War of the Schmalkaldic League

Schmalkaldic War

Titian's Equestrian Portrait of Charles I of Spain and V of the Holy Roman Empire (1548) celebrates Charles' victory at the Battle of Mühlberg.

Date	10 July 1546 – 23 May 1547
Location	Holy Roman Empire
Result	Imperial-Spanish victory Capitulation of Wittenberg: Schmalkaldic League dissolved, Saxon electoral dignity passed to the Albertine House of Wettin

Belligerents

Commanders and leaders

The Schmalkaldic War (German: Schmalkaldischer Krieg) refers to the short period of violence from 1546 until 1547 between the forces of Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire (simultaneously King Charles I of Spain), commanded by Don Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba, and the Lutheran Schmalkaldic League within the domains of the Holy Roman Empire.

In the course of the Lutheran Reformation numerous Imperial States had adopted the new confession, against the opposition of the ruling Catholic House of Habsburg, who recognised these conversions as a quest for increasing autonomy to the detriment of the central Imperial authority. At the 1521 Diet of Worms Emperor Charles V had Martin Luther banned and the proliferation of his writings prohibited, which in 1529 provoked the Protestation at Speyer by several Lutheran estates. The tensions culminated to an open conflict over the Lutheran Augsburg Confession of 1530, the Apology of which, written by Philipp Melanchthon, was rejected by the Emperor. In turn several Lutheran states led by Elector John Frederick I of Saxony and Landgrave Philip I of Hesse met at the town of Schmalkalden, where they established the Schmalkaldic League in 1531.