les on the north-eastern frontier of France. Each sovereign found
himself at the head of forty thousand men, and the Emperor's military
ability was seen in his proposal for an advance of both armies upon
Paris. But though Henry found no French force in his front, his cautious
temper shrank from the risk of leaving fortresses in his rear; and while
their allies pushed boldly past Chalons on the capital, the English
troops were detained till September in the capture of Boulogne, and only
left Boulogne to form the siege of Montreuil. The French were thus
enabled to throw their whole force on the Emperor, and Charles found
himself in a position from which negotiation alone could extricate him.

[Sidenote: Growth of Lutheranism.]

His ends were in fact gained by the humiliation of France, and he had as
little desire to give England a strong foothold in the neighbourhood of
his own Netherlands as in Wolsey's days. The widening of English
territory there could hardly fail to encourage that upgrowth of heresy
which the Emperor justly looked upon as the greatest danger to the hold
of Spain upon the Low Countries, while it would bring Henry a step
nearer to the chain of Protestant states which began on the Lower Rhine.
The plans which Charles had formed for uniting the Catholics and
Lutherans in the conferences of Augsburg had broken down before the
opposition both of Luther and the Pope. On both sides indeed the
religious contest was gathering new violence. A revival had begun in the
Church itself, but it was the revival of a militant and uncompromising
orthodoxy. In 1542 the fanaticism of Cardinal Caraffa forced on the
establishment of a supreme Tribunal of the Inquisition at Rome. The next
year saw the establishment of the Jesuits. Meanwhile Lutheranism took a
new energy. The whole north of Germany became Protestant. In 1539 the
younger branches of the house of Saxony joined the elder in a common
adherence to Lutheranism; and their conversion had been followed by that
of the Elector of Brandenburg. Southern Germany seemed bent on following
the example of the north. The hereditary possessions of Charles himself
fell away from Catholicism. The Austrian duchies were overrun with
heresy. Bohemia promised soon to become Hussite again. Persecution
failed to check the triumph of the new opinions in the Low Countries.
The Empire itself threatened to become Protestant. In 1540 the accession
of the Elector Palatine robbed Catholicism of