ollowers. "No priest can save you! no masses or indulgences
can help you! But God has saved you!" The voice of the preacher came
to the weary, crying out from ancient cathedrals and passionately
swaying the whole nation of Germany. Europe was in need of the same
moral freedom. Other countries took up the new creed and examined it,
finding that which would work like a leaven in the corruptness of the
age.

{63}

Chapter VI

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor

The sixteenth century was an age of splendid monarchs, who vied with
each other in the luxury of their courts, the chivalry of their
bearing, and the extent of their possessions.

Francis I was a patron of the New Learning, the pride of France, ever
devoted to a monarch with some dash of the heroic in his composition.
He was dark and handsome, and excelled in the tournaments, where he
tried to recapture the romance of the Middle Ages by his knightly
equipment and gallant feats of arms.

Henry VIII, the King of England, was eager to spend the wealth he had
inherited on the glittering pageants which made the people forget the
tyranny of the Tudor monarchs. He was four years the senior of
Francis, but still under thirty when Charles the Fifth succeeded, in
1516, to the wide realms of the Spanish Crown.

This king was likely to eclipse the pleasure-loving rivals of France
and England, for he had vast power in Europe through inheritance of the
great possessions of his house. Castile and Aragon came to Charles
through his mother, Joanna, who was the daughter of Ferdinand and
Isabella. Naples and Sicily went with Aragon, though, as a matter of
fact, they had been appropriated in violation of a treaty. The Low
Countries were part of the dominions of Charles' grandmother, Mary of
{64} Burgundy, who had married Philip, the Archduke of Austria. When
Maximilian of Austria died in 1519, he desired that his grandson should
succeed not only to his dominions in Europe, but also to the proud
title of Holy Roman Emperor, which was not hereditary. With the
treasures of the New World at his disposal, through the discoveries of
Christopher Columbus, Charles V had little doubt that he could obtain
anything he coveted.

It was soon evident that Charles' claim to the Empire would be disputed
by Francis I, who declared, "An he spent three millions of gold he
would be Emperor." The French King had a fine army, and money enough
to bribe the German princes, in whose han