on one side, the pope and the emperor on the other.

At the same time the Turks, under the leadership of the Sultan Solyman himself, were organizing a formidable force for the invasion of Hungary, which invasion would require all the energies of Ferdinand, with all the forces he could raise in Austria, Hungary and Bohemia to repel.
Next to Hungary and Bohemia, Saxony was perhaps the most powerful State of the Germanic confederacy.

The emperor placed full reliance upon Maurice, and the Protestants in their despair would have thought of him as the very last to come to their aid; for he had marched vigorously in the armies of the emperor to crush the Protestants, and was occupying the territories of their most able and steadfast friend.

Secretly, Maurice made proposals to all the leading Protestant princes of the empire, and having made every thing ready for an outbreak, he entered into a treaty with the King of France, who promised large subsidies and an efficient military force.
Maurice conducted these intrigues with such consummate skill that the emperor had not the slightest suspicion of the storm which was gathering.

Every thing being matured, early in April, 1552, Maurice suddenly appeared before the gates of Augsburg with an army of twenty-five thousand men.