177 



CHARLES V. 



CHARLES VI. 



178 



not refuse without entering into a war of extermination ; but he 

 referred ultimately the question to the general council, which he urged 

 the pope to convoke, but the council (that of Trent) did not take 

 place till after Charles's death. Charles was not intolerant by dispo- 

 sition j his mind was of an inquisitive turn, and he showed at various 

 times considerable indulgence towards the doctrines of the Protestants. 

 After his death doubts even of his orthodoxy were entertained by the 

 Spanish Inquisition, which imprisoned and examined some of his 

 familiar attendants. 



In 1535, Europe being at peace, Charles sailed with a large arma- 

 ment for Tunis, where Khair Eddiu Barbarossa, the dread of the 

 Christians in the Mediterranean, had fortified himself. Charles, sup- 

 ported by his admiral, Andrea Doria, stormed La Qoletta, and 

 defeated Baruarossa ; the Christian slaves in Tunis meantime having 

 revolted, the gates of the city were opened, and the Imperial soldiers 

 entering in disorder began to plunder and kill the inhabitants, without 

 any possibility of their officers restraining them. About 30,000 

 Mussulmans of all ages and both sexes perished on that occasion. 

 When order was restored, Charles entered Tunis, where he re- 

 established on the throne Muley Hassan, who had been dispossessed 

 by Barbarossa, on condition of acknowledging himself his vassal, and 

 retaining a Spanish garrison at La Qoletta. Charles returned to 

 Italy and landed at Naples in triumph, having liberated 20,000 

 Christian slaves, and given, for a time, au effectual blow to Barbarossa 

 and his piracy. On his return to Europe in 1536, he found King 

 Francis again prepared for war. The French invaded Piedmont, but 

 Charles collecting his forces in the north of Italy, drove them back. 

 He invaded Provence, besieged Marseille, but could not take it, and after 

 haviug devastated Provence and lost nearly one half of his army, he 1 

 withdrew into Italy with the rest. In 1538 a truce for ten years 

 was eutered into between Francis and Charles through the mediation 

 of the pope. The truce however was broken in 1542. In 1539 the 

 people of Ghent, Charles V.'s native place, revolted on account of 

 some encroachment on their privileges, and the rebellion threatening 

 to spread to other towns of Flanders, Charles, who was then in Spain, 

 asked Francis for a safe conduct to cross France on his way to Flanders, 

 which Franch immediately granted. He was received by Francis 

 with the greatest honours, although some of the French courtiers 

 advised him to take advantage of the opportunity to secure the 

 person of Charles, and oblige him to sign the cession of the duchy of 

 Milan in favour of one of Francis's song ; but Francis disdained the 

 suggestion. The citizens of Ghent having surrendered at discretion 

 were treated by Charles with great severity ; 26 of the leaders of the 

 revolt being executed in 1540. 



In 1541 Charles sailed with an armament to attack Algiers, against 

 the advice of his old admiral, Andrea Doria. He landed near that 

 city, began the siege, and built a redoubt on a hill commanding the 

 town, which is still called the Fort of the Emperor, but his troops 

 were cut off by disease and by the Arabs. A dreadful storm dispersed 

 his fleet, and Charles re-embarked with a small portion of his men, 

 leaving his artillery and baggage behind. 



In 1542 war broke out again between Francis and Charles. The 

 ostensible cause of it was the seizure which had taken place the year 

 before of Kincon, a Spanish refugee, who had gone over to Francis, 

 and had been sent by him to Constantinople to contract an alliance 

 with Sultan Solyman against Charles. Rincon succeeded, returned to 

 France, and set off again for Constantinople with Frrgoso, a Genoese 

 refugee, whom Francis had also taken into his service. These two 

 emissaries, in passing through Italy, were seized by the Marquis del 

 Vasto, governor of Milan, put to the torture, and then put to death, as 

 traitor* to their sovereign. In accordance with the treaty, Solyman 

 sent Barbarossa with a large fleet to ravage the coasts of Italy, and 

 join Francis's squadron on the coast of Provence. [BABBABOSSA.] The 

 war was carried on by land in Flanders, Roussillon, and in Piedmont, 

 where Charles's troops lost the battle of Cerisolles against the Count 

 of Eughien. Charles however invaded Champagne; and his ally, 

 Henry VIII. of England, entered Picardy in 1544, but soon after 

 peace was made at Crespi between Charles and Francis. One of the 

 terms of this peace was that both sovereigns engaged themselves to 

 destroy Protestantism in their respective dominions. In France they 

 began to fulfil this engagement by massacreing the Protestants in the 

 towns of Cabritres and Merindol ; in Germany Charles proceeded by 

 les sanguinary and more formal means. The diet of Worms, in 1545, 

 passed several resolutions against the Protestants, in consequence of 

 which they roae in arms in 1546, under Frederic, elector of Saxony 

 and the landgrave of Hease. Charles defeated them and took the two 

 princes prisoner*. He gave the electorate of Saxony to Maurice, a 

 kinman of Frederic. Maurice acted with consummate skill, so as to 

 deceive Charles himself, during several years, as to his real intentions. 

 He appeared to side with the emperor, fought bravely for him, but at 

 the same time took care that the cause of the Protestants should not 

 be rendered totally desperate ; he urged Charles to liberate the laud- 

 grave of Hesse, who was his father-in-law, and on Charles's repeated 

 refusals he entered into secret correspondence with the other Protestant 

 princes to be ready to rise at a given signal. At last, in 1552, Maurice 

 threw off the mask, by taking the field at the head of the Protestant 

 leraey, and was very near surprising the emperor at Innsbruck, 

 whence Charles was obliged to fly in a hurry. He also frightened 



away the fathers of the council assembled at Trent. At this crisis 

 Henri II. of France, who had succeeded Francis I., resumed hostilities 

 against the emperor. Under these circumstances Charles was obliged 

 to sign the treaty of Passau with the Protestant princes of Germany, 

 in August 1552, by which the Protestants obtained the free exercise 

 of their religion in their dominions. This treaty was afterwards con- 

 firmed by a solemn declaration of the diet at Augsburg iu 1555, 

 which was called the " peace of religion," for it was the foundation 

 of religious freedom in Germany. 



The war continued with the French on one side and with the Turks 

 in Hungary on the other. In 1554, Philip, Charles's son, married Mary, 

 queen of England, upon which occasion his father made over to him 

 the crowns of Naples and Sicily. In 1555 Joanna of Spain died, after 

 having been insane for nearly fifty years. Charles beiug now nominally 

 as well as in reality solo king of the Spanish monarchy, put in effect 

 a resolution which he had formed for some years before. Having 

 assembled the States of the Low Countries at Brussels, on the 25th of 

 October 1555, he appeared there seated between his son Philip and 

 his sister, the Queen of Hungary, and resigned the sovereignty of the 

 Netherlands, his paternal dominions, to Philip. He then rose, and 

 leaning on the Prince of Orange for support, as he was suffering severely 

 from the gout, he addressed the assembly, recapitulating the acts of 

 his long administration. " Ever since the age of seventeen," he said, 

 " he had devoted all his thoughts and exertions to public objects, 

 seldom reserving any portion of his time for the indulgence of ease 

 or pleasure. He had visited Germany nine times, Spain six times, 

 France four, Italy seven, Flanders ten times, England twice, and Africa, 

 twice ; had made eleven voyages by sea ; he had not avoided labour or 

 repined under fatigue in the arduous office of governing his extensive 

 dominions ; but now his constitution failed him, and his infirmities 

 warned him that it was time to retire from the helm. He was not so 

 fond of reigning as to wish to retain the sceptre with a powerless 

 hand ! " He added that " if, in the course of a long administration, 

 he had committed errors if, under the pressure of a multiplicity of 

 affairs, he had neglected or wronged any one of his subjects, he now 

 implored their forgiveness, while for his part he felt grateful for their 

 fidelity and attachment, and he should with his last breath pray for 

 their welfare." Then turning to Philip, he gave him some salutary 

 advice, especially to respect the laws and the liberties of his subjects ; 

 after which, exhausted with fatigue and emotion, he closed the impres- 

 sive scene. Two weeks after he made over to Philip, with the same 

 solemnity and before a large assembly of Spanish graudees and German 

 princes, the crowns of Spain and of the Indies. In the following year, 

 August 1556, he likewise resigned the imperial crown to his brother 

 Ferdinand, who had already been elected king of the Romans and his 

 successor ; and after visiting his native place, Ghent, he embarked for 

 Spam with a small retinue. On lauding at Laredo in Biscay he kissed 

 the ground, saying, " Naked I came out of my mother's womb, and 

 naked I return to thee, thou common mother of mankiud." In 

 February 1557, accompanied by one gentleman attendant and twelve 

 domestics, he retired to the monastery of St. Yuste of the Hieronymite 

 order, situated near Plaseucia, in Estremadura, in a sequestered valley 

 at the foot of the Sierra de Gredos, where he had caused apartments 

 to be prepared for him. There he lived for about eighteen months, 

 employed either in his garden, or iu contriving works of ingenious 

 mechanism, of which he was remarkably fond, and in which he was 

 assisted by Turriano, a clever mechanician of the time, and occasion- 

 ally diverting himself with literature, iu which he was assisted by a 

 learned gentleman of the chamber, William Van Male. In the last six 

 months of his existence, his body becoming more and more enfeebled 

 by repeated fits of the gout, his mind lost its energy, and he fell into 

 gloomy reveries, and the practice of ascetic austerities. Among other 

 things he had his own funeral obsequies performed in the chapel of 

 the convent (August 30, 1558). The fatigue and excitement of this 

 ceremony, in which he took part, brought ou a fit of fever, which in 

 about three weeks carried him off: he died ou the 21st of September 

 1558, in his fifty-ninth year. 



(Antonio de Vera, Vida y Hechos de D. Carlos I. ; Robertson, 

 History of Charles V. ; Botta, Storia d' Italia ; and numerous other 

 historians. The circumstances of the last mouths of his life have 

 recently been narrated (from original documents in the French Foreign- 

 Office) in a work of remarkable interest, The Cloiiter-Life of t/te 

 Emperor Charles the Fifth, by W. Stirling.) 



CHARLES VI. of Germany, born in 1685, was the son of the 

 Emperor Leopold I. Charles II. of Spain, the last offspring of the 

 Spanish branch of the house of Austria, being childless, Leopold 

 claimed the inheritance of the crowu of .Spain for one of his children, 

 as next of blood. He fixed upon his younger son, the Archduke 

 Charles, as the presumptive heir, aud king Charles confirmed tho 

 choice by his will ; but the intrigues of Louis XIV. aud his friends ut 

 the court of Spain made the king alter his will before his death in 

 favour of Philip of Anjou, whose grandmother was daughter to 

 Philip IV. of Spain and sister to Charles II. This gave rise to the 

 long war of the Spanish succession, in which most of the other 

 European powers took part. After the death of Charles II. in 

 November 1700, Philip of Anjou was proclaimed under the name of 

 Philip V., but the emperor, England, Holland, aud Portugal supported 

 the claims of the Archduke Charles, who laudad at Lisbon in .March 



