Persecution of the French Protestants by Francis.—The cessation of the wars between Francis and Charles left each free to give his attention to his heretical subjects. And both had work enough on hand; for while the king and the emperor had been fighting each other, the doctrines of the reformers had been spreading rapidly in all directions and among all classes.
The severest blow dealt by Henry against the heretics of his kingdom fell upon the Vaudois, or Waldenses,[1] the inhabitants of a number of hamlets in Piedmont and Provence. Thousands were put to death by the sword, thousands more were burned at the stake, and the land was reduced to a wilderness. Only a miserable remnant, who found an asylum among the mountains, were left to hand down their faith to later times.
Charles' Wars with the Protestant German Princes.— Charles, on his part, turned his attention to the reformers in Germany. Inspired by religious motives and convictions, and apprehensive, further, of the effect upon his authority in Germany of the growth there of a confederacy of the Protestant princes, known as the League of Schmalkald, Charles resolved to suppress the reform movement by force. He was at first successful, but in the end, the war proved the most disastrous and humiliating to him of any in which he had engaged. Successive defeats of his armies forced him to give up his undertaking to make all his German subjects think alike in matters of religion.
The Religious Peace of Augsburg (1555).—In the celebrated Diet of Augsburg, convened in 1555 to compose the distracted affairs of the German states, it was arranged and agreed that every prince should be allowed to choose between the Catholic religion
- ↑ So called from the founder of the sect, Peter Waldo, or Pierre de Vaux, who lived about the beginning of the thirteenth century.
Christian captives. For this brilliant and knightly achievement, the emperor received great applause throughout Europe. Just after his third war with Francis, the emperor made an unsuccessful and most disastrous assault upon Algiers, another stronghold of the corsairs.
