voted for the Recess of Augsburg there were only two, the Elector Joachim of Brandenburg and Duke George of Saxony, who were ready to face a civil war for the sake of their convictions. In Germany were reproduced on a smaller scale all those elements of disunion which had made the attempted crusades of the previous century ridiculous fiascos. Each Catholic Prince desired the suppression of heresy, but no one would set his face against the enemy for fear of being stabbed in the back by a friend. The rulers of Bavaria and Austria were both unimpeachably orthodox, but Bavaria was again intriguing with Hesse against the House of Habsburg. The Emperor himself had few troops and no money. The multiplicity of interests pressing upon his attention prevented his concentration upon any one object, and increased his natural indecision of character. Never was his policy more hesitating and circumspect than in 1530-1 when fortune seemed to have placed the ball at his feet.
His inactivity enabled the Protestants to mature their plans and organise an effective bond of resistance. The doctrine of implicit obedience to the Emperor broke down as danger approached; the divines naively admitted that they had not before realised that the sovereign power was subject to law; and Luther, acknowledging that he was a child in temporal matters, allowed himself to be persuaded that Charles was not the Caesar of the New Testament, but a governor whose powers were limited by the Electors in the same way as the Roman consul's by the Senate, the Doge's by the Venetian Council, and a Bishop's by his Chapter. The Protestants, having already denied that a minority could be bound by a majority of the Diet, now carried the separatist principle a step further by declaring that the Empire was a federated aristocracy of independent sovereigns, who were themselves to judge when and to what extent they would yield obedience to their elected president. It is not, however, fair to charge them with adopting Protestantism in order to further their claims to political independence; it is more correct to say that they extended their particularist ideas in order to protect their religious principles.
The first care of the Princes and burghers who deliberated at Schmalkalden from December 22 to 81, 1530, was to arrange for common action with regard to the litigation before the Reichskammergericht. But the decision which gave their meeting its real importance was their agreement to form a league for mutual defence against all attacks on account of their faith, from whatever quarter these might proceed. This, the first sketch of the Schmalkaldic League, was subscribed by the -Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, the Brunswick-Lüneburg Dukes, Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt, the two Counts of Mansfeld, and the cities of Magdeburg and Bremen. Margrave George of Brandenburg and the city of Nürnberg were not yet prepared to take the decisive step; and, although the Tetrapolitan cities, reinforced by Ulm, Biberach, Isny,
