ardour in the cause of Christianity; offering to the French
king the renunciation of his rights, and a release from that monarch's
obligations to him, on condition of his joining him in an expedition
against the Infidels; but when he found himself at the head of an
immense army under the walls of Vienna, he sat still and allowed
Solyman to carry off at his leisure the spoils of the principal towns of
Hungary.

When at length he made up his mind to take the field, he selected, as
most worthy of the exercise of his prowess, the triumph over the pirate
Barbarossa and his African hordes: the most important result of the
campaign being the occupation of Tunis, (where in his zealous burnings
for Christianity he installed a Mahometan sovereign,) and the wanton
destruction by his soldiers of a splendid library of valuable
manuscripts.

We have seen how little his Spanish subjects allowed themselves to be
dazzled by the splendours of his vast authority, and history informs us
how far he was from conceiving the resolution of reducing them to
obedience by any measures savouring of energetic demonstration. The
irreverence to his person he calmly pocketed, and the deficiences in his
exchequer were supplied by means of redoubled pressure on his less
refractory Flemings. He submitted to the breach of faith of Francis of
France, and to the disrespect of his Castilian vassals; but, on the
burghers of the city of Ghent being heard to give utterance to
expressions of discontent at the immoderate liberties taken with their
purse-strings, he quits Madrid in a towering rage, crosses France at
the risk of his liberty, and enters his helpless burg at the head of a
German army, darting on all sides frowns of imperial wrath, each
prophetic of a bloody execution.

Aware of the preparations of Francis for attacking his dominions
simultaneously in three different directions, he took insufficient or
rather no measures to oppose him, but turning his back, embarked for
Algiers, where he believed laurels to be as cheap as at Tunis. There,
however, he lost one half of his armament, destroyed by the elements;
and the remainder narrowly escaping a similar fate, and being dispersed
in all directions, he returned in time to witness the unopposed
execution of the plans of his French enemy. What measures are his on
such an emergency? Does he call together the contingents of the German
States? Unite the different corps serving in Lombardy and
Savoy,--disp