FROM THE WAR OF SCHMALKALDE
TO THE TREATY OF CATEAU CAMBRESIS
Charles and the Protestants—Council of Trent, second session—Maurice won over—Death of Luther—Outbreak of war of Schmalkalde—Charles successful in Southern Germany—Council removed to Bologna—Battle of Mühlberg—Diet of Augsburg—Charles and Paul III.—The Interim—Charles and Julius III.—End of second session of Council of Trent—Maurice joins the Protestants—Treaty of Friedwald—Policy of Ferdinand—Charles flies from Innsbruck—Treaty of Passau—Death of Maurice—Diet and Peace of Augsburg—Truce of Vaucelles—Abdication and death of Charles—Last war between France and Spain—Battles of Gravelines and St. Quentin—Treaty of Cateau Cambrésis.
§ 1. The Schmalkaldic War and the battle of Mühlberg.
On the signature of the Peace of Crespi, the hands of the Emperor were at last free to deal with the Protestants in Germany.Charles at last free to deal with the Protestants. To understand the conduct of Charles at this juncture, it is necessary to remind ourselves of the main aim of his life. He had inherited from Maximilian the idea of establishing an universal supremacy in Western Europe; from his grandmother Isabella, that severe spirit of orthodoxy so characteristic of the Spanish nation. To a man with such views as these, the Lutheran movement was equally distasteful, both from a political and a religious point of view; and, had he been able to follow his own convictions, he would have taken immediate steps to crush out the new opinions in the year 1521. But Charles was no fanatic, and the political exigencies of the moment had caused him to listen to the advice of his ministers, more especially of Gattinara, who bade him temporise, and try to win back the Lutherans by measures of conciliation. From that day to this, it had been necessary to pursue the same path, while of late he had entertained the idea of comprehension and possibly of settling the religious difficulty by a National Diet [[pp. 204], [212], [216]].
But although this policy had served the political ends of the Emperor, and prevented the Lutherans from joining his enemies in the field, it had not succeeded in bringing them back to the fold. In his determination to put an end to schism, by force if necessary, the Emperor had never swerved. Of late, more especially since the death of Gattinara (1530), he had learnt to depend more upon himself, and now at last the moment had arrived for action. Meanwhile, the Spanish leanings of Charles had been intensified. Since the resignation of the Austrian lands to Ferdinand in 1521, he had looked on Spain as the centre of his rule, and had identified himself with Spanish interests in Church and State. It was Spain that had chiefly supported him in his European struggles, and he now came, rather as King of Spain and Emperor of the West, than as a German prince, to re-establish the unity of the Empire and of the ancient Church. Charles, however, was too good a statesman to ruin his cause by over haste. He appreciated the strength of the Protestant position, and saw that he must proceed with caution. The Germans had often petitioned for a General Council, and if a Council could now be summoned, it might institute certain reforms, which might conciliate the more moderate, and strengthen his hand.Agreement with the Pope. For this, the consent of the Pope was necessary. Accordingly, Charles promised Parma and Piacenza to Ottavio Farnese, the grandson of Paul, and the Pope consented to re-summon the Council to Trent,[54] in March, 1545. Meanwhile, the Emperor met his Diet at Worms. The hopes of the Emperor with regard to the Council were not fulfilled. It did not open its session till December.Second Session of the Council of Trent. Dec. 1545. It was not well attended; only some forty bishops came, and among them the Spaniards and Italians were in a decided majority. The Protestants therefore refused to acknowledge it as a free and general Council, more especially as it was decided that its members should vote as individuals and not by nations, a course of procedure which would ensure the victory of the papal party. Moreover, the wish of Charles that the Council should postpone the consideration of dogma, and first proceed to the reform of abuses, was rejected. It was agreed that both subjects should be taken together; and on the question as to the authority of tradition, and the doctrine of Justification, the views of Rome prevailed.
Charles, meanwhile, had met with more success in Germany in his attempts to gain the German Princes to his side. William, Duke of Bavaria, who, by the death of his brother (1545),Charles succeeds in gaining over many of the princes of Germany, especially Maurice of Saxony. had become sole ruler in the duchy, had hitherto, although a Roman Catholic, coqueted with the League of Schmalkalde. He was now brought over by the promise of the hand of Ferdinand’s daughter for his son, with the reversion of Bohemia should Ferdinand die without male heirs, and by the hopes held out to him, that, if the Elector-Palatine remained obdurately Protestant, the electoral dignity should be transferred from the Palatine to the Bavarian branch of the Wittelsbach family. John of Brandenburg-Küstrin, Margrave of the Neumark, and Albert Alcibiades of Brandenburg-Culmbach, two of the younger members of the House of Hohenzollern, annoyed at the reinstatement of the Duke of Würtemberg (cf. [p. 210]), also joined the Emperor. Charles was further successful in securing the neutrality of Joachim, Elector of Brandenburg, Frederick, the Elector-Palatine, and of some of the cities who had been members of the League.
Of his allies, however, by far the most important was Maurice of Saxony. The history of the House of Wettin in Saxony illustrates most forcibly the evil results of that custom, so prevalent among the German princes, of dividing their territories among their sons. In 1464, Frederick II. of Saxony had died, leaving his territories to his two sons, Ernest and Albert, and from that day the jealousy between these two lines had been extreme. In the early days of the Lutheran movement, while the Electors, Frederick the Wise, John, and John Frederick, the representatives of the elder or Ernestine branch, had, in their capital of Wittenberg, been the earnest supporters of reform, George, the representative of the Albertine line at Meissen, had been one of the most devoted advocates of the ancient faith. This cause of difference was but in part removed when Henry, the brother of Duke George, who succeeded him in 1539, accepted Lutheranism. Maurice, who succeeded his father Henry in 1541, had also declared himself a Protestant, and had married the daughter of the Landgrave, Philip of Hesse. Nevertheless, he had recalled some of the ministers of his Catholic uncle, George, and among them Carlowitz. He had also refused to join the League of Schmalkalde, weak and divided by jealousies as it was, and had always taken an independent position, which was disliked by his cousins at Wittenberg. The estrangement thus caused between him and John Frederick, the Elector, was aggravated by more personal grounds of quarrel. None of the princes of Germany had made greater use of the cry for secularisation of ecclesiastical property than these Saxon princes, and this had led to fresh disagreements between the two cousins. The bishopric of Naumburg had been secularised by John Frederick; Maurice was anxious to do the same with the bishopric of Merseburg. They also quarrelled over their claims within the limits of the see of Meissen, which was under the common jurisdiction of both branches; while both were anxious to obtain possession of the two bishoprics of Magdeburg and Halberstadt, which had accepted Protestantism, and lay close at hand.
The Emperor, by cleverly playing upon these jealousies and by magnificent promises, succeeded in buying the alliance of Maurice. He consented to appoint him guardian of the bishoprics of Halberstadt and Magdeburg, entertained the proposal of assigning the bishoprics of Merseburg and Meissen to him as hereditary duchies, and finally promised to transfer to him the electoral dignity now held by John Frederick. On the question of religion it was not difficult to calm the apprehensions of the Saxon duke. He had been subjected to various influences during his youth; his mother, Catherine of Mecklenburg, was an earnest Protestant; his uncle, the Catholic George, had made a favourite of him and tried to influence his religious views. It is not, therefore, astonishing that Maurice, although by no means an irreligious man, had no strong convictions on points of dogma, nor that he viewed matters from the standpoint of the statesman rather than of the theologian. He had accepted Lutheranism because his people wished for it, and the promises of the Emperor seemed to give all that was needed. In religious matters, Maurice was to allow no further innovations until the final settlement, which was to be referred to a Council, ‘and, if some points remained unsettled for the present, Maurice was to be under no apprehension.’ The terms indeed were vague; but when people wish to be satisfied, they are not very exacting. On these conditions, therefore, Maurice engaged to join the Emperor in his attack on the Elector, John Frederick. He did not, however, thereby break his alliance with the Landgrave, nor declare war on the League of Schmalkalde.
While these negotiations had been going on, Charles had been holding diets and entertaining schemes of compromise.Charles takes action against the Protestants. June 1546. His attempts, however, to gain comprehension either through a Council or a Diet had failed, and at last the moment for action had arrived. A truce had been effected with Solyman; France and the Pope were friendly, and Charles’ concessions had brought over several of his opponents. Against the wish of Granvelle he therefore threw off the mask, and at Ratisbon published the imperial ban against those who refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Imperial Chamber. Even now he did not speak of the war as a religious one; he proceeded, he declared, not against those who were dutiful subjects, but against those who would not submit to imperial laws; he was about to check insubordination, not to punish heresy. It is not necessary to accuse Charles of deliberate falsehood; indeed, as long as Maurice was on his side, it could scarcely be called a war against the Protestants. Nor, on the other hand, is it just to accuse the Protestants of having taken up the question of reform solely from political motives, in pursuance of their old struggle against the Emperor. Nevertheless, the cause of religious independence was now so closely identified with that of territorial independence, and the unity of the Church so intimately connected in Charles’ mind with that of the Empire, that the religious and political issues could no longer be distinguished. The question at stake was this: should Germany be forced to accept the mediæval system of one Empire and one Church, or should the princes vindicate their rights to political and religious autonomy?
By a strange coincidence, Luther, who had been the prime author of the discord, and yet had striven so long to keep the religious question apart from politics, and had so reluctantly sanctioned the appeal to arms,Death of Luther. Feb. 18, 1546. passed away before the actual outbreak of hostilities. On February 18, 1546, he died in his native town of Eisleben, in his sixty-fourth year. Whatever may be our view as to the doctrinal position of the Reformer, it is as idle to deny his greatness, as to belittle the importance of the movement he originated. Of his faults, and he had many, some were those of his class and of his age, some were all his own. Luther was the son of a Saxon peasant, and never freed himself from the homely coarseness of his early surroundings. Scurrility in controversy was the custom of the day, and Luther did not rise above the common standard; while nature had given him an uncompromising and dictatorial, and a somewhat violent character. Yet he was not deficient in more amiable qualities. His hospitality, his generosity, his geniality and affection, made him beloved at home and among his friends; while his sterner virtues—his honesty, his piety, his earnest conviction, his unflagging industry, and, above all, his unflinching courage—even his adversaries have not been able to gainsay. It would also be a mistake to imagine that he had no refinement. Of this his hymns, many of which are familiar to us, and, above all, his German translation of the Bible, are sufficient proof. This magnificent work, which did much to elevate and fix the literary style of Germany, is enough, of itself, to give to Luther a high place among men of letters.