The war began soon after Luther's death. The Emperor brought into Germany his Spanish infantry, the beginning of what was to be a curse to that country for many generations, and various manœuvrings and skirmishes took place, the most important of which was Maurice of Saxony's invasion of the Electorate. At last the Emperor met the Elector in battle at Mühlberg (April 24th, 1547), where John Frederick was completely defeated and taken prisoner. Wittenberg, stoutly defended by Sibylla, soon after surrendered. This was the end. Philip was induced to surrender on promise of favourable treatment, made by the Electors who had remained on the Emperor's side. Charles refused to be bound by the promise made in his name, and the Landgrave was also held captive. All Germany, save Constance in the south and some of the Baltic lands, lay prostrate at the Emperor's feet. It remained to be seen what use he would make of his victory.
In due time he set himself to bring about what he conceived to be a reasonable compromise which would enable all Germany to remain within one National Church. He tried at first to induce the separate parties to work [pg 390] it out among themselves; and, when this was found to be hopeless, he, like a second Justinian, resolved to construct a creed and to impose it by force upon all, especially upon the Lutherans. To begin with, he had to defy the Pope and slight the General Council for which he had been mainly responsible. He formally demanded that the Council should return to German soil (it had been transferred to Bologna), and, when this was refused, he protested against its existence and, like the German Protestants he was coercing, declared that he would not submit to its decrees. He next selected three theologians, Michael Helding, Julius von Pflug, and Agricola,—a mediævalist, an Erasmian, and a very conservative Lutheran—to construct what was called the Augsburg Interim.
§ 14. The Augsburg Interim.[365]
This document taught the dogma of Transubstantiation, the seven Sacraments, adoration of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, retained most of the mediæval ceremonies and usages, and declared the Pope to be the Head of the Church. This was to please the Romanists. It appealed to the Lutherans by adopting the doctrine of Justification by Faith in a modified form, the marriage of priests with some reservations, the use of the Cup by the laity in the Holy Supper, and by considerably modifying the doctrine of the sacrificial character of the Mass. Of course all its propositions were ambiguous, and could be read in two ways. This was probably the intention of the framers; if so, they were highly successful.
Nothing that Charles ever undertook proved such a dismal failure as this patchwork creed made from snippets from two Confessions. However lifeless creeds may become, they all—real ones—have grown out of the living Christian [pg 391] experience of their framers, and have contained the very life-blood of their hearts as well as of their brains. It is a hopeless task to construct creeds as a tailor shapes and stitches coats.
Charles, however, was proud of his creed, and did his best to enforce it. The Diet of 1548 showed him his difficulties. The Interim was accepted and proclaimed as an edict by this Diet (May 15), but only after the Emperor, very unwillingly, declared practically that it was meant for the Protestants alone. “The Emperor,” said a member of the Diet, “is fighting for religion against the Pope, whom he acknowledges to be its head, and against the two parts of Christendom in Germany—the mass of the Protestants and the ecclesiastical princes.” Thus from the beginning what was to be an instrument to unite German Christendom was transformed into a “strait-waistcoat for the Lutherans”; and this did not make it more palatable for them. At first the strong measures taken by the Emperor compelled its nominal acceptance by many of the Protestant princes.[366] The cities which seemed to be most refractory had their Councils purged of their democratic members, and their Lutheran preachers sent into banishment—Matthew Alber from Reutlingen, Wolfgang Musculus from Augsburg, Brenz from Hall, Osiander from Nürnberg, Schnepf from Tübingen. Bucer and Fagius had to flee from Strassburg and take refuge in England. The city of Constance was besieged and fell after a heroic defence; it was deprived of its privileges as an imperial city, and was added to the family possessions of the House of Austria. Its pastor, Blarer, was sent into banishment. Four hundred Lutheran divines were driven from their homes.
If Charles, backed by his Spanish and Italian troops, could secure a nominal submission to his Interim, he could not coerce the people into accepting it. The churches stood empty in Augsburg, in Ulm, and in other cities. The [pg 392] people met it by an almost universal passive resistance—if singing doggerel verses in mockery of the Interim may be called passive. When the Emperor ordered Duke Christopher of Würtemberg to drive Brenz out of his refuge in his State, the Duke answered him that he could not banish his whole population. The popular feeling, as is usual in such cases, found vent in all manner of satirical songs, pamphlets, and even catechisms. As in the times before the Peasants' War, this coarse popular literature had an immense circulation. Much of it took the form of rude broadsides with a picture, generally satirical, at the top, and the song, sometimes with the music score, printed below.[367] Wandering preachers, whom no amount of police supervision could check, went inveighing against the Interim, distributing the rude literature through the villages and among the democracy in the towns. Soon the creed and the edict which enforced it became practically a dead letter throughout the greater part of Germany.
The presence of the Emperor's Spanish troops on the soil of the Fatherland irritated the feelings of Germans, whether Romanists or Protestants; the insolence and excesses of these soldiers stung the common people; and their employment to enforce the hated Interim on the Protestants was an additional insult. The citizens of one imperial city were told that if they did not accept the Interim they must be taught theology by Spanish troops, and of another that they would yet learn to speak the language of Spain. While the popular odium against Charles was slowly growing in intensity, he contrived to increase it by a proposal that his son Philip should have the imperial crown after his brother Ferdinand. Charles' own election had been caused by a patriotic sentiment. The people thought that a German was better than a Frenchman, and they had found out too late that they had not got a German but a Spaniard. Ferdinand had lived in Germany long enough to know its wants, and his son [pg 393] Maximilian had shown that he possessed many qualities which appealed to the German character. The proposal to substitute Philip, however natural from Charles' point of view, and consistent with his earlier idea that the House of Hapsburg should have one head, meant to the Germans to still further “hispaniolate” Germany. This unpopularity of Charles among all ranks and classes of Germans grew rapidly between 1548 and 1552; and during the same years his foreign prestige was fast waning. He remained in Germany, with the exception of a short visit to the Netherlands; but in spite of his presence the anarchy grew worse and worse. The revolt which came might have arisen much sooner had the Protestants been able to overcome their hatred and suspicion of Maurice of Saxony, whose co-operation was almost essential. It is unnecessary to describe the intrigues which went on around the Emperor, careless though not unforewarned.
Maurice had completed his arrangements with his German allies and with France early in 1552. The Emperor had retired from Augsburg to Innsbruck. Maurice seized the Pass of Ehrenberg on the nights of May 18th, 19th, and pressed on to Innsbruck, hoping to “run the old fox to earth.” Charles escaped by a few hours, and, accompanied by his brother Ferdinand, fled over the Brenner Pass amid a storm of snow and rain. It was the road by which he had entered Germany in fair spring weather when he came in 1530, in the zenith of his power, to settle, as he had confidently expected, the religious difficulties in Germany. He reached Villach in Carinthia in safety, and there waited the issue of events.