When at length he made up his mind to take the field, he selected, as most worthy of the exercise of his prowess, the triumph over the pirate Barbarossa and his African hordes: the most important result of the campaign being the occupation of Tunis, (where in his zealous burnings for Christianity he installed a Mahometan sovereign,) and the wanton destruction by his soldiers of a splendid library of valuable manuscripts. We have seen how little his Spanish subjects allowed themselves to be dazzled by the splendours of his vast authority, and history informs us how far he was from conceiving the resolution of reducing them to obedience by any measures savouring of energetic demonstration. The irreverence to his person he calmly pocketed, and the deficiences in his exchequer were supplied by means of redoubled pressure on his less refractory Flemings. He submitted to the breach of faith of Francis of France, and to the disrespect of his Castilian vassals; but, on the burghers of the city of Ghent being heard to give utterance to expressions of discontent at the immoderate liberties taken with their purse-strings, he quits Madrid in a towering rage, crosses France at the risk of his liberty, and enters his helpless burg at the head of a German army, darting on all sides frowns of imperial wrath, each prophetic of a bloody execution. Aware of the preparations of Francis for attacking his dominions simultaneously in three different directions, he took insufficient or rather no measures to oppose him, but turning his back, embarked for Algiers, where he believed laurels to be as cheap as at Tunis. There, however, he lost one half of his armament, destroyed by the elements; and the remainder narrowly escaping a similar fate, and being dispersed in all directions, he returned in time to witness the unopposed execution of the plans of his French enemy. What measures are his on such an emergency? Does he call together the contingents of the German States? Unite the different corps serving in Lombardy and Savoy,--dispatch an order to the viceroy of Naples to march for the north of Italy; and having completed his combinations, cross the Pyrenees at the head of a Spanish army, and give the law to his far weaker antagonist? No! nothing that could lead to an encounter with the French king accorded with his policy, as it has been called, but more probably with his disposition. He quits Spain, it is true, and using all diligence, travels round France, but not too near it, and arrives in Flanders. Here he puts himself at the head of his Germans, and marches--against the Duke of Cleves! who had formed an alliance with his principal enemy.