• List of illustrations; List of tables; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction; Part I. Strategy and Finance: 1. The grand strategy of Charles V; 2. The Habsburg-Valois struggle: Italy 1515–28; 3. The search for revenue, I: the hard roads of fiscal reform; 4. The search for revenue, II: parliamentary subsidies; 5. The search for credit: Charles and his bankers; Part II. Impresario of War: Charles's Campaigns, 1529–52; 6. Finding uses for an army: Charles in Italy, 1529–30; 7. Crusades in Austria and the Mediterranean, 1532–5; 8. Failures in Provence and at Prevesa and Algiers, 1536–41; 9. Charles's Grand Plan, 1543–4; 10. The first Schmalkaldic War, 1546–7; 11. The second Schmalkaldic War and the assault on Metz, 1552; Part III. War Taxation: Parliaments of the Core Provinces of the Low Countries, Naples, and Castile; 12. Fiscal devolution and war taxation in the Low Countries; 13. Baronial politics and war finances in the Kingdom of Naples; 14. Town autonomy, Noble magistrates, and war taxation in Castile; Conclusions; Bibliography; Index.

Review of the hardback: 'This is a meticulous piece of scholarship … This is an important book. It draws together a mass of information gleaned from a wide range of European archives and, more significantly, offers a new perspective on Charles V and the modus operandi of the Habsburg dynastic empire.' Alastair Duke, Ashgate