The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

Thus in its earliest days Luther's revolt was handled very gently, and it spread with speed. Then Charles, secure upon his throne and gravely Catholic, resolved on firmer methods of stamping out the heresy. He summoned Luther to that famous interview at Worms (1521), where the reformer, threatened with outlawry and all the terror of the empire's power, refused to unsay his preaching, crying out in agony: "Here I stand! I can no other! God help me! Amen!"

Charles in his shrewd, silent way saw that the matter was not to be settled so easily as he had hoped. Already half Germanywas on Luther's side. Several leading nobles accompanied him as he left the Emperor's presence. Charles wanted their help against the Turks. So there was more temporizing. Then came war with Francis no tune this for quarrelling with obstinate Teutonic princes and their obstinate protege.

The peasants of Germany did Luther's cause more harm than Charles had done. These ignorant and bitterly oppressed unfortunates, constituting everywhere, remember, the vast majority of the human race, heard impassioned preachings of reform, revolt. To them Rome seemed not the oppressor, but their immediate lords; and, thinking they were obeying Luther's behest, they rose in arms. Some of the more violent reformers joined them. Luther preached against the uprising, but it was not to be checked. Terrible were the excesses of the mobs of brutal peasantry, and all the upper classes of the land were forced in self-defence to turn against them and crush them. Many a noble who had once thought well of the reform, abandoned it in fear and horror at its consequences.[4]

Meanwhile the war with France became more serious. The claims of both Charles and Francis to Italian lands made that unlucky country the theatre of their battles. Francis, with his compact domain and readily gathered resources, proved at first more than a match for the scattered forces and insecure authority of the Emperor. Never had the French monarch's fame stood higher than when in 1525, with an army made confident by repeated victories, he besieged Pavia. The city was the last important stronghold of Charles in Italy; it was reduced almost to surrender.

Then came a fatal blunder. Francis confused the old ways with the new. The German generals had been hopeless of raising the siege, the imperial armies were on the point of disbanding, but as a last resort their leaders advanced and defied the enemy to fight on equal terms. Instead of laughing at the proposal as any modern leader would, Francis, in face of the protest of all his generals, accepted and in true chivalrous fashion fought the wholly unnecessary battle of Pavia. His forces were completely defeated, he himself made prisoner. "All is lost," he wrote home to France, "but honor." Even that too was lost, had he but known. Charles, unchivalrous, determined to make the most of his good-luck, and, for the release of his royal prisoner, demanded such terms as would make France little more than a subject state.[5]

King Francis refused, threatened heroic suicide to save his country; but he wearied of captivity at last and descended to his rival's level. It was the tragic turning-point of the French monarch's life, the not wholly untragic turning-point of larger destinies, ancient chivalry being admitted unsuccessful and wholly out of date. The two monarchs dickered over the terms of release. Charles abated somewhat of his demands, and Francis was made free, having sworn to a treaty which he never meant to keep. He repudiated it on various pleas, and having thus sacrificed honor to regain something of all it had lost him, recommenced the strife with Charles on more equal terms.

The Pope, not the Leo of earlier years, but Clement VII, another Medici, absolved Francis from his treaty oath. This benevolence can scarce be ascribed to religious grounds, for Charles was assuredly a better Catholic than Francis. But as a temporal ruler Clement feared to have in Italy a neighbor so powerful and unchecked as the Emperor was becoming. Charles had his revenge. A German army of "Lutheran heretics" marched into Italy swearing to hang the Pope to the dome of St. Peter's. They stormed Rome, sacked it with such cruelty as rivalled the barbarian plunderings of over a thousand years before; and if they did not hang Clement, it was only because his castle of St. Angelo proved too strong for their assaults. The marvellous art treasures which had been slowly garnered in Rome since the days of Nicholas V, were almost wholly destroyed.[6] Charles hastened to disclaim responsibility for this direct assault upon the head of his Church; but he did not relinquish any of the advantages it gave. He and the Pope arranged an alliance and the Imperial army turned from Rome against Florence, where Pope Clement's family, the Medici, had recently been expelled as rulers. The siege and capture of Florence (1529) mark almost the last fluttering of real independence in Italy. From that time the country remained in the grasp of the Hapsburgs or their heirs and allies. Petty tyrants, minions of Austria or Spain, ruled over the various cities. Their intellectual supremacy passed over to France. Only within the last half-century has a brighter day redawned for Italy, has she ceased to be what she was so long called, "the battle-ground" of other nations.