The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

Charles returned with an army the next year, and made peace with his Germans, that he might turn all his fury against Henry, who had thus assumed his father's unforgotten quarrel. A mighty German army laid siege to Henry's most valuable bit of spoils, the strong city of Metz. But the young French nobles, under Francis, Duke of Guise, a new, great general who had risen to the help of France, threw themselves gallantly into the fortress for its defence. Cold, hunger, and pestilence wasted the imperial troops until—one can scarce say they raised the siege, they disappeared, those who did not die had slunk away in fear before the grisly death. Charles accepted his fate with bitter calm, commenting that he saw Fortune was indeed a woman, she deserted an aged emperor for a young king.

The Emperor's life had failed. He had not the heart to begin his plots again. In 1555 he consented to the Peace of Augsburg,[16] which granted complete liberty of faith to the German princes, and so ended the first period of the Reformation. Religion, in this celebrated treaty, was still regarded as a matter in which only monarchs were to be considered. By a peculiar obliquity of vision, the princes denied to their subjects the very thing they demanded for themselves. Each ruler was allowed to establish what creed he chose within his own domains, and then to compel his subjects to accept it.

The following year (1556) Charles with solemn ceremony resigned all his kingdoms—Austria and the Empire to his brother, Spain to his son the celebrated Philip II. Charles himself retired to a Spanish monastery, where two years later he died. He had found life a vanity, indeed.

THE OTHER CONTINENTS

Of the world of Asia during this time it scarce seems necessary to speak. The Tartars or Mongols, driven back from the borders of the Turkish empire, invaded India and there founded the Mongol or Mogul empire which Akbar pushed to its greatest extent.[17] These Moguls remained emperors of India until its conquest by the English, over two centuries later. Even to our own days their title has come down as a symbol of power, "the Great Mogul."

Portuguese adventurers continued and expanded the trade with Asia, which Vasco da Gama had opened. The Spaniards also sought a share in it, and Jesuit missionaries preached the Christian faith. Magellan, a Portuguese but sailing in the service of Spain, was the first to fulfil the vision of Columbus and find the Indies by sailing westward.[18] He crossed the entire Atlantic and Pacific oceans, discovered the Philippine Islands, and was slain there by the natives. One of his ships completed the first circumnavigation of the globe.

Look also to Spain's achievements in America, a new continent, but one already vastly important because of the broad empires Spaniards were winning there, the enormous wealth that was beginning to pour into the mother-country. Settlement had begun immediately on the discovery. Rich mines were opened and the Indians forced to work in them as slaves. As the unhappy aborigines perished by thousands under the unaccustomed toil, negroes were brought from Africa to supply their places, were driven like wild beasts to the labor.[19] The New World became more like a hell than like the paradise for which Isabella and Columbus planned. Cortés conquered Mexico,[20] rich with gold beyond all that Europe had even dreamed. Pizarro found in Peru[21] a civilization whose remarkable advance we are only lately beginning to realize. And he annihilated it—for gold. Lima was founded, and Buenos Aires, to be twice destroyed by Indians and yet become the metropolis of South America.[22] Even here extended the rivalry of the great European monarchs, Charles and Francis. Cartier, in the service of[Pg xxviii] the latter, refused to acknowledge the claims of Spain to America, and exploring the St. Lawrence planned for France a colonial empire to match that of her enemy.[23] De Leon discovered Florida, and died while seeking there to emulate the successes of Cortés. De Soto discovered the Mississippi[24] and he also perished, lured on in the same knight-errant search for another golden empire to conquer. Who, having read the lives of such adventurers as these, shall ridicule the wildest extravagance in all the romances of chivalry? Wonderland grew real around these men. They achieved impossibilities. The maddest imaginings of the poets, the most fantastic tales of knightly wanderings and successes, seem slight beside the exploits of these daring, dauntless, heartless cavaliers of Spain.