The death of John Huss was terribly revenged. The stake became the watchword of union. The hitherto mild and submissive reformers became desperate revengers. Churches and convents were burnt; monks and priests slaughtered without mercy. The insurgents met and defeated the imperial forces. The strongest armies of the cross withered before their ferocity. For fifteen years they devastated the Papal dominions, and shook the government with the violence of their retribution. Seeing it impossible to restrain their rage, Sigismund obliged the Council of Basle to negotiate with them for the adjustment of their difficulties. This politic measure so incensed Pope Eugenius IV., whose uncompromising vengeance longed for the extermination of every opponent to papal despotism, that he ordered his legates to dissolve the obnoxious assembly. But the laity had advanced in liberality and knowledge far beyond the possible attainment of a papal despot, and in defiance of his maledictions and intrigues, continued their useful session, and terminated, by peaceful concessions, the war with the Hussites.
The grand struggle between religious freedom and Catholic despotism was visibly approaching when Charles V., King of Spain, in 1519 became Emperor of Germany. His design was to conquer the world, and his policy was to unite all parties in augmenting the national strength. To secure the favor of the pope, and the co-operation of his extensive and effective machinery, he declared himself the defender of the Catholic faith. To conciliate the Protestants he convened a diet at Worms, at which, under a plausible show of toleration he allowed Luther, in his presence, to defend the principles of the reformation. But his ambiguous policy becoming offensive to the Roman See, he issued an edict against the Protestants. A Catholic from interest, he was more disposed to make the pope auxiliary to the success of his designs than to be governed by him. Hence, when Francis I. preferred claims to certain portions of the Germanic empire, he leagued with the pope and accomplished the defeat of the king; but he was equally disposed to defend his interests against the pope. The papal monarch, always apprehensive of the political power of friend or foe, seeing that his confederacy with Charles had vastly augmented the latter's preponderating power, and placed the papal interests at his disposal, formed against him a counter league with the Italian States. This effort to retrieve the errors of his policy only aggravated his misfortune. The forces of the Holy League were defeated by the arms of Charles, Rome taken by storm, the city plundered, the pope imprisoned, and four hundred thousand crowns of gold demanded for his ransom. When Charles heard of the success of his arms, in evident mockery he dressed himself in mourning for the pope, ordered masses to be said in all the churches for his deliverance from prison, and in alleviation of his misfortune reduced the ransom to 100,000 crowns, The power of Charles overawing the papal throne, it prudently refrained from venting in insulting anathemas the ebullitions of its wrath. Pope Clement VII., after the peace of Cambray in 1592, crowned Charles as King of Lombardy and Rome.