ccomplish his favorite
scheme in behalf of his son. At the very time Charles seemed to be most
sensible of the vanity of worldly grandeur, and when he appeared to be
quitting it not only with indifference but with contempt, the vast
schemes of ambition, which had so long occupied and engrossed his mind,
still kept possession of it. He could not think of leaving his son in a
rank inferior to that which he himself had held among the princes of
Europe. As he had, some years before, made a fruitless attempt to secure
the imperial crown to Philip, that, by uniting it to the kingdoms of
Spain and the dominions of the house of Burgundy, he might put it in his
power to prosecute, with a better prospect of success, those great plans
which his own infirmities had obliged him to abandon, he was still
unwilling to relinquish this flattering project as chimerical or
unattainable.

Notwithstanding the repulse which he had formerly met with from his
brother Ferdinand, he renewed his solicitations with fresh importunity,
and during the summer had tried every art, and employed every argument,
which he thought could induce him to quit the imperial throne to Philip,
and to accept of the investiture of some province, either in Italy or in
the Low Countries, as an equivalent. But Ferdinand, who was so firm and
inflexible with regard to this point that he had paid no regard to the
solicitations of the Emperor, even when they were enforced with all the
weight of authority which accompanies supreme power, received the
overture, that now came from him in the situation to which he had
descended, with great indifference, and would hardly deign to listen to
it. Charles, ashamed of his own credulity in having imagined that he
might accomplish now that which he had attempted formerly without
success, desisted finally from his scheme. He then resigned the
government of the empire, and, having transferred all his claims of
obedience and allegiance from the Germanic body to his brother the King
of the Romans, he executed a deed to that effect, with all the
formalities requisite in such an important transaction. The instrument
of resignation he committed to William, Prince of Orange, and empowered
him to lay it before the college of electors.

Nothing now remained to detain Charles from that retreat for which he
languished. The preparations for his voyage having been made for some
time, he set out for Zuitburg, in Zealand, where the fleet which was to