Chapter V: From the War of Schmalkalde to the Treaty of Cateau Cambresis (2)

At this moment occurred the death of Maurice, an event which, under more prosperous circumstances, might have offered Charles an opportunity of final victory. In the midst of the foreign war, Charles had not ceased to intrigue with the disaffected, more especially with Albert of Culmbach. In return for the assistance that prince had given him before Metz, he had confirmed those grants of money and of land which Albert had extorted from the Bishops of Bamberg and Wurzburg. These claims Albert now proceeded to enforce with arms, in spite of the order of the Imperial Chamber; whereupon, in February 1553, Ferdinand and Maurice, who, with other Princes of the south of Germany, formed the League of Heidelberg to enforce the Treaty of Passau, marched against him and defeated him at Sievershausen, in the Duchy of Luneburg (July 9). The victory, however, was dearly bought, for Maurice died two days afterwards of his wounds. Thus, at the age of thirty-two, a Prince passed away who had played the leading part in the history of Germany since 1546. To this day his aims and his character are matters of hot dispute. By some he is looked upon as the apt pupil of Machiavelli, a man devoid of religious conviction, or of any principle beyond that of calculating self-interest. Others represent him as the greatest statesman of the day; as the man who first guessed the designs of Charles, and whose treachery in 1546 was really only the first and necessary move towards the final vindication of the cause of Protestantism, forced upon him by the necessity of gaining a strong position before he could hope to resist the Emperor. As is so often the case with violent partisanship, the truth lies midway between these two extreme views. Although Maurice had no very strong convictions on the points at issue between the adherents of the two hostile creeds, and was, no doubt, influenced by ambition, yet it is unjust to accuse him of sacrificing the religion of his subjects to personal ends. In any case, whatever we may think of his motives, the ability of his statesmanship is beyond dispute. Once deceived by Charles, he quickly learnt of him, and finally succeeded in outmanœuvring that master of diplomacy. To Maurice, at least, Protestantism owed its final recognition, and Germany her escape from the Spanish tyranny of Charles. Nor did the electorate of Saxony suffer under his hands. The country was well ruled, and education advanced. Nay, had Maurice lived longer or been succeeded by men of like calibre with himself, Saxony would probably not have seen herself eclipsed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by her neighbours, the Hohenzollern Electors of Brandenburg. Whether it be true that, at the moment of his death, he dreamt of even greater things, and that he, in conjunction with Ferdinand, was intriguing with France to secure the imperial dignity for himself, we cannot say. Maurice was too good a diplomatist to show his hand before the decisive moment. But at least we may believe that Germany would not have fared ill under him as Emperor.

Neither Albert nor Charles benefited from the death of Maurice. The former was shortly driven from Germany to end his days as a pensioner of the French King, while his dominions in Franconia fell to his cousin, George Frederick of Anspach; and Charles, despairing of resisting the united will of Germany, at last bowed to the inevitable. He abandoned his scheme of succession, and ceased to oppose a permanent settlement of the religious difficulties. To this course he was the more inclined, because he now thought of marrying Philip to Mary, the Catholic Queen of England, and thus uniting England with the Spanish monarchy. With this change of policy, the rivalry between him and his brother was at an end, and Ferdinand was given a free hand in Germany.

The affairs of Saxony first demanded attention. John Frederick, in spite of his remonstrances, was forced to rest content with some territorial concessions; while the rest of the dominions, with the electoral titles, went to Augustus, the brother of Maurice.

| Diet of Augsburg. Feb.-Sept. 1555.

Having settled this question satisfactorily, Ferdinand prevailed on his brother to summon the Diet to Augsburg in February, 1555. Charles, however, refused to take any part in the negotiations, and left Ferdinand to preside and to settle matters as he would, with the warning that he should do nothing against his conscience.

| Death of Julius III., March 1555, facilitates
| matters.

With a few exceptions all in Germany, both Catholic and Protestant, earnestly desired a settlement of the religious question, and the establishment of a peace which might protect them from such turbulent spirits as Albert of Brandenburg. And yet the attempt to reconcile the conflicting interests of the two religions--always a difficult matter--was rendered doubly so by the complicated character of the imperial constitution. No sooner, therefore, did discussion begin than dissensions appeared, and these were fostered by the papal party. Fortunately, the death of Julius III., in March, forced his legate, Cardinal Morone, to retire from Augsburg. The next Pope, Marcellus II., only lived twenty days; and although his successor, Paul IV. (Caraffa), attempted to put every obstacle in the way, he was only able to limit the concessions granted to the Protestants.

On two points, agreement was comparatively easy. It was declared that hereafter all religious disputes should be settled by peaceful means, and to this end, in all causes between a Catholic and a Lutheran, the Imperial Chamber was to be composed of an equal number of assessors from either party. The remaining questions presented greater difficulties. The Lutherans had originally wished that every individual should be allowed to conform to the Confession of Augsburg, whether the subject of a Protestant state or no. But this was dreaded by those Catholic Princes in whose dominions Lutheranism had made great strides, and the Reformers were forced to rest content with the stipulation, that every secular Prince or imperial city should be allowed to decide which of the two religions should be adopted within their jurisdiction, and that those who could not conform should be allowed to depart with their goods. A compromise was also arrived at with regard to the secularisation of ecclesiastical property within the jurisdiction of secular Princes. All such property as had been secularised before the Treaty of Passau, 1552, was to remain so, but no further exercise of the right was to be allowed. The Protestants, while conceding this point, demanded that ecclesiastical Princes should, like the secular Princes, be allowed to establish what religion they liked within their jurisdictions, and that any ecclesiastical Prince or Bishop who adopted the Lutheran Confession should retain his dignities and his revenues. This would, however, have dealt a fatal blow at the whole fabric of the Empire, and was stoutly resisted by the Catholics, and by Ferdinand himself. As the Lutherans stood out, Ferdinand thought seriously of postponing the consideration of this question, lest the rest of the treaty might be lost. Finally, however, an unsatisfactory compromise was arrived at. It was enacted, that if any ecclesiastic should hereafter abandon the Catholic religion, he should relinquish his office, with the revenues and patronage appertaining thereto. This clause the Lutherans allowed to be inserted in the treaty, but only under protest that they did not consider the reservation binding on them; and further obtained the concession that those subjects of ecclesiastical Princes, who had already embraced Lutheranism, should be unmolested, and that those who might subsequently become Lutherans should be allowed to emigrate.

By the Peace of Augsburg, the attempt of Charles to re-establish the unity of the Church on the basis of a revived Empire of the West, received its final death-blow; and the principle of autonomy in ecclesiastical matters was definitely recognised. Had Charles been victorious over his foreign enemies, in all probability he would, for a time at least, have gained his end. Had he been less ambitious, and confined his attention to Germany, he might possibly have succeeded in crushing out Lutheranism. But the very magnificence of his aims prevented their realisation. Again and again, when he was about to strike, some exigency of politics intervened to thwart him; and eventually the principle of territorialism, when supported by the foreigner, proved too strong. Yet it would not be fair to charge the Protestants with having used a religious cry to further their political ends. In Germany, as elsewhere in Europe, the religious element perforce connected itself with politics. The Reformation furnished a creed and a new enthusiasm to the political aspirations already existing, and eventually gave the victory to those political tendencies which were the strongest. Had Charles been a different man, he might have adopted Protestantism and thereon founded a united kingdom in Germany. But this his character and his Spanish sympathies prevented, and, short of complete victory on his part, there was no alternative but that of decentralisation. Henceforth, Germany abandoned all hope of reconciling the two religions by means of a general or even a national Council in Germany. The Lutheran Church obtained a legal recognition, and the Protestant states claimed to pursue their course without the intervention of any external ecclesiastical authority. In this way the mediæval conception of Church and State was completely revolutionised, and the temporal authority gained an independence it had not enjoyed before. Nevertheless, the settlement was by no means final, and bore in it the seeds of future discord. The principle of individual toleration was not conceded. If the Princes usually adopted the religion of the majority of their subjects, the rights of the minority were not respected. The ‘ecclesiastical reservation’ was certain hereafter to lead to serious disputes. Above all, the Calvinists, who were shortly to become the most active of the Reformers, were not included in the peace. The religious quarrels which ensued between them and the Lutherans embittered the political jealousies already existing. The Catholics took advantage of this, and Germany had yet to undergo the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War, before the religious question should receive its final settlement.

| Truce of Vaucelles. Feb. 1556.

While Germany had been absorbed in these momentous issues, the war with France had been continued on the borders of the Netherlands, and in Italy, with varying results. In April 1555, Siena was regained for the Imperialists by Cosimo, Duke of Florence. Elsewhere the events were unimportant, and, in 1556, a truce concluded at Vaucelles, led to a brief cessation of arms. By that date, however, Charles had ceased to be King of Spain.

| Preparation of Charles for his abdication.

Disappointed at the frustration of all his schemes, a victim to gout, asthma, and other ailments, he determined to abandon the heretical Germany to Ferdinand, and to resign the government of his other territories to his son. Charles fondly hoped that Philip, united to the Queen of England, and in the full vigour of youth, might yet establish a great Catholic monarchy with its centre in Spain, and resist the dangerous advance of heresy; nay, might some day bring the King of France to his knees, and establish Spanish supremacy in Europe. Milan and Italy had been already ceded to Philip on his marriage with Mary of England, but the division of authority had led to difficulties, and to some quarrels between father and son. In October 1555, therefore, one month after the peace of Augsburg, Queen Mary of Hungary resigned her post as Regent of the Netherlands, and the government of those territories, which had just been once more separated from the Empire, was handed over to Philip.

| Jan. 1556. Philip acknowledged King of Spain. Sept.:
| Charles resigns the imperial throne.

Even then, Charles had apparently intended to retain the government of Spain somewhat longer in his hands, but Italy and the Netherlands could scarcely be defended without Spanish arms and money; accordingly, in the following January (1556), Philip was acknowledged King of Spain. Finally, in the September of that year, Charles resigned the imperial crown, although, owing to certain technicalities, Ferdinand was not elected for two years. By this act, the ambitious idea, first entertained by Maximilian, of uniting under one rule Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands with the German dominions of the Hapsburgs, was abandoned, and a return was made to the more reasonable policy of Ferdinand the Catholic. Henceforth until the disappearance of the Spanish line in 1700, the House of Hapsburg was divided into two branches, of which the Austrian ruled over the family territories in South Germany, and secured the elective throne of the Empire; while the Spanish ruled over Italy, Franche-Comté, the Netherlands, and the conquests in the New World. It would probably have been well for Spain if she had never had a German Emperor as her King; while the Netherlands, all that now remained to her of the patrimony of the Archduke Philip, was yet to prove a source of weakness and humiliation.

| Charles at Yuste. Sept. 1556 to Sept. 1558.

| Death of Charles V. 21st Sept. 1558.

Charles, having resigned the burden of government to younger shoulders, retired to the Jeronymite monastery of Yuste in the province of Estremadura, in September, 1556. The traditional story of his life there requires some correction. He did not dwell in the monastery, but in a house prepared for him close by. Although he lived a religious life, attended regularly the services of the Church, and even submitted himself to the penance of flagellation, his daily lot was not otherwise one of extreme hardship. In the matter of diet, especially, he not only excused himself from fasting, ostensibly on the score of health, but indulged, to his cost, his love for rich and unwholesome dishes. He by no means shut himself off from all worldly concerns, but kept up an active correspondence with his son, and with his daughter Joanna, who acted as Regent of Castile during Philip’s absence. He was most energetic in collecting the necessary taxes for the campaigns of 1557 and 1558, and one of his last acts was to urge the Regent to crush out the Lutheran heresy, which had appeared in Spain. Retaining in his retreat the same dogged adherence to the principles which had guided his life, Charles at last, in his fifty-eighth year, succumbed to the ailments which had been growing upon him of late (21st September 1558).

The Emperor has been so often before us, that it is needless to say much more of him here. His character was late in developing, and it was not until the Diet of Worms, 1521, that he began to show his powers. From that moment, however, he bent himself to the bewildering difficulties of his position with a consistency of purpose which is all the more remarkable when we remember his constitutional indolence and irresolution. It is the conflict between these three qualities--his obstinacy, his lethargy, and his irresolution--which explains the contradictions of his conduct. Self-possessed and self-contained, yet with a fiery nature which at times betrayed itself, few save his two chancellors, Gattinara and Granvelle, and his confessor Pedro de Soto, were admitted to his counsels. If we except his wife Isabella of Portugal, who died in 1539, his son and his sisters, he made but few close attachments, and his heart was rarely stirred by any sentiment. He never forgave an injury; he rarely did a generous deed. He was a man to command fear and even admiration, but not to inspire affection. A Netherlander at first, but never a German, he soon became a thorough Spaniard, and looked upon Spain as the model he would fain impose on Europe.

§ 3. _Last War between France and Spain._

| Paul IV. allies himself with France against Philip.
| July 1556.

The wish of Charles to secure a few years’ peace for his successor was not fulfilled. It was thwarted by the Duke of Guise, the representative of the war party in France, and by his brother the Cardinal of Lorraine, but more especially by Paul IV. That fiery prelate, who was now in his eightieth year, although a leader in the Catholic reaction, had throughout his life been a strenuous opponent of the Spaniard in Italy. A member of a Neapolitan family (the Caraffa) which had always supported the Angevin party in that kingdom, he had early incurred the displeasure of Charles, who had caused his name to be struck off the Council of Government, and resisted his nomination to the archiepiscopal see of Naples. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that, as Pope, he should adopt that anti-Spanish policy which had now become almost traditional with the Papacy. He remembered the days of Italian freedom, and considered the Spaniard the most dangerous of its enemies. ‘The French,’ he said, ‘may easily be dislodged hereafter; but the Spaniards are like dog-grass, sure to strike root wherever it is cast.’ Prompted by these motives, he had, in December 1555, made a secret treaty with France, with the object of driving the Spaniards from Italy, and now he urged Henry II. to break his truce with Spain. The Guises threw their influence on the side of war; and in July, 1556, in pursuance of a fanciful scheme of reviving the French claim to Naples, a treaty was made by which that kingdom was to be torn from Philip and conferred on one of Henry’s sons, with the exception of some portion of the northern frontier, which was to fall to the Pope as his share of the spoil.

| Duke of Alva invades the Papal States. Sept. 1556.

| French invade Naples, but are recalled by defeat of
| St. Quentin. Jan.-Aug. 1557.

| Paul comes to terms with Alva.

Paul had not waited for this alliance to commence hostilities, or to punish the Colonnesi, who supported the imperial cause. In answer to this, the Duke of Alva, who had just been appointed Governor of Naples, entered the Papal States (September), and, in the absence of the French, occupied the chief places in the Campagna. Indeed, had it not been for the scruples of the Duke, or rather of his royal master, Rome itself might have been taken; but Philip’s orders were that he should bring the Pope to terms rather than ruin him. Alva accordingly listened to the insincere offers of the Pope, and delayed further operations until the advance of the French army under the Duke of Guise, at the beginning of the new year, forced him to retreat southwards. Alva now played a waiting game, and, refusing to meet the French in a pitched battle, gradually wore them out, as Gonzalvo had done in 1503. The Duke of Guise, frustrated in his attempt to take the town of Civitella (May 15), and wearied by these tactics, was forced to evacuate the kingdom of Naples, and shortly afterwards was recalled to France (August 15), by the news of the defeat of St. Quentin, ‘having done little for his King, still less for the Church, and nothing for his honour.’ Paul, deserted by his allies, was forced to accept the terms offered him, which, however, were so advantageous that, as Alva bitterly remarked, ‘they seem to have been dictated by the vanquished instead of the victor.’ The territories of the Church were to be restored intact; the remaining French troops were to be allowed a free passage to France; the affair of the Colonnesi was to be submitted to the arbitration of Philip and the Pope. The Duke of Alva was actually to ask pardon, and receive absolution from the Pope, for having dared to take up arms against him.

| Sicily, Naples, Milan, finally secured by Spain.

This, the last war for the possession of Italy for many a long day, is noticeable for the strange contradictions it presents. Not only does the most bigoted of the Popes oppose the most bigoted of Kings; he even calls to his assistance the Infidel and the Protestant mercenaries of Germany; while his opponent, at the command of his master Philip, wages war on the Pope with every expression of reverence, and, when dictating peace, does so, as a suppliant, on his knees. Yet, in spite of his haughty demeanour, Paul had failed. The French henceforth ceased to struggle for Italy; Sicily, Naples, and Milan remained in the hands of the Spanish Hapsburgs until the extinction of their line in the year 1700.

| Campaign on the eastern frontier of France. Spanish
| victory of St. Quentin, Aug. 10.

| Calais taken by the Duke of Guise. Jan. 1-8, 1558.

| The French defeated at Gravelines. July 13, 1558.

In the war which had meanwhile broken out on the eastern frontier of France, the exhaustion of that country was plainly visible. The feudal levies responded but feebly; the provincial legions of infantry, which had been organised by Francis I. in 1534, had never been successful; and of the French peasantry, the Gascons alone appeared in any numbers. France was thus forced to fall back on six thousand German mercenaries. Emanuel Philibert, the dispossessed Duke of Savoy, a man of twenty-nine years, who commanded the army of Philip, had a much larger force drawn from the various countries under Spanish rule, and was aided by a contingent of English, who with difficulty had been prevailed upon to aid the husband of their queen. The financial straits of the two combatants were much the same, but the energy of Charles in his retreat at St. Yuste succeeded in wringing from the Spaniards a considerable amount of money. On the approach of the Duke of Savoy, Coligny threw himself into the city of St. Quentin (August 2), a town of importance, as being the entrepot for trade between France and the Low Countries. But the rash attempt of the Marshal de Montmorenci, who was in supreme command, to relieve it with a far inferior force, led to his total defeat (August 10). The Marshal himself, many nobles, and thousands of the common soldiers, were taken prisoners; as many more were slain. France, in a word, had not suffered such a defeat since Pavia. ‘Is not my son in Paris?’ asked Charles, on receiving intelligence of the victory; and had Charles himself been in command, Paris might have fallen. But Philip, ever more fond of negotiation than of war, delayed till he should be master of St. Quentin. The city, defended by the energy and ability of Coligny, was not stormed till the 27th of August--and the delay saved Paris. Quarrels subsequently broke out in the Spanish camp, which led to the retreat of the English. The Germans complained of want of pay; many transferred their services to the French; and, after taking a few more places, the army of Philip went into winter quarters. In January, the surprise of Calais by the Duke of Guise reversed, at least in the opinion of the French, the disaster of St. Quentin. The English, in overweening confidence, had of late neglected the defences of that town, and in the winter were accustomed to withdraw a portion of the troops, because the marshes were then believed to be impassable. The Duke, informed of this, suddenly appeared before the walls, and took by assault the two forts of Newman Bridge, and Risbank, which defended Calais from the sea and from the shore respectively. Lord Wentworth, despairing of holding the city now that his position was commanded, capitulated on January 8. The recovery of this city, which had been in the hands of the English since the days of Edward III., very naturally caused boundless exultation in France. The taking of Thionville by the Duke of Guise followed in June; and in July, the Marshal de Termes, in command of the Calais garrison, secured Dunkirk and Mardyke. But the Marshal had imprudently ventured too far into the enemies’ country, and had left Gravelines unmasked behind him. As he attempted to retreat, he was caught between the garrison of Gravelines and a Flemish force raised by the Count of Egmont, and was completely routed, falling himself into the enemies’ hands (July 13).

This was the last action in the war. The renewal of hostilities had not been of Philip’s seeking, and he was now doubly anxious for peace. The difficulty of supplying money, always a serious matter, was now so great that Philip confessed to his ministers that he was on the brink of ruin. The death of his father, Charles, on the 21st of September, demanded his presence in Spain; and England was not to be trusted to continue the war, especially as Mary was very ill. Nor had France much to hope for from a continuation of the struggle, now that the Pope had made his peace with Philip. Her finances were exhausted, her people weary of a struggle which brought them no benefit. Besides all this, heresy had appeared both in France and in Spain. Henry II. therefore listened to the advice of Montmorenci and of the Cardinal of Lorraine. The first, as a captive and a rival of the victorious Duke of Guise, had personal reasons for desiring peace; the latter urged Henry to devote his attention to the extirpation of heresy.

| Treaty of Cateau Cambrésis. April 3, 1559.

Negotiations were commenced in October, but were delayed by the death of Mary of England in November, and the refusal of Queen Elizabeth to acknowledge the surrender of Calais. Philip, hoping perhaps thereby to gain her hand, offered to stand by the English Queen and break off the negotiations, but only on condition that she would support him with all her power as long as the war should last. This did not suit the cautious and parsimonious Queen, and she finally consented to leave Calais for eight years in the hands of France. France was also allowed, by the Emperor Ferdinand, to retain the three Lotharingian Bishoprics, Metz, Toul, and Verdun, but had to surrender all her other conquests to Philip and his allies, except Turin, Saluzzo, Pignerol, and a few other places of importance in Piedmont. These she was to hold until Henry’s claim to that principality through his grandmother, Louise of Savoy, should be decided--a claim which he could hardly believe to be serious. Thus Philip regained the towns which France had taken in Luxembourg; Montferrat was restored to the Duke of Mantua; Genoa regained Corsica. On his side, Philip surrendered the few places he held in Picardy. The two Kings further bound themselves to do their best to procure the meeting of a General Council, which was necessary both for reformation of abuses, and for the restoration of union and concord to the Church. The treaty was to be ratified by a double marriage; Philip was to marry Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Henry II., then a girl of thirteen, who had at first been suggested as the bride of his son Don Carlos; Margaret, the sister of the French king, was to espouse Emanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy. In the tournament which was held to celebrate the marriage of Philip with the French princess, Henry II. received a wound from which he died, and was succeeded by his son Francis II., a youth of sixteen, who in 1558 had married Mary Queen of Scots.

The peace of Cateau Cambrésis, by which France ‘lost as many provinces as she regained cities,’ was far more disadvantageous than the military position, in spite of the defeats of St. Quentin and Gravelines, justified. It is therefore not unnaturally looked upon as a dishonourable one by most French writers. It reminds us once more of the taunt of Machiavelli that the French are not masters of diplomacy, and is perhaps not an unfitting close to that long struggle between the Houses of Valois and of Hapsburg, which commenced with the foolish expedition of Charles VIII., and in which France had continually been the aggressor. Her only permanent gains were those of Calais, and the three Lotharingian bishoprics; and these, balanced as they were by the loss of Spanish Navarre, were won at the price of an exhausted treasury and an impoverished people. She had no doubt taken a leading part in resisting the dangerous supremacy of the Austro-Spanish House, and in foiling the attempt of Charles to establish a universal monarchy in Europe. Yet it may be questioned whether she could not have done this more effectively if she had kept her hands off Italy, and had strengthened and extended her frontiers by winning Rousillon and Franche-Comté, and by pressing towards the Rhine. While playing the rival to the House of Hapsburg, she had not only contributed to the success of the Reformers in Germany, and to the advance of the Turk in Hungary, but had allowed Protestantism to gain a firm hold at home, and had fostered a military spirit among the smaller nobility, which was to give to the religious struggle in France some of its worst characteristics.

Throughout the long struggle nothing had been done to strengthen the government of France, or to develop constitutional life. The monarchy came out of the war bankrupt, and the government the prey of rival factions--factions which, if they did not cause the religious wars, most certainly prolonged them and France, torn by civil and religious strife, had to wait till the reign of Henry IV. before she could take that part in European affairs to which her central position, the ability of her people, and her magnificent natural resources entitled her.

Nor was Spain in much better plight. To outward appearances, indeed, the power of Philip seemed overwhelming. He was King of the whole Spanish Peninsula with the exception of Portugal;[56] King of Naples and of Sicily, and Duke of Milan, a position which enabled him to control the politics of the Peninsula;[57] Master of Franche-Comté and of the Netherlands. In Africa, he held Tunis and Oran, with places on the Barbary coast, and the islands of Cape de Verd, and the Canaries; while in the Pacific Ocean, the Philippines were under his sway. In America, Spain held a large part of the eastern coast, except Brazil, which belonged to Portugal, all the islands in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, and the kingdoms of Mexico and Peru, which had been conquered during the reign of Charles. The Spanish infantry was considered the most formidable in Europe, and the treasures of the Indies were believed to be inexhaustible. Yet Spain had suffered seriously from the long-protracted struggle. Her resources were nearly as much crippled as those of France; her government, if better organised, was fully as despotic, and all religious liberty had been crushed out; and she was shortly to give evidence of her weakness in the failure to put down the revolt of the United Provinces, and in the defeat of the Armada by the puny ships of England.

The peace of Cateau Cambrésis, therefore, closes one epoch and begins another. New actors came upon the scene.[58] The struggle for supremacy is stayed a while. Germany and Spain are for ever divided; the Turkish Empire soon ceases to be aggressive, and begins to suffer from internal decay. The remaining thirty-nine years we have to cover is chiefly taken up with the Counter-Reformation and the struggles to which that movement gave birth, with the religious wars in France, and with the revolt of the Netherlands against the religious and political tyranny of Spain.

FOOTNOTES:

[54] It had already been summoned in 1542, but had been
postponed.

[55] The question whether Charles had used the words, ‘nicht
einiges’ (any), or ‘nicht ewiges (perpetual) Gefängniss,’ appears
to be an afterthought. Cf. Armstrong, ii. 156.

[56] For the character of the Spanish rule in Italy, cf.
Armstrong, _Charles V._, II. p. 291 ff.

[57] As we shall have to speak but little hereafter of Italy, it
may be well to give concisely the names of the chief dependent or
independent states:

1. Piedmont, in the hands of Emanuel Philibert of Savoy.

2. Genoa and Venice, independent republics.

3. Parma and Piacenza, under the rule of Ottavio Farnese; of
these Parma had been restored to him by Paul III., and Piacenza
by Philip II. in 1556.

4. Mantua, in the hands of Frederick, first Duke of Mantua, who
also gained Montferrat from Charles V. in 1536, having married
the heiress of William VII. (Paleologus), Marquis of Montferrat.

5. Florence, under Duke Cosimo dei Medici, who had just secured
Siena, and assumed the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1569.

6. The Duchy of Urbino, a papal fief, in the hands of Guidobaldo
della Rovere.

7. The duchies of Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio, in the hands of
Ercole II. of Este. On the extinction of the direct line in 1597,
Ferrara was seized by the Pope, Clement VIII. Modena and Reggio
went to Charles of Este, a collateral.

[58] Charles, and Mary Queen of England died in 1558, Paul IV.
and Henry II. in 1559.