In France Louis XI. had cunningly conceived the idea of recovering the power of the throne by an apparent friendship with the people; and a combination was thus formed against which a decrepit feudalism could not long stand.

In Spain the smaller kingdoms had at last been merged into two larger ones, and by the union of Castile and Aragon under Ferdinand and Isabella, and the expulsion of the Moors which quickly followed that event, that country was at last consolidated into one kingdom--in which feudalism no longer existed as a disturbing power.

In northern Italy also, among that brilliant group of small republics, there was this same centralizing tendency at work. Florence had pa.s.sed into the strong keeping of the Medici (1434), while Genoa and most of the Lombard republics were gravitating toward the control of Milan.

It was at this period that there were for the first time formed those combinations and alliances between the nations of Europe which led finally to a system existing for the preservation of the _balance of power_. In fact, after the various monarchies had a.s.sumed these firmer and more definite outlines, there began a process of weaving them together into a larger whole; and the threads used in this process are known as _European diplomacy_, which, as we have recently seen, is stronger than individual sovereigns!

It was perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the fifteenth century that the Imperial throne of Germany should be occupied, at this time of centralizing tendencies, by a man determined not alone to reign but to rule.

Maximilian I., son of the sleepy Frederick III., was chosen by the electors in 1486. He was full of energy, intelligence, and heart, and was, besides, the handsomest prince in Europe, and his wife, Mary of Burgundy, was the fairest of princesses.

The people, weary of disorder and insecurity, were glad to feel the touch of a strong hand. Maximilian firmly planted the foundations of the house of Hapsburg. From that time the choice of the Electors was merely a formal recognition of the hereditary rights of that family.

This prince, standing on the dividing line between the old and new, possessed the qualities of both. He was stately, brave, and chivalric, and at the same time educated according to the highest standards of his time, devoted to literature, art, and poetry, and with comprehensive and progressive plans for his kingdom. He had a sincere desire to reform abuses. He introduced into Germany the post office, and the system for the conveyance of letters, throughout two thousand independent territories!

The Turks were advancing on the east, the French King was hara.s.sing him on the west, and the Pope always trying to embroil him with other kingdoms and to drain his Empire. His was not an easy task.

He was not a Charlemagne nor a Frederick Barbarossa, but he infused strength and a power of resistance into Germany at a period of extreme weakness, and he reunited to the house of Hapsburg the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia.

There was evidence that the long thraldom to Rome was pa.s.sing away, in the fact that Maximilian a.s.sumed Imperial authority without receiving the crown from papal hands; his father Frederick having been the last Emperor who made pilgrimage to Rome for that purpose (in 1452).

When Maximilian came to the throne in 1493 an event of transcendent importance had just occurred. Europe had learned with amazement that when the sun disappeared in that mysterious Western Ocean, it pa.s.sed on to shine upon other lands beyond--lands teeming with life and riches.

The most fascinating field for adventure the world had ever known was suddenly opened to Europe, and the magnet of boundless wealth was transferred from the East to the West. A stream of adventurous and rapacious men, from all the lands excepting Germany, was moving toward the setting sun.

Spain, only recently obscure, poor and struggling to free her land from an alien race, suddenly found herself mistress of her own territory, consolidated, and with an empire and resources in the West, practically boundless.

The good Queen Isabella, who had been the instrumentality in bringing about these changes for her country, had the satisfaction of seeing her kingdom at one bound take its place in the first rank among the nations of Europe.

Her chief care now was to make alliances for her children suited to this new position. She and Ferdinand aimed high. They secured the daughter of Maximilian, Emperor of Germany, for their son, who was heir to the crown of Spain; but the hopes from this union were quickly blighted, as the young prince suddenly died during the wedding festivities. Then another marriage was arranged for their oldest daughter Joanna with Philip, Maximilian's son, who was also heir to the Imperial throne.

But Isabella's sorrows matched her triumphs and successes in magnitude.

Joanna became hopelessly insane. Another daughter, who married the King of Portugal, was buried in the same grave with the infant who was expected to unite the crowns of Spain and Portugal, while for her youngest child Katharine was reserved the unhappy fate of becoming the wife of Henry VIII. of England.

It is sad to remember that this admirable woman, in her intense desire to drive heretic Jews out of her country, was prevailed upon, by her confessor Torquemada, to establish the Inquisition in Spain. Believing as she devoutly did that heresy meant eternal death, and little suspecting the engine for cruelty it was to become, this kindest and best of women may be forgiven for this fatal mistake.

Overwhelmed by private griefs and sorrows, Isabella died in 1506, leaving her crazed daughter Joanna a widow, with two sons, the elder six years old. She would have been consoled could she have known that, in thirteen years from that time, this grandson would wear not alone the crown of Spain, but the great Imperial crown of Germany, and would be lord of a greater empire, and wield more power, than any living sovereign.

CHAPTER IX.

The period of Maximilian's reign was a bridge which spanned two colossal events: the discovery of America and the Reformation. When this Emperor died in 1517, a greater work was at hand than any he or his predecessors had ever accomplished, and the humble man who was to be its instrument was destined to become a power above all princes, and to shake the Church of Rome to its foundation after an undisturbed reign of a thousand years.

The Reformation had long been preparing in the hearts of the people.

The persecutions of the Albigenses in France, the Waldenses in Savoy, and the burning of Huss and of Jerome, had all come from the growing conviction that the Bible was the only true source of Christian truth and doctrine.

The art of printing had made this well of pure truth accessible to all, and there was a deep though unspoken belief in the hearts and minds of the people that a church grasping at secular power and riches had wandered far from the simple teachings of its Founder.

These smoldering fires were very near to the surface when Maximilian died. Charles, his grandson, was then King of Spain. The ambitious Francis I. of France struggled hard for the crown laid down by the Emperor, but, in 1519, it was placed upon the head of his rival, and Charles V. was the first of whom it could be said that the sun never set upon his dominions.

At this most critical moment in the history of the world, the fate of Europe was in the hands of three men: Charles V., Emperor of Germany; Francis I., King of France, and Henry VIII., King of England.

Charles, half Fleming and half Spaniard, had the grasping acquisitiveness of the one nation, and the proud, fanatical cruelty of the other. Small of stature, plain in feature, sedate, quiet, crafty, he was playing a desperate game with Francis I. for supremacy in Europe.

Francis, handsome as an Apollo, accomplished, fascinating, profligate, was fully his match in ambition. Covering his worst qualities with a gorgeous mantle of generosity and chivalrous sense of honor, he was the insidious corrupter of morals in France, creating a sentiment which laughed at virtue and innocence as qualities belonging to a lower cla.s.s of society.

Each of these men was striving to enlist Henry VIII. upon his side, by appealing to the cruel caprices of that vain, ostentatious, arrogant King, who in turn tried to use them for the furthering of his own desires and purposes.

It was a sort of triangular game between the three monarchs--a game full of finesse and far-reaching designs. If Charles attacked Francis, Henry attacked Charles, while the astute Charles, knowing well the desire of the English King to repudiate Katharine and make Anne Boleyn his queen, whispered seductive promises of the papal chair to Wolsey, who was in turn to establish his own influence over his royal master by bringing about the marriage with Anne, upon which the King's heart was set, and then be rewarded by securing Henry's promise of neutrality for Charles, in his designs of overreaching Francis--and, after that, the road to Rome for the aspiring cardinal would be a straight one!

It was an intricate diplomatic net-work, in which the thread of Henry's desire for the fair Anne was mingled with Wolsey's desire for preferment, and both interlaced with the ambitious, far-reaching purposes of the other two monarchs.

All these events were very absorbing, and while they were splendidly gilding the surface of Europe in the first half of the sixteenth century, it seemed a small matter that an obscure monk was denouncing the Pope and defying the power of the Catholic Church. Little did Charles suspect that, when his victories and edicts were forgotten, the words of the insolent heretic would still be echoing down the ages.

A few years later, and the Apollo-like beauty and false heart of Francis I. were dissolving in the grave; Henry VIII. had gone to another world, to meet his reward--and his wives; and Charles V. was sadly counting his beads in the monastery of St. Jerome, at Juste, reflecting upon the vanity of human ambitions. But the murmur of protest from the unknown monk had become a roar--the rivulet had swollen into a threatening torrent. As it is the invisible forces that are the most powerful in nature, so it is the obscure and least observed events that have accomplished the most tremendous revolutions in human affairs.

But before all this had happened, in the year 1517, when it had not yet occurred to Henry's sensitive conscience that his marriage with Katharine, his brother's widow, was illegal, and while Charles V., that sedate young man, who "looked so modest and soared so high," was quietly revolving plans for the extension of his empire, Pope Leo X., the pious Vicar of Christ upon earth, and elegant patron of Michael Angelo and Raphael, found his income all too small for his magnificent tastes. It does not seem to have occurred to him that his tastes were too costly for his income; he simply recognized that something must be done, and at once, to fill his empty purse. But what should it be? A simple and ingenious expedient solved the perplexing problem. He would issue a proclamation to his "loving, faithful children," that he would grant absolution for all sorts of crimes, the prices graduated to suit the enormity of the offense. We have not seen the proclamation, but doubt not it was in most caressing Latin, for can anything exceed the velvety softness of the gloves worn on the hands which have signed papal decrees?

Simple lying and slander were cheap; perjury and sins against chast.i.ty more costly; while the use of the stiletto, of poison, and the hired a.s.sa.s.sin could be enjoyed only by the richest. It worked well. In the hopeful words of a pious dignitary, "as soon as the money c.h.i.n.ks in the coffer, the soul springs out of purgatory." Who could resist such promise? Money flowed in swollen streams into the thirsty coffers, many even paying in advance for crimes they intended to commit!

Martin Luther was the one man who dared to stand up and denounce this tax upon crime, this papal trade in vice. The people had at last found a voice and a leader.

Protestantism, which had long been maturing in silence and in darkness, sprang full-armed into existence, and was the first thing to confront Charles when he a.s.sumed the Imperial crown.

He, no doubt, thought that he would soon be able to dispose of the new heresy, as had his royal father and mother in Spain disposed of heretic Jews a few years before. But this new specter of Protestantism would not down!

When Charles called together an a.s.sembly of states (or Diet) at Worms, in 1521, he supposed he was going to deal with one obscure monk, leading an obscure movement. But it a.s.sumed quite a different aspect when Luther, the culprit, was sustained by two great electors and many princes of his realm; and when a long list of grievances against the Papacy was formally presented by several states, which he was firmly told he would be required to redress!

The princes were in earnest. They began to seize church property, to send monks and nuns adrift, and to make free with gold and silver vessels and treasure belonging to the Church.

This time of confusion was used by one ambitious ruler for his own ends. The German, or Teutonic, order was a knightly organization created expressly to hold the frontier against the Slavonic people.

After the year 1230 this order held Prussia, which they ruled like princes. The Margrave of Brandenburg, who was at the time of the Reformation Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, realized his opportunity in the existing disorder. He made himself sovereign over Prussia, and annexed the possessions of the Teutonic order to his family.

But it was not alone the princes who saw their opportunity in this time of overturning. The wrongs of the peasants were very real and very grievous, and of long, long standing. The entire burden of taxation rested on them--the archbishops and the n.o.bles and the _gentlemen_ all being exempt!

When the Reformation began the _bauer_, or peasantry, believed that their hope lay in the abolishing of Catholicism and of the feudal system.

It takes a very small spark to fire a train of gunpowder. When the Countess of Lupfen ordered the peasants on her estate to spend their Sundays in picking strawberries and gathering snail sh.e.l.ls for pincushions, she dropped such a spark! They refused, and the revolt spread, gathering in fury as it moved like a cyclone through the German states. All throughout Germany there are to be seen, to-day, ruined castles which tell the story of this "Peasants' War" (1525). Hideous atrocities were committed, and, as has so often happened, the cause of a people whose grievances were real and heartrending was so stained with crime that sympathy with and pity for their sufferings were obliterated. Even Luther--whose followers they claimed to be--said of them, "they should be treated as a man would treat a mad dog."

The bold stand taken by Luther against this rebellion strengthened him with the princes. Not only Saxony, Hesse, and Brunswick and many free cities, but the Augustine order of monks, a part of the Franciscans, and a number of priests had embraced the new doctrine contained in the "Augsburg Confession," the creed or summary of belief which was prepared by Luther's friend, Philip Melancthon.

The principles a.s.serted in this were that men are justified by faith alone; that an a.s.sembly of believers const.i.tutes a Church; that monastic vows, invocation of saints, fasting, celibacy, etc., are useless.

Such were the chief points in the celebrated "Confession," which was signed by the Protestant cities and princes in 1530.

So while Charles was engaged in his great game of finesse with Francis I. and Henry VIII. for preponderance in Europe--while the Turks were pressing toward Vienna on the east, and the French into Flanders on the west, and while the Pope, who should have been his ally, jealous of his power was circ.u.mventing and weakening him so far as he could, worse than all else, the foundations of the Protestant Church were being permanently laid in Germany.