While the occurrences related in the preceding chapter were passing, an event took place which, had it happened earlier, would have had an important influence on the politics of Europe, and the news of which, when it did happen, was everywhere received with the greatest interest. This event was the death of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, in his monastic retreat at Yuste. In the earlier pages of our narrative, we have seen how that monarch, after his abdication of the throne, withdrew to the Jeronymite convent among the hills of Estremadura. The reader may now feel some interest in following him thither, and in observing in what manner he accommodated himself to the change, and passed the closing days of his eventful life. The picture I am enabled to give of it will differ in some respects from those of former historians, who wrote when the Archives of Simancas, which afford the most authentic records for the narrative, were inaccessible to the scholar, native as well as foreign.[280] [Sidenote: CHARLES AT YUSTE.] Charles, as we have seen, had early formed the determination to relinquish at some future time the cares of royalty, and devote himself, in some lonely retreat to the good work of his salvation. His consort, the Empress Isabella, as appears from his own statement at Yuste, had avowed the same pious purpose.[281] She died, however, too early to execute her plan; and Charles was too much occupied with his ambitious enterprises to accomplish his object until the autumn of 1555, when, broken in health and spirits, and disgusted with the world, he resigned the sceptre he had held for forty years, and withdrew to a life of obscurity and repose.