These publications occasioned fresh dealings with Duke George, who again complained to the Elector about them, and also about certain letters falsely ascribed to Luther, and then published a reply, under an assumed name, to his first pamphlet. Luther answered this 'libel' with a tract entitled 'Against the Assassin at Dresden,' not intended, as many have supposed, to impute murderous designs to the Duke, but referring to the calumnies and anonymous attacks in his book. The tone employed by Luther in this tract reminds us of his saying that 'a rough wedge is wanted for a rough log.' It brought down upon him a fresh admonition from his prince, in reply to which he simply begged that George might for the future leave him in peace.
The imminence of the common danger favoured the attempts of the South German States to effect an agreement with the German Protestants, and the efforts of Butzer in that direction. Luther himself acknowledged in a letter to Butzer, how very necessary a union with them was, and what a scandal was caused to the gospel by their rupture hitherto, nay, that if only they were united, the Papacy, the Turks, the whole world, and the very gates of hell would never be able to work the gospel harm. Nevertheless, his conscience forbade him to overlook the existing differences of doctrine; nor could he imagine why his former opponents, if they now acknowledged the Real Presence of the Body at the Sacrament, could not plainly admit that presence for the mouth and body of all partakers, whether worthy or unworthy. He deemed it sufficient at present, that each party should desist from writing against the other, and wait until 'perhaps God, if they ceased from strife, should vouchsafe further grace.' The new explanations, however, were enough to make the Schmalkaldic allies abandon their scruples to admitting the South Germans, and they were accordingly received into the league.
Thus then, at the end of March 1531, a mutual defensive alliance for six years of the members of the Schmalkaldic League was concluded between the Elector John, the Landgrave Philip, three Dukes of Brunswick Lüneburg, Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt, Counts Albert and Gebhard of Mansfeld, the North German towns of Magdeburg, Bremen, and Lübeck, and the South German towns of Strasburg, Constance, Memmingen, and Lindau, and also Ulm, Reutlingen, Bibrach, and Isny. Even Luther no longer raised any objections.
By this alliance the Protestants presented a firm and powerful front among the constituent portions of the German Empire. Their adversaries were not so agreed in their interests. Between the Dukes of Bavaria, and between the Emperor and Ferdinand, political jealousy prevailed to an extent sufficient to induce the former to combine with the heretics against the newly-elected King. Outside Germany, Denmark reached the hand of fellowship to the Schmalkaldic League; for the exiled King of Denmark, Christian II., who had previously turned to the Saxon Elector and been friendly to Luther, now sought, after returning in all humility to the orthodox Church, to regain his lost sovereignty with the help of his brother-in-law, the Emperor. The King of France also was equally ready to make common cause with the Protestant German princes against the growing power of Charles V.
As for Luther, we find no notice on his part of the schemes and negotiations connected with these political events, much less any active participation in them. There was just then a rupture pending between Henry VIII. of England and the Emperor, and the former was preparing to secede from the Church of Rome. Henry was anxious for a divorce from his wife Katharine of Arragon, an aunt of the Emperor, on the ground of her previous marriage with his deceased brother, which, as he alleged, made his own marriage with her illegal; and since the Pope, in spite of long negotiations, refused, out of regard for the Emperor, to accede to his request, Henry had an opinion prepared by a number of European universities and men of learning, on the legality and validity of his marriage, which in fact for the most part declared against it. A secret commissioner of the former 'Protector of the Faith' was then sent to the Wittenbergers, and to Luther, whom he had so grossly insulted. Luther, however, pronounced (Sept. 5, 1531) against the divorce, on the ground that the marriage, though not contrary to the law of God as set forth in Scripture, was prohibited by the human law of the Church. The political side of the question he disregarded altogether. He expressed himself to Spalatin, in a certain tone of sadness, about the Pope's evil disposition towards the Emperor, the intrigues he seemed to be promoting against him in France, and the animosity of Henry VIII. towards him on account of his decision on the marriage; and added, 'Such is the way of this wicked world; may God take our Emperor under His protection!'
With Charles V. and Ferdinand the question of peace or war was, of necessity, largely governed by the menacing attitude of the Turks; in fact it determined their policy in the matter. Luther kept this danger steadily in view; after the publication of the Recess he promised the wrath of God upon those madmen who would enter upon a war while they had the Turks before their very eyes. Ferdinand in vain sought to conclude a treaty of peace with the Sultan, who demanded him to surrender all the fortresses he still possessed in a part of Hungary, and reserved the right of making further conquests. He was even induced, in March 1581, to advise his brother to effect a peaceful arrangement with the Protestants, in order to ensure their assistance in arms. Attempts at reconciliation were accordingly made through the intervention of the Electors of the Palatinate and Mayence. The term allowed by the Diet (April 15) passed by unnoticed. The Emperor also directed the 'suspension of the proceedings, which he had been authorised by the Recess of Augsburg to set on foot in religious matters, till the approaching Diet.'
The negotiations were languidly protracted through the summer, without effecting any definite result. An opinion, drawn up jointly by Luther, Melancthon, and Bugenhagen, advised against an absolute rejection of the proposed restoration of episcopal power; the only thing necessary to insist upon being that the clergy and congregations should be allowed by the bishops the pure preaching of the gospel which had hitherto been refused them.
About this time Luther had the grief of losing his mother. She died on June 30, after receiving from her son a consolatory letter in her last illness. Of his own physical suffering in this month we have already spoken. On the 26th, he wrote to Link that Satan had sent all his messengers to buffet him (2 Cor. xii. 7), so that he could only rarely write or do anything: the devil would probably soon kill him outright. And yet not his will would be done, but the will of Him who had already overthrown Satan and all his kingdom.
Soon afterwards, the desire of the Catholics for coercive measures was stimulated afresh by the news of a defeat which the Reformed cities in Switzerland had sustained at the hands of the five Catholic Cantons, notwithstanding that the balance of force inclined there far more than in Germany to the side of the Evangelicals. The struggle which Luther was perpetually endeavouring to avert from Germany, culminated in Switzerland in a bloody outbreak, mainly at Zwingli's instigation. Zwingli himself fell on October 11 in the battle of Cappel, a victim of the patriotic schemes by which he had laboured to achieve for his country a grand reform of politics, morality, and the Church, but for which he had failed to enlist any intelligent or unanimous co-operation on the part of his companions in faith. Ferdinand triumphed over this first great victory for the Catholic cause. He was now ready to renounce humbly his claim upon Hungary, so that, by making peace with the Sultan, he might leave his own and the Emperor's hands free in Germany. Luther saw in the fate of Zwingli another judgment of God against the spirit of Münzer, and in the whole course of the war a solemn warning for the members of the Schmalkaldic League not to boast of any human alliance, and to do their utmost to preserve peace.
But the events in Switzerland gave no handle against those who had not joined the Zwinglians, nor were even the latter weakened thereby in power and organisation. The South Germans had now to cling all the more firmly to their alliance with the Lutheran princes and cities; the Zwinglian movement suffered shortly afterwards (Dec. 1) a severe loss in the death of Oecolampadius. Finally the Sultan was not satisfied with Ferdinand's repeated offers, but prepared for a new campaign against Austria in the spring of 1532, and towards the end of April he set out for it.