approaching which was to decide
whether Christianity or Mahometanism should hold the ascendant. The
Ottoman tide of conquest rolled up to the very walls of Vienna; and
Charles, who, as head of the empire, was placed on the frontier of
Christendom, was called on to repel it. When thirty-two years of age, he
marched against the formidable Solyman, drove him to an ignominious
retreat, and, at less cost of life than is often expended in a skirmish,
saved Europe from invasion. He afterwards crossed the sea to Tunis,
then occupied by a horde of pirates, the scourge of the Mediterranean.
He beat them in a bloody battle, slew their chief, and liberated ten
thousand captives from their dungeons. All Europe rang with the praises
of the young hero, who thus consecrated his arms to the service of the
Cross, and stood forward as the true champion of Christendom.

But from this high position Charles was repeatedly summoned to other
contests, of a more personal and far less honorable character. Such was
his long and bloody quarrel with Francis the First. It was hardly
possible that two princes, so well matched in years, power, pretensions,
and, above all, love of military glory, with dominions touching on one
another through their whole extent, could long remain without cause of
rivalry and collision. Such rivalry did exist from the moment that the
great prize of the empire was adjudged to Charles; and through the whole
of their long struggle, with the exception of a few reverses, the
superior genius of the emperor triumphed over his bold, but less politic
adversary.

There was still a third contest, on which the strength of the Spanish
monarch was freely expended through the greater part of his reign,--his
contest with the Lutheran princes of Germany. Here, too, for a long
time, fortune favored him. But it is easier to contend against man than
against a great moral principle. The principle of reform had struck too
deep into the mind of Germany to be eradicated by force or by fraud.
Charles, for a long time, by a course of crafty policy, succeeded in
baffling the Protestant league; and, by the decisive victory at
Muhlberg, seemed, at last, to have broken it altogether. But his success
only ministered to his ruin. The very man on whom he bestowed the spoils
of victory turned them against his benefactor. Charles, ill in body and
mind, and glad to escape from his enemies under cover of the night and a
driving tempest, was at length comp