Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3: A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History
History
Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3: A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History
Biography
Delivered by the death of Francis in 1547, in which year Henry VIII.
also died, from the watchful supervision of a jealous and powerful
rival, and relieved from the fear of the Turks by a five years' truce,
Charles was at liberty to bend his whole strength against the revolted
princes of Germany. He marched against the Elector Frederick of Saxony,
who was defeated at Mulhausen, taken prisoner, and condemned to death
by a court-martial composed of Italians and Spaniards, in contempt of
the laws of the empire. The sentence was communicated to the prisoner
while playing at chess; his firmness was not shaken, and he tranquilly
said, "I shall die without reluctance, if my death will save the honor
of my family and the inheritance of my children." He then finished his
game. But his wife and family could not look at his death so calmly; at
their entreaty he surrendered his electorate into the emperor's hands.
The other chief of the Protestant league, the Landgrave of Hesse, was
also forced to submit, and detained in captivity, contrary to the
pledged word of the emperor; who, fearless of any further resistance to
his supreme authority, convoked a diet at Augsburg in 1548. At that
assembly Maurice was invested with Saxony, and the emperor, in the vain
hope of enforcing a uniformity of religious practice, published by his
own authority a body of doctrine called the "Interim," to be in force
till a general council should be assembled. This necessarily was
unsatisfactory to both parties, but its observance was enforced by a
master with whom terror was the engine of obedience.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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