As the year 1553 drew to a close the Emperor Charles V looked out over the vast reaches of his land with a jaundiced eye. He was master of most of Europe and much of the New World. His dominions stretched from Spain through Italy, where he was duke of Milan and king of Naples and Sicily, up across the Franche-Comté to the Low Countries, the wealthiest region in the Christian world, and eastward through the German-speaking lands of the Holy Roman Empire. He ruled the Cape Verde Islands and the Canaries, the North African territories of Tunis, Oran and Melilia; on the other side of the world the Philippines were his. Treasure ships brought him gold and silver from the mines and ruined empires of Mexico and Peru in seemingly limitless supply, and his viceroys in the Americas ruled millions of acres of bountiful, trackless wilderness. His soldiers were the most fearsome fighters in Europe, while his Spanish and Flemish ships were more numerous and more powerful than the navies of France and England combined.
