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296 CHARLES (GERMANY) of Germany ; but he accomplished no immedi- ate result. In 1535 he began from Spain a campaign against the Turkish pirates, who had possessed themselves of Tunis, and were an- noying the Spanish fleets. Tunis was taken, and 22,000 Christian slaves who had been im- prisoned there were restored to liberty. New troubles had broken out in Germany. Ulric of Wurtemberg had regained his possessions, and the Swabian confederation had been broken up (1533). A new war broke out with Francis I., who this time effected an alliance with the Turks ; but though he invaded Italy at the same time that Solyman renewed his attack on Hungary, Charles's generals defeated both. A truce of ten years, agreed upon in 1538, with much talk of an enduring peace, had hardly begun before it was broken by a new disagreement about the terms upon which such a peace could be arranged. Henry VIII. of England now joined Charles ; and after ex- periencing a severe defeat at Ceresole, and repairing it by victories in France and at sea, the latter again came out of the war as con- queror, at the peace of Crespy, Sept. 18, 1544. During the progress of the conflict he had also found time and means to make his power in Spain more nearly absolute through changes in the form of government (1539), to repress a revolt in the Netherlands (1540), and to un- dertake an expedition against Algiers (1541), which however was a failure. The peace of Crespy concluded, Charles again turned toward German affairs; and allying himself with the pope, Duke Maurice of Saxony, and his own brother Ferdinand, he began a campaign against the Protestant princes of the Smal- cald league, who had aroused his anger by their opposition to the settlement of religious questions by a council. He defeated them in the battle of Mtihlberg, April 24, 1547, took away the territory of the elector of Saxony and gave it to Duke Maurice, issued a decree against Magdeburg for espousing the Prot- estant cause, and finally, in a second diet at Augsburg (1548), issued the so-called Interim, a regulation fixing the degree of toleration and the forms of faith to be observed pending the still anticipated decision of the general council assembled at Trent. But his plans were sud- denly defeated by a rapidly executed scheme of his former ally Duke Maurice, who was now alarmed at the apparent tendency of Charles's measures, and who allied himself with Henry II. of France, who had in 1547 succeeded Charles's old enemy Francis. In the summer of 1552 Maurice suddenly ap- peared with an army before Innspruck, where the emperor lay ill of the gout, at the same time that Henry invaded and took possession of a large portion of Lorraine. Charles fled before Maurice, narrowly escaping capture ; he was unprepared for a war, and yielded to the Protestants' demands in the treaty of Passau, Aug. 2, 1552, which gave them entire religious freedom. He made some further efforts to contend with Henry, but found himself unable to recapture what he had lost. Thus suddenly deprived of much of his power, depressed by illness, and disappointed in his chief plans, the emperor announced at the Augsburg diet of 1555 his intention of retiring altogether from the world. Resigning his kingdoms of Spain, the Indies, Naples, and the Netherlands to his son Philip in 1555-'6, he entered the Span- ish monastery of Yuste, near Plasencia. His brother Ferdinand succeeded him as emperor. At Yuste Charles spent the remainder of his life, still endeavoring to exercise an in- fluence on the politics of Europe, remaining in constant correspondence with the princi- pal men of the various states, and strangely mingling these occupations with study, me- chanical labor, and composition. Shortly be- fore his death he had all the ceremonies of his funeral performed, even taking his place in the coffin prepared for his body. A man of the most remarkable executive ability, manifesting a power almost amounting to genius in the formation of his plans, and an almost unpar- alleled energy in carrying them out, Charles was nevertheless shortsighted in regard to the great questions of his time, and never freed his action from the narrowest motives of personal or family aggrandizement. " To gain the em- pire over Francis, and to leave to Don Philip a richer heritage than the dauphin could ex- pect, were," says Motley in his masterly sum- ming up of the emperor's character, " the great motives of the unparalleled energy displayed by Charles during the longer and more success- ful part of his career." His war with the ref- ormation was rather against its political than its religious tendencies, and, until it was too late to oppose it with success, he was blind to the vast importance of the movement. Motley says of him that in spite of his rigid observance of religious rites, the bigoted intolerance he manifested toward' the close of his life, and his harsh measures against the Protestants of the Netherlands, he was no fanatic. " He believed in nothing, save that when the course of the imperial will was impeded, and the interests of his imperial house in jeopardy, pontiffs were to succumb as well as Anabaptists." His pri- vate life, for a powerful monarch of that age, was decent and orderly ; his greatest vice was gluttony, which in his retirement he carried to the utmost excess. In manner he was cold, formal, and repellent, without grace or the power of winning ; but he often succeeded in persuading by the ingenuity of his arguments. Of his military and administrative talents Mot- ley says : " He was inferior to no general of his age. He was the first to arm when a battle was to be fought, and the last to take off his harness. He was calm in great reverses. It is said that he was never known to change col- or except upon two occasions; a man of a phlegmatical, stoical temperament, without a sentiment, and without a tear ; essentially a man of action, a military chieftain. Yet,