Much as we may dread the ravages of the infidel, they can hardly drain Christendom more effectually than it is now drained by the exactions of the Church." It was at Augsburg in July, 1518, that the diet ventured thus boldly to speak.

This was one year after Luther had nailed upon the church door in Wittemberg, his ninety-five propositions, which had roused all Germany to scrutinize the abominable corruptions of the papal church.

This bold language of the diet, influenced by the still bolder language of the intrepid monk, alarmed Leo X., and on the 7th of August he issued his summons commanding Luther to repair to Rome to answer for heresy.
Maximilian, who had been foiled in his own attempt to attain the chair of St.Peter, who had seen so much of the infamous career of Julius and Alexander, as to lose all his reverence for the sacred character of the popes, and who regarded Leo X.merely as a successful rival who had thwarted his own plans, espoused, with cautious development, but with true interest, the cause of the reformer.

And now came the great war of the Reformation, agitating Germany in every quarter, and rousing the lethargic intellect of the nations as nothing else could rouse it.
Maximilian, with characteristic fickleness, or rather, with characteristic pliancy before every breeze of self-interest, was now on the one side, now on the other, and now, nobody knew where, until his career was terminated by sudden and fatal sickness.
The emperor was at Innspruck, all overwhelmed with his cares and his plans of ambition, when he was seized with a slight fever.

Hoping to be benefited by a change of air, he set out to travel by slow stages to one of his castles among the mountains of Upper Austria.