This time of confusion was used by one ambitious ruler for his own ends. The German, or Teutonic, order was a knightly organization created expressly to hold the frontier against the Slavonic people. After the year 1230 this order held Prussia, which they ruled like princes. The Margrave of Brandenburg, who was at the time of the Reformation Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, realized his opportunity in the existing disorder. He made himself sovereign over Prussia, and annexed the possessions of the Teutonic order to his family. But it was not alone the princes who saw their opportunity in this time of overturning. The wrongs of the peasants were very real and very grievous, and of long, long standing. The entire burden of taxation rested on them--the archbishops and the nobles and the _gentlemen_ all being exempt! When the Reformation began the _bauer_, or peasantry, believed that their hope lay in the abolishing of Catholicism and of the feudal system. It takes a very small spark to fire a train of gunpowder. When the Countess of Lüpfen ordered the peasants on her estate to spend their Sundays in picking strawberries and gathering snail shells for pincushions, she dropped such a spark! They refused, and the revolt spread, gathering in fury as it moved like a cyclone through the German states. All throughout Germany there are to be seen, to-day, ruined castles which tell the story of this "Peasants' War" (1525). Hideous atrocities were committed, and, as has so often happened, the cause of a people whose grievances were real and heartrending was so stained with crime that sympathy with and pity for their sufferings were obliterated. Even Luther--whose followers they claimed to be--said of them, "they should be treated as a man would treat a mad dog." The bold stand taken by Luther against this rebellion strengthened him with the princes. Not only Saxony, Hesse, and Brunswick and many free cities, but the Augustine order of monks, a part of the Franciscans, and a number of priests had embraced the new doctrine contained in the "Augsburg Confession," the creed or summary of belief which was prepared by Luther's friend, Philip Melancthon. The principles asserted in this were that men are justified by faith alone; that an assembly of believers constitutes a Church; that monastic vows, invocation of saints, fasting, celibacy, etc., are useless. Such were the chief points in the celebrated "Confession," which was signed by the Protestant cities and princes in 1530. So while Charles was engaged in his great game of finesse with Francis I. and Henry VIII. for preponderance in Europe--while the Turks were pressing toward Vienna on the east, and the French into Flanders on the west, and while the Pope, who should have been his ally, jealous of his power was circumventing and weakening him so far as he could, worse than all else, the foundations of the Protestant Church were being permanently laid in Germany.