresh conquests, which would have helped him in his impending war with Charles. But the German Princes were content with securing their immediate objects without becoming the cat's-paw of France, and peace was made with Ferdinand at Cadan on June 29. Ulrich was restored to Württemberg, but Ferdinand's pride was to some extent saved by the provision that the duchy was to be held as a fief of Austria - without however impairing its imperial status and should pass to the Habsburgs in the default of male heirs in Ulrich's line; at the same time Ferdinand withdrew his original stipulation that the Reformation should not be established in Württemberg.

The Protestants, however, were bent upon more than a local victory for their faith, and they employed their advantage over Ferdinand to render more secure their general position in Germany. The great defect in the Nürnberg Peace of 1532 was the absence of any definition of the "religious cases" with which the Reichskammergericht was prohibited from dealing. When the Court appealed to Charles on the point, he replied that it was their business to determine what was, and what was not, a "religious" suit; and as the Court was composed of Catholics it naturally asserted its jurisdiction in all suits about ecclesiastical property. But secularisation of Church property was the financial basis of the reformed Churches, and by this time was also one of the main financial supports of Lutheran States. If they could be attacked on this ground the Peace of Nürnberg was of little value to them; and they grew more and more exasperated as the Kammergericht proceeded to condemn cities and Princes such as Strassburg, and Nürnberg, Duke Ernest of Lüneburg and Margrave George of Brandenburg. Eventually, on January 30, 1534,

222

Revolutionary movements

the Protestants formally repudiated the Kammergericht as a partisan body, thus rejecting the last existing national institution, for the Reichsregiment was already dissolved. This however afforded them no protection, and in the Peace of Cadan they insisted that Ferdinand should quash all such proceedings of the Chamber as were directed against the members of the Schmalkaldic League. With this demand the King was forced to comply; the only compensation he received was the withdrawal of the Elector of Saxony's opposition to his recognition as King of the Romans. It was no wonder that men declared that Philip of Hesse had done more for the Reformation by his Württemberg enterprise than Luther could do in a thousand books.

Other causes than the weakness of Ferdinand and the disinclination of Lutherans to promote the ends of Francis I moved Catholic and Protestant Princes to the Peace of Cadan. Both alike were threatened by their common foe, the spirit of revolution, which in two different forms had now submerged Catholic Münster and Protestant Lübeck. Of the two phenomena the Anabaptist reign at Münster was the more to be feared and the harder to be explained, for the term by which it is known represents a mere accident of the movement as being its essence. It was not essentially theological, nor is "anabaptist" an adequate or accurate expression of its theological peculiarities. The doctrines of second baptism and adult baptism are inoffensive enough, but attempts to realise the millennium, if successful, would be fatal to most forms of government, and a familiar parallel to the Münster revolutionists may be found in the English Fifth-monarchy men of the seventeenth century. In both cases millenary doctrines were only the outward form in which the revolutionary spirit was made manifest, and the spirit of revolution. is always at bottom the same because it has its roots in the depths of human nature. The motive force which roused the English peasants in 1381 was essentially the same as that which dominated Münster in 1534 and lined the barricades of Paris in 1848. The revolutionist becomes a believer in the brotherhood of man, in the perfectibility of the race, and in the practicability of the millennium. The narrower his experience of men and affairs, the wider his flights of fancy; and revolutionary principles commonly find their most fruitful soil among hand-workers of sedentary occupation and straitened circumstances. In those submerged classes materials for discontent ever abound, awaiting the coincidence of two events to set them free, the flash of vision into better things and the disturbance of the repressive force of law and order. The Reformation produced them both; and the new gospel of Divine justice for the oppressed set the volcanic flood in motion, and strife between Catholic and Protestant authorities gave it a vent.

It was not to be expected that the rigid, respectable condition into which Lutheranism had sunk under the aegis of territorial Princes or even the more elastic religion of Zwingli would satisfy all of those