Bucer declared he had himself agreed to the bigamy from fear lest Philip should otherwise be lost to the Evangelical cause,[204] and his feelings were doubtless shared at Wittenberg. Melanchthon speaks not merely of a possible attempt on Philip’s part to obtain the Emperor’s sanction to his marriage, but of an actual threat to leave the party in the lurch.[205] Johann Brenz, as soon as news reached him in Würtemberg of the Landgrave’s hint of an appeal to the Emperor, saw in it a threat to turn his back on the protesting party.[206] All three probably believed that at heart the Landgrave would remain true to the new faith, but what Luther had chiefly in view was Philip’s position as head of the Schmalkalden League. The result was all the more tragic. The compliance wrung from the Wittenbergers failed to protect the party from the evil they were so desirous of warding off. Philip’s reconciliation with the Emperor, as already pointed out, was very detrimental to the Schmalkalden League, however insincere his motives may have been. On this point G. Kawerau says:[207] “In the Landgrave’s resolution to address himself to the Emperor and the Pope, of which they were informed, they [Luther and Melanchthon] saw a ‘public scandal,’ a ‘_publica offensio_,’ which they sought to obviate by demanding absolute secrecy.”[208] “But the disastrous political consequences did, in the event, make their appearance.... The zealously promoted alliance with François I, to which even the Saxon Elector was not averse, came to nothing and Denmark and Sweden’s overtures had to be repelled. The prime-mover in the Schmalkalden League was himself obliged to cripple the League. ‘The dreaded champion of the Evangel became the tool of the Imperial policy’ (v. Bezold). From that time forward his position lacked precision and his strong initiative was gone.”