Public opinion appeared ready for a revolution. "I am pretty familiar with the history of this German nation," Leo's representative, Aleander, remarked; "I know their past heresies, councils, and schisms, but never were affairs so serious before. Compared with present conditions, the struggle between Henry IV and Gregory VII was as violets and roses.... These mad dogs are now well equipped with knowledge and arms; they boast that they are no longer ignorant brutes like their predecessors; they claim that Italy has lost the monopoly of the sciences and that the Tiber now flows into the Rhine." "Nine-tenths of the Germans," he calculated, "are shouting 'Luther,' and the other tenth goes so far at least as 'Death to the Roman curia.'" [Sidenote: Luther's attitude toward a violent realization of his reforms.] Luther was too frequently reckless and violent in his writings. He often said that bloodshed could not be avoided when it should please God to visit his judgments upon the stiff-necked and perverse generation of "Romanists," as the Germans contemptuously called the supporters of the pope. Yet he always discouraged precipitate reform. He was reluctant to make changes, except in belief. He held that so long as an institution did not mislead, it did no harm. He was, in short, no fanatic at heart. The pope had established himself without force, so would he be crushed by God's word without force. This, we may assume, was Luther's most profound conviction, even in the first period of enthusiasm and confidence. He perhaps never fully realized how different Hutten's ideas were from his own, for the poet knight died while still a young man. And as for Franz von Sickingen, Luther soon learned to execrate the ruthless, worldly soldier who brought discredit by his violence upon the cause of reform. [Sidenote: Charles V's want of sympathy with the German reformers.] 147. Among the enemies of the German reformers none was more important than the young emperor. It was toward the end of the year 1520 that Charles came to Germany for the first time. After being crowned king of the Romans at Aix-la-Chapelle, he assumed, with the pope's consent, the title of emperor elect, as his grandfather Maximilian had done. He then moved on to the town of Worms, where he was to hold his first diet and face the German situation.