Yet it was little suspected. Luther, on the morrow of the day on which the _recess_ was published, wrote to a friend: "The diet is sitting at Spire in the German fashion. They drink and gamble, and there is nothing done except that."[36] "Le congrès danse et ne marche pas,"[37] has been said in our days. It is because great things are often transacted under an appearance of frivolity, and because God accomplishes his designs unknown even to those whom he employs as his instruments. In this diet a gravity and love of liberty of conscience were manifested, which are the fruits of Christianity, and which in the sixteenth century had its earliest, if not its most energetic development among the German nations. [36] Potatur et luditur, præterea nihil.--(L. Epp. iii. p. 126.) [37] The congress dances but does not move forward. Yet Ferdinand still hesitated. Mahomet himself came to the aid of the Gospel. Louis, king of Hungary and Bohemia, drowned at Mohacz on the 29th August, 1526, as he was fleeing from before Soliman II., had bequeathed the crown of these two kingdoms to Ferdinand. But the Duke of Bavaria, the Waywode of Transylvania, and, above all, the terrible Soliman, contested it against him. This was sufficient to occupy Charles's brother: he left Luther, and hastened to dispute the two thrones. [Sidenote: ITALIAN WAR.] II. The Emperor immediately reaped the fruits of his new policy. No longer having his hands tied by Germany, he turned them against Rome. The Reformation had been exalted and the Papacy was to be abased. The blows aimed at its pitiless enemy were about to open a new career to the evangelical work. Ferdinand, who was detained by his Hungarian affairs, gave the charge of the Italian expedition to Freundsberg, that old general who had patted Luther in a friendly manner on the shoulder as the reformer was about to appear before the diet of Worms.[38] This veteran, observed a contemporary,[39] who "bore in his chivalrous heart God's holy Gospel, well fortified and flanked by a strong wall," pledged his wife's jewels, sent recruiting parties into all the towns of Upper Germany, and owing to the magic idea of a war against the Pope, soon witnessed crowds of soldiers flocking to his standard. "Announce," Charles had said to his brother,--"announce that the army is to march against the Turks; every one will know what Turks are meant." [38] See Vol. II. book vii. chap. viii. [39] Haug mars chalk, surnamed Zeller.