For a few months in the summer of 1546, it appeared the Schmalkaldic League might triumph over Charles V. As Schmalkaldic armies occupied Füssen, Donauwörth, and the Eastern Swabian countryside, Augsburg and other evangelical imperial cities sent forth preachers to staff the newly captured parishes. The long awaited resolution of the religious question seemed at hand, and the region's magistrates acted to prepare the way for the victory of evangelical reform. Their attitude appears in two letters sent to Kaufbeuren's council a few months earlier in October 1545. In September of that year, Duke Heinrich of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel living up to the “warlike ways” attributed to him by Ulm's council, invaded Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel in an attempt to regain his lands by force. Within weeks, a Schmalkaldic force led by Philip of Hesse crushed the duke's army. In announcing the Schmalkaldic League's victory, Augsburg's magistrates expressed their

Memmingen's council proclaimed “God the Lord seems to have given us this victory. We see how His divine majesty will long preserve His holy word by those faithful people who place their trust in Him.”