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 territorial power he was eager to carry out the verdict of the Court. Personal animosity between him and his neighbour the Landgrave added fuel to the flames; Philip was believed to be arming for war in the spring of 1539, and Held and Duke Henry were bent upon anticipating his attack.

Such a development was, however, repugnant to responsible people on both sides. The Emperor had not in fact been so truculent as Held represented; his real intention in sending his Vice-Chancellor to Germany seems to have been to provide safeguards for his imperial authority, which in 1536-7 was threatened at least as much by Catholic as it was by Protestant enmities. The Pope appeared to be indifferent to the fate of the Church and Empire in Germany, and regarded with apparent unconcern the alliance between France and the infidels against the Christian Emperor. If Charles was to make head against them he must feel more secure in Germany, and the only means feasible were a Council summoned without the concurrence of Francis or Paul, a national synod of the German people, or a perpetual compromise on the basis of the Nürnberg peace of 1532. The ten years' truce with France concluded at Nice relieved Charles of his more pressing anxieties, but in spite of appearances, brought him no nearer to the position from which he could dictate terms to the Lutherans. He was doubtless aware that Francis had given, both before and after the truce, satisfactory assurances to the German Princes to the effect that the concord was merely defensive and that he would not allow Charles to destroy them. And other dangers arose on the imperial horizon. In February, 1538, Ferdinand closed his long rivalry with Zapolya by a treaty which guaranteed to that potentate, who was then childless, a lifelong tenure of his Hungarian throne on condition that Ferdinand should be his successor. But this only enraged the really formidable foe, the Sultan, who regarded Hungary as his and Zapolya as only his viceroy; and in 1539 war was once more threatened on the banks of the Danube.

A still greater trouble menaced the Habsburgs in Flanders, and the revolt of Ghent extending though it did to Alost, Oudenaarde, and Courtrai, was only a part of the peril. Gelders, which had constantly been to the Burgundian House what Scotland was to England, passed in 1539 into the hands of a ruler who dreamt of uniting with the Schmalkaldic League on the east, with Henry VIII on the west, and possibly with Francis I on the south, and of thus surrounding Charles' dominions in the Netherlands with an impenetrable hostile fence. John, Duke of Cleves, had married Mary, the only child of William of Jülich and Berg; his son William, heir to the united duchy of Cleves-Jiilich-Berg, had also claims on the neighbouring duchy of Gelders, whose Duke died without issue in 1538. The Estates of Gelders admitted William's claims, and in February, 1539, he also succeeded his father in Cleves. He had been educated by Erasmus' friend Conrad Heresbach, and the