Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/427

Rh EMPEROR.] CHARLES V. 415 themselves into a league for mutual defence under the leadership of Saxony and Hesse. This was the famous Smalkald League, which from the end of 1530 continued to be the political bulwark of German Protestantism. The league entered into communication with both France and England : but it was from a much stranger quarter deliver ance was to come. As at the Diet of Worms it was Francis, so now it was Soliman that averted an armed collision between the young Protestantism and the imperial power. Foiled in his attack on Vienna in 1529, the sultan was again threatening the south-eastern frontiers ,, of Germany with a terrible army. Charles felt it necessary to unite the empire against him, and so at Nuremberg effected a compromise with the Protestants, by which freedom of worship was secured till the calling of a general council. With all enthusiasm they then armed against the Turk. At the head of one of the most splendid armies ever equipped by Christendom, Charles for ths first time took the field in person. Great deeds were expected at this hostile meeting of the Eastern and the Western worlds ; but the sultan, reckoning on the religious quarrels of Germany, did not anticipate that he would have to confront the united forces of the empire, and therefore soon with drew within his own frontier (1532). Not being able to follow the enemy through the wasted kingdom of Hungary, the emperor returned through Italy to Spain. His next expedition was against Tunis, now the stronghold of the great pirate Barbarossa. The emperor defeated Barbarossa, took the city, and released thousands cf Christian slaves, who, returning to Europe, spread abroad the fame of their generous deliverer (1535). The same year war was resumed with Francis, who formed an alliance with the Turks, and invaded the territory of the duke of Savoy. Charles failed completely in an invasion of Provence, and the war ended without any important result by the truce of Nice (1538). Next year ths emperor lost his wife Isabella, to whom he was deeply attached. Towards the end of the year (1539), when a revolt of the city of Ghent required his presence in Flanders, Charles passed through Paris on the special invitation of the French king, giving to Europe, as was thought, a noble example of chivalrous confidence and forgetfulness of past enmities. The emperor was too much occupied with present emergencies to introduce a systematic despotism into the Netherlands ; but when the privileges of the cities came into conflict with his imperial plans they were little respected. The most cruel edicts had been issued against Lutheranism and a bloody persecution carried on. But to Charles the Netherlands were above all things an inexhaustible source of revenue, from which he drew the supplies for his many wars. They paid annually twice as much as Spain and the Indies put together, and were continually called upon for extraordinary contributions. The great city of Ghent, his own birthplace, had lately refused to contribute, and even entered into communication with Francis, who betrayed it to Charles. The emperor entered the city with a numerous army and an imposing retinue, caused the ringleaders to be executed, annulled the constitution of the city, and placed it entirely under the government of persons nominated by himself (1540). In the autumn of next year Charles made another expedition against the corsairs of North Africa, who had now made Algiers their great stronghold and the centre of their nefarious power. But he was unsuccessful ; a tremendous tempest so disabled the army and injured the fleet that he was obliged to return before he had in the least accomplished the object of the expedition. He had unwisely persisted in it during a highly unfavourable season ; but the bravery with which he exposed himself to danger and hardship of every kind to some extent atoned for his rashness. The reverses sustained by the emperor at Algiers encouraged the most persevering of his enemies, Francis, to renew the war in alliance with the Turks. Consequently, Charles was once more obliged on every side to make head against his old foes, against the French armies in Piedmont and on the Spanish and Flemish frontiers, against the Turkish armies in Hungary, and against a junction of the French and Turkish fleets in the Mediter ranean. At length a fresh compromise with the Protestant princes enabled him to invade Champagne with a powerful German army, which so alarmed the French capital that Francis found it expedient to conclude the peace of Crespy (1544). This was the last war of Charles with his French rival. The emperor had all along maintained his superiority over the king, but except that the French had been expelled from Italy, they remained, territorially, as they had been at the beginning. This peace with Francis, and a truce subsequently con cluded with Soliman, now left Charles free to grapple with his last and most difficult labour, the suppression of the Information. The religious question always lay very near to the heart of the emperor. But during the first twenty-five years of his reign, it had only been at short and broken intervals, left him by his wars and other multi form relations with Francis, Henry, the Pope, and the Turk, that he had been able to take it in hand. Scarcely had he been able to enter on some deliberate method of dealing with it when one or other of those rivals or suspicious friends crossed his path, and called his attention elsewhere. And now, when he could devote seven years of almost uninterrupted leisure to the work, and could concentrate the entire strength of his empire on the execution of it, he was destined to discover that the Refor mation had grown too strong to be arrested even by his imperial will. Its progress, great as it had been from the Diet of Worms to that of Augsburg, had been far greater from the Diet of Augsburg to the period at which we have arrived. At Augsburg the elector of Saxony and Philip of Hesse were the only considerable princes that supported the Reformation. By this time Wurtem- berg, Brandenburg, the dukedom of Saxony, and the Palatinate of the Rhine had declared for it. Northern Germany was almost entirely Protestant, whilst in Southern Germany the imperial cities, and even to some extent the nobility of the Austrian hereditary states, were in favour of it. Bohemia was strongly inclined in the same direction ; and towards the West the orthodoxy of the Netherlands was threatened by the duke of Cleves, who was going to- enter the Smalkald League, when his plans were cut short by the emperor, and still more so by Hermann, archbishop of Cologne, wlio was engaged in inaugurating a moderate reformation of his province under the advice of Bucer and Melanchthon. Thus had the new movement profited by the distractions of an emperor who wished to arrest it. Now it was clearly time for the most strenuous and com prehensive effort. It was to be expected of the politic nature of Charles that he would not have recourse to extreme measures till all means of accommodation had been exhausted. Accordingly, in 1541, at Ratisbon, a great religious conference had been held by some of the most moderate theologians on either side. No little harmony of opinion had been arrived at, but they differed as to tran- substantiation and the powers of the church, the more decided heads of both parties were afraid that compromise was being carried too far, and the result was that they separated without any common platform being secured. Towards the end of 1545 another of the methods all along proposed for the arrangement of the religious difficulty, and constantly urged on the popes by the emperor, was at length to be tried. But the Protestants were resolved to have nothing to do with a so-called general council which was.