to outwit the man who had outwitted all the world, and to
drive before him, in ignominious flight, the conqueror of the nations.
The German lad who had learned both war and dissimulation in the court
and camp of him who was so profound a master of both arts, was destined
to eclipse his teacher on the most august theatre of 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 Magnificent, possessed most of Hungar