Some of the material provided for Goethe's Egmont is of interest in our context as well:

For a detailed and highly partisan account of the turbulent year 1568 leading up the execution of Counts Egmont and Horn read the old classic:
John Lothrop Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1899), vol. II, Chapter 2.
On p. 158 you'll read about the death sentence issued by the Holy Office which "condemned all the inhabitants of the Netherlands to death as heretics. From this universal doom only a few persons, especially named, were excepted. A proclamation of the King, dated ten days later, confirmed this decree of the inquisition ... It was hardly the purpose of Government to compel the absolute completion of the wholesale plan ...yet it was certain that when all were condemned, any might at a moment's warning be carried to the scaffold, and this was precisely the course adopted by the authorities."
There are numerous echoes in Goethe's Egmont of the fear and sheer terror that gripped the citizens of the Netherlands.

Schiller writes a brilliant review of Goethe's drama in which he takes him to task for changing the historical Egmont: Ueber "Egmont", Trauerspiel von Goethe.

The splendid four-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand, Oxford UP 1996, is still in print and an indispensable reference.
Gerhard Ritter, Die Neugestaltung Deutschlands und Europas im 16. Jahrhundert remains a classic. So, of course is
Leopold Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation. Berlin, 1839.
Richard van Duelmen, Reformation als Revolution (1987) deals with social movements and religious radicalism during the German Reformation.
Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers, ed. G.H. Williams and A.M. Mergal. Texts and comments.
Ernst Bloch, Thomas Muenzer (1921) remains a curiosity.

(1) Luther on Authority, Law and Order. (A piece constantly under revision since I first delivered it at a Cornell Luther Symposium in 1983).
(2) The Protestant Revolution. A revised version of a piece published in 1993. It deals with the protest movement in East Germany that lead to the collapse of the regime, and attempts to place it in a historical perspective.
Two columns of mine dealing with Luther's legacy appeared in The Ithaca Journal:
"A 1944 retrospect: Germans versus Hitler" (8/26/94) and "Martin Luther" (2/29/96).

Martin Luther, Small Catechism. Concordia Publishing House. St. Louis, Missouri. Section III has the "Table of Duties", among them "Of Civil Government" and "Of Subjects".
Luther und die Obrigkeit, ed. Gunther Wolf, Darmstadt 1972, reprints 18 essays on the subject originally published between 1955 and 1969.

We'll begin by viewing a few scenes from a video depicting the life of Elizabeth I of England (1533-1603), Glenda Jackson in the title role. It is 1558, the year Mary Tudor, the Catholic (or Bloody) Mary, Queen of England since 1553, dies without leaving an heir. She is married to Philip, Infant (Crown Prince) of Spain. There is a brief encounter between the future Queen of England and the future King of Spain, and for one brief moment there is a tantalizing sense of what might have been. The Protestant Queen and the Catholic King each becoming the other's consors regni. Putting the affairs of state ahead of the affairs of faith. Religious tolerance, freedom of thought and speech, Gedankenfreiheit, as Posa puts it in Schiller's drama. Instead, when the drama starts, The Spanish Armada has just been destoyed (1588) and England, now a Protestant super power, and Catholic Spain are at war.

It is important to understand that the Don Carlos we meet is a thoroughly changed man from what he had been only months earlier. He appears to be in the grip of melancholy. The monk Domingo, the King's confessor and chief spy at Philip's court, tries to pry the secret out of him. He pictures the Carlos that was and the Carlos who is now the cause of great anxiety to his father, his stepmother, the court, indeed the entire realm. The uncertain condition of the Infant, the crown prince, is a threat to the Empire's political stability. Carlos, suspicious of every one at a court of a thousand spies, rejects every offer to unburden himself to the priest, even in confession. He protects his secret but does justify his caution in a manner so contemptuous and abusive and revealing that Domingo can be quite satisfied with the results of this interview. He didn't get what he came for, but the glimpse into Carlos' present state of mind is almost as valuable.
The sudden appearance of childhood companion Posa, just back from extended travels, instantly turns the defensive prince into one so hysterically eager to tell all that Posa is shocked, even slightly revolted. This is not the fiery youth he remembers, the future king eager to bring about a new order based on freedom and equality. Posa reluctantly postpones his political agenda and takes up the personal mission thrust upon him by Carlos, that of a friend and mentor who will guard his client's every step and action.
The secret is out, Carlos is passionately, obsessively in love with Elizabeth, once his fiancee, now his stepmother. This is one of the early depictions, Goethe's Werther is another, of love as a debilitating illness that corrupts all rational and ethical faculties. It exculpates the sufferers who cannot be held accountable for their actions, since they are committed under the influence of a force they cannot control. Wagner's Tristan und Isolde is the supreme representation of this arch romantic theme.

Carlos, in his extreme agitation, ruins every chance he is given. He very nearly loses the queen in their early encounter  (I,5) when he refuses to accept her marital status as final, proclaiming in true despotic fashion that he is not willing to suffer unhappiness when "all it takes" to be happy is "simply" to cancel every law that stands in his way.
His audience with Philip (II,1&2) is a disaster. When he wins the battle over Alba's presence we sense that he's just lost the war. He wants to be reinstated as his father's son and he nearly succeeds, trying a number of different roles in swift succession to move the king. He loses all when he reveals his real agenda, to be appointed supreme commander of the expeditionary force that is about to leave for Holland. The king at first reacts as a father, when Carlos persists, as a wary older man protecting his power, then increasingly as king and supreme commander who needs to isolate and neutralize an impetuous and obstinate rival: sick persons such as you require medical attention; the Duke will go to Flanders, you stay here. Carlos forces the king to seal the rift by confirming the decision, then sputters his own exit line in barely contained fury: I'm finished. He has moved the king, he'll never know it, he wanted all or nothing now or never, and stormed off the stage convinced that he gained nothing. The king however is willing to take a chance on Carlos; but he, typically, tells Alba, not the person who needs to hear it.

His scene with Princess Eboli (II,8) is the longest non-dialogue in the drama. Only when she tells him that she is about to be given in marriage to an unloved man (only half her secret, the other half is in the letter Carlos has yet to read) does he warm up to her and instantly adopts the role that this revelation suggests, the knight in shining armor, St. George, Perseus. And he declares his willingness to come to her rescue with such ardor that she is convinced it is a declaration of love. A long embarrassed silence follows when they both recognize their mistake, followed by inept attempts on Carlos' part to explain and apologize, followed by his refusal to return the letter once he finds out what it contains. He walks right over the woman he had sworn to carry through hell only moments earlier, triumphantly carrying off the incriminating letter instead. The creep. Carlos has sunk to his lowest level in the drama.
Eboli appears utterly destroyed. But what immediately follows (II,9) is a spectacular self-regeneration of a person. She forces herself calmly and dispassionately to analyze the data she thinks she has, comes to a firm conclusion, and never mind that it is false, determines to act on it. She will not be defeated. Only the king displays a similar inner strength when he rebuilds himself after a series of devastating blows (V,9).

Posa tears up the letter and once again reminds his ward (how many times now?) how generous of spirit he once was and how self-absorbed his unfortunate passion has made him. And once again Carlos' self-esteem and self-confidence sink and sag. He surrenders himself, one more time, completely to Posa's guidance. So utterly weakened is he by his own misadventures and the emotional up and down of high expectations and subsequent let-down that he will excuse even Posa's apparent treachery  and blame himself. He, the crown prince, is now in prison, placed there by Posa. It is here that he regains the initiative. When he learns of the true nature of the deception and realizes that Posa is lost unless he, Carlos, intervenes, he proposes that they both face the king and tell him the truth: this is what a friend will do for a friend. And the king will be moved. (Remember that Karl Moor harbored similar hopes). Schiller wrote a ballad on the subject of extraordinary loyalty, Die Buergschaft, in which the despot finally yields to what little humanity is still alive in him: "Ich sei, gewaehrt mir die Bitte, in eurem Bunde der Dritte." There is a potential turning point here, but a shot rings out before Carlos can rise to the occasion. Another occurs a few moment later when the king seems on the verge of abdicating in favor of his son, but faints and is carried out of the room as Alba leaves to restore order in Madrid, and Carlos, grieving over Posa's body, is not even aware of the opportunity just missed.

It is his genuine human concern which in the end earns him our sympathy. The final scene shows him at his best (remember when, as a child, he offered himself in punishment for an offense Posa had committed?): instead of attempting to save himself he instinctively saves the queen from crashing to the floor in a faint.

In this most important scene, Carlos taking leave of Elizabeth, but words and body language express opposite messages. He renounces his love for her forever; should he return, his father's widow shall be tabu to him; presumptuous as ever he even admonishes her to return to her conjugal duties. Blather. His body language carries the opposite message: he moves toward her, takes her hand, takes her into his arms, kisses her. This kiss seals their relationship. They take leave as lovers. When they meet again, as they both expect to, they will meet as lovers. The parting is to be temporary and all options remain open. The language (his, not hers) conceals the true significance of the hour, after days of extraordinary turmoil they have finally found each other.
Note also, however, that this view of their future together is but one of many variations of a universal phenomenon: "To the Victor belong the Spoils" including the women of the conquered or vanquished enemy. The fate of the Women of Troy, the story of Absalom's rebellion against his father David (2 Samuel 16, 21f.) are ancient examples, the latter recaptured in Rilke's "Absaloms Abfall." Systematic rape is an element of warfare still, with Bosnia the most blatant recent example. We'll see various depictions in art, inluding Max Slevogt's "Der Sieger" (1912).

When the curtain comes down on the drama we will probably decide that we prefer to live in a world inhabited by the Carlos, Philips and Eboli, despite their passions and rages and subsequent unpredictabilties, as opposed to a stable world governed by ideologues like the Marquis of Posa or the Grand Inquisitor.

Read Schiller's own Letters about Don Carlos, which deal more with the marquis than the prince, which judge Posa quite harshly. Theu are clearly influenced by Kantian ethics. Manipulating others as he does is Posa's main offense. People are not to be used as means to an end, they are the end. He himself says so in his audience with Philip. But he is a manipulator, conspirator and organizer of the first order. Even Alba has nothing but admiration for him when he learns of Posa's plans for the liberation of the Netherlands, including an alliance between the Ottoman Empire and the Protestant powers of Northern Europe. One military genius paying his respect to another.
Posa serves an ideology as fanatically as does the Grand Inquisitor, his main antagonist in the drama. Just like Church and Crown, he proposes war to export the new ideology into the rest of the world. It is what Europe expected of Napoleon, soon to be disillusioned, however. We'll view the scene where Napoleon "inherits" the Revolution and vows to export it, from Abel Gance's silent film (French, 1926).

We'll  also watch two scenes from Guiseppe Verdi's adaptation of Schiller's drama. Philip's agonized insight that Elizabeth never loved him, immediately followed by the Grand Inquisitor's visit (in Schiller III,1 and V,10). They agree to sacrifice Carlos for the sake of the state and religion. As a rebel and a heretic Carlos is both an enemy of the state and of the true faith.

The generation of Schiller's parents were witnesses to a real life drama based on a father-and-son conflict with almost the same conclusion. When  Crown Prince Friedrich of Prussia (1712-1786), the later Friedrich II (the Great), could no longer endure the barbaric treatment at the hands of his father and absolute monarch Friedrich Wilhelm I (1688-1740) he decided to flee to England where his maternal grandfather had ascended to the throne as George I (1660-1727) and where his uncle now governed as George II. Friedrich's mother Sophie Dorothea, a Princess of Hanover, favors another marriage between their two houses, King Friedrich Wilhelm does not.
Young Friedrich's confidant was Lieutenant Hans Herrmann von Katte. The plan is discovered, Friedrich and Katte are arrested. The king is enraged and plans to have his son tried and executed for high treason. He has to be reminded repeatedly that his son is a Reichsfuerst (Prince of the Realm) and under the Emperor's jurisdiction, not the King's. Katte is tried and found guilty, the majority of the military jurors vote for life imprisonment. The court refuses to try Friedrich, citing lack of jurisdiction..
The king is outraged and changes Katte's sentence to death by the sword, quoting Roman justice: Fiat justitia et pereat mundus. The Law must be upheld, no matter what. Friedrich is forced to watch from his cell window and faints. November 6, 1730. Two weeks later he submits to the will of his father, in writing. He is released and goes to work as an administrator, first here in Kuestrin which he not allowed to leave, later as a re-installed military officer in Neu-Ruppin and  Rheinsberg.
We'll watch a few scenes from Hans Steinhoff's Der Alte und der Junge Koenig (1934) based on this tumultuous relationship. Emil Jannings (Professor Unrat in The Blue Angel) and Werner Hinz are father and son.