His friends, he says in 1529, “because the Turk was now so near,” had insisted on his finishing a writing against them which had already been commenced; “more particularly because of some unskilful preachers among us Germans, who, I regret to learn, are teaching the people that they must not fight against the Turks.” Some, he writes, also taught, that “it was not becoming for any Christian to wield the sword”; others went so far as to look forward to the coming of the Turks and their rule. “And such error and malice amongst the people is all placed at Luther’s door, as the fruit of my Evangel; in the same way that I had to bear the blame of the revolt [of the peasants].... Hence I am under the necessity of writing on the matter and of exculpating us, both for my own sake and for that of the Evangel ... in order that innocent consciences may not continue to be deceived by such calumnies, and be rendered suspicious of me and my teaching, or be wrongly led to believe that they must not fight against the Turks.”[205] In February, 1528, Suleiman II. was in a position to demand that King Ferdinand should evacuate Buda-Pesth, the capital; it was already feared that his threat of visiting Ferdinand in Austria might be all too speedily fulfilled. The Sultan actually commenced, in the spring of 1529, his great campaign, which brought him to the very walls of Vienna. The city, however, defended itself with such heroism that the enemy was at last compelled to withdraw. In April, 1529, when the reports of the danger which menaced Austria had penetrated throughout the length and breadth of Germany, Luther at last published the writing above referred to, viz. “On the Turkish War.”