in effect that each Prince might sanction what religion he would, within
his own territories; thus cancelling the Decree of Worms. The capture and
occupation of Rome by troops mainly Spanish in the same year, despite the
Emperor's repudiation, was another alarming symptom; which received a
terrifying confirmation in 1527, when the Imperial troops, Spanish and
German, headed by the "Lutheran" Frundsberg and the Constable of Bourbon,
turned their arms upon the Holy City, stormed it, sacked it with a savage
thoroughness unparalleled since the days of Alaric, and held the Pope
himself a prisoner.

[Sidenote: 1530 Diet of Augsburg]

Thus the Pope himself was now not merely dominated by the Emperor but
actually in his hands. The successes of Charles however urged Francis--who
had been liberated in 1526--to renewed activity, and for a time it seemed
not unlikely that he would recover his ascendency in Italy, a consummation
as little to Clement's taste as the Imperial dominance. But the French King
misused his opportunities and his armies met with fresh disasters. In 1529,
the Pope and the Emperor were reconciled, with the result that at another
Diet of Spires the Worms edict was revived and the last Spires edict
revoked, in face of the protest of the Lutheran Princes which earned for
them the title of Protestants. That party however was sufficiently strong
to prevent its opponents from enforcing the decree over the Empire. At the
Diet of Augsburg next year (1530) the decree was confirmed: the Protestants
replying by drawing up the Confession of Augsburg, formulating their
doctrines, a document which became the definite expression of Protestantism
in the least general sense of the term--while they bound themselves for
mutual support in the League of Schmalkald. The two parties seemed to be on
the verge of war; but the sentiment of nationality in face of the
threatening of a Turkish advance and of the non-German leanings of Charles