A fresh revolt of the Andalusian Moors in 1530 attested how precarious was the liberty of worship granted them. We see them this time extending a hand to their African brothers, more disposed than ever to succour them. Barbarossa, happy in finding this gate of entry into the peninsula, sent thirty-six vessels from Algiers with land troops. The Africans, reunited with the Andalusian Moors, intrenched themselves in the Sierra de Perdona, and repulsed the Spaniards who came to attack them. But soon, convinced that the revolt offered nothing for the future, they offered their Andalusian brothers to transport them, with all their goods, to the African coast, and more than seventy thousand went to seek in Algeria the liberty refused them in Spain.[e]
Into the interminable wars of this sovereign—in other words, into his transactions as emperor of Germany—this chapter cannot enter. Those in Italy, Germany, and France, must be sought in the histories of those countries. We may mention that of two expeditions to the African coast, to humble, if not to extirpate, the Mohammedan pirates, one was successful, the other disastrous—the latter a casualty occasioned by a tempest; that he compelled the Grand Turk, who penetrated into the centre of Europe, to retreat; and that at the battle of Pavia he made his great rival, Francis I, prisoner. His behaviour to that monarch was neither dignified nor liberal: anxious to derive the utmost advantage from circumstances, he exacted, as the price of liberation, conditions which, after long hesitation, Francis signed, but with a protest that they should not be binding. Accordingly, the French monarch was no sooner in his own dominions than he openly evaded them, and again tried the fortunes of war; but he could never—not even by his alliance with the Lutherans and the Turks—obtain any advantage over his great rival.
[1525-1556 A.D.]
In 1525 Charles married the princess Isabella, sister of João III king of Portugal. The issue of this union was, besides two daughters, the infante Philip, born 1527, destined to be no less famous than himself. For this son he endeavoured to procure the imperial crown of Germany, but his brother Ferdinand, who had been elected king of the Romans, would not forego the dignity, nor would the electors themselves favour the pretensions of the young prince. In 1554, however, he procured for Philip the hand of the English princess Mary; and that the marriage ceremony might be performed with more splendour, he invested him with the regal title by abdicating in his favour his Italian possessions—the kingdom of Naples and the duchy of Milan. This was not enough: he was preparing to abdicate the whole of his immense dominions, and to retire forever from the world.
CHARLES RETIRES FROM THE WORLD
From the very prime of life the emperor appears to have meditated his retreat from the world. In 1554, the death of his mother, queen Juana, made him decide on the immediate fulfilment of his long-cherished project. For this step, indeed, other reasons might be given. Though only fifty-six, his frame was greatly enfeebled—the result alike of constitutional weakness, and of incessant activity; and he was subject to grievous attacks of the gout, no less than to other acute pains. In such a state, where the least exertion naturally augmented his infirmities, we may easily conceive that empire could afford him little gratification, and that life itself must be a burden. That, in the hope of some alleviation, he should wish to resign his load of “sceptred care,” has nothing to create surprise. Having concluded a truce with Henry, the successor of Francis—a truce, however, which the perfidy of the Frenchman and the ambition of the pope rendered of short duration—and recalled Philip from England, the emperor assembled at Brussels the states of the Netherlands (October, 1555). There, amidst the most imposing solemnity ever witnessed since the days of the Roman cæsars, he resigned the sovereignty of the Low Countries, which he had inherited from his father, the archduke Philip, into the hands of his son. In a few weeks after this august ceremony, Charles, in one no less imposing, resigned the crown of Spain and the dominions dependent on it both in the Old and New worlds. The imperial crown he still retained, with the view of once more negotiating with his brother Ferdinand in behalf of his son; but in a few months afterwards he despatched the instrument of resignation from the place which he had chosen for his retreat, the monastery of San Yuste, or St. Justus, one of the most secluded and delightful situations in Estremadura.[d]
It was necessary to ascend to the times of Diocletian, to find an example of a similar abdication of empire, on so deliberate and extensive a scale, and the great English historian of the Roman Empire has compared the two acts with each other. But there seems a vast difference between the cases. Both emperors were distinguished soldiers; both were merciless persecutors of defenceless Christians; both exchanged unbounded empire for absolute seclusion. But Diocletian was born in the lowest abyss of human degradation—a slave and the son of a slave. For such a man, after having reached the highest pinnacle of human greatness, voluntarily to descend from power, seems an act of far greater magnanimity than the retreat of Charles.
[1556 A.D.]
Born in the purple, having exercised unlimited authority from his boyhood, and having worn from his cradle so many crowns and coronets, the German emperor might well be supposed to have learned to estimate them at their proper value. Contemporary minds were busy, however, to discover the hidden motives which could have influenced him, and the world, even yet, has hardly ceased to wonder. Yet it would have been more wonderful, considering the emperor’s character, had he remained. The end had not crowned the work; it not unreasonably discrowned the workman. The earlier, and indeed the greater part of his career, had been one unbroken procession of triumphs. The cherished dream of his grandfather, and of his own youth, to add the pope’s triple crown to the rest of the hereditary possessions of his family, he had indeed been obliged to resign. He had too much practical Flemish sense to indulge long in chimeras, but he had achieved the empire over formidable rivals, and he had successively not only conquered, but captured almost every potentate who had arrayed himself in arms against him. Clement and Francis, the dukes and landgrafs of Cleves, Hesse, Saxony, and Brunswick, he had bound to his chariot wheels; forcing many to eat the bread of humiliation and captivity, during long and weary years. But the concluding portion of his reign had reversed all its previous glories. His whole career had been a failure. He had been defeated, after all, in most of his projects. He had humbled Francis, but Henry had most signally avenged his father. He had trampled upon Philip of Hesse and Frederick of Saxony; but it had been reserved for one of that German race, which he characterised as “dreamy, drunken, and incapable of intrigue,” to outwit the man who had outwitted all the world, and to drive before him, in ignominious flight, the conqueror of the nations.