by the rising theological temper, of which the murder of an unfortunate Protestant, Juan Diaz, and its official approval, were signs, Charles had taken the plunge, and on May 24< he had announced to his sister Maria his resolve to begin the war of religion.
The Elector of Saxony must have been the only leading Protestant who was surprised by the decision. Philip of Hesse had long been seeking in vain to awake the Schmalkaldic League from its lethargy. But, expected or not, the war certainly found the Protestants unfitted if not unprepared to cope with the crisis. Long immunity had created a false sense of security; and the League, whose military strength appeared imposing, was honeycombed with disaffection. It had not escaped the workings of that particularism which had proved fatal to the Swabian League and to the Reichsregiment; and its members were discontented because it could not grind all their private axes. The cities, and still more the knights, were hostile as ever to the encroaching territorial power of the Princes, among whom Philip of Hesse was considered the protagonist. At his door was laid the ruin of Sickingen, and Sickingen's son mustered many a knight to Charles' standard. Charles moreover could appeal to public opinion as the champion of the imperial constitution, which the Lutheran Princes attacked without suggesting a substitute. They had repudiated the Kammergericht, protested against the Diet's recesses whenever they pleased, and denied the authority of General Councils and of the Emperor himself; he was no longer Emperor, they said, but a bailiff of the Pope. But if authority were denied to all these institutions, where was the bulwark against anarchy? They might seem to have resolved that the Empire should not exist at all unless it served their particular purpose.
It was this aspect of lawlessness which enabled Charles to pretend that the war was waged, not against any form of religion, but against rebellion. When Hans of Ciistrin's chaplains were preaching the purest word of Lutheranism within the lines of the Emperor's camp, who could say that Charles was warring on Lutheran doctrine? Henry VIII told the Schmalkaldic envoys that if they were threatened on account of religion he would come to their aid, but he could not see that such was the case when so many Protestant Princes were fighting on Charles' side. The Emperor spared no pains to foster this public impression. On this ground he persuaded the Swiss to remain neutral, and endeavoured to detach the south German towns from the cause of the Princes. He sought, in fact, to isolate Philip and John Frederick as he had isolated William of Cleves in 1543, and to represent his offence and theirs as the same. In the ban which was proclaimed against them on July 20 he recalled the Pack conspiracy of 1528, the invasion of Württemberg in 1534, and the two wars in Brunswick; and held up the Princes to reprobation as contemners of public authority and disturbers of the peace of the Empire.
