Albert Frederick Pollard

“ The vigorous city life of the Middle Ages was a thing of the past; in many a German town the representative of the territorial sovereign domineered over the elect of the burghers, interfered in their administration, and even controlled their finances. On the shores of the Baltic the destruction of town independence involved the loss of Germany's maritime power, and not till our own day has this eclipse begun to pass. With the decay of civic life went also the ruin of municipal arts and civilisation, and in its stead there was only the mainly formal culture of the petty German Court. ”

“ Charles had more than once divided the Lutherans; he had now divided the House of Habsburg.
Maurice alone could restore peace to the Empire. His campaign in Hungary had not been successful, and Zapolya's widow with Solyman's help retained control of Transylvania. But Persia once more diverted the Turk's attention from west to east, and gave Maurice and Ferdinand respite to deal with Albrecht and his notorious lieutenant, Wilhelm von Grumbach. Maurice, who had posed as the liberator of Germany from Spanish tyranny, was now to play the part of saviour of society from princely anarchy. ”

“ On that day Augsburg fell before the Princes; the resistance of Nürnberg, Ulm, and Strassburg alone marred the completeness of their victory, for Bavaria and Württemberg were their secret allies. On the 18th Maurice was at Linz. Ferdinand sought to negotiate an armistice, but Maurice refused to date it earlier than May 26, and used the interval to draw his net round Charles. In spite of the words attributed to him, that he had no cage big enough for such a bird, Maurice did not shrink from pressing his illustrious fugitive, and hoped, as he said, to run the fox to earth. ”

“ No age in Germany was more barren of intellectual inspiration than that which succeeded the Peace of Augsburg. The internecine struggles of the reign of Charles V had exhausted all classes in the nation, and an era of universal lassitude followed: intellectually, morally, and politically, Germany was a desert, and it was called Religious Peace. ”

“ Had he been as devoid of religious scruples as Maurice of Saxony or Henry of Navarre, and had he had only German feelings to consult, he would in 1548 have become an ostensible Protestant. But Charles would never have bought a kingdom with a Mass; he preferred to lose a kingdom for a Mass, and, in spite of his enmity with the Papacy, he was bent on making Germany Catholic, and on using his victory to decide questions upon which he had declared the struggle would not be fought. ”

“ His terms were the imperial sanction of his spoliation of the Bishops of Würzburg and Bamberg. "Necessity knows no law," wrote Charles to his sister, as he struck his bargain with the worst law-breaker in Germany and sanctioned his sacrilegious plunder of Bamberg and Würzburg. But Albrecht could not remedy the defects of Alva's generalship, produce harmony between Germans and Spaniards in the Emperor's army, or make any impression on Metz. For a month after his generals had recognised that success was impossible Charles refused to admit his defeat. ”

“ The leading Catholic opponent of the Habsburgs, Duke William III of Bavaria, who ruled the whole duchy since the death of his younger brother Ludwig, was won over to something more than benevolent neutrality by the alliance between Pope and Emperor, by the marriage of his son with Ferdinand's eldest daughter, and a promise of the throne of Bohemia for their descendants if Ferdinand's male issue failed, and by the offer of the coveted hat of the Elector Palatine, if the latter sided openly with Charles' enemies. ”

“ The advance of Henry II had been checked by the valour of Strassburg; Charles had released John Frederick, and with a little help the Ernestine Wettin could raise a storm which would drive his cousin from Saxony; while Hans of Custrin would willingly join in the fray in return for a share of the Albertine lands. Conscious that the nation was not really behind him and that he would lose his all by defeat, Maurice reluctantly yielded to Charles' demand that the religious question should be left to a Diet. ”

“ A proposal for the preservation of peace would naturally meet with much support; but that support was neutralised by the conviction that the League, which Charles proposed to establish on the model of the old Swabian League, was really designed to strengthen the Habsburgs against other Princes and against the nation itself. The League was to embrace the whole of Germany, to be directed by a number of permanent officials who although representative of the various orders would tend to fall under government influence, and to have at its disposal an efficient military force. ”

“ The Reformation of the Empire became incompatible with the Reformation of the Church; and the seal on Charles' failure was set by the Diet of Augsburg, which, besides concluding a truce of religion, removed the Reichskammergericht, the organisation of the Circles, and the preservation of the peace from the sphere of imperial influence. Henceforward Germany was not a kingdom, but a collection of petty States, whose rulers were dominated by mutual jealousies. From the time of Charles V to that of Frederick the Great, Germany ceased to be an international force ”

“ Margrave Albrecht roughly refused to accept the peace; and when Maurice marched to help Ferdinand against the Turks, many of his troops mutinied and took service with Albrecht. The Margrave's disgust was not due to zeal for the Protestant faith, but to the fact that Maurice had played both hands in the game and reduced his partner to a dummy. Fortune seemed to be turning and Charles thought of refusing to ratify the treaty, delayed the liberation of Philip of Hesse, and returned to his schemes for creating a friendly league and securing the Empire for his son. ”

“ The chief actual contribution of the Lutheran Reformation to religious liberty was thus indirect, almost undesigned. It produced the first Church independent of Rome, and prepared the way for countless other religious communities, which, however narrowly they may define their individual formularies, tend by their number to enforce mutual toleration. Private morality has been evolved out of the conflicting interests of an infinite mass of individuals; international law depends upon the multiplicity of independent States ”

“ The Lutherans had for m an v years expressed a desire for a General Council; if it met and they accepted its decrees, unity would be achieved: if they refused to be bound by them, the refusal would be a justification for war and a good ground on which to appeal for help to the Catholic Powers. Secondly, the mere fact of its meeting would annul the concessions which Charles had made; and thirdly, the demand of a free General Council from an obstructive Pope would enhance the illusion under which the Lutherans laboured that Charles was their ally against the Papacy. ”

“ The Lutherans of Lusatia and Silesia and the Utraquists of Bohemia refused to follow Ferdinand in support of Maurice. They were much more anxious to preserve their own lands from Spanish troops; they entered into negotiations with John Frederick, threatened to withdraw their allegiance from Ferdinand, whose hold on the Bohemian throne was at that moment weakened by the death of his wife, the daughter of Wladislav II, and received John Frederick with open arms when he crossed the frontier. North Germany seemed at last to be roused to a sense of danger ”

“ His preachers had declared that Charles was warring on the Gospel, and that whoever abetted him would incur everlasting damnation. To discount these denunciations Maurice produced a declaration from the Emperor that religion should remain untouched where it was established; he represented to his Estates that if he did not execute the ban against John Frederick, Ferdinand would, and that it would be much safer for them politically and theologically that Electoral Saxony should fall into his Protestant hands than into the Catholic hands of Ferdinand. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the other scale a Catholic would place the fact that to the rescue of the ecclesiastical Electorates from the rising tide of Protestantism must be attributed in no small measure the hold which Catholicism still retains on western Germany.
This lame and halting conclusion of nearly forty years' strife has been hailed as the birth of religious liberty; but it is mockery to describe the principle which underlay the Peace of Augsburg as one of toleration. Cujus regio ejus religio is a maxim as fatal to true religion as it is to freedom of conscience ”

“ The Emperor found a refuge at Villach in Carinthia, while Maurice went to the conference at Passau, where his own troubles began to gather. He demanded as the price of peace security against Habsburg aggression in Germany, restoration of princely privilege, and a guarantee of the Lutheran religion irrespective of the decrees of the Council of Trent. The Catholic Princes assembled at Passau were disposed to concede these terms, but to connive at permanent schism was incompatible with Charles' rigid Catholic conscience. ”

“ They rebelled neither to free the German nation, nor to redeem the true religion. Their real motive was fear lest Charles should establish a strong monarchy, and reduce their oligarchy to the impotence to which they had endeavoured to reduce his sovereignty. This apprehension had begun to work soon after the battle of Mühlberg. As early as 1548 Otto of Brunswick-Harburg was intriguing in France with Henry II, who suggested a North-German-Polish league, the germ of the later alliance between France and Poland against the House of Habsburg. ”

“ Discontent was expressed with Charles' proposal to invest his son with the Netherlands on terms which rendered those provinces an hereditary appanage of the Habsburg family, independent of the Empire and transmissible to female heirs; and even Catholics were offended at the persecution to which Philip of Hesse and John Frederick were subjected. The former believed that the Emperor intended to cany him off to Spain, and when he attempted to escape his German guards were exchanged for Spaniards. The three lay Electors, most of the Princes, and even Ferdinand, petitioned for Philip's release ”

“ Ferdinand's request for assistance from the Diet was coldly received by Charles, and his envoy in Transylvania, Castaldo, suspecting that Martinuzzi intended treachery, had him murdered with Ferdinand's connivance (December, 1551) . The Turks thereupon began to advance, while the disputes of the Farnese in Italy, where France supported Orazio and the Emperor Ottavio, brought Henry II and Charles to the verge of war.
Under these circumstances men began to desert the Emperor's failing cause. Maurice, who had betrayed his cousin, would not adhere too scrupulously to Charles ”