He began
with the city of Aix-la-Chapelle, in a Prussian province on the Lower
Rhine; sent an army there, took possession of the town, expelled the
Protestants from the magistracy, driving some of them into exile,
inflicting heavy fines upon others, and abolishing entirely the exercise
of the Protestant religion.
He then turned to Donauworth, an important city of Bavaria, upon the
Upper Danube. This was a Protestant city, having within its walls but
few Catholics. There was in the city one Catholic religious
establishment, a Benedictine abbey. The friars enjoyed unlimited freedom
of conscience and worship within their own walls, but were not permitted
to occupy the streets with their processions, performing the forms and
ceremonies of the Catholic church. The Catholics, encouraged by the
emperor, sent out a procession from the walls of the abbey, with
torches, banners, relics and all the pageants of Catholic worship. The
magistrates stopped the procession, took away their banners and sent
them back to the abbey, and then suffered the procession to proceed.
Soon after the friars got up another procession on a funeral occasion.
The magistrates, apprehensive that this was a trap to excite them to
some opposition which would render it plausible for the emperor to
interfere, suffered the procession to proceed unmolested.
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