The prelates
who were assembling at Trent, alarmed by so sudden and astounding a
revolution, dissolved the assembly and hastened to their homes.
The emperor was at Innspruck seated in his arm chair, with his limbs
bandaged in flannel, enfeebled and suffering from a severe attack of the
gout, when the intelligence of this sudden and overwhelming reverse
reached him. He was astonished and utterly confounded. In weakness and
pain, unable to leave his couch, with his treasury exhausted, his armies
widely scattered, and so pressed by their foes that they could not be
concentrated from their wide dispersion, there was nothing left for him
but to endeavor to beguile Maurice into a truce. But Maurice was as much
at home in all the arts of cunning as the emperor, and instead of being
beguiled, contrived to entrap his antagonist. This was a new and a very
salutary experience for Charles. It is a very novel sensation for a
successful rogue to be the dupe of roguery.
Maurice pressed on, his army gathering force at every step. He entered
the Tyrol, swept through all its valleys, took possession of all its
castles and its sublime fastnesses, and the blasts of his bugles
reverberated among the cliffs of the Alps, ever sounding the charge and
announcing victory, never signaling a defeat.
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