Everywhere anxiety reigned supreme, for there were lacking both
preparedness and unanimity. The Catholic Princes of the Empire were not
much better than the rest. Petty interests and jealousies outweighed in
many instances a sense of the common needs. At Spires, for instance,
Duke George of Saxony stipulated, as a condition of any promise of
assistance, that he should be given precedence over both the Dukes of
Bavaria. While the Catholic Estates agreed, at the Diet of Augsburg, to
the grants for the war against the Turks, the Protestant Estates were
not to be induced to give a favourable decision until the Emperor had
sanctioned the so-called religious Peace of Nuremberg in 1532.[227]
In the summer of that same year Suleiman passed Buda-Pesth with 300,000
men. Thence he continued his march along the Danube with the intention
of taking Vienna, this time at any cost. The Emperor Charles V.
hurried in person to command the great army which was collecting near
Vienna; the Sultan was to be encountered and a decisive battle fought.
Throughout the Empire the greatest enthusiasm for the cause prevailed.
The Electoral Prince, Joachim of Brandenburg, was nominated by the
Emperor to the command of the troops of the Saxon lowlands, since this
country had not been unanimous in the choice of a Captain, probably
owing to the religious dissensions.
The Protestant Prince Joachim requested a pious letter from Luther.
This Luther sent him, promising him his prayers, and saying that “he
would take the field in spirit with his dear Emperor Carol [as he now
calls him], and fight under his banner against Satan and his members.”
He prayed God to bestow on them all “a glad spirit,” granting them not
to trust in their own strength, but to fight with the “fear of God,
trusting in His Grace alone,” and to ascribe the honour to heaven only;
hitherto there had been too much of the “spirit of defiance on both
sides,” and each party had gone into the field “without God,” “which
on every occasion had been worse for the people of God than for the
enemy.” Luther was evidently quite incapable of writing on the subject
without his polemical ideas casting their shadow over his field of
vision.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account