As to the Protestant cities of Germany, they found the Interim religion to be flat Popery. And the royal quack–Pope had to adopt the orthodox practice in administering it. Augsburg, Ulm, Strasburg, Bremen, Lubeck, Hamburg, Magdeburg, Constance, and many other towns would have none of it. And Spanish soldiers had to be employed, with more or less success in different places, in recommending it to their favourable consideration. At Augsburg, Charles placed bodies of these troops at the different gates, and in other commanding positions of the town, then called the members of the municipal government to the town–hall, dismissed them all from their functions, abolished "motu proprio" the entire form of municipal government, and nominated a few creatures of his own to govern the city, each man of whom had sworn to receive and observe the Interim. Ulm he converted much in the same manner, sending off in chains the Protestant preachers. The stout Magdeburgers shut their gates, manned their walls, and stood a siege against the imperial troops and the Interim. For a lay Pope's essay at persecution this was zealous and energetic enough, though falling far short of the true ecclesiastical practice of Inquisition, stake, and faggot. [Sidenote: ROYAL VIEWS OF HUMAN NATURE.] It might be supposed that Charles would have been too sagacious a man to have imagined that any successful issue could have come of this Interim scheme of his. It seems hardly a thing to have been hoped, that Germany had gone through all the sufferings and sorrows, spiritual and temporal, incidental to a national change of religion, and kicked off the authority of a real Pope, venerable with the prestige of fifteen centuries, to submit quietly to a new quack Pope, whose whole theological apparatus consisted of men–at–arms and gunpowder. If men were to submit to an imposed creed, it was better to take one without seven or eight heresies in it. No very profound knowledge of the human heart, one would think, were needed to enable a sagacious ruler of men to anticipate failure for such a plan; and Charles has the reputation of having been such. But it strikes one, in considering this and a hundred other similar mistakes by the Louis XIVths. and other great masters of kingcraft, as doubtful how far it is practicable for such personages to attain to any knowledge of the plebeian human heart. Of the hearts of princes, ministers of state, popes, cardinals, diplomatists, ambassadors, and such,—though hearts are not generally supposed to be worn on embroidered sleeves,—a royal craftsman practised in the business may know a thing or two; may, perhaps, if acute, obtain some uncertain notion of the hearts of gentlemen–ushers, ladies of honour, grand chamberlains, and other such samples of mankind: but it would seem as if such knowledge were rather calculated to lead a royal philosopher astray in dealing with humanity outside the palace gates.