. The outline of history : being a plain history of life and mankind. picnic known tohistorians as the Field of the Cloth of Gold(1520). Knighthood was becoming a pic-turesque affectation in the sixteenth cen-tury. The Emperor Maximilian I is stillcalled the last of the knights by Germanhistorians. The election of Charles was secured, itis to be noted, by a vast amount ofbribery. He had as his chief supporters andcreditors the great German business houseof the Fuggers. That large treatmentof money and credit which we callfinance, which had gone out of Europeanpolitical life with the collapse o

. The outline of history : being a plain history of life and mankind. picnic known tohistorians as the Field of the Cloth of Gold(1520). Knighthood was becoming a pic-turesque affectation in the sixteenth cen-tury. The Emperor Maximilian I is stillcalled the last of the knights by Germanhistorians. The election of Charles was secured, itis to be noted, by a vast amount ofbribery. He had as his chief supporters andcreditors the great German business houseof the Fuggers. That large treatmentof money and credit which we callfinance, which had gone out of Europeanpolitical life with the collapse o

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. The outline of history : being a plain history of life and mankind. picnic known tohistorians as the Field of the Cloth of Gold(1520). Knighthood was becoming a pic-turesque affectation in the sixteenth cen-tury. The Emperor Maximilian I is stillcalled the last of the knights by Germanhistorians. The election of Charles was secured, itis to be noted, by a vast amount ofbribery. He had as his chief supporters andcreditors the great German business houseof the Fuggers. That large treatmentof money and credit which we callfinance, which had gone out of Europeanpolitical life with the collapse of the RomanEmpire, was now coming back to power.This appearance of the Fuggers, whosehouses and palaces outshone those of theemperors, marks the upward movement offorces that had begun two or three centuriesearlier in Cahors in France and in Florenceand other Italian towns. Money, publicdebts, and social unrest and discontent,re-enter upon the miniature stage of thisOutline. Charles V was not so much aHabsburg as a Fugger emperor. EUROPE izz the -time of CHARLES V. 416 THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY For a time this fair, not very intelligent-looking young man with the thick upper lipand long, clumsy chin—features whichstill afflict his descendants—was largely apuppet in the hands of his ministers. Ableservants after the order of Machiavelliguided him at first in the arts of kingship.Then in a slow but effectual way he beganto assert himself. He was confronted atthe very outset of his reign in Germany withthe perplexing dissensions of Christendom.The revolt against the papal rule which hadbeen going on since the days of Huss andWyclifle had been recently exasperated bya new and unusually cynical selling of in-dulgences to raise money for the completion