1542]

Attack upon Brunswick

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some of the nobles of Meissen, a part of Saxony which was mainly Albertine but to some extent under Ernestine influence. The Catholic Bishop of Meissen naturally sided with Maurice, who had succeeded to his father in 1541, rather than with John Frederick. In 1542 he demurred to the Elector's demand for levies for the Turkish war, and John Frederick without consulting his cousin marched his troops. into Wurzen, the property of a collegiate chapter founded by the Bishops of Meissen, and conveniently situated for incorporation in the Elector's dominions. This inflamed the Albertine nobility, and Maurice began to arm. The Landgrave and Luther intervened; a compromise was patched up, and Wurzen was partitioned; but a root of bitterness remained between the cousins, which bore fruit in later years.

One aggression was promptly followed by another. Among the temporal Catholic Princes none of note were left except the Dukes of Bavaria and Duke Henry of Brunswick. Duke Henry (Luther's "böser Heinz") was described as the "greatest Papist in all Germany," and he was left alone in the north to face the Schmalkaldic League. He had long been at enmity with Philip of Hesse, and his cruelty towards his wife was almost as great a scandal as the Landgrave's bigamy. In his zeal for his faith or for his house he pronounced Charles' suspension of the verdicts of the Reichskammergericht against Brunswick and Goslar to be contrary to the laws of the Empire, and despite the disapprobation of Ferdinand, Granvelle, and Albrecht of Mainz, he proceeded to attack the two towns. The Schmalkaldic League at once armed in their defence; but not satisfied with this the Elector and the Landgrave overran Henry's duchy, Wolfenbüttel alone offering serious resistance (August, 1542). The Duke's territories were sequestered by the League and evangelised by Bugenhagen. Ferdinand had to content himself with the League's assurance that it would carry the war no farther, and with the pretence that it had been waged in defence of Charles' suspending powers. But the sort of respect the Lutherans were willing to pay the imperial authorities was shown by their attitude towards the Kammergericht. They obtained admittance to it early in 1542, and thereupon declined to tolerate the presence of any clerical colleagues; but, failing to secure a majority on it, they declared in December that it had no jurisdiction over them or their allies. Encouraged perhaps by the result of the Brunswick war, Duke William of Cleves now abandoned his Erasmian compromise and adopted Lutheranism undefiled. Even more important was the simultaneous conversion of Hermann von Wied, Archbishop and Elector of Cologne, whose territories were surrounded on all sides by the composite duchy of Cleves-Jülich-Berg. Bishop Hermann had held. the see since 1515; he had corresponded with Erasmus, and after 1536 had endeavoured to reform the worst practical abuses in his diocese. Gropper's treatise, written to reconcile justification by faith with Catholic doctrine, probably indicates the direction in which the Archbishop's mind

244

Annexation of Gelders

[1543

was moving. He next began to correspond with Bucer, who with his connivance commenced preaching at Bonn in 1542. Bucer was followed by Melanchthon, who completed the work of conversion. Franz von Waldeck, Bishop of Münster, Minden, and Osnabrück, was inclined to follow his metropolitan's lead, and another important convert was Count Otto Henry, nephew, and eventually successor, of the Elector Palatine. The Emperor's fate trembled in the balance. Arrayed against him were France, Turkey, the Pope, Sweden, Denmark, Scotland, Gelders, and Cleves; he could only look for assistance from Henry VIII and the Lutherans. Henry became his ally in hope of reducing Scotland, but into which scale would the German sword be cast? Francis I was holding out all sorts of inducements, and his proposals were backed by Strassburg and Calvin. But the Princes were perhaps not bold enough, perhaps not bad enough, to seize the opportunity of effecting their sovereign's ruin. Francis was allied to both Turks and Pope; Charles was for once maintaining the national cause. To motives of patriotism was added the private agreement between Charles and the Landgrave. The Habsburgs were lavishing all their wiles on Philip; and Philip, in spite of Bucer's warnings and in spite of his own real convictions, allowed himself to be duped. He opposed the admission of Denmark, Sweden, and Cleves into the Schmalkaldic League, and Duke William was thus left to his fate. With genuine insight Charles made the reduction of Gelders his first object. On August 22, 1543, he arrived before Duren, the principal stronghold in Gelders; on the 24th it was battered from break of day till 2 p.m., and then his Spanish and Italian troops took it by storm. Jülich, Roermonde, and Orkelen fell in the next few days, and on September 6 Duke William knelt before Charles at Venloo. Gelders and Zutphen were annexed to the Emperor's hereditary States, passed from him to Philip II, and thus were in effect severed from the Empire; Duke William repudiated his French bride and his heresy, and later (1546) was married to Maria, Ferdinand's daughter. The Reformation in neighbouring Cologne was checked, and during the winter Bucer declared that the subjection of Germany was inevitable and imminent.

Such was not the view taken by German Princes. Charles still needed their help to deal with France and the Turks, and they allowed themselves to be bought. Their price was heavy, but the Emperor was willing to pay it, knowing that if he succeeded he would get his money back with plenty of interest. At the Diet of Speier in February, 1544, his words were smooth and his promises ample. In fact he almost abandoned the Catholic position by committing himself to the pledge. of a national settlement of the religious question whether the Pope liked it or not, and by confirming the suspension of all processes against the Protestants and their possession of the goods of the Church. In return the Lutheran Princes contributed some meagre levies for the French

1544]

Peace of Crépy

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and Turkish wars. Their real concession was abstention from taking part with the Emperor's enemies, while Charles and Henry VIII invaded the French King's dominions. This time it was John Frederick who made private terms with the Habsburgs without his colleagues' knowledge. In return for an imperial guarantee of the Cleves succession to his wife, the sister of Duke William, in case William's line died out, the Elector of Saxony recognised Ferdinand as Roman King; and the compact was to be sealed by the marriage of John Frederick's son to one of Ferdinand's daughters. Other members of the hostile coalition were detached by the same skilful play upon particularist interests. Gustavus of Sweden and Frederick of Denmark had joined it from fear lest Charles should enforce the claims of his niece Dorothea (daughter of Christian II and Isabella), and her husband, Count Frederick of the Palatinate, to both those kingdoms. These were now abandoned and Francis I was left without allies except the Pope and the Sultan.

The campaign opened in 1544 with a French victory at Ceresole, but the tables were turned in the north. Aided by Lutheran troops Charles captured St Dizier while Henry VIII laid siege to Boulogne. In September the Emperor was almost within sight of the walls of Paris, when suddenly on the 18th he signed the preliminaries of the Peace of Crépy. Many and ingenious were the reasons alleged before the world. and to his ally of England. In reality there had been a race between the two as to which should make peace first and leave the other in the grip of the enemy. Had Henry won he might have conquered Scotland, and there might have been no Schmalkaldic war. But Charles had proved the nimbler; it was he and not Henry who was left free to deliver his blows in another direction. At the cost of liberal terms to his foe he had duped one of the allies who had helped him to victory; it remains to recount the fate which befell the other.

CHAPTER VIII

RELIGIOUS WAR IN GERMANY

CHARLES V achieved a masterpiece of unscrupulous statecraft when he extricated himself from his war with France and left his English ally entangled in its toils. Cogent military reasons for the peace concluded at Crépy could doubtless be alleged; the position of the imperial army in the heart of France was more imposing than secure, and the disasters of the retreat from Marseilles in 1524 might have been repeated in Champagne or Picardy. But there were deeper motives at work; however promising the military situation might have been, no prosecution of the war could have been attended with greater advantages than was its conclusion at that juncture. Charles was left with a freer hand to deal with Germany than he had ever had before. He had been more brilliantly victorious in 1530, but England and France were then at peace, and at liberty to harass him with underhand intrigues. Now, they were anxious suitors for his favour, ready, instead of reluctant, to purchase his support against each other by furthering the Emperor's efforts to cope with his remaining difficulties. These were now three, Turkish, Lutheran, and papal; with the two latter he must deal to some extent simultaneously; the Turkish problem he was enabled by the friendly offices of Francis I to postpone.

Few historical points are so hard to determine as Charles' real intentions with respect to the religious situation in Germany in 1545. Was it to be peace or was it to be war? We have much of the Emperor's correspondence to guide us, but its help is by no means. decisive. Charles was constitutionally hesitating; it was his habit to dally with rival schemes until circumstances compelled a choice. On the eve of war he was still weighing the merits of peace, and it was always possible that an unexpected development in any one of his heterogeneous realms might disturb all past calculations. Yet there can be little doubt as to Charles' ultimate aim in 1545 or at any other date. The original dynastic objects of his policy had been achieved. with wonderful success, and the subordinate but still powerful motive of religion came more prominently into action. His religious ideas

1526-45]

Religious policy of Charles V

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were comparatively simple; he adhered to medieval Catholicism because he could comprehend no other creed and conceive of no other form of ecclesiastical polity. As well let there be two Emperors as two independent standards of faith. The Church like the Empire must be one and indivisible, and he must be the sovereign of the one and the protector of the other.

With these ideas it was impossible for Charles even to contemplate a permanent toleration of schism or heresy. His concessions to the Lutherans from 1526 to 1544 were not made with any such intention; they were simply payments extorted from Charles by necessity for indispensable services to be rendered against the Turks and the French; they were all provisional and were limited in time to the meeting of a General Council. That they sprang from necessity and not from any reluctance of Charles to persecute is proved by his conduct in other lands than Germany. He did not attempt a policy of toleration or comprehension in Spain or in the Netherlands; there his methods were the Inquisition and the stake. Wherever he had the power to persecute he persecuted; he abstained in Germany only because he had no other choice and because he thought his abstention was not for ever; and in the end the most powerful motive for his abdication was his desire to escape the necessity of countenancing permanent schism.

Throughout, Charles was steadfast to the idea of Catholic unity; but his determination to enforce it at the cost of war was the growth of time and the result of the gradual course of events. He is credited with a desire to effect his end by the method of comprehension; but room for the Lutherans in the Catholic Church was to be found not so much by widening the portals of the Church as by narrowing Lutheran doctrine, by the partial submission of the Lutherans and not by the surrender of current Catholicism. It soon became obvious that the Lutherans would never be brought to the point of voluntary submission; and so early as 1531 the Emperor would have resorted to persecution if he had had the means. But from persecution to war was a long step, and he would have shrunk from war at that date even if it had been in his power to wage it. Before 1545, however, this reluctance had been removed. The logic of facts had proved that it was a death-struggle in Germany between the medieval Church and Empire on the one hand and Protestant territorialism on the other. The fault was partly the Emperor's; by making himself the champion of the old religion he had forced an alliance between the anti-Catholic Reformers and the antiimperial Princes; and from 1532 onwards territorial and Protestant principles had made vast strides at the expense of Catholicism and the Empire. It is not necessary, nor is it possible, to determine which advance alarmed Charles most; both were equally fatal to the position which he had adopted. The threatened secularisation of the ecclesiastical electorates would have converted Germany from a Catholic monarchy