years with varying 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, 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 toward 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 Frederick 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 honor
of my family and the inherit