The ensuing year opened with events more disastrous to France. Fontarabia was lost by the cowardice or treachery of its governor [Feb. 27]. In Italy, the allies resolved on an early and vigorous effort, in order to dispossess Bonnivet of that part of the Milanese which lies beyond the Tesino. Clement, who, under the pontificates of Leo and Adrian, had discovered an implacable enmity to France, began now to view the power which the emperor was daily acquiring in Italy, with so much jealousy, that he refused to accede, as his predecessors had done, to the league against Francis, and forgetting private passions and animosities, labored, with the zeal which became his character, to bring about a reconciliation among the contending parties. But all his endeavors were ineffectual; a numerous army, to which each of the allies furnished their contingent of troops, was assembled at Milan by the beginning of March. Lannoy, vice­roy of Naples, took the command of it upon Colonna's death, though the chief direction of military operations was committed to Bourbon and the Marquis de Pescara; the latter the ablest and most enterprising of the Imperial generals; the former inspired by his resentment with new activity and invention, and acquainted so thoroughly with the characters of the French commanders, the genius of their troops, and the strength as well as weakness of their armies, as to be of infinite service to the party which he had joined. But all these advantages were nearly lost through the emperor's inability to raise money sufficient for executing the various and extensive plans which he had formed. When his troops were commanded to march, they mutinied against their leaders, demanding the pay which was due to them for some months; and disregarding both the menaces and entreaties of their officers, threatened to pillage the city of Milan, if they did not instantly receive satisfaction. Out of this difficulty the generals of the allies were extricated by Morone, who prevailing on his countrymen, over whom his influence was prodigious, to advance the sum that was requisite, the army took the field.

Bonnivet was destitute of troops to oppose this army, and still more of the talents which could render him an equal match for its leaders. After various movements and encounters, described with great accuracy by the contemporary historians, a detail of which would now be equally uninteresting and uninstructive, he was forced to abandon the strong camp in which he had entrenched himself at Biagrassa. Soon after, partly by his own misconduct, partly by the activity of the enemy, who harassed and ruined his army by continual skirmishes, while they carefully declined a battle which he often offered them; and partly by the caprice of 6000 Swiss, who refused to join his army, though within a day’s march of it; he was reduced to the necessity of attempting a retreat into France, through the valley of Aost. Just as he arrived on the banks of the Sessia, and began to pass that river, Bourbon and Pescara appeared with the vanguard of the allies, and attacked his rear with great fury. At the beginning of the charge, Bonnivet, while exerting himself with much valor, was wounded so dangerously, that he was obliged to quit the field; and the conduct of the rear was committed to the chevalier Bayard, who, though so much a stranger to the arts of a court that he never rose to the chief command, was always called, in time of real danger, to the post of greatest difficulty and importance. He put his himself at the head of the men at arms, and animating them by his presence and example to sustain the whole shock of the enemy’s troops, he gained time for the rest of his countrymen to make good their retreat. But in this service he received a wound which he immediately perceived to be mortal, and being unable to continue any longer on horseback, he ordered one of his attendants to place him under a tree, with his face towards the enemy; then fixing his eyes on the guard of his sword, which he held up instead of a cross, he addressed his prayers to God, and in this posture, which became his character both as a soldier and as a Christian, he calmly waited the approach of death. Bourbon, who led the foremost of the enemy’s troops, found him in this situation, and expressed regret and pity at the sight. “Pity not me”, cried the high-spirited chevalier, “I die as a man of honor ought, in the discharge of my duty; they indeed are objects of pity, who fight against their king, their country, and their oath”. The Marquis de Pescara, passing soon after, manifested his admiration of Bayard’s virtues, as well as his sorrow for his fate, with the generosity of a gallant enemy; and finding that he could not be removed with safety from that spot, ordered a tent to be pitched there, and appointed proper persons to attend him. He died, notwithstanding their care, as his ancestors for several generations had done, in the field of battle. Pescara ordered his body to be embalmed, and sent to his relations; and such was the respect paid to military merit in that age, that the duke of Savoy com­manded it to be received with royal honors in all the cities of his dominions; in Dauphine, Bayard’s native country, the people of all ranks came out in a solemn procession to meet it.

Bonnivet led back the shattered remains of his army into France; and in one short campaign, Francis was stripped of all be had possessed in Italy, and left without one ally in that country.

While the war, kindled by the emulation of Charles and Francis, spread over so many countries of Europe, Germany enjoyed a profound tranquility, extremely favorable to the reformation, which continued to make progress daily. During Luther’s confinement in his retreat at Wartburg, Carlostadius, one of his disciples, animated with the same zeal, but possessed of less prudence and moderation than his master, began to propagate wild and dangerous opinions, chiefly among the lower people. Encouraged by his exhortations, they rose in several villages of Saxony, broke into the churches with tumultuary violence, and threw down and destroyed the images with which they were adorned. Those irregular and outrageous proceedings were so repugnant to all the elector’s cautious maxims, that, if they had not received a timely check, they could hardly have tailed of alienating from the reformers a prince, no less jealous of his own authority, than afraid of giving offence to the emperor, and other patrons of the ancient opinions. Luther, sensible of the danger, immediately quitted his retreat, without waiting for Frederic’s permission, and returned to Wittenberg [March 6, 1522]. Happily for the reformation, the veneration for his person and authority was still so great, that his appearance alone suppressed that spirit of extravagance which began to seize his party. Carlostadius and his fanatical followers, struck dumb by his rebukes, submitted at once, and declared that they heard the voice of an angel, not of a man.

Before Luther left his retreat, he had begun to translate the Bible into the German tongue, an undertaking of no less difficulty than importance, of which he was extremely fond; and for which he was well qualified: he had a competent knowledge of the original languages; a thorough acquaintance with the style and sentiments of the inspired writers; and though his compositions in Latin were rude and barbarous, he was reckoned a great master of the purity of his mother tongue, and could express himself with all the elegance of which it is capable. By his own assiduous application, together with the assistance of Melanchthon and several other of his disciples, he finished part of the New Testament in the year 1522; and the publication of it proved more fatal to the church of Rome, than that of all his own works. It was read with wonderful avidity and attention by persons of every rank. They were astonished at discovering how contrary the precepts of the Author of our religion are, to the inventions of those priests who pretended to be his vicegerents; and having now in their hand the rule of faith, they thought themselves qualified, by applying it, to judge of the established opinions, and to pronounce when they were conformable to the standard, or when they departed from it. The great advantages arising from Luther’s translation of the Bible, encouraged the advocates for reformation, in the other countries of Europe, to imitate his example, and, to publish versions of the Scriptures in their respective languages.

About this time, Nuremberg, Frankfort, Hamburg, and several other free cities in Germany, of the first rank, openly embraced the reformed religion, and by the authority of their magistrates abolished the mass, and the other superstitious rites of popery. The elector of Brandenburg, the dukes of Brunswick and Lunenburg, and prince of Anhalt, became avowed patrons of Luther’s opinions, and countenanced the preaching of them among their subjects.

The court of Rome beheld this growing defection with great concern; and Adrian’s first care after his arrival in Italy, had been to deliberate with the cardinals, concerning the proper means of putting a stop to it. He was profoundly skilled in scholastic theology, and having been early celebrated on that account, he still retained such an excessive admiration of the science to which he was first indebted for his reputation and success in life, that he considered Luther’s invectives against the schoolmen, par­ticularly Thomas Aquinas, as little less than blasphemy. All the tenets of that doctor appeared to him so clear and irrefragable, that he supposed every person who called in question or contradicted them, to be either blinded by ignorance, or to be acting in opposition to the conviction of his own mind. Of course, no pope was ever more bigoted or inflexible with regard to points of doctrine than Adrian; he not only maintained them as Leo had done, because they were ancient, or because it was dangerous for the church to allow of innovations, but he adhered to them with the zeal of a theologian, and with the tenaciousness of a disputant. At the same time his own manners being extremely simple, and uninfected with any of the vices which reigned in the court of Rome, he was as sensible of its corruptions as the reformers themselves, and viewed them with no less indignation. The brief which he addressed to the diet of the empire assembled at Nuremberg [November, 15221], and the instructions which he gave Cheregato, the nuncio whom he sent thither, were framed agreeably to these views. On the one hand, he condemned Luther’s opinions with more asperity and rancor of expression than Leo had ever used; he severely censured the princes of Germany for suffering him to spread his pernicious tenets, by their neglecting to execute the edict of the diet at Worms, and required them, if Luther did not instantly retract his errors, to destroy him with fire as a gangrened and incurable member, in like manner as Dathan and Abirain had been cut off by Moses, Ananias and Sapphira by the apostles, and John Huss and Jerome of Prague by their ancestor. On the other hand, he with great candor, and in the most explicit terms, acknowledged the corruptions of the Roman court to be the source from which had flowed most of the evils that the church now felt or dreaded; he promised to exert all his authority towards reforming these abuses, with as much dispatch as the nature and inveteracy of the disorders would admit; and he requested of them to give him their advice with regard to the most effectual means of suppressing that new heresy which had sprung up among them.

The members of the diet, after praising the pope’s pious and laudable intentions, excused themselves from not executing the edict of Worms, by alleging that the prodigious increase of Luther’s followers, as well as the aversion to the court of Rome among their other subjects on account of its innumerable exactions, rendered such an attempt not only dangerous, but impossible. They affirmed that the grievances of Germany, which did not arise from imaginary injuries, but from impositions no less real than intolerable, as his holiness would learn from a catalogue of them which they intended to lay before him, called now for some new and efficacious remedy; and in their opinion, the only remedy adequate to the disease, or which afforded them any hopes of seeing the church restored to soundness and vigour, was a general council. Such a council, therefore, they advised him, after obtaining the emperor’s consent, to assemble without delay in one of the great cities in Germany, that all who had right to be present might deliberate with freedom, and propose their opinions with such boldness, as the dangerous situation of religion at this juncture required.

The nuncio, more artful than his master, and better acquainted with the political views and interests of the Roman court, was startled at the proposition of a council; and easily foresaw how dangerous such an assembly might prove, at a time when many openly denied the papal authority, and the reverence and submission yielded to it visibly declined among all. For that reason he employed his utmost address in order to prevail on the members of the diet to proceed themselves with greater severity against the Lutheran heresy, and to relinquish their proposal concerning a general council to be held in Germany. They, perceiving the nuncio to be more solicitous about the interest of the Roman court, than the tranquility of the empire, or purity of the church, remained inflexible, and continued to prepare the catalogue of their grievances to be presented to the pope. The nuncio, that he might not be the bearer of a remonstrance so disagreeable to his court, left Nuremberg abruptly, without taking leave of the diet.

The secular princes accordingly, for the ecclesiastics, although they gave no opposition, did not think it decent to join with them, drew up the list (so famous in the German annals) of a hundred grievances, which the empire imputed to the iniquitous dominion of the papal see. This list contained grievances much of the same nature with that prepared under the reign of Maximilian. It would be tedious to enumerate each of them; they complained of the sums exacted for dispensations, absolutions, and indulgences; of the expense arising from the law-suits carried by appeal to Rome; of the innumerable abuses occasioned by reservations, commendams, and annates; of the exemption from civil jurisdiction which the clergy had obtained; of the arts by which they brought all secular causes under the cognizance of the ecclesiastical judges; of the indecent and profligate lives which not a few of the clergy led; and of various other particulars, many of which have already been mentioned, among the circumstances that contributed to the favorable reception, or to the quick progress of Luther’s doctrines. In the end they concluded, that if the holy see did not speedily deliver them from those intolerable burdens, they had determined to endure them no longer, and would employ the power and authority with which God had entrusted them, in order to procure relief.

Instead of such severities against Luther and his followers as the nuncio had recommended, the recess or edict of the diet [March 6,1523] contained only a general injunction to all ranks of men to wait with patience for the determinations of the council which was to be assembled, and in the mean time not to publish any new opinions contrary to the established doctrines of the church; together with an admonition to all preachers to abstain from matters of controversy in their discourses to the people, and to confine themselves to the plain and instructive truths of religion.

The reformers derived great advantage from the transactions of this diet, as they afforded them the fullest and most authentic evidence that gross corruptions prevailed in the court of Rome, and that the empire was loaded by the clergy with insupportable burdens. With regard to the former, they had now the testimony of the pope himself, that their invectives and accusations were not malicious or ill-founded. As to the latter, the representatives of the Germanic body, in an assembly where the patrons of the new opinions were far from being the most numerous or powerful, had pointed out as the chief grievances of the empire, those very practices of the Romish church against which Luther and his disciples were accustomed to declaim. Accordingly, in all their controversial writings after this period, they often appealed to Adrian’s declaration, and to the hundred grievances, in confirmation of whatever they advanced concerning the dissolute manners, or insatiable ambition and rapaciousness, of the papal court.

At Rome, Adrian’s conduct was considered as a proof of the most childish simplicity and imprudence. Men trained up amidst the artifices and corruptions of the papal court, and accustomed to judge of actions not by what was just, but by what was useful, were astonished at a pontiff, who, departing from the wise maxims of his predecessors, acknowledged disorders which he ought to have concealed; and forgetting his own dignity, asked advice of those to whom he was entitled to prescribe. By such an excess of impolitic sincerity, they were afraid that, instead of reclaiming the enemies of the church, he would render them more presumptuous, am instead of extinguishing heresy, would weaken the foundations of the papal power, or stop the chief sources from which wealth flowed into the church. For this reason the cardinals and other ecclesiastics of greatest eminence in the papal court industriously opposed all his schemes of reformation, and by throwing objections and difficulties in his way, endeavored to retard or to defeat the execution of them. Adrian, amazed, on the one hand, at the obstinacy of the Lutherans, disgusted, on the other, with the manners and maxims of the Italians, and finding himself unable to correct either the one or the other, often lamented his own situation, and often looked back with pleasure on that period of his life when he was only dean of Louvain, a more humble but happier station, in which little was expected from him, and there was nothing to frustrate his good intentions.

Clement VII, his successor, excelled Adrian as much in the arts of government, as he was inferior to him in purity of life, or uprightness of intention. He was animated not only with the aversion which all popes naturally bear to a council, but having gained his own election by means very uncanonical, he was afraid of an assembly that might subject it to a scrutiny which it could not stand. He determined, therefore, by every possible means to elude the demands of the Germans, both with respect to the calling of a council, and reforming abuses in the papal court, which the rashness and incapacity of his predecessor had brought upon him. For this purpose he made choice of cardinal Campeggio, an artful man, often entrusted by his predecessors with negotiations of importance, as his nuncio to the diet of the empire assembled again at Nuremberg.

Campeggio, without taking any notice of what had passed in the last meeting, exhorted the diet [February], in a long discourse, to execute the edict of Worms with vigor, as the only effectual means of suppressing Luther’s doctrines. The diet, in return, desired to know the pope’s intentions concerning the council, and the redress of the hundred grievances. The former, the nuncio endeavored to elude by general and unmeaning declarations of the pope's resolution to pursue such measures as would be for the greatest good of the church. With regard to the latter, as Adrian was dead before the catalogue of grievances reached Rome, and of consequence it had not been regularly laid before the present pope, Campeggio took advantage of this circumstance to decline making any definitive answer to them in Clement’s name; though, at the same time, he observed that their catalogue of grievances contained many particulars extremely indecent and undutiful, and that the publishing it by their own authority was highly disrespectful to the Roman see. In the end he renewed his demand of their proceeding with vigour against Luther and his adherents. But though an ambassador from the emperor, who was at that time very solicitous to gain the pope, warmly seconded the nuncio, with many professions of his master’s zeal for the honor and dignity of the papal see, the recess of the diet [April 18] was conceived in terms of almost the same import with the former, without enjoining any additional severity against Luther and his party.

Before he left Germany, Campeggio, in order to amuse and soothe the people, published certain articles for the amendment of some disorders and abuses which prevailed among the inferior clergy; but this partial reformation, which fell so far short of the expectations of the Lutherans, and of the demands of the diet, gave no satisfaction, and produced little effect. The nuncio, with a cautious hand, tenderly lopped a few branches; the Germans aimed a deeper blow, and by striking at the root wished to exterminate the evil.