art of setting and maintaining an army in the field.

Yet, though brave and warlike as the most chivalrous of his ancestors,
Gothic, Burgundian, or Suabian, he was entirely without chivalry.
Fanaticism for the faith, protection for the oppressed, fidelity to
friend and foe, knightly loyalty to a cause deemed sacred, the sacrifice
of personal interests to great ideas, generosity of hand and heart; all
those qualities which unite with courage and constancy to make up the
ideal chevalier, Charles not only lacked but despised. He trampled on
the weak antagonist, whether burgher or petty potentate. He was false as
water. He inveigled his foes who trusted to imperial promises, by arts
unworthy an emperor or a gentleman. He led about the unfortunate John
Frederic of Saxony, in his own language, "like a bear in a chain," ready
to be slipped upon Maurice should "the boy" prove ungrateful. He
connived at the famous forgery of the prelate of Arras, to which the
Landgrave Philip owed his long imprisonment; a villany worse than many
for which humbler rogues have suffered by thousands upon the gallows.
The contemporary world knew well the history of his frauds, on scale both
colossal and minute, and called him familiarly "Charles qui triche."

The absolute master of realms on which the sun perpetually shone, he was
not only greedy for additional dominion, but he was avaricious in small
matters, and hated to part with a hundred dollars. To the soldier who
brought him the sword and gauntlets of Francis the First, he gave a
hundred crowns, when ten thousand would have been less than the customary
present; so that the man left his presence full of desperation. The
three soldiers who swam the Elbe, with their swords in their mouths; to
bring him the boats with which he passed to the victory of Muhlberg,
received from his imperial bounty a doublet, a pair of stockings, and
four crowns apiece. His courtiers and ministers complained bitterly of