The time had arrived when a German Emperor might raise his power above the heads of all the princes, and with irresistible strength overthrow every opponent; for just at that time a new power arose in Germany, imperative in its demands, and capable of the greatest results,--public opinion. The Reform movement in the Church combined also within it the germ of great political reforms. Had an Emperor arisen who would have sympathized with the needs of the German spirit, who would have united himself with the Reformation, and known how to raise it for his own aims in an exalted spirit, he would have had it in his power to form out of the Empire a new state and a united German Church: it was the highest prize that ever was offered to an ambitious prince; and how favourable would have been his position! The nation was deeply roused against the hierarchy and Romish influence, and the Reformation began with a struggle against the highest of the ecclesiastical electors. Three Electorates, more than seventy Imperial dignities, comprising the largest third of the whole country of Germany, were in the hands of ecclesiastical lords, who would all have fallen had the Reformation been undertaken by the Emperor and people. The Emperor would have found in the movement, powers which would have made his Imperial army irresistible; the evangelical preachers could not in a moment have transformed awkward peasants into skilled soldiers; but they might have infused into the armies of the Emperor, much of the enthusiasm and reckless daring which the best among them made proof of in their own lives; besides which, comprehensive ideas of political reform sprang up in the circle of the Huttens and Sickingens; and a German Emperor might well have found in such ideas the means of reconciling the conflicting interests of peasants, citizens, and knights, at least sufficiently so to serve his own purposes. How could the German princes, disunited as they always were, have withstood an Emperor with such allies, strengthened by a well-established income, and leader of an army which for the first time since the Crusades would have been animated by a great idea? Good grounds would such an emperor have had to have respected old families: it would not have been necessary for him to take the Electoral crown from off their heads, but he might have reduced them to be dignitaries of one great united empire, in which the highest jurisdiction and the power of the army would have been vested in him alone: the want of such a man was for centuries the misfortune of Germany.