Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/99

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

Turkish fleet; and though still a pirate he was the representative of a great Power.

Charles considered that there might just be time for a blow before he was once more paralysed by hostilities with France. The winter of 1534 was spent in preparations, and on May 30, 1535, Charles sailed from Barcelona, and was joined by Doria from Genoa and the galleys of Italy and Sicily. Assistance came from Portugal, from the Knights of Malta, from Venice, and other Italian States, and especially from the new Pope Paul III. The force amounted to 74 galleys, 30 smaller warships, and 300 ships of burden. The attack was directed against Tunis and proved completely successful. Landing at Carthage, the army first won its way into the fortress of Goletta, taking 84 ships and £00 guns, and then after some hesitation advanced upon Tunis, defeated the troops of Barbarossa, and, assisted by the rising of some 5000 Christian slaves, captured the town. The former ruler of Tunis, Muley Hassan, was restored there, the Spaniards retaining Goletta, Bona, and Biserta. Charles returned in triumph to Sicily, though he had not ventured to attack Algiers. The blow was opportune, for a few months later (February, 1536) Francis concluded a treaty with Solyman, with whom he had previously entered into relations in 1525 and 1528. It had another significance, for the Moors of Valencia, after their forcible conversion to Christianity ordered in 1525 and executed in the following years, had been in relations with the Muslim in Africa, and many of them had escaped to swell the bands of Barbarossa.

Meanwhile, on September 25, 1534, Clement had died, nowhere regretted, unless in France. To him more than to any other man is due the success of the Reformation, as a movement antagonistic to Rome. Intent upon dynastic and political interests, he had not only refused persistently to face the question of religion, but he had done as much as any to fetter the only force, except his own, that could have attempted its solution. At his death all England, Denmark, Sweden, part of Switzerland, and the half of Germany, were in revolt; but up to the last the possession of Florence or Milan was of more account in his eyes than the religious interests of all Christendom. The College of Cardinals, immediately on their meeting, came to the almost unanimous choice of Alessandro Farnese, who took the name of Paul III. He soon showed his proclivities by attempting to take Camerino from Francesco Maria della Rovere, the Duke of Urbino, to give it to his own son Pierluigi. But the choice of the Cardinals was grateful to the Emperor, who hoped better things from Farnese than he had ever obtained from Clejnent, and in particular the summons of a General Council.

The death of Francesco Sforza (November 1, 1535), to whom the Emperor had in 1534 given his niece Christina of Denmark, disturbed the settlement of Milan and threatened the early outbreak of war. Charles seems to have made up his mind to this, for the demands now