Charles V

Henry VII, the king of England, made a deal with Don Philip, son of the emperor Maximilian — or, to introduce him more honorably, the father of the emperor Charles V — to have Philip hand over the duke of Suffolk — the White Rose,his enemy — who had escaped him and was hiding in the Low Countries.

A lieutenant in the ultramontane army of the king of France, a man in great favor at the court and in the king’s debt for his title — which had been taken from his brother — he let himself be spooked (as was later shown), for no particular reason and in spite of his own sympathies, by those fine predictions that favored the emperor Charles the Fifth against us and that had spread everywhere, even to Italy where these mad prophecies had gone so far that large sums of money where exchanged in Rome over this idea that we were finished.

And yet, when Charles the Fifth led a campaign against us in Provence,the marquis of Guast, having gone to reconnoiter the city of Arles and having moved from behind a windmill he had used to cover his approach, was spotted by the lords of Bonneval and seneschal of Agenais who were walking the galleries of the arena.

Likewise, when the pope met with the emperor, in Bologna,the emperor found a way to let the pope arrive first, and got there after him.

It is found after he tells of the fine scene Charles V made before the consistory, in Rome, speaking outrageous words against us in front of the bishop of Macon and the lord of Velly, our ambassadors.

In the expedition of the Emperor Charles V into Provence, King Francis was put to choose either to go meet him in Italy or to await him in his own dominions;

as it was particularly observed in the service of the king of Tunis, who in our days landed at Naples to have an interview with Charles the Emperor.

Muley Hassam, king of Tunis, he whom the Emperor Charles V restored to his kingdom, reproached the memory of his father Mahomet with the frequentation of women, styling him loose, effeminate, and a getter of children.

The greatest act of the Emperor Charles V was that when, in imitation of some of the ancients of his own quality, confessing it but reason to strip ourselves when our clothes encumber and grow too heavy for us, and to lie down when our legs begin to fail us, he resigned his possessions, grandeur, and power to his son, when he found himself failing in vigor, and steadiness for the conduct of his affairs suitable with the glory he had therein acquired.

What we have here is rather an apology for King Francis, against the Emperor Charles V, than history.

Charles V, Philippe de Commines;