The bull irritated the German princes; whether they liked Luther or not, they decidedly disliked to have the pope issuing commands to them. Then it appeared to them very unfair that Luther's personal enemy should have been intrusted with the publication of the bull. Even the princes and universities that were most friendly to the pope published the bull with great reluctance. The students of Erfurt and Leipsic pursued Eck with pointed allusions to Pharisees and devil's emissaries. In many cases the bull was ignored altogether. Luther's own sovereign, the elector of Saxony, while no convert to the new views, was anxious that Luther's case should be fairly considered, and continued to protect him. One mighty prince, however, the young emperor Charles V, promptly and willingly published the bull; not, however, as emperor, but as ruler of the Austrian dominions and of the Netherlands. Luther's works were burned at Louvain, Mayence, and Cologne, the strongholds of the old theology. [Sidenote: Luther defies pope and emperor.] "Hard it is," Luther exclaimed, "to be forced to contradict all the prelates and princes, but there is no other way to escape hell and God's anger." Never had one man so unreservedly declared war upon pretty much the whole consecrated order of things. As one power arrayed against an equal, the Wittenberg professor opposed himself to pope and emperor, giving back curse for curse and fagot for fagot. His students were summoned to witness "the pious, religious spectacle," when he cast Leo's bull on the fire, along with the canon law and one of the books of scholastic theology which he most disliked. [Sidenote: Hutten's plan for an immediate destruction of the old Church.] Never was the temptation so great for Luther to encourage a violent demolition of the old structure of the Church as at this time. Hutten was bent upon the speedy carrying out of the revolution which both he and Luther were forwarding by their powerful writings. Hutten had taken refuge in the castle of the leader of the German knights, Franz von Sickingen, who he believed would be an admirable military commander in the coming contest for truth and liberty. Hutten frankly proposed to the young emperor that the papacy should be abolished, that the property of the Church should be confiscated, and that ninety-nine out of a hundred of the clergy should be dispensed with as superfluous. In this way Germany would be freed, he argued, from the control of the "parsons" and from their corruption. From the vast proceeds of the confiscation the state might be strengthened and an army of knights might be maintained for the defense of the empire. [Sidenote: Views of the papal representative on public opinion in Germany.]