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 who had claims to the Danish throne through his wife Dorothea, Christian II's daughter. The Council of Trent actually met in December, and Paul III offered 12, 000 foot, 500 horse, a loan of 200, 000 crowns and half-a-year's ecclesiastical revenues in Spain for the purposes of the war. At the same time the Emperor's personal efforts to check the Reformation in Cologne had failed; Hermann von Wied defied both the imperial Ban and the papal Bull, and was taken under the wing of the Schmalkaldic League. The primate, Albrecht of Mainz, died in September; Charles' candidate for the vacant Archbishopric received not a single vote; and Sebastian von Heusenstamm was an Erasmian Catholic who owed his election to Philip of Hesse's aid rendered in return for Heusenstamm's promise to purify his see. Duke Henry of Brunswick was defeated in an attempt in September to regain his duchy with the help of mercenaries under Christopher von Wrisberg; the sequestration of his territories arranged at Speier and Worms was set aside; and they were appropriated by the Schmalkaldic League, an act of violence which Charles expressed his intention of using as a pretext for a religious war.

In these circumstances the doctrinal discussions which the Emperor renewed in the winter can be regarded as little more than a blind to delude the Protestants or a screen behind which he made his preparations for war. His representatives at the conference, Cochlaeus, Eberhard Billick, and Malvenda all held extreme views, and their arguments were principally aimed against the compromise of 1541. They revived the scholastic dogmas which had then been abandoned; and the interest of their discussions consists, for English readers at any rate, mainly in the fact that Malvenda based his defence on the teaching of a forgotten English Dominican, Robert Holcot (d. 1349). Charles' real efforts were directed towards the more useful work of consolidating the Catholic and disintegrating the Protestant party. The leading Catholic opponent of the Habsburgs, Duke William III of Bavaria, who ruled the whole duchy since the death of his younger brother Ludwig, was won over to something more than benevolent neutrality by the alliance between Pope and Emperor, by the marriage of his son with Ferdinand's eldest daughter, and a promise of the throne of Bohemia for their descendants if Ferdinand's male issue failed, and by the offer of the coveted hat of the Elector Palatine, if the latter sided openly with Charles' enemies.

Still more important were the divisions among the Protestants. The imprisonment of Duke Henry of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and the seizure of his duchy had alienated his Protestant as well as his Catholic kinsfolk, including the Duchess Elizabeth of Brunswick-Calenberg, her son Duke Eric, and Duke Henry's son-in-law Margrave Hans of Brandeii-burg-Cüstrin, who were detached from the Schmalkaldic League by the promise of Henry's restoration. Margrave Hans' elder brother, the Elector Joachim of Brandenburg, was already pledged to neutrality, and