Just a few days after the battle at Mühlberg (24 April 1547) emperor Charles V moved via Belgern und Torgau to encamp on the Elbe flats to besiege the heavily fortified city of Wittenberg. His demand to give up the city was rejected vehemently. The city resisted longer than expected, so the emperor tried to force their hand by threatening to send them the decapitated elector.

The commander of the fortress replied: “We will respond by treating the margrave Albert of Brandenburg in kind.” The emperor called a tribunal, which condemned the captive elector to death. Their verdict: “John Frederick the eighth, is to be punished as example. He is to be beheaded in the marked field.” John Frederick took this ruling calmly.

The story goes, that the elector heard this decision on the 10th of May. He was playing chess with his cousin, the duke Ernst of Brunswick. On receiving the news, he did not stop playing, but put the order aside and told the duke: “Watch out. You are checkmate.” This anecdote shows how the elector took the judgment composed and calmly. He told the emperor: “I presume, Your majesty will deal more leniently with me than that. If not, do give me a day´s notice to inform my wife and sons about necessities.”

The emperor did not pass the death sentence, but a week later on the 18th of May Wittenberg capitulated. The elector gave up his lands and his electorship. He handed over the unconquered fortresses Wittenberg and Gotha and entered lifelong imprisonment.

“John Frederick, elector of Saxony called the magnanimous.”
A memoir on his four hundredth birthday anniversary by D. Bernhard Rogge
translated by yours truly.