Digne épouse, reçois mes éternels adieux. On the 24th of July the king set out with his small force. The Christians numbered but one against a hundred of their enemies.[543] Meanwhile, though marching against the successor of Mohammed, Louis had not withdrawn his decrees against the disciples of Jesus Christ. Were the reformers who did not set out to the war, the women, the old men, the children, and those who were already prisoners for the Gospel’s sake, to be cruelly put to death? The noble Pempflinger was greatly distressed. He had from the first looked on the persecuting edicts as unjust, and he now felt the necessity of declaring to the king that to send the disciples of the Lord to the stake would be to call down the judgment of God on Hungary. Nor could he endure the thought that every other parish should be left without a pastor. He resolved therefore to go to Louis. If every minister of religion remained in his parish to take care of the afflicted, if the sentence of death which had gone forth against the evangelicals were revoked, and if they were allowed to go out to defend their country on the field of battle, the divine wrath might perhaps be appeased and Hungary and the Gospel might be saved. The monks already, taking advantage of the edict of persecution and of the general excitement, were striving to stir up the people and to obtain by violent means the death of the evangelicals. In their view these were the sacrifices likely to avert calamities which were ready to fall upon the land. The count set out with all speed; but ere long his progress was arrested by terrible tidings.[544] [Sidenote: The Hungarian Army.] The young king, while marching at the head of his three thousand men, had been joined by the Hungarian magnates and the Polish companies. By the time he reached Tolna, he had from ten to twelve thousand men. The troops from Bohemia, Moravia, Croatia, and Transylvania were not yet under his banner. He received, however, some additional forces, and reached Mohacz on the Danube, a point about half-way between his capital and the Turkish frontier, at the head of about twenty-seven thousand men. Hardly any of these had ever been under fire. In the middle ages the command of armies had frequently been given to ecclesiastics. Louis followed this strange custom, and entrusted his troops to Jomory, archbishop of Cologne, an ex-Franciscan, who had previously served one or two campaigns, and had won distinction. The king thought that an energetic monk would be better, in spite of his frock, than a cowardly general. But this nomination showed plainly into what hands the king had fallen.