In 1535, Europe being at peace, Charles sailed with a large arma ment for Tunis, where Khair Eddie Barbarossa, the dread of the Christians in the Mediterranean, had fortified himsel£ Charles, sup ported by his admiral, Andrea Doria, stormed La Goletta, and defeated Barbarossa ; the Christian slaves in Tunis meantime having revolted, the gates of the city were opened, and the Imperial soldiers entering in disorder began to plunder and kill the inhabitants, without any possibility of their officers restraining them. About 30,000 Mussultnans of all ages and both sexes perished on that occasion. When order was restored, Charles entered Tunis, where he re established on the throne Muley Hassan, who had been dispossessed by Barbarossa, on condition of acknowledging himself his vassal, and retaining a Spanish garrison at La Goletta. Charles returned to Italy and landed at Naples in triumph, having liberated 20,000 Christian slaves, and given, for a time, an effectual blow to Barbarossa and his piracy. On his return to Europe in 1536, he found King Frauds again prepared for war. The French invaded Piedmont, but Charles collecting his forces in the north of Italy, drove them back. He invaded Provence, besieged Marseille, but could not take it, and after having devastated Provence and lost nearly one half of his army, hel withdrew into Italy with the rest. In 1538 a truce for ten years was eutered into between Francis and Charles through the mediation of the pope. The truce however was broken in 1542. In 1539 the people of Ghent, Charles V.'s native place, revolted on account of some encroachment on their privileges, and the rebellion threatening to spread to other towns of Flanders, Charles, who was then in Spain, asked Francis for a safe conduct to cross France on his way to }leaders, which Francis immediately granted. He was received by Francis with the greatest honours, although some of the French courtiers advised him to take advantage of the opportunity to secure the person of Charles, and oblige him to sigu the cession of the duchy of Milan in favour of one of Francis's eons; but Francis disdained the suggestion. The citizens of Ghent having surrendered at discretion were treated by Charles with great severity; 26 of the leaders of the revolt being executed in 1540.
In 1541 Charles sailed with an armament to attack Algiers, against the advice of his old admiral, Andrea Doria. lie landed near that city, began the siege, and built a redoubt on a hill commanding the town, which is still called the Fort of the Emperor, but his troops were cut off by disease and by the Arabs. A dreadful storm dispersed his fleet, and Charles re-embarked with a small portion of his men, leaving his artillery and baggage behind.
In 1542 war broke out again between Francis and Charles. The ostensible cause of it was the seizure which had taken place the year before of Itincon, a Spanish refugee, who had goue over to Francis, and had been sent by him to Constantinople to contract an alliance with Sultan Solyman against Charles. Rincon succeeded, returned to France, and set off again for Constantinople with Fregoeo, a Genoese refugee, whom Francis had also taken into his service. These two emissaries, in passing through Italy, were seized by the Marquis del Vaesto, governor of Milan, put to the torture, and then put to death, as traitors to their sovereign. In accordance with the treaty, Solyman neat Barbarossa with a large fleet to ravage the coasts of Italy, and join Francis's squadron on the coast of Provence. (Bausanossa.j The war was carried on by land in Flanders, Roussillon, and in Piedmont, where Charles's troops lost the battle of Cerisolles against the Count of k'nghien. Charles however invaded Champagne; and his ally, Henry VIII. of England, entered Picardy in 1544, but soon after peace was made at Crespi between Charles and Francis. One of the terms of this peace was that both sovereigns engaged themselves to destroy Proteetantism in their respective dominions. In France they began to fulfil this engagement by masaacreing the Protestants iu the towns of Cabrieree and Merindol; in Germany Charles proceeded by less sanguinary and more formal means. The diet of Worms, iu 1545, passed several resolutions against the Protestants, in consequence of which they rose in arms iu 1546, under Frederic, elector of Saxony and the laudgrave of limn. Charles defeated them and took the two princes prisoners. Ile gave the electorate of Saxony to Maurice, a kineman of Frederic. Maurice acted with consummate skill, so an to deceive Charles himself, during several years, as to his real intentions. He appeared to side with the emperor, fought bravely for him, but at the same time took care that the cause of the Protestants should not be rendered totally desperate; ho urged Charles to liberate the land grave of Heade, who was his father-in-law, and on Charles's repeated he entered into secret correspondence with the other Protestant princes to be ready to rise at a given signal. At last, in 1552, Maurice threw off the mask, by taking the field at the bead of the Protestant confederacy, and was very near surprising the emperor at Innsbruck, whence Charles was obliged to fly in a hurry. He also frightened
away the fathers of the council assembled at Trent. At this crisis Henri II. of France, who had succeeded Francis I., resumed hostilities against the emperor. Under these circumstances Charles was obliged to sign the treaty of Passau with the Protestaut princes of Germany, in August 1552, by which the Protestants obtained the free exercise of their religion in their dominions. This treaty was afterwards con firmed by a solemn declaration of the diet at Augsburg iu 1555, which was called the "peace of religion," for it was the foundation of religious freedom in Germany.
The war continued with the French on one side and with the Turks in Hungary on the other. In 1554, Philip, Charles's son, married Mary, queen of England, upon which occasion his father made over to him the crowns of Naples and Sicily. In 1555 Joanna of Spain died, after having been insane for nearly fifty years. Charles being now nominally as well as in reality solo king of the Spanish monarchy, put in effect a resolution which be had formed for some years before. Having assembled the States of the Low Countries at Brussels, on the 25th of October 1555, he appeared there seated between his son Philip and his sister, the Queen of Hungary, and resigned the sovereignty of the Netherlands, his paternal dominione, to Philip. He then rose, and leaning on the Prince of Orange for support, as he was suffering severely from the gout, he addressed the assembly, recapitulating the acts of his long administration. " Ever since the age of seventeen," he said, "he had devoted all his thoughts and exertions to public objects, seldom reserving any portion of his time for the indulgence of ease or pleasure. He had visited Germany nine times, Spain six times, France four, Italy seven, Flanders ten times, England twice, and Africa twice; had made eleven voyages by sea ; he had not avoided labour or repined under fatigue in the arduous office of governing his extensive dominions; but now his constitution failed him, and his infirmities warned him that it was time to retire from the helm. He was not so fond of reigning as to wish to retain the sceptre with a powerless hand !" He added that "if, in the course of a long admiuistratiou, he had committed errors—if, under the pressure of a multiplicity of affairs, ho had neglected or wronged any one of his subjects, he now implored their forgiveness, while for his part he felt grateful for their fidelity and attachment, and he should with his last breath pray for their welfare." Then turning to Philip, he gave him some salutary advice, especially to respect the laws and the liberties of hie subjects; after which, exhausted with fatigue and emotiou, he closed the impree sive scene. Two weeks after he made over to Philip, with the same solemnity and before a large assembly of Spanish grandees and Germau princes, the crowns of Spain and of the Iudies. In the following year, August 1556, he likewise resigned the imperial crown to his brother Ferdinand, who had already been elected king of the Romans and his successor; and after visiting his native place, Ghent, he embarked for Spain with a small retinue. On landing at Laredo in Biscay he kissed the ground, saying, "Naked I came out of my mother's womb, and naked I return to thee, thou common mother of mankind." In February 1557, accompanied by one gentleman attendant and twelve domestics, he retired to the monastery of St. Yuste of the Hieronymite order, situated near Plasencia, in Estremadura, in a sequestered valley at the foot of the Sierra do Gredos, where he had caused apartments to be prepared for him. There he lived for about eighteen months, employed either in his garden, or in contriving works of ingenious mechanism, of which he was remarkably fond, and in which he was assisted by Turriano, a clever mechaeician of the time, and occasion ally diverting himself with literature, in which he was assisted by a learned gentleman of the chamber, William Van Male. In the last six months of his existence, his body becoming more and more enfeebled by repeated fits of the gout, his mind lost its energy, and he fell into gloomy reveries, aud the practice of ascetic austerities. Among other things he had his own funeral obsequies performed in the chapel of the convent (August 30, 1558). The fatigue and excitement of this ceremony, in which he took part, brought on a fit of fever, which in about three weeks carried him off: he died on the 21st of September 1558, in hie fifty-ninth year.
(Antonio de Vera, Vida y Heehos de D. Carlos I.; Robertion, History of Charles V. ; Botta; Scoria d' Dalia ; aud numerous other historians. The circumstances of the last months of his life have recently been narrated (from original documents in the French Foreign Office) in a work of remarkable interest, The Cloister-Life of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, by W. Stirling.)