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 League was held at Frankfort from December, 1545, to February, 1546, without resulting in harmony between Philip and John Frederick or in the adoption of satisfactory financial or military preparations for war. Philip had been alarmed early in 1545 by rumours of the approaching peace with the Turks, and wished to send embassies to England, France, and Denmark, to form an alliance with the Swiss and- with Holland, and to take the offensive before Charles' measures were complete. But John Frederick believed in peace to the last. He was deluded by Charles' assurances that he meant no war on the Lutherans, but rather another expedition against Algiers, and by the Emperor's apparent confidence in peace, evinced by his crossing Germany almost unattended from the Netherlands to Ratisbon, which base it was in fact essential for Charles to reach.

So the time passed until the opening of the Diet at Ratisbon in June, 1546. Eric of Brunswick, Margrave Hans of Ciistrin, and some other Protestants whom Charles had won over were present; but Philip and John Frederick were absent. Maurice, who was still ostensibly on the best of terms with his cousin and his father-in-law, was told by Granvelle that he must come to Ratisbon to conclude his agreement with the Emperor. Maurice came, but he was determined not to sell himself too cheaply. Besides the grant of the practical administration of Magdeburg and Halberstadt, a demand which ran counter to all the principles Charles was bent on enforcing, he required the transference to himself of his cousin's electoral dignity and-what cost Charles a greater effort to concede-immunity from the decrees of the Council of Trent, so far as they might touch the doctrine of justification by faith, clerical marriages, and communion in both elements. Without these concessions Maurice despaired of maintaining his position in Protestant Saxony, and with some modifications they were all granted by Charles. The Emperor's confessor had advised him to tempt some of the Protestant Princes with the bait of their neighbours' vineyards; but it was a sore test for Charles when, in order to attain his purpose, he had to grant in private to particular Princes terms which he refused to them all in public, and to surrender that principle of submission to the Church on which the whole war was based.

Somewhat similar verbal assurances were made to Hans of Ciistrin, Albrecht of Culmbach, and Eric of Brunswick. On June 7 the treaty with Bavaria was formally signed, and two days later that with the Pope. But the Diet still continued; and on the 13th the Protestants repudiated the Council of Trent and demanded instead a national Council. Pending its decisions the compromise of Speier should remain in force. Charles laughed; he had already given orders for mobilisation. Encouraged by the success of his diplomacy in dividing the Protestants and by the singularly favourable aspect of foreign affairs, urged on by the exhortation of his Spanish subjects, possibly carried away to some extent