The answer of the king was characteristic of his policy and of his career.  “I have convened you,” he said, “to give me contributions, not remonstrances.  I wish you to help me expel the Turks, not the Jesuits.”

From many a prince this reply would have excited exasperation.  But Maximilian had established such a character for impartiality and probity, that the rebuke was received with applause rather than with murmurs, and the Protestants, with affectionate zeal, rallied around his standard.  So great was the influence of the king, that toleration, as one of the virtues of the court, became the fashion, and the Catholics and Protestants vied with each other in the manifestation of mutual forbearance and good will.  They met on equal terms in the palace of the monarch, shared alike in his confidence and his favors, and cooperated cordially in the festivities of the banqueting room, and in the toils of the camp.  We love to dwell upon the first beautiful specimen of toleration which the world has seen in any court.  It is the more beautiful, and the more wonderful, as having occurred in a dark age of bigotry, intolerance and persecution.  And let us be sufficiently candid to confess, that it was professedly a Roman Catholic monarch, a member of the papal church, to whom the world is indebted for this first recognition of true mental freedom.  It can not be denied that Maximilian II. was in advance of the avowed Protestants of his day.

Pope Pius V. was a bigot, inflexible, overbearing; and he determined, with a bloody hand, to crush all dissent.  From his throne in the Vatican he cast an eagle eye to Germany, and was alarmed and indignant at the innovations which Maximilian was permitting.  In all haste he dispatched a legate to remonstrate strongly against such liberality.  Maximilian received the legate, Cardinal Commendon, with courtesy, but for a time firmly refused to change his policy in obedience to the exactions of the pope.  The pope brought to bear upon him all the influence of the Spanish court.  He was threatened with war by all the papal forces, sustained by the then immense power of the Spanish monarchy.  For a time Maximilian was in great perplexity, and finally yielded to the pope so far as to promise not to permit any further innovations than those which he had already allowed, and not to extend his principles of toleration into any of his States where they had not as yet been introduced.  Thus, while he did not retract any concessions he had made, he promised to stop where he was, and proceed no further.

Maximilian was so deeply impressed with the calamities of war, that he even sent an embassy to the Turks, offering to continue to pay the tribute which they had exacted of his father, as the price of a continued armistice.  But Solyman, having made large preparations for the renewed invasion of Hungary, and sanguine of success, haughtily rejected the offer, and renewed hostilities.