Chapter IX: Part 9

The ‘History’ of Delambre was preceded by that of Bailly, a work of such totally different character, that the description of it after the other may almost seem exaggerated for the sake of contrast. With much general knowledge, and, perhaps, considerable research, but with too much previous self-instruction what to find, Bailly has made conjectures of his wishes, and positive theories of his conjectures. His fanciful accounts of people whom he has caused, as has been observed, to give us all knowledge, except that of their own name and existence, perhaps drove Delambre a little into the other extreme: it so, the circumstance is not to be regretted; and the reader, who has amused himself with the former, by inventing inventors for all that has ever been invented, may fall back upon the latter, to learn how many of his conclusions are founded on the rational basis of written testimony. A strong predilection for the latter kind of evidence is the characteristic of Delambre’s writings; and if familiarity with the Greeks rendered him somewhat prejudiced in their favour, he has but paid too much interest for a large and acknowledged debt; whereas Bailly has squandered his whole substance upon creatures of his own imagination.

A very striking feature of Delambre’s writings upon the history of astronomy, is the avidity with which he throws himself upon any calculation which comes in his way, repulsive as such details are to writers in general. Not content with the fullest numerical exposition of the process as practised by the astronomer he is describing, he frequently adds the modern method of doing the same thing. This is one of the most useful parts of his undertaking; for astronomy is not, as so many imagine, only the art of looking at the heavens, but also of knowing what to do with the results of observation; and Delambre, in his character of an unwearied calculator, has been of more use than the most assiduous observer[5] of his day.

Footnote 5:

We are far from undervaluing the higher species of observation which,
when combined with the sagacity of the inventor, finds new general
laws. We speak only of the vulgar notion entertained of an astronomer,
which, however excusable in the general ignorance of the science,
portrays only a part of the character, useful indeed, but not the most
difficult.

But in the character of an observer Delambre was conspicuous. In conducting his part of the Survey, we cannot help admiring his fortitude as well as skill. In a letter to Lalande, written in 1797, he thus expresses himself, and it is no exaggerated instance of the impediments he frequently met with: “I had about six hours’ work, and I could not do it in less than ten days. In the morning I mounted to the signal, which I left at sunset. The nearest inn was that at Salers, to which it took me three hours to go, and as much to return, and the road was the worst I have met with. At last I resolved to take up my lodging in a neighbouring cowhouse; I say neighbouring, because it was only at the distance of an hour’s walk. During these ten days I could not take off my clothes; I slept upon hay, and lived on milk and cheese. All this time I could hardly ever get sight of the two objects at once; and during the observations, as well as in the long intervals which they left, I was alternately burned by the sun, frozen by the wind, and drenched by the rain. I passed thus ten or twelve hours every day, exposed to all the inclemency of the weather; but nothing annoyed me so much as the inaction.”

It was with extreme difficulty that permission to encounter these inconveniences was granted. The republican government, which, in its hurry to change the weights and measures,[6] had ordered the commission, began to fear lest a latent tinge of royalism in some one of their agents might infect the new standard. At least such a suspicion forces itself upon us, when we find that “The Committee of Public Safety, considering how important it was to the amelioration of the public mind that those employed by government,” in the Survey for instance, “should be distinguished,” not by their knowledge of the theodolite and repeating circle, but “by their republican virtues and hatred of kings,” struck Delambre and others off the list, and would have served Méchain in the same way (who was on the frontier, with public money in his possession), had not they found within themselves the suspicion that he would play them false. But we must not be less than just to the instances of liberal feeling which the most bigoted times produce. When Delambre returned to Paris, he was allowed, after some hesitation, to retain the diploma of the Royal Society of London, written in Latin, with the arms of the King of England upon it.

Footnote 6:

For some of our readers we may state that the object was the
measurement of the earth’s circumference, or rather the deduction of
it from the measurement of a part, in order that the metre might be
made an exact aliquot part of the circumference.

Such were the feelings with which the government regarded even their own favourite project, and we may therefore be surprised at the endurance with which Delambre solicited, and at length partially obtained, leave to recommence his operations; add to which, that his astronomical instruments caused him frequently to be molested as a spy by the ignorant populace of the departments—a fact nowise to be wondered at, when we remember that at Paris Lalande’s observatory was searched for arms, and the tube of a telescope carried off to the authorities as some strange species of gun.

Delambre did not interfere in politics; it would have been strange indeed if he had found time. It was amply sufficient for one man to link his name to the science of astronomy, past, present, and future, by history, observations, and tables.

DRAKE.

Francis Drake, the first British circumnavigator of the globe, was born in Devonshire, of humble parents. So much is admitted: with respect to the date of his birth, and the method of his nurture, our annalists, Camden and Stowe, are not agreed. By the latter we are told that Drake was born at Tavistock, about 1545, and brought up under the care of a kinsman, the well-known navigator, Sir John Hawkins. Camden, on the other hand, anticipates his birth by several years, and says that he was bound apprentice to a small shipowner on the coast of Kent, who, dying unmarried, in reward of his industry, bestowed his bark upon him as a legacy. Both accounts agree that in 1667 he went with Hawkins to the West Indies on a trading voyage, which gave its colour to the rest of his life. Their little squadron was obliged by stress of weather to put into St. Juan de Ulloa, on the coast of Mexico; where, after being received with a show of amity, it was beset and attacked by a superior force, and only two vessels escaped. To make amends for his losses in this adventure, in the quaint language of the biographer Prince, in his ‘Worthies of Devon,’ “Mr. Drake was persuaded by the minister of his ship that he might lawfully recover the value of the King of Spain by reprisal, and repair his losses upon him any where else. The case was clear in sea divinity; and few are such infidels as not to believe in doctrines which make for their profit. Whereupon Drake, though then a poor private man, undertook to revenge himself upon so mighty a monarch.”

_Engraved by W. Holl._

DRAKE.

_From an original Picture in the possession of
Sir T. F. Eliott Drake Bar^t. of Nutwell Court, near Exeter._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._
]

Dr. Johnson, in his ‘Life of Drake,’ states, with perfect complacency and without a word of qualification, that the bold sailor determined on an expedition, “by which the Spaniards should feel how imprudently they always act who injure and insult a brave man.” In his national zeal, the moralist seems to have forgotten that the retaliation of which he speaks was a lawless robbery, exercised upon the peaceable subjects of a king with whom we were not at war, in satisfaction of a wrong in which they the sufferers had neither part nor interest, and that this forcible levying of satisfaction, without national warrant and commission, is what in modern language we call piracy. It is fortunate for the peace of the world that this system of “sea divinity” is gone by. But in judging of this undertaking, which the courage, constancy, and success of its contriver could not by themselves save from the stigma of piracy, we must take into account the peculiar circumstances of the times. War, it is true, was not declared between Spain and England; but the bigotry of Philip II., his deep-rooted hatred and persecution of the Protestant religion, and his known support of the Catholic malcontents, caused Spain to be regarded by the English Protestants as their deadliest enemy; so that the plunder of Spanish America might be regarded, in the language of the Puritans, merely as a spoiling of the Egyptians; and the more because it was pretty clear, however the Queen’s prudence might delay it, that a breach must ensue between the two nations ere long. This feeling was strengthened by the jealous care with which the Spaniards sought to exclude all foreigners from navigating the new-discovered seas; and there is some justice in Elizabeth’s reply to the Spanish ambassador, when he complained of Drake’s piracies, that his countrymen, by arrogating a right to the whole new world, and excluding thence all other European nations who should sail thither, even with a view of exercising the most lawful commerce, naturally tempted others to make a violent irruption into those regions.

In the years 1570–1 Drake made two voyages to the West Indies, apparently to gain a more precise acquaintance with the seas, the situation, strength, and wealth of the Spanish settlements. In 1572 he sailed with two ships, one of seventy-five tons, the other of twenty-five tons, their united crews mustering only seventy-three men and boys, all volunteers. His object was to capture the now ruined city of Nombre de Dios, situated on the isthmus of Panama a few miles east of Porto Bello, then the great repository of all the treasure conveyed from Mexico to Spain. Off the coast of America his little armament was augmented by an English bark with thirty men on board; so that, deducting those whom it was necessary to leave in charge of the ships, his available force fell short of an hundred men. This handful of bold men attacked the town, which was unwalled, on the night of July 22, and found their way to the market-place, where the captain received a severe wound. He concealed his hurt until the public treasury was reached, but before it could be broken open, he became faint from loss of blood, and his disheartened followers abandoned the attempt, and carried him perforce on board ship. Such at least is the account of the English: there is a Portuguese statement in ‘Hakluyt’s Voyages,’ vol. iii. p. 525, less favourable both to the daring and success of the assailants.

Failing in this attempt, Drake continued for some time on the coast, visiting Carthagena and other places, and making prize of various ships; and if we wonder at his hardihood in adventuring with such scanty means to remain for months in the midst of an awakened and inveterate enemy, how much more surprising is it that the wealthy, proud, and powerful monarchy of Spain should so neglect the care of its most precious colonies, as to leave them unable to crush so slight a foe. The English appear to have felt perfectly at their ease; they cruised about, formed an intimate alliance with an Indian tribe, named Symerons, the bond of union being a common hatred of the Spaniards, and built a fort on a small island of difficult access, at the mouth of a river, where they remained from September 24, to February 3, 1573. On the latter day, Drake set forth with one portion of his associates, under the conduct of the Symerons, to cross the isthmus. On the fourth day they reached a central hill, where stood a remarkable “goodly and great high tree, in which the Indians had cut and made divers steps to ascend up neere unto the top, where they had also made a convenient bower, wherein ten or twelve men might easily sitt; and from thence wee might without any difficulty plainly see the Atlantic Ocean, whence now wee came, and the South Atlantic (i. e. Pacific), so much desired. After our captain had ascended to this bower with the chief Symeron, and having, as it pleased God at that time, by reason of the brize, a very faire day, had seen that sea of which he had heard such golden reports, he besought Almighty God of his goodness to give him life and leave to sayle once in an English ship in that sea.” We quote from a tract entitled ‘Sir Francis Drake Revived,’ written by some of Drake’s companions, corrected, it is said, by himself, and published by his nephew in 1626, which contains a full and interesting account of this adventurous expedition. Drake’s present object was to intercept a convoy of treasure on the way from Panama to Nombre de Dios. The route was this: eight leagues from Panama, lying inland to the north-west, is the town of Venta Cruz, high on the river Chagre. For this distance merchandise was carried on mules, then embarked in flat-bottomed boats, and carried down the river to its mouth, then shipped for Nombre de Dios, or after the abandonment of that town, for Porto Bello; and this is the route by which it has often been proposed to make a canal to join the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. By this route the treasures of Peru and Chili, as well as Mexico, were brought to Europe, for the passage round Cape Horn was then unknown, and no ship but Magalhaens’ had yet accomplished the passage round the world to Europe. Guided by the Symerons, the English approached Panama, learned that a valuable treasure was expected to pass, and beset the lonely forest road which it had to travel. But the haste of one drunken man gave a premature alarm, in consequence of which the march of the caravan was stopped: and Drake with his party, their golden hopes being thus defeated, forced their way through Venta Cruz, and returned by a shorter route to their encampment, after a toilsome and fruitless journey of three weeks. It was not till April 1, that the long-desired opportunity presented itself, on which day they took a caravan of mules laden with silver, and a small quantity of gold. They carried off part of the spoil, and buried about fifteen tons of silver; but on returning for it, they found that it had been recovered by the Spaniards.

Drake returned to England, August 9, 1573. In dividing the treasure he showed the strictest honour, and even generosity; yet his share was large enough to pay for fitting out three ships, with which he served as a volunteer in Ireland under the Earl of Essex, and “did excellent service both by sea and land in the winning of divers strong forts.” In 1577, he obtained a commission from Queen Elizabeth to conduct a squadron into the South Seas. What was the purport of the commission we do not find: it appears from subsequent passages that it gave to Drake the power of life and death over his followers; but it would seem from the Queen’s hesitation in approving his proceedings, that it was not intended to authorize (at least formally) his depredations on Spanish property.

With five ships, the largest the Pelican of one hundred tons burden, the smallest a pinnace of fifteen tons, manned in all with only 164 men, Drake sailed from Plymouth, November 15, 1577, to visit seas where no English vessel had ever sailed. Without serious loss, or adventure worthy of notice, the fleet arrived at Port St. Julian, on the coast of Patagonia, June 20, 1578. Here the discoverer Magalhaens had tried and executed his second in command on a charge of mutiny, and the same spot did Drake select to perform a similar tragedy. He accused the officer next to himself, Thomas Doughty, of plots to defeat the expedition and take his life; plots undertaken, he said, before they had left England. “Proofs were required and alleged, so many and so evident, that the gentleman himself, stricken with remorse, acknowledged himself to have deserved death;” and of three things presented to him, either immediate execution, or to be set on shore on the main, or to be sent home to answer for his conduct, he chose the former; and having at his own request received the sacrament together with Drake, and dined with him in farther token of amity, he cheerfully laid his head on the block, according to the sentence pronounced by forty of the chiefest persons in the fleet. Such is the account published by Drake’s nephew, in ‘The World Encompassed,’ of which we shall only observe, without passing judgment on the action, that Drake’s conduct in taking out a person whom he knew to be ill affected to him, was as singular as is the behaviour and sudden and acute penitence attributed to Doughty. But we have no account from any friend of the sufferer. It is fair to state the judgment of Camden, who says, “that the more unprejudiced men in the fleet thought Doughty had been guilty of insubordination, and that Drake in jealousy removed him as a rival. But some persons, who thought they could see further than others, said that Drake had been ordered by the Earl of Leicester to take off Doughty, because he spread a report that Leicester had procured the death of the Earl of Essex.”

Having remained at Port St. Julian until August 15, they sailed for the Straits, reached them August 20, and passed safely into the Pacific, September 6, with three ships, having taken out the men and stores, and abandoned the two smaller vessels. But there arose on the 7th a dreadful storm, which dispersed the ships. The Marigold was no more heard of, while the dispirited crew of the Elizabeth returned to England, being the first who ever passed back to the eastward through Magellan’s Strait.[7] Drake’s ship was driven southwards to the 56th degree, where he ran in among the islands of the extreme south of America. He fixes the farthest land to be near the 56th degree of south latitude, and thus appears to claim the honour of having discovered Cape Horn. From September 7 to October 28, the adventurers were buffeted by one continued and dreadful storm: and in estimating the merits of our intrepid seamen, it is to be considered that the seas were utterly unknown, and feared by all, those who had tried to follow in Magalhaens’ course having seldom succeeded, and then with much pain and loss, and little fruit of their voyage; that their vessels were of a class which is now hardly used for more than coasting service; and that the imperfection of instruments and observations laid them under disadvantages which are now removed by the ingenuity of our artists. Add to this, that as the Spaniards gave out that it was impossible to repass the Straits, there remained no known way to quit the hostile shores of America, but by traversing the unexplored Pacific.

Footnote 7:

This is the general statement: but in the ‘Lives of Early English
Navigators,’ in the Edinburgh Cabinet Library, vol. v., it is said
that a Spaniard named Ladrilleros had made the passage twenty years
before.

The storm at length ceased, and the lonely Pelican (which Drake however had renamed the Golden Hind) ran along the coast of Lima and Peru, reaping a golden harvest from the careless security of those who never thought to see an enemy on that side of the globe. There is something rather revolting, but very indicative of the temper of the age, in the constant reference to the guidance and protection of God, mixed with a quiet jocularity with which ‘Master Francis Fletcher, Preacher in this employment,’ from whose notes the ‘World Encompassed,’ which is a narrative of this voyage, was compiled, speaks of acts very little different from highway robbery, such as would now be held disgraceful in open war: as, for instance, on meeting a Spaniard driving eight lamas, each laden with 100 pounds weight of silver, “they offered their service without entreaty, and became drovers, not enduring to see a gentleman Spaniard turned carrier.” Enriched by the most valuable spoil, jewels, gold, and silver, Drake steered to the northward, hoping to discover a homeward passage in that quarter. In the 48th degree of latitude he was stopped by the cold; and, determining to traverse the Pacific, he landed, careened his ship, and, in the Queen’s name, took possession of the country, which he named New Albion. September 29, 1579, he sailed again, and reached the Molucca Islands November 4. In his passage thence to the island of Celebes, he incurred the most imminent danger of the whole voyage. The ship struck, as they were sailing before a fair wind, on a reef of rocks, so precipitous that it was impossible to lay out an anchor to heave her off. They stuck fast in this most hazardous situation for eight hours. At the end of that time the wind shifted, and the ship, lightened of part of her guns and cargo, reeled off into deep water, without serious injury. Had the sea risen, she must have been wrecked. This was Drake’s last mishap. He reached Plymouth in the autumn of 1580, after near three years’ absence. Accounts differ as to the exact date of his arrival.

Since Drake had for this voyage the Queen’s commission, by which we must suppose the license to rob the Spaniards to have been at least tacitly conceded, he seems to have been rather hardly used in being left from November to April in ignorance how his bold adventure was received at court. Among the people it created a great sensation, with much diversity of opinion: some commending it as a notable instance of English valour and maritime skill, and a just reprisal upon the Spaniards for their faithless and cruel practices; others styling it a breach of treaties, little better than piracy, and such as it was neither expedient nor decent for a trading nation to encourage. During this interval, Drake must have felt his situation unpleasant and precarious; but the Queen turned the scale in his favour by going, April 4, 1581, to dine on board his ship at Deptford, on which occasion she declared her entire approbation of his conduct, and conferred on him the honour, and such it then was, of knighthood. His ship she ordered to be preserved, as a monument of his glory. Having fallen to decay, it was at length broken up: a chair, made out of its planks, was presented to the University of Oxford, and probably is still to be seen in the Bodleian library. Cowley wrote a Pindaric ode upon it.

Drake had now established his reputation as the first seaman of the day; and in 1585 the Queen, having resolved on war, intrusted him with the command of an expedition against the Spanish colonies. He burnt or put to ransom the cities of St. Jago, near Cape Verde, St. Domingo, Carthagena, and others, and returned to England, having fully answered the high expectations which were entertained of him. He was again employed with a larger force of thirty ships in 1587, with which he entered the port of Cadiz, burnt 10,000 tons of shipping, which were to form part of the Armada, took the castle of Cape St. Vincent, and sailing to the Azores, made prize of a large and wealthy ship on its way from the Indies. Still more eminent were his services against the Armada in the following year, in which he served as vice-admiral under Lord Howard of Effingham. But these are well-known passages of history, and we have shortened our account of them, to relate at more length the early incidents of Drake’s adventurous life.

In 1589 Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Norris were joined in the command of an expedition, meant to deliver Portugal from the dominion of Spain. This failed, as many expeditions have done in which the sea and land services were meant to act together; and, as usual, each party threw the blame on the other. Drake’s plan appears to have been most judicious: it was at least accordant with his character, downright and daring. He wished to sail straight for Lisbon and surprise the place; but Norris was bent on landing at Corunna, where he did indeed some harm to the Spaniards, but no service towards the real objects of the expedition. When the land-forces did at last besiege Lisbon, Drake was unwilling or unable to force his way up the Tagus to co-operate with them, and for this he was afterwards warmly blamed by Norris. He defended himself by stating that the time misspent by the English at Corunna had been well employed by the Spaniards in fortifying Lisbon; and we fully believe that neither fear nor jealousy would have made him hesitate at any thing which he thought to be for the good of the service. This miscarriage, though for a time it cast something of a cloud upon Drake’s fame, did not prevent his being again employed in 1595, when the Queen, at the suggestion of himself and Sir John Hawkins, determined to send out another expedition against Spanish America, under those two eminent navigators, the expenses of which were in great part to be defrayed by themselves and their friends. Great hope was naturally conceived of this expedition, the largest which had yet been sent against that quarter, for it consisted of thirty vessels and 2500 men. The chief object was to sail to Nombre de Dios, march to Panama, and there seize the treasure from Peru. But the blow, which should have been struck immediately, was delayed by a feint on the parts of the Spaniards to invade England; the Plate fleet arrived in safety, and the Spanish colonies were forewarned. Hawkins died, it was said of grief at the ruined prospects of the expedition, November 12, while the fleet lay before Porto Rico; and on the same evening Drake had a narrow escape from a cannon ball, which carried the stool from under him as he sat at supper and killed two of his chief officers. Repulsed from Porto Rico, the admiral steered for the Spanish main, where he burnt several towns, and among them Nombre de Dios. He then sent a strong detachment of 750 men against Panama; but they found the capture of that city impracticable. Soon afterwards he fell sick of a fever, and died January 28, 1596. His death, like that of his coadjutor, is attributed to mental distress; and nothing is more probable than that disappointment may have made that noxious climate more deadly. Hints of poisoning were thrown out; but this is a surmise easily and often lightly made. “Thus,” says Fuller, in his Holy State, “an extempore performance, scarce heard to be begun before we hear it is ended, comes off with better applause, or miscarries with less disgrace, than a long-studied and openly-premeditated action. Besides, we see how great spirits, having mounted up to the highest pitch of performance, afterwards strain and break their credits in trying to go beyond it. We will not justify all the actions of any man, though of a tamer profession than a sea-captain, in whom civility is often counted preciseness. For the main, we say that this our captain was a religious man towards God, and his houses, generally speaking, churches, where he came chaste in his life, just in his dealings, true of his word, and merciful to those that were under him, hating nothing so much as idleness.” To these good qualities we may add that he was kind and considerate to his sailors, though strict in the maintenance of discipline: and liberal on fit occasions, though a strict economist. He cut a watercourse from Buckland Abbey to Plymouth, a distance of seven miles in a straight line, and thirty by the windings of the conduit, to supply the latter town with fresh water, which before was not to be procured within the distance of a mile. He is honourably distinguished from the atrocious race of buccaneers, to whom his example in some sort gave rise, by the humanity with which he treated his prisoners. And it should be mentioned, as a proof of his judicious benevolence, that in conjunction with Sir John Hawkins, he procured the establishment of the Chest at Chatham, for the relief of aged or sick seamen, out of their own voluntary contributions. The faults ascribed to him are ambition, inconstancy in friendship, and too much desire of popularity.

In person, Drake was low, but strongly made, “well favoured, fayre, and of a cheerefull countenance.” The scarf and jewel which he wears in our portrait (which is engraved from a picture in the possession of Sir Trayton Drake, of Nutwell Court, near Exeter, the present representative of the family) were given him by Queen Elizabeth; the former when he took leave of her before sailing to meet the Armada. The jewel contains a portrait of herself: these relics are still in the possession of the family. Drake left no issue: his nephew was created a baronet by James I., and the title is still extant.

The collection of voyages by Hakluyt, and the accounts published by Drake’s nephew, quoted in this memoir, contain the fullest accounts of Drake’s adventurous history. Prince’s ‘Worthies of Devon,’ Dr. Johnson’s ‘Life of Drake,’ Kippis’s ‘Biographia Britannica,’ and the ‘Edinburgh Cabinet Library,’ vol. v., all give satisfactory accounts of this eminent ornament of the British navy.

[From “a drawn Plan of Her Majestie’s (Elizabeth) Harbour at Berwick.”
Cottonian MSS.
Augustus, vol. ii., in British Museum.]
]

_Engraved by W. Holl._

CHARLES V.

_From the Original by Holbein in the Private
Collection of the King of the French._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._
]

CHARLES V.

Charles V. was born at Ghent, February 24, 1500. His parents were the Archduke Philip, son of the Emperor Maximilian, and Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand of Arragon and Isabella of Castile. To those united kingdoms Charles succeeded on the death of his grandfather Ferdinand, in 1516. The early part of his reign was stormy: a Flemish regency and Flemish ministers became hateful to the Spaniards: and their discontent broke out into civil war. The Castilian rebels assumed the name of The Holy League, and seemed animated by a spirit not unlike that of the English Commons under the Stuarts. Spain was harassed by these internal contests until 1522, when they were calmed by the presence of Charles, whose prudence, and we may hope his humanity, put an end to the rebellion. He made some examples; but soon held his hand, with the declaration, that “too much blood had been spilt.” An amnesty was more effectual than severities, and the royal authority was strengthened, as it will seldom fail to be, by clemency. Some of his courtiers informed him of the place where one of the ringleaders was concealed. His answer is worthy of everlasting remembrance,—“You ought to warn him that I am here, rather than acquaint me where he is.”

Spain, the Two Sicilies, the Low Countries, and Franche Comté, belonged to Charles V. by inheritance; and by his grandfather Maximilian’s intervention, he was elected King of the Romans: nor had he to wait long before that prince’s death, in 1519, cleared his path to the empire. But Francis I. of France was also a candidate for the imperial crown, with the advantage of being six years senior to Charles, and of having already given proof of military talent. The Germans, however, were jealous of their liberties; and not unreasonably dreading the power of each competitor, rejected both. Their choice fell on Frederic, Elector of Saxony, surnamed the Wise, celebrated as the protector of Luther; but that prince declined the splendid boon, and recommended Charles, on the plea that a powerful emperor was required to stop the rapid progress of the Turkish arms. It was, however, surmised, that two thousand marks of gold, judiciously distributed by the Spanish ambassador, had some little influence in fixing the votes. On his election, Charles was required to sign a capitulation for the maintenance of the liberties and rights of the Germanic body, with a proviso against converting the empire into an heir-loom in his family. From the time of Otho IV. it had been customary for new emperors to send an embassy to Rome, giving notice of their election, and promising obedience to the papal court; but Charles V. thought this more honoured in the breach than the observance; nor have the pretensions of the Holy See been since strong enough to recover that long established claim. So true it is, that practices resting on no better foundation than absurd or pernicious precedents, require only a successful example of resistance, to ensure their abolition.

The political jealousy, embittered by personal emulation, which existed between the Emperor and the King of France, broke out into war in 1521. France, Navarre, and the Low Countries, were at times the seat of the long contest which ensued; but chiefly Italy. The duchy of Milan had been conquered by Francis in 1515. It was again wrested from the French by the Emperor in 1522. In 1523, a strong confederacy was formed against France, by the Pope, the Emperor, the King of England, the Archduke Ferdinand, to whom his brother Charles had ceded the German dominions of the House of Austria; the states of Milan, Venice, and Genoa; all united against a single power. And in addition, the celebrated Constable of Bourbon became a traitor to France, to gratify his revenge; brought his brilliant military talents to the Emperor’s service; and was invested with the command of the Imperial troops in Italy. To this formidable enemy Francis opposed his weak and presumptuous favourite, the Admiral Bonnivet, who was driven out of Italy in 1524, the year in which the gallant Bayard lost his life, in striving to redeem his commander’s errors.

The confidence of Francis seemed to increase with his dangers, and his faults with his confidence. He again entered the Milanese, in 1525, and retook the capital. But Bonnivet was his only counsellor; and, under such guidance, the siege of Pavia was prosecuted with inconceivable rashness, and the battle of Pavia fought without a chance of gaining it. Francis was taken prisoner, and wrote thus to his mother, the Duchess of Angoulême;—“Everything is lost, except our honour.” This Spartan spirit has been much admired; but whether justly, may be a question. From a Bayard, nothing could have been better: but the honour of a king is not confined to fighting a battle; and this specimen, like the conduct of Francis in general, proves him to have been the mirror of knighthood, rather than of royalty.

Charles, notwithstanding his victory at Pavia, did not invade France, but, as the price of freedom, he prescribed the harshest conditions to the captive king. At first they were rejected; but haughty spirit and conscience were at length both reconciled to the casuistry, that the fulfilment of forced promises may be eluded. Francis therefore consented to the treaty of Madrid, made in 1526, by which it was stipulated that he should give up his claims in Italy and the Low Countries; surrender the duchy of Burgundy to Spain; and return into captivity, if these conditions were not fulfilled in six weeks. When once at large, instead of executing the treaty, he formed a league with the Pope, the King of England, and the Venetians, to maintain the liberty of Italy. The Pope absolved him from his oaths, and he refused to return into Spain. This deliberate infraction of an oath savoured neither of the mirror of knighthood, nor royalty. Nor did the Emperor appear to advantage in this transaction: his want of generosity was conspicuous in his extravagant demands, and his failure in the higher tone of princely feeling was not compensated to himself by the success of his politics.

In 1527, Bourbon laid siege to Rome, and was slain in the assault; but the Imperialists took and plundered the city, and are said in derision to have proclaimed Martin Luther Pope. The Emperor’s conduct on this occasion was not less farcical, than his hypocrisy was disgusting. On receiving news of the captivity of the head of the church, instead of setting him at liberty, he commanded processions for his deliverance, and ultimately exacted from him a heavy ransom. Meanwhile the treaty of Madrid was not fulfilled; and this was the cause of another war between Spain, and France supported by England. The passions of the rival monarchs were now much excited, and challenges and the lie were exchanged between them. No duel was fought, nor probably intended; but the notoriety of the challenge went far to establish a false point of punctilio, we will not call it honour, among gentlemen, and single combats became more frequent than in the ages of barbarism.

In 1529, the course of these calamities was suspended by the treaty of Cambray, negotiated in person by two women. The Duchess of Angoulême, and Margaret of Austria, governess of the Low Countries, met in that city, and settled the terms of pacification between the rival monarchs.

For Charles’s honourable conduct on Luther’s appearance before the diet of Worms, the reader may refer to the life of the Reformer in our second volume. The cause of Lutheranism gained ground at the diet of Nuremberg; and if Charles had declared in favour of the Lutherans, all Germany would probably have changed its religion. As it was, the Reformation made progress during the war between the Emperor and Clement VII. All that Charles acquired from the diet of Spire in 1526, was to wait patiently for a general council, without encouraging novelties. In 1530, he assisted in person at the diet of Augsburg, when the Protestants (a name bestowed on the Reformers in consequence of the protest entered by the Elector of Saxony and others at the second diet of Spire) presented their confession, drawn up by Melancthon, the most moderate of Luther’s disciples. About this time Charles procured the election of his brother Ferdinand as king of the Romans, on the plea that, in his absence, the empire required a powerful chief to make head against the Turks. This might be only a pretence for family aggrandisement: but the Emperor became seriously apprehensive lest the Lutherans, if provoked, should abandon the cause of Christendom; and policy therefore conceded what zeal would have refused. By a treaty concluded with the Protestants at Nuremberg, and ratified at Ratisbon in 1531, Charles granted them liberty of conscience, till a council should be held, and annulled all sentences passed against them by the Imperial chamber: on this they engaged to give him powerful assistance against the Turks.

In 1535, Muley Hassan, the exiled king of Tunis, implored Charles’s aid against the pirate Barbarossa, who had usurped his throne. The Emperor eagerly seized the opportunity of acquiring fame, by the destruction of that pest of Spain and Italy. He carried a large army into Africa, defeated Barbarossa, and marched to Tunis. The city surrendered, being in no condition to resist: and while the conqueror was deliberating what terms to grant, the soldiery sacked it, committed the most atrocious violence, and are said to have massacred more than thirty thousand persons. This outrage tarnished the glory of the expedition, which was entirely successful. Muley Hassan was restored to his throne.

In 1536 a fresh dispute for the possession of the Milanese broke out between the King of France and the Emperor. It began with a negotiation, artfully protracted by Charles, who promised the investiture, sometimes to the second, sometimes to the youngest son of his formerly impetuous rival, whom he thus amused, while he took measures to crush him by the weight of his arms. But if misfortune had made the King of France too cautious, prosperity had inspired Charles with a haughty presumption, which gave the semblance of stability to every chimerical vision of pride. In 1536 he attempted the conquest of France by invading Provence; but his designs were frustrated by a conduct so opposite to the national genius of the French, that it induced them to murmur against their general. Charles however felt by experience the prudence of those measures, which sacrificed individual interests to the general good, by making a desert of the whole country. Francis marked his impotent hatred by summoning the Emperor before parliament by the simple name of Charles of Austria, as his vassal for the countries of Artois and Flanders. The charge was the infraction of the treaty of Cambray, the offence was laid as felony, to abide the judgment of the court of peers: on the expiration of the legal term, the two fiefs were decreed to be confiscated. A fresh source of hostility broke out on the death of the young Dauphin of France, who was said to have been poisoned, and the king accused Charles V. of the crime. But there is neither proof nor probability to support the charge: and the accused could have no interest to commit the act imputed to him, since there were two surviving sons still left to Francis.

But the resources even of Charles were exhausted by his great exertions: arrears were due to his troops, who mutinied everywhere, from his inability to pay them. He therefore assembled the Cortes, or states-general, of Castile, at Toledo, in 1539, stated his wants, and demanded subsidies. The clergy and nobility pleaded their own exemption, and refused to impose new taxes on the other orders. Charles in anger dissolved the Cortes, and declared the nobles and prelates for ever excluded from that body, on the ground that men who pay no taxes have no right to a voice in the national assemblies. Toledo at that time witnessed a singular instance of power and haughtiness in the Spanish grandees. The Emperor with his court was returning from a tournament, when one of the officers making way before him struck the Duke d’Infantado’s horse: the proud nobleman drew his sword, and wounded the offender. Charles ordered the grand provost to arrest the duke; but the Constable of Castile compelled the provost to retire, claimed his exclusive right to judge a grandee, and took the duke, whom the other nobles rallied round, to his own house. Only one cardinal remained with the king, who had the good sense to pocket the affront. He offered to punish the officer; but Infantado considered the proposal as sufficient reparation, and the grandees returned to court. But the people of Ghent made a more serious resistance to authority, on account of a tax which infringed their privileges. They offered to transfer their allegiance to Francis, who did not avail himself of the proposal, not from either conscientious or chivalrous scruples, but because his views were all centred in Milan: he therefore betrayed his Flemish clients to the Emperor, in hopes of obtaining the investiture of the Italian duchy. By holding out the expectation of this boon, Charles obtained a safe-conduct for his passage through France into Flanders, whither he was anxious to repair without loss of time. His presence soon reduced the insurgents. The inhabitants of Ghent opened their gates to him on his fortieth birthday, in 1540; and he entered his native city, in his own words, “as their sovereign and their judge, with the sceptre and the sword.” He punished twenty-nine of the principal citizens with death, the town with the forfeiture of its privileges, and the people by a heavy fine for the building of a citadel to coerce them. He broke his word with Francis by bestowing the Milanese on his own son, afterwards Philip II. If his duplicity be hateful, the credulity of Francis is contemptible.

Our limits will not allow of our detailing the circumstances of the Emperor’s calamitous expedition against Algiers; but his courage, constancy, and humanity in distress and danger, claim a sympathy for his misfortunes, which is withheld from the selfish and wily career of his prosperity.

Francis devised new grounds for war, and allied himself with Sweden, Denmark, and the Sultan Soliman. This is the first instance of a confederacy with the North. But he had alienated the Protestants of Germany by his severe measures against the Lutherans, and Henry VIII. by crossing the marriage of his son Edward with Mary of Scotland, yet in her cradle. Henry therefore leagued with the Emperor, who found it convenient to bury the injuries of Catherine of Arragon in her grave. The war was continued during the two following years with various success: the most remarkable events were the capture of Boulogne by the English, and the great victory won by the French over the Imperialists at Cerisolles, in Piedmont, in 1544. In the autumn of that year a treaty was concluded at Crespi, between Charles and Francis, involving the ordinary conditions of marriage and mutual renunciations, with the curious clause that both should make joint war against the Turks. In the same year the embarrassments created by the war, and the imminent danger of Hungary, increased the boldness of the German Protestants belonging to the league of Smalkald, and the Emperor, while presiding at the diet of Spire, won them over by consenting to the free exercise of their religion.

The Catholics had always demanded a council, which was convened at Trent in 1545. The Protestants refused to acknowledge its authority, and the Emperor no longer affected fairness towards them. In 1546 he joined Pope Paul III. in a league against them, by a treaty in terms contradictory to his own public protestations. Paul himself was so imprudent as to reveal the secret, and it enabled the Protestants to raise a formidable army in defence of their religion and liberties. But the Electors of Cologne and Brandenburg, and the Elector Palatine, resolved to remain neuter. Notwithstanding this secession, the war might have been ended at once, had the confederates attacked Charles while he lay at Ratisbon with very few troops, instead of wasting time by writing a manifesto, which he answered by putting the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse under the ban of the empire. He foresaw those divisions which soon came to pass, by Maurice of Saxony’s seizure of his cousin’s electorate.

Delivered by the death of Francis in 1547, in which year Henry VIII. also died, from the watchful supervision of a jealous and powerful rival, and relieved from the fear of the Turks by a five years truce, Charles was at liberty to bend his whole strength against the revolted princes of Germany. He marched against the Elector Frederic of Saxony, who was defeated at Mulhausen, taken prisoner, and condemned to death by a court-martial composed of Italians and Spaniards, in contempt of the laws of the empire. The sentence was communicated to the prisoner while playing at chess: his firmness was not shaken, and he tranquilly said, “I shall die without reluctance, if my death will save the honour of my family and the inheritance of my children.” He then finished his game. But his wife and family could not look at his death so calmly: at their entreaty he surrendered his electorate into the Emperor’s hands. The other chief of the Protestant league, the Landgrave of Hesse, was also forced to submit, and detained in captivity, contrary to the pledged word of the Emperor; who, fearless of any further resistance to his supreme authority, convoked a diet at Augsburg in 1548. At that assembly Maurice was invested with Saxony: and the Emperor, in the vain hope of enforcing a uniformity of religious practice, published by his own authority a body of doctrine called the “Interim,” to be in force till a general council should be assembled. The divines by whom that “Interim” was composed, had inserted the fundamentals of Catholic doctrine, and preserved the ancient form of worship; but they allowed the communion in both kinds, and permitted married priests to perform sacerdotal functions. This necessarily was unsatisfactory to both parties; but its observance was enforced by a master, with whom terror was the engine of obedience.