could remember, is a disproof of
the not uncommon assertion that Charles took the Lutherans by surprise.

On a rumor that the enemy were crossing the Danube to separate him from
the troops on the march from Italy, Charles moved on Landshut with some
six thousand men, not much more than a tenth of the opposing force. He
was determined, he wrote, to remain in Germany alive or dead, rejecting
as idle vanity the notion that it was beneath his dignity to lead a
small force. At Landshut he met papal auxiliaries under Ottavio Farnese
and Alessandro Vitelli, with detachments of light horse sent by the
Dukes of Florence and Ferrara. When the Spanish foot and Neapolitan
cavalry had joined, he could muster at Regensburg twenty-eight thousand
men, over whom he placed Alba in command. The Elector and Landgrave, in
renunciation of their fealty, had sent in a herald with a broken staff
addressed to Charles self-styled the Fifth and Roman Emperor. To him was
delivered the ban of the empire against his masters, condemning them,
not for heresy, but for acts of violence and rebellion, for the Pack
plot, the attack on Wuertemberg, and the seizure of Brunswick.

The campaign now began in earnest. While the Lutherans timidly wasted
their opportunities, Charles with his greatly inferior force made a
hazardous night march on Ingolstadt. The movement was executed with much
disorder, resembling a flight rather than an advance. The league
neglected the chance of making a flank attack on the hurrying,
straggling line as it followed the right bank of the Danube until it was
conveyed across the river at Neustadt. To add to the Emperor's danger,
his German troops were mostly Lutherans, hating the priests and the
Spanish and Italian regiments. Many had early deserted from their
general, the Marquis of Marignano; all cherished ill-feeling against
Charles' confessor as being the cause of the civil war. Even the
population of Bavaria, professedly a friendly territory, was in great
part a Lutheran.

At Ingolstadt Charles could draw supplies from Bavaria, whose neutrality
the league had foolishly respected, and thither the Count of Buren with
the Netherland army might find his way. He was by no means out of
danger, encamped as he was with but feeble artillery outside the city
walls. But the Lutheran princes with all their bluster had little
stomach for stand-up fights. From August 31st to September 3d they
bombarded the city with one hundred ten guns, to