many and various, but nothing short of a Diet of the empire could
settle the disturbance.[11]

Such a Diet was convoked by the young emperor for January, 1521. It
was the first of his reign, and the grandest ever held on German soil.
Philip of Hesse came to it with a train of six hundred cavaliers. The
electors, dukes, archbishops, landgraves, margraves, counts, bishops,
barons, lords, deputies, legates, and ambassadors from foreign courts
came in corresponding style. They felt it important to show their
consequence at this first Diet, and were all the more moved to be
there in force because the exciting matter of Reform was specified as
one of the chief things to be considered. The result was one of the
most august and illustrious assemblies of which modern history tells,
and one which presented a spectacle of lasting wonder that a poor lone
monk should thus have moved all the powers of the earth.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Audin, in his _Life of Luther_, says: "A monk who wore a cassock
out at the elbows had caused to the most powerful emperor in the world
greater embarrassments than those which Francis I., his unsuccessful
rival at Frankfort, threatened to raise against him in Italy. With the
cannon from his arsenal at Ghent and his lances from Namur, Charles
could beat the king of France between sunrise and sunset; but lances
and cannon were impotent to subdue the religious revolution, which,
like some of the glaciers which he crossed in coming from Spain,
acquired daily a new quantity of soil."--Vol. i. chap. 25. Again, in
chap. 30, he says of the emperor: "The thought of measuring his
strength with the hero of Marignan was far from alarming him, but a
struggle with the monk of Wittenberg disturbed his sleep. He wished