The World of Gerard Mercator by Andrew Taylor

Author:Andrew Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2009-09-25T16:00:00+00:00

Walter Ghim almost certainly watched his friend at work on these globes, and later, he described them in admiration. "One [was] of purest blown crystal, and one of wood. On the former, the planets and the more important constellations were engraved with a diamond and inlaid with shining gold; the latter, which was no bigger than the little ball with which boys play in a circle, depicted the world in so far as its small size permitted, in exact detail.""'16; Judging from Ghim's description of their size, the world presented on the smaller globe can have been little more than a sketch—certainly not detailed enough for serious study. With their shining gold inlay, they sound more like a rich man's toys than instruments of scientific precision.

Mercator carried the finished globes personally to the emperor in Brussels, so that he could gain the maximum personal advantage from the order. Because Charles was on the move for much of his life, in military campaigns or journeying between the different parts of his empire, he spent little time at his court in Brussels. In normal times that city was a glittering, luxurious place, its mood very different from the restrained atmosphere of Duisburg. The emperor gave lavish banquets and surrounded himself with fine paintings, famous choirs, and magnificent Flemish tapestries. This, though, was a somber occasion: Charles, broken in health and in spirit, was preparing his abdication.

The victories that followed the battle at Ingolstadt in 1546 had proved to be the high point of his military campaigns. In 1552, France declared war on Charles and occupied the ancient cities of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, on the French borders of the empire, and at the same time, the Protestant German princes formed a fresh alliance against him, spurring him back into military action. First, he was forced to flee humiliatingly from Innsbruck by the soldiers of the Protestant prince Maurice of Saxony, who declared derisively that he wanted "to seek an interview with the emperor." Then he gathered his army around the imposing fortifications of Metz, meaning to recapture it by siege from the French. He camped outside the walls with some one hundred thousand men in the middle of a cold November, but this time there was none of the jovial encouragement of his men's morale that had marked his conduct at Ingolstadt six years earlier. His Spanish and Italian troops, huddled miserably in open trenches in the freezing weather, died by the thousands of cold and disease, and on New Year's Day of 1553, he withdrew in confusion. Some thirty thousand of his men had lost their lives, and with them perished not only Charles's hopes of regaining the city of Metz but also any chance of imposing his will on the German princes.

Charles was still only in his early fifties, but he was worn, bent, white-haired, and prematurely aging. The gout that had troubled him for years had left him a virtual cripple, unable to grip with his hands and struggling to mount his horse.

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