King of Spain. Parma and Piacenza also had just been captured from the papal Farneses by the emperor’s troops (1547), and now Charles conceived an arrangement by which the suzerainty of the empire over Italy should be transferred to Spain, the states of Flanders and Holland secured to the possessor of the Spanish crown, and the emperor consequently left only with his Austrian dominions, poor and isolated, with the great religious question rending them in twain. The transfer of the Italian suzerainty was to be announced later, but Charles secured the consent of his brother to the rest of his projects by promising to guarantee the succession of the imperial crown after the death of Ferdinand to his son, the Archduke Maximilian, who was to marry Charles’s eldest daughter, Maria.

As soon as this had been agreed to, the emperor sent the Duke of Alba to Spain with an able statement of the whole case for Philip’s information, setting forth the new combination and its advantages, and urging the prince to make a progress through the territories which were destined to be his. The voyage was to be a long, and, to a man of Philip’s habits and tastes, not an attractive one. Notwithstanding the emperor’s exhortations years before, he spoke no German or Flemish, and indeed very little of any language but Spanish. He was already of sedentary habits, and feasts and the bustle of state receptions were distasteful to him. But he was a dutiful son, and during all the summer of 1548 the splendid preparations for his voyage kept Castile busy, whilst Maximilian, the heir to the empire, was on his way to Spain to marry the Infanta Maria and assume the regency during Philip’s absence.

CHAPTER II