At the same time letters from Charles V., dated from Toledo, arrived in Germany, by which another diet was convoked at Augsburg. Charles wished to give the empire a constitution that would enable him to dispose of the forces of Germany at his good pleasure. Religious differences offered him the means; he had only to let loose the Catholics against the followers of the Gospel, and when they had exhausted their strength, he would easily triumph over both. Down with the Lutherans! was therefore the cry of the emperor.[424] [424] Sleidan. Hist. de la Réf. i. 214. [Sidenote: DANGERS.] Thus all things combined against the Reformation. Never had Luther's spirit been overwhelmed by so many fears. The remnants of Munzer's party had sworn to take his life; his sole protector was no more; Duke George, he was informed, intended to have him arrested in Wittemberg itself;[425] the princes who might have defended him bowed their heads, and seemed to have forsaken the Gospel; it was rumoured that the university, the number of whose students was already diminished by these troubles, was about to be suppressed by the new elector; and Charles, victorious at Pavia, was assembling a new diet with the end of giving a deathblow to the Reformation. What dangers must not Luther have foreboded!......This anguish, these inward struggles, that had so often tortured him to groans, now wrung his soul. How can he resist so many enemies? In the midst of these agitations, in the face of so many dangers, beside the corpse of Frederick that was scarcely cold, and the dead bodies of the peasants that yet strewed the plains of Germany, Luther--none could certainly have imagined such a thing--Luther married. [425] Keil, Luther's Leben, p. 160. CHAPTER XIII. The Nuns of Nimptsch--Luther's Sentiments--The Convent dissolved--Luther's Marriage--Domestic Happiness. [Sidenote: THE NUNS OF NIMPTSCH.]