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 allies. He was fortunate to escape so lightly; he had not learnt wisdom with years, and his people detested his rule. Ferdinand pressed for the abrogation of the Treaty of Cadan and the restitution of the duchy, but Charles was afraid that such a step would revive Bavarian and other jealousies of the Habsburg power.

In the north-west, too, the imperial cause made strides. At the end of January imperial commissioners were sent to enforce the long-threatened Catholic restoration in Cologne. The Protestant Archbishop, Hermann von Wied, had been suspended by the Pope, and his offer to abdicate in return for a guarantee for the maintenance of Protestantism was rejected; Count Adolf of Schaumburg was elected coadjutor; on February 25 Hermann resigned and Catholicism was forcibly re-established. In the same month Duke Henry of Brunswick captured Minden and regained his duchy. For these successes the inactivity of Landgrave Philip was largely responsible. At the critical moment his former vigour was lost in vacillation. His son-in-law Maurice was seeking to separate him from the Elector, and Philip gave Maurice warning when John Frederick marched against him. But he could not make up his mind to accept the terms that were offered, and the final catastrophe, which he did nothing to avert, left him at Charles' uncovenanted mercy.

The Landgrave and the Elector seemed to have exchanged their accustomed parts, for while Philip was wasting the precious moments John Frederick was exerting himself with unwonted resolution and success. Maurice's treachery had alienated the whole of Saxony; and John Frederick's appearance at the beginning of December, 1546, was the signal for a great outburst of enthusiasm for his cause. He rapidly recovered the whole of his own territories, extended his influence over the sees of Merseburg, Halberstadt, and Magdeburg, and invaded Albertine Saxony. He defeated and captured Margrave Albrecht of Culmbach at Rochlitz, and overran all Maurice's lands with the exception of Leipzig. His cousin complained that most of his subjects favoured John Frederick, and thought of fleeing to Königsberg. The Lutherans of Lusatia and Silesia and the Utraquists of Bohemia refused to follow Ferdinand in support of Maurice. They were much more anxious to preserve their own lands from Spanish troops; they entered into negotiations with John Frederick, threatened to withdraw their allegiance from Ferdinand, whose hold on the Bohemian throne was at that moment weakened by the death of his wife, the daughter of Wladislav II, and received John Frederick with open arms when he crossed the frontier. North Germany seemed at last to be roused to a sense of danger; a league was in course of formation including Magdeburg, Bremen, Brunswick, and Hamburg, and Christopher of Oldenburg and Albrecht of Mansfeld were prepared to support it.

At this moment, when the fortune of war seemed to be turning, the tide began to set against Charles in other quarters. The spiritual and