Christendom. Absorbed at Innspruck with the deliberations of the Trent
Council, Charles had not heeded the distant mutterings of the tempest
which was gathering around him. While he was preparing to crush,
forever, the Protestant Church, with the arms which a bench of bishops
were forging, lo! the rapid and desperate Maurice, with long red beard
streaming like a meteor in the wind, dashing through the mountain passes,
at the head of his lancers--arguments more convincing than all the dogmas
of Granvelle! Disguised as an old woman, the Emperor had attempted on
the 6th April, to escape in a peasant's wagon, from Innspruck into
Flanders. Saved for the time by the mediation of Ferdinand, he had,
a few weeks later, after his troops had been defeated by Maurice,
at Fussen, again fled at midnight of the 22nd May, almost unattended,
sick in body and soul, in the midst of thunder, lightning, and rain,
along the difficult Alpine passes from Innspruck into Carinthia.
His pupil had permitted his escape, only because in his own language,
"for such a bird he had no convenient cage." The imprisoned princes now
owed their liberation, not to the Emperor's clemency, but to his panic.
The peace of Passau, in the following August, crushed the whole fabric
of the Emperor's toil, and laid-the foundation of the Protestant Church.
He had smitten the Protestants at Muhlberg for the last time. On the
other hand, the man who had dealt with Rome, as if the Pope, not he, had
been the vassal, was compelled to witness, before he departed, the
insolence of a pontiff who took a special pride in insulting and humbling
his house, and trampling upon the pride of Charles, Philip and Ferdinand.
In France too, the disastrous siege of Metz had taught him that in the
imperial zodiac the fatal sign of Cancer had been reached. The figure of
a crab, with the words "plus citra," instead of his proud motto of "plus
ultra," scrawled on the walls where he had resided during that dismal
epoch, avenged more deeply, perhaps, than the jester thought, the
previous misfortunes of France. The Grand Turk, too, Solyman the