But though Charles seemed to be prosperous on every side, and though the conquest of Mexico and Peru now began to prevent that scarcity of money under which he had hitherto labored, he found himself threatened with difficulties in Germany; and his desire of surmounting them was the chief cause of his granting such moderate conditions to the Italian powers. Sultan Solyman, the greatest and most accomplished prince that ever sat on the Ottoman throne, had almost entirely subdued Hungary, had besieged Vienna, and, though repulsed, still menaced the hereditary dominions of the house of Austria with conquest and subjection. The Lutheran princes of the empire, finding that liberty of conscience was denied them, had combined in a league for their own defence at Smalcalde, and because they protested against the votes passed in the imperial diet, they thenceforth received the appellation, of “protestants.” Charles had undertaken to reduce them to obedience; and on pretence of securing the purity of religion, he had laid a scheme for aggrandizing his own family, by extending its dominion over all Germany. The friendship of Henry was one material circumstance yet wanting to Charles, in order to insure success in his ambitious enterprises; and the king was sufficiently apprised that the concurrence of that prince would at once remove all the difficulties which lay in the way of his divorce; that point which had long been the object of his most earnest wishes. But besides that the interests of his kingdom seemed to require an alliance with France, his haughty spirit could not submit to a friendship imposed on him by constraint; and as he had ever been accustomed to receive courtship, deference, and solicitation from the greatest potentates, he could ill brook that dependence to which this unhappy affair seemed to have reduced him. Amidst the anxieties with which he was agitated, he was often tempted to break off all connections with the court of Rome; and though he had been educated in a superstitious reverence to papal authority, it is likely that his personal experience of the duplicity and selfish politics of Clement had served much to open his eyes in that particular. He found his prerogative firmly established at home: lie observed that his people were in general much disgusted with clerical usurpations, and disposed to reduce the powers find privileges of the ecclesiastical order: he knew that they had cordially taken part with him in his prosecution of the divorce, and highly resented the unworthy treatment which after so many services and such devoted attachment, he had received from the court of Rome. Anne Boleyn also could not fail to use all her efforts, and employ every insinuation, in order to make him proceed to extremities against the pope; both as it was the readiest way to her attaining royal dignity, and as her education in the court of the duchess of Alençon, a princess inclined to the reformers, had already