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On June 28, 1519, King Carlos I was elected Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. From the article:
"Holy Roman Emperor Charles V - 1519-1556
Charles V (Spanish: Carlos; French: Charles; German: Karl; Dutch: Karel; Italian: Carlo) (24 February 1500 – 21 September 1558) was ruler of both the Spanish Empire from 1516 and the Holy Roman Empire from 1519, as well as of Habsburg Netherlands from 1506. He voluntarily stepped down from these and other positions by a series of abdications between 1554 and 1556. Through inheritance, he brought together under his rule extensive territories in western, central, and southern Europe, and the Spanish colonies in the Americas and Asia. As a result, his domains spanned nearly four million square kilometers and were the first to be described as "the empire on which the sun never sets".
Charles was the heir of three of Europe's leading dynasties: the Houses of Valois-Burgundy (Netherlands), Habsburg (Holy Roman Empire), and Trastámara (Spain). He inherited the Burgundian Netherlands and the Franche-Comté as heir of the House of Valois-Burgundy. From his own dynasty, the Habsburgs, he inherited Austria and other lands in central Europe. He was also elected to succeed his Habsburg grandfather, Maximilian I, as Holy Roman Emperor, a title held by the Habsburgs since 1440. From the Spanish House of Trastámara, he inherited the crowns of Castile, which was in the process of developing a nascent empire in the Americas and Asia, and Aragon, which included a Mediterranean empire extending to Southern Italy. Charles was the first king to rule Castile and Aragon simultaneously in his own right, and as a result he is sometimes referred to as the first King of Spain. The personal union, under Charles, of the Holy Roman Empire with the Spanish Empire resulted in the closest Europe would come to a universal monarchy since the death of Louis the Pious.
Because of widespread fears that his vast inheritance would lead to the realization of a universal monarchy and that he was trying to create a European hegemony, Charles was the object of hostility from many enemies. His reign was dominated by war, and particularly by three major simultaneous conflicts: the Habsburg-Valois Wars with France, the struggle to halt the Ottoman advance, and the Protestant Reformation resulting in conflict with the German princes. The wars with France, mainly fought in Italy, resulted in recovery of territory lost at the beginning of his reign and included the decisive defeat and capture of Francis I of France at the Battle of Pavia in 1525. France recovered and the wars continued for the remainder of Charles's reign. Enormously expensive, they led to the development of the first modern professional army in Europe, the Tercios.
The struggle with the Ottoman Empire was fought in Hungary and the Mediterranean. After seizing most of eastern and central Hungary in 1526, the Ottomans’ advance was halted at their failed Siege of Vienna in 1529. A lengthy war of attrition, conducted on his behalf by his younger brother Ferdinand, continued for the rest of Charles's reign. In the Mediterranean, although there were some successes, Charles was unable to prevent the Ottomans’ increasing naval dominance and the piratical activity of the Barbary Corsairs. Charles opposed the Reformation and in Germany he was in conflict with the Protestant Princes of the Schmalkaldic League who were motivated by both religious and political opposition to him. He could not prevent the spread of Protestantism and although he won a decisive victory against the Princes at the Battle of Mühlberg, 1547, he was ultimately forced to concede the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, which divided Germany on confessional lines.
While Charles did not typically concern himself with rebellions, he was quick to put down three particularly dangerous rebellions in the vital territories of Castile, the Frisian lands, and later in his reign in the port city of Ghent. Once the rebellions were quelled the essential Castilian and Burgundian territories remained mostly loyal to Charles throughout his rule.
Charles’s Spanish dominions were the chief source of his power and wealth, and they became increasingly important as his reign progressed. In the Americas, Charles sanctioned the conquest by Castillian conquistadors of the Aztec and Inca empires. Castillian control was extended across much of South and Central America. The resulting vast expansion of territory and the flows of South American silver to Castile had profound long term effects on Spain.
Charles was only 56 when he abdicated, but after 34 years of energetic rule he was physically exhausted and sought the peace of a monastery, where he died at the age of 58. Upon Charles’s abdications, the Holy Roman Empire was inherited by his younger brother Ferdinand, who had already been given the Austrian lands in 1521. The Spanish Empire, including the possessions in the Netherlands and Italy, was inherited by Charles’s son Philip II. The two empires would remain allies until the 18th century.
Heritage and early life
Charles was born in 1500 as the eldest son of Philip the Handsome and Joanna of Castile in the Flemish city of Ghent, which was part of the Habsburg Netherlands. The culture and courtly life of the Burgundian Low Countries were an important influence in his early life. He was tutored by William de Croÿ (who would later become his first prime minister), and also by Adrian of Utrecht (later Pope Adrian VI). It is said that Charles spoke several vernacular languages: he was fluent in French and Dutch, later adding an acceptable Castilian Spanish (which Charles called the "divine language") required by the Castilian Cortes Generales as a condition for becoming King of Castile. He also gained a decent command of German (in which he was not fluent prior to his election), though he never spoke it as well as French. A witticism sometimes attributed to Charles is: "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse." A variant of the quote is attributed to him by Swift in his 1726 Gulliver's Travels, but there are many other variants and it is often attributed instead to Frederick the Great.
From his Burgundian ancestors he inherited an ambiguous relationship with the Kings of France. Charles shared with France his mother tongue and many cultural forms. In his youth he made frequent visits to Paris, then the largest city of Western Europe. In his words: "Paris is not a city, but a universe" (Lutetia non urbs, sed orbis). He was betrothed to both Louise and Charlotte of Valois, daughters of King Francis I of France, but they both died in childhood. Charles also inherited the tradition of political and dynastic enmity between the royal and the Burgundian ducal lines of the Valois dynasty. Charles was very attached to the Burgundian Low Countries where he had been raised. These lands were very rich and contributed significantly to the wealth of the Empire. He also spent much time there, mainly at Brussels. This stands in contrast with the attitude of his son Philip who only visited the Low Countries once.
Until the 1540s, Charles did not spend much time in Germany (apart from the Netherlands). He frequently was in Northern Italy (then part of the Holy Roman Empire). He never actually governed his Austrian dominions and made his brother Ferdinand the ruler of these lands in 1521, as well as his representative in the Holy Roman Empire during his absence. In spite of this, the Emperor had a close relationship with some German families, like the House of Nassau, many of which were represented at his court in Brussels. Some German princes or noblemen accompanied him in his military campaigns against France or the Ottomans, and the bulk of his army was generally composed of German troops, especially the Imperial Landsknechte. Indeed, in 1519, he was elected because he was considered a German prince while his main opponent was French. Nonetheless, in the long term, the growth of Lutheranism and Charles' staunch Catholicism alienated him from various German princes who finally fought against him in the 1540s and the 1550s. It is important to note, though, that other states of the Empire chose to support him in his war, and that he had the constant support of his brother, in spite of their strained personal relationship. Whereas Charles spent much of his final years as a ruler trying to address the issue of religion in the Empire, it would ultimately be Ferdinand, by then much more popular in Germany, who would bring peace to the German lands.
Though Spain was the core of his personal possessions and though he had many Iberian ancestors, in his earlier years Charles felt as if he were viewed as a foreign prince. He became fluent in Spanish late in his life, as it was not his first language. Nonetheless, he spent much of his life in Spain, including his final years in a Spanish monastery, and his heir, later Philip II, was born and raised in Spain. Indeed, Charles's motto, Plus Ultra ('Further Beyond'), became the national motto of Spain. He had many Spanish counselors and, except for the revolt of the comuneros in the 1520s, Spain remained mostly loyal to him. Spain was also his most important military asset, as it provided a great number of generals, as well as the formidable Spanish tercios, considered the best infantry of its time. Many Spaniards, however, believed that their resources were being used to sustain a policy that was not in the country's interest. They usually believed that Charles should have focused on the Mediterranean and North Africa instead of Northern or Central Europe.
Reign
Charles V's European territories. Red represents the Crown of Aragon, magenta the Crown of Castile, orange his Burgundian inheritances, mustard yellow his Austrian inheritances, and pale yellow the balance of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1506, Charles inherited his father's Burgundian territories, most notably the Low Countries and Franche-Comté. Most of the holdings were fiefs of the German Kingdom (part of the Holy Roman Empire), except his birthplace of Flanders, which was still a French fief, a last remnant of what had been a powerful player in the Hundred Years' War. As he was a minor, his aunt Margaret of Austria (born as Archduchess of Austria and in both her marriages as the Dowager Princess of Asturias and Dowager Duchess of Savoy) acted as regent, as appointed by Emperor Maximilian until 1515. She soon found herself at war with France over the question of Charles' requirement to pay homage to the French king for Flanders, as his father had done. The outcome was that France relinquished its ancient claim on Flanders in 1528.
From 1515 to 1523, Charles's government in the Netherlands also had to contend with the rebellion of Frisian peasants (led by Pier Gerlofs Donia and Wijard Jelckama). The rebels were initially successful but after a series of defeats, the remaining leaders were captured and decapitated in 1523.
Charles extended the Burgundian territory with the annexation of Tournai, Artois, Utrecht, Groningen and Guelders. The Seventeen Provinces had been unified by Charles's Burgundian ancestors, but nominally were fiefs of either France or the Holy Roman Empire. In 1549, Charles issued a Pragmatic Sanction, declaring the Low Countries to be a unified entity of which his family would be the heirs.
The Low Countries held an important place in the Empire. For Charles V personally they were his home, the region where he was born and spent his childhood. Because of trade and industry and the wealth of the region's cities, the Low Countries also represented an important income for the Imperial treasury.
The Burgundian territories were generally loyal to Charles throughout his reign. The important port city of Ghent rebelled in 1539 due to heavy tax payments demanded by Charles. The rebellion did not last long, however, as Charles's military response, with reinforcement from the Duke of Alba, was swift and humiliating to the rebels of Ghent.
Spain
In the Castilian Cortes of Valladolid in 1506 and of Madrid in 1510, Charles was sworn as the Prince of Asturias, heir-apparent to his mother the Queen Joanna. On the other hand, in 1502, the Aragonese Corts gathered in Saragossa and pledged an oath to Joanna as heiress-presumptive, but the Archbishop of Saragossa expressed firmly that this oath could not establish jurisprudence, that is to say, modify the right of the succession, except by virtue of a formal agreement between the Cortes and the King. So, upon the death of King Ferdinand II of Aragon, on 23 January 1516, Joanna inherited the Crown of Aragon, which consisted of Catalonia, Valencia, Naples, Sicily and Sardinia, while Charles became Governor General. Nevertheless, the Flemings wished Charles to assume the royal title, and this was supported by his grandfather the emperor Maximilian I and Pope Leo X. Thus, after the celebration of Ferdinand II's obsequies on 14 March 1516, Charles was proclaimed king of the crowns of Castile and Aragon jointly with his mother. Finally, when the Castilian regent Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros accepted the fait accompli, he acceded to Charles's desire to be proclaimed king and imposed his enstatement throughout the kingdom.[ Charles arrived in his new kingdoms in autumn of 1517. Jiménez de Cisneros came to meet him but fell ill along the way, not without a suspicion of poison, and he died before meeting the King.
Charles V with Armor by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, according to Titian. El Escorial. Madrid, Spain
Due to the irregularity of Charles assuming the royal title while his mother, the legitimate queen, was alive, the negotiations with the Castilian Cortes in Valladolid (1518) proved difficult. In the end Charles was accepted under the following conditions: he would learn to speak Castilian; he would not appoint foreigners; he was prohibited from taking precious metals from Castile; and he would respect the rights of his mother, Queen Joanna. The Cortes paid homage to him in Valladolid in February 1518. After this, Charles departed to the crown of Aragon. He managed to overcome the resistance of the Aragonese Cortes and Catalan Corts, and he was finally recognized as king of Aragon and count of Barcelona jointly with his mother. The Kingdom of Navarre had been invaded by Ferdinand of Aragon jointly with Castile in 1512, but he pledged a formal oath to respect the kingdom. On Charles's accession to the Spanish throne, the Parliament of Navarre (Cortes) required him to attend the coronation ceremony (to become Charles IV of Navarre), but this demand fell on deaf ears, and the Parliament kept piling up grievances.
Charles was accepted as sovereign, even though the Spanish felt uneasy with the Imperial style. Spanish kingdoms varied in their traditions. Castile was an authoritarian kingdom, where the monarch's own will easily overrode law and the Cortes. By contrast, in the kingdoms of the crown of Aragon, and especially in the Pyrenean kingdom of Navarre, law prevailed, and the monarchy was a contract with the people. This became an inconvenience and a matter of dispute for Charles V and later kings, since realm-specific traditions limited their absolute power. With Charles, government became more absolute, even though until his mother's death in 1555 Charles did not hold the full kingship of the country.
Soon resistance to the Emperor arose because of heavy taxation to support foreign wars in which Castilians had little interest, and because Charles tended to select Flemings for high offices in Spain and America, ignoring Castilian candidates. The resistance culminated in the Revolt of the Comuneros, which Charles suppressed. Immediately after crushing the Castilian revolt, Charles was confronted again with the hot issue of Navarre when King Henry II attempted to reconquer the kingdom. Main military operations lasted until 1524, when Hondarribia surrendered to Charles's forces, but frequent cross-border clashes in the western Pyrenees only stopped in 1528 (Treaties of Madrid and Cambrai).
After these events, Navarre remained a matter of domestic and international litigation still for a century (a French dynastic claim to the throne did not end until the French Revolution in 1789). Castile became integrated into Charles's empire, and provided the bulk of the empire's financial resources as well as its most effective military units. The enormous budget deficit accumulated during Charles's reign resulted in Spain declaring bankruptcy during the reign of Philip II.
Italy
The Crown of Aragon inherited by Charles included the Kingdom of Naples, the Kingdom of Sicily and the Kingdom of Sardinia. Aragon also previously controlled the Duchy of Milan, but a year before Charles ascended to the throne, it was annexed by France after the Battle of Marignano in 1515. Charles succeeded in re-capturing Milan in 1522, when Imperial troops defeated the Franco-Swiss army at Bicocca. Yet in 1524 Francis I of France retook the initiative, crossing into Lombardy where Milan, along with a number of other cities, once again fell to his attack. Pavia alone held out, and on 24 February 1525 (Charles's twenty-fifth birthday), Charles's Spanish forces captured Francis and crushed his army in the Battle of Pavia, yet again retaking Milan and Lombardy. Spain successfully held on to all of its Italian territories, though they were invaded again on multiple occasions during the Italian Wars.
In addition, Habsburg trade in the Mediterranean was consistently disrupted by the Ottoman Empire. In 1538 a Holy League consisting of all the Italian states and Spain was formed to drive the Ottomans back, but it was defeated at the Battle of Preveza. Decisive naval victory eluded Charles; it would not be achieved until after Charles's death, at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.
America
During Charles's reign, the Spanish territories in the Americas were considerably extended by conquistadores like Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro. They conquered the large Aztec and Inca empires and incorporated them into the Empire as the Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru between 1519 and 1542. Combined with the circumnavigation of the globe by the Magellan expedition in 1522, these successes convinced Charles of his divine mission to become the leader of Christendom, which still perceived a significant threat from Islam. The conquests also helped solidify Charles's rule by providing the state treasury with enormous amounts of bullion. As the conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo observed, "We came to serve God and his Majesty, to give light to those in darkness, and also to acquire that wealth which most men covet."
In 1528 Charles assigned a concession in Venezuela Province to Bartholomeus V. Welser, in compensation for his inability to repay debts owed. The concession, known as Klein-Venedig (little Venice), was revoked in 1546. In 1550, Charles convened a conference at Valladolid in order to consider the morality of the force used against the indigenous populations of the New World, which included figures such as Bartolomé de las Casas. Charles V is credited with the first idea of constructing an American Isthmus canal in Panama as early as 1520.
Holy Roman Empire
After the death of his paternal grandfather, Maximilian, in 1519, Charles inherited the Habsburg Monarchy. He was also the natural candidate of the electors to succeed his grandfather as Holy Roman Emperor. He defeated the candidacies of Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, Francis I of France, and Henry VIII of England. The electors gave Charles the crown on 28 June 1519. In 1530, he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Clement VII in Bologna, the last emperor to receive a papal coronation.
Despite holding the imperial throne, Charles's real authority was limited by the German princes. They gained a strong foothold in the Empire's territories, and Charles was determined not to let this happen in the Netherlands. An inquisition was established as early as 1522. In 1550, the death penalty was introduced for all cases of unrepentant heresy. Political dissent was also firmly controlled, most notably in his place of birth, where Charles, assisted by the Duke of Alba, personally suppressed the Revolt of Ghent in mid-February 1540.
Charles abdicated as emperor in 1556 in favor of his brother Ferdinand; however, due to lengthy debate and bureaucratic procedure, the Imperial Diet did not accept the abdication (and thus make it legally valid) until 24 February 1558. Up to that date, Charles continued to use the title of emperor.
France
Much of Charles's reign was taken up by conflicts with France, which found itself encircled by Charles's empire while it still maintained ambitions in Italy. In 1520, Charles visited England, where his aunt, Catherine of Aragon, urged her husband, Henry VIII, to ally himself with the emperor. In 1508 Charles was nominated by Henry VII to the Order of the Garter. His Garter stall plate survives in Saint George's Chapel.
The first war with Charles's great nemesis Francis I of France began in 1521. Charles allied with England and Pope Leo X against the French and the Venetians, and was highly successful, driving the French out of Milan and defeating and capturing Francis at the Battle of Pavia in 1525. To gain his freedom, the French king was forced to cede Burgundy to Charles in the Treaty of Madrid, as well as renouncing his support of Henry II's claim over Navarre.
When he was released, however, Francis had the Parliament of Paris denounce the treaty because it had been signed under duress. France then joined the League of Cognac that Pope Clement VII had formed with Henry VIII of England, the Venetians, the Florentines, and the Milanese to resist imperial domination of Italy. In the ensuing war, Charles's sack of Rome (1527) and virtual imprisonment of Pope Clement VII in 1527 prevented the Pope from annulling the marriage of Henry VIII of England and Charles's aunt Catherine of Aragon, so Henry eventually broke with Rome, thus leading to the English Reformation. In other respects, the war was inconclusive. In the Treaty of Cambrai (1529), called the "Ladies' Peace" because it was negotiated between Charles's aunt and Francis' mother, Francis renounced his claims in Italy but retained control of Burgundy.
A third war erupted in 1535. Following the death of the last Sforza Duke of Milan, Charles installed his son Philip in the duchy, despite Francis's claims on it. This war too was inconclusive. Francis failed to conquer Milan, but he succeeded in conquering most of the lands of Charles's ally, the Duke of Savoy, including his capital Turin. A truce at Nice in 1538 on the basis of uti possidetis ended the war but lasted only a short time. War resumed in 1542, with Francis now allied with Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I and Charles once again allied with Henry VIII. Despite the conquest of Nice by a Franco-Ottoman fleet, the French remained unable to advance into Juarez, while a joint Anglo-Imperial invasion of northern France, led by Charles himself, won some successes but was ultimately abandoned, leading to another peace and restoration of the status quo ante bellum in 1544.
A final war erupted with Francis' son and successor, Henry II, in 1551. Henry won early success in Lorraine, where he captured Metz, but French offensives in Italy failed. Charles abdicated midway through this conflict, leaving further conduct of the war to his son, Philip II and his brother, Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor.
Conflicts with the Ottoman Empire
Charles fought continually with the Ottoman Empire and its sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent. The defeat of Hungary at the Battle of Mohács in 1526 "sent a wave of terror over Europe." The Muslim advance in Central Europe was halted at the Siege of Vienna in 1529.
Suleiman won the contest for mastery of the Mediterranean, in spite of Spanish victories such as the conquest of Tunis in 1535. The regular Ottoman fleet came to dominate the Eastern Mediterranean after its victories at Preveza in 1538 and Djerba in 1560 (shortly after Charles's death), which severely decimated the Spanish marine arm. At the same time, the Muslim Barbary corsairs, acting under the general authority and supervision of the sultan, regularly devastated the Spanish and Italian coasts, crippling Spanish trade and chipping at the foundations of Habsburg power.
In 1536 Francis I of France allied himself with Suleiman against Charles. While Francis was persuaded to sign a peace treaty in 1538, he again allied himself with the Ottomans in 1542 in a Franco-Ottoman alliance. In 1543 Charles allied himself with Henry VIII and forced Francis to sign the Truce of Crépy-en-Laonnois. Later, in 1547, Charles signed a humiliating treaty with the Ottomans to gain himself some respite from the huge expenses of their war.
Charles V made overtures to the Safavid Empire to open a second front against the Ottomans, in an attempt at creating a Habsburg-Persian alliance. Contacts were positive, but rendered difficult by enormous distances. In effect, however, the Safavids did enter in conflict with the Ottoman Empire in the Ottoman-Safavid War, forcing it to split its military resources.
Protestant Reformation
As Holy Roman Emperor, Charles called Martin Luther to the Diet of Worms in 1521, promising him safe conduct if he would appear. Initially dismissing Luther's theses as "an argument between monks", he later outlawed Luther and his followers in that same year but was tied up with other concerns and unable to take action against Protestantism. 1524 to 1526 saw the Peasants' Revolt in Germany and in 1531 the formation of the Lutheran Schmalkaldic League. Charles delegated increasing responsibility for Germany to his brother Ferdinand while he concentrated on problems elsewhere.
In 1545, the opening of the Council of Trent began the Counter-Reformation, and Charles won to the Catholic cause some of the princes of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1546 (the year of Luther's natural death), he outlawed the Schmalkaldic League (which had occupied the territory of another prince). He drove the League's troops out of southern Germany and at the Battle of Mühlberg defeated John Frederick, Elector of Saxony and imprisoned Philip of Hesse in 1547. At the Augsburg Interim in 1548 he created a solution giving certain allowances to Protestants until the Council of Trent would restore unity. However, Catholics mostly resented the Interim and some actively opposed it. Protestant princes, in alliance with Henry II of France, rebelled against Charles in 1555, which caused Charles to retreat to the Netherlands.
Health
Charles suffered from an enlarged lower jaw, a deformity that became considerably worse in later Habsburg generations, giving rise to the term Habsburg jaw. This deformity was caused by the family's long history of inbreeding, which was commonly practiced in royal families of that era to maintain dynastic control of territory. He struggled to chew his food properly and consequently experienced bad digestion for much of his life. As a result, he usually ate alone. He suffered from epilepsy and was seriously afflicted with gout, presumably caused by a diet consisting mainly of red meat. As he aged, his gout progressed from painful to crippling. In his retirement, he was carried around the monastery of St. Yuste in a sedan chair. A ramp was specially constructed to allow him easy access to his rooms.
Abdications and later life
Charles abdicated the parts of his empire piecemeal. First he abdicated the thrones of Sicily and Naples, both fiefs of the Papacy, and the Duchy of Milan to his son Philip in 1554. Upon Charles's abdication of Naples on 25 July, Philip was invested with the kingdom (officially "Naples and Sicily") on 2 October by Pope Julius III. The abdication of the throne of Sicily, sometimes dated to 16 January 1556, must have taken place before Joanna's death in 1555. There is a record of Philip being invested with this kingdom (officially "Sicily and Jerusalem") on 18 November 1554 by Julius. These resignations are confirmed in Charles's will from the same year. The most famous—and public—abdication of Charles took place a year later, on 25 October 1555, when he announced to the States General of the Netherlands his abdication of those territories and the county of Charolais and his intention to retire to a monastery. He abdicated as ruler of the Spanish Empire in January 1556, with no fanfare, and gave these possessions to Philip. In September 1556, he abdicated as Holy Roman Emperor in favor of his brother Ferdinand, although the abdication was not formally accepted by the Electors of the Empire until 1558. The delay had been at Ferdinand's request who had been concerned about holding a risky election in 1556.
Charles retired to the monastery of Yuste in Extremadura, but continued to correspond widely and kept an interest in the situation of the empire. He suffered from severe gout. Some scholars think Charles decided to abdicate after a gout attack in 1552 forced him to postpone an attempt to recapture the city of Metz, where he was later defeated. He lived alone in a secluded monastery, with clocks lining every wall, which some historians believe were symbols of his reign and his lack of time. Charles died on 21 September 1558 from malaria. Twenty-six years later, his remains were transferred to the Royal Pantheon of the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial.
Coat of arms of Charles V
Coat of arms of Charles I of Spain and V of Germany according to the description: Arms of Charles I added to those of Castile, Leon, Aragon, Two Sicilies and Granada present in the previous coat, those of Austria, ancient Burgundy, modern Burgundy, Brabant, Flanders and Tyrol. Charles I also incorporates the pillars of Hercules with the inscription "Plus Ultra", representing the overseas empire and surrounding coat with the collar of the Golden Fleece, as sovereign of the Order ringing the shield with the imperial crown and Acola double-headed eagle of the Holy Roman Empire and behind it the Spanish Cross of Burgundy. From 1520 added to the corresponding quarter to Aragon and Sicily, one in which the arms of Jerusalem, Naples and Navarre are incorporated.
Titles of Charles V
The titles of King of Hungary, of Bohemia, and of Croatia, were incorporated into the imperial family during Charles's reign, but they were held, both nominally and substantively, by his brother Ferdinand, who initiated a four-century-long Habsburg rule over these eastern territories. However, according Charles V testament, the titles of King of Hungary, of Dalmatia, and of Croatia and others were legated to his grandson, Infante Carlos, Prince of Asturias who was the son of Philip II of Spain, and who died young. Charles's full titulature went as follows:
Charles, by the grace of God, Holy Roman Emperor, forever August, King of Germany, King of Italy, King of all Spains, of Castile, Aragon, León, of Hungary, of Dalmatia, of Croatia, Navarra, Grenada, Toledo, Valencia, Galicia, Majorca, Sevilla, Cordova, Murcia, Jaén, Algarves, Algeciras, Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, King of Two Sicilies, of Sardinia, Corsica, King of Jerusalem, King of the Western and Eastern Indies, of the Islands and Mainland of the Ocean Sea, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Lorraine, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Limburg, Luxembourg, Gelderland, Neopatria, Württemberg, Landgrave of Alsace, Prince of Swabia, Asturia and Catalonia, Count of Flanders, Habsburg, Tyrol, Gorizia, Barcelona, Artois, Burgundy Palatine, Hainaut, Holland, Seeland, Ferrette, Kyburg, Namur, Roussillon, Cerdagne, Drenthe, Zutphen, Margrave of the Holy Roman Empire, Burgau, Oristano and Gociano, Lord of Frisia, the Wendish March, Pordenone, Biscay, Molin, Salins, Tripoli and Mechelen."
"Holy Roman Emperor Charles V - 1519-1556
Charles V (Spanish: Carlos; French: Charles; German: Karl; Dutch: Karel; Italian: Carlo) (24 February 1500 – 21 September 1558) was ruler of both the Spanish Empire from 1516 and the Holy Roman Empire from 1519, as well as of Habsburg Netherlands from 1506. He voluntarily stepped down from these and other positions by a series of abdications between 1554 and 1556. Through inheritance, he brought together under his rule extensive territories in western, central, and southern Europe, and the Spanish colonies in the Americas and Asia. As a result, his domains spanned nearly four million square kilometers and were the first to be described as "the empire on which the sun never sets".
Charles was the heir of three of Europe's leading dynasties: the Houses of Valois-Burgundy (Netherlands), Habsburg (Holy Roman Empire), and Trastámara (Spain). He inherited the Burgundian Netherlands and the Franche-Comté as heir of the House of Valois-Burgundy. From his own dynasty, the Habsburgs, he inherited Austria and other lands in central Europe. He was also elected to succeed his Habsburg grandfather, Maximilian I, as Holy Roman Emperor, a title held by the Habsburgs since 1440. From the Spanish House of Trastámara, he inherited the crowns of Castile, which was in the process of developing a nascent empire in the Americas and Asia, and Aragon, which included a Mediterranean empire extending to Southern Italy. Charles was the first king to rule Castile and Aragon simultaneously in his own right, and as a result he is sometimes referred to as the first King of Spain. The personal union, under Charles, of the Holy Roman Empire with the Spanish Empire resulted in the closest Europe would come to a universal monarchy since the death of Louis the Pious.
Because of widespread fears that his vast inheritance would lead to the realization of a universal monarchy and that he was trying to create a European hegemony, Charles was the object of hostility from many enemies. His reign was dominated by war, and particularly by three major simultaneous conflicts: the Habsburg-Valois Wars with France, the struggle to halt the Ottoman advance, and the Protestant Reformation resulting in conflict with the German princes. The wars with France, mainly fought in Italy, resulted in recovery of territory lost at the beginning of his reign and included the decisive defeat and capture of Francis I of France at the Battle of Pavia in 1525. France recovered and the wars continued for the remainder of Charles's reign. Enormously expensive, they led to the development of the first modern professional army in Europe, the Tercios.
The struggle with the Ottoman Empire was fought in Hungary and the Mediterranean. After seizing most of eastern and central Hungary in 1526, the Ottomans’ advance was halted at their failed Siege of Vienna in 1529. A lengthy war of attrition, conducted on his behalf by his younger brother Ferdinand, continued for the rest of Charles's reign. In the Mediterranean, although there were some successes, Charles was unable to prevent the Ottomans’ increasing naval dominance and the piratical activity of the Barbary Corsairs. Charles opposed the Reformation and in Germany he was in conflict with the Protestant Princes of the Schmalkaldic League who were motivated by both religious and political opposition to him. He could not prevent the spread of Protestantism and although he won a decisive victory against the Princes at the Battle of Mühlberg, 1547, he was ultimately forced to concede the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, which divided Germany on confessional lines.
While Charles did not typically concern himself with rebellions, he was quick to put down three particularly dangerous rebellions in the vital territories of Castile, the Frisian lands, and later in his reign in the port city of Ghent. Once the rebellions were quelled the essential Castilian and Burgundian territories remained mostly loyal to Charles throughout his rule.
Charles’s Spanish dominions were the chief source of his power and wealth, and they became increasingly important as his reign progressed. In the Americas, Charles sanctioned the conquest by Castillian conquistadors of the Aztec and Inca empires. Castillian control was extended across much of South and Central America. The resulting vast expansion of territory and the flows of South American silver to Castile had profound long term effects on Spain.
Charles was only 56 when he abdicated, but after 34 years of energetic rule he was physically exhausted and sought the peace of a monastery, where he died at the age of 58. Upon Charles’s abdications, the Holy Roman Empire was inherited by his younger brother Ferdinand, who had already been given the Austrian lands in 1521. The Spanish Empire, including the possessions in the Netherlands and Italy, was inherited by Charles’s son Philip II. The two empires would remain allies until the 18th century.
Heritage and early life
Charles was born in 1500 as the eldest son of Philip the Handsome and Joanna of Castile in the Flemish city of Ghent, which was part of the Habsburg Netherlands. The culture and courtly life of the Burgundian Low Countries were an important influence in his early life. He was tutored by William de Croÿ (who would later become his first prime minister), and also by Adrian of Utrecht (later Pope Adrian VI). It is said that Charles spoke several vernacular languages: he was fluent in French and Dutch, later adding an acceptable Castilian Spanish (which Charles called the "divine language") required by the Castilian Cortes Generales as a condition for becoming King of Castile. He also gained a decent command of German (in which he was not fluent prior to his election), though he never spoke it as well as French. A witticism sometimes attributed to Charles is: "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse." A variant of the quote is attributed to him by Swift in his 1726 Gulliver's Travels, but there are many other variants and it is often attributed instead to Frederick the Great.
From his Burgundian ancestors he inherited an ambiguous relationship with the Kings of France. Charles shared with France his mother tongue and many cultural forms. In his youth he made frequent visits to Paris, then the largest city of Western Europe. In his words: "Paris is not a city, but a universe" (Lutetia non urbs, sed orbis). He was betrothed to both Louise and Charlotte of Valois, daughters of King Francis I of France, but they both died in childhood. Charles also inherited the tradition of political and dynastic enmity between the royal and the Burgundian ducal lines of the Valois dynasty. Charles was very attached to the Burgundian Low Countries where he had been raised. These lands were very rich and contributed significantly to the wealth of the Empire. He also spent much time there, mainly at Brussels. This stands in contrast with the attitude of his son Philip who only visited the Low Countries once.
Until the 1540s, Charles did not spend much time in Germany (apart from the Netherlands). He frequently was in Northern Italy (then part of the Holy Roman Empire). He never actually governed his Austrian dominions and made his brother Ferdinand the ruler of these lands in 1521, as well as his representative in the Holy Roman Empire during his absence. In spite of this, the Emperor had a close relationship with some German families, like the House of Nassau, many of which were represented at his court in Brussels. Some German princes or noblemen accompanied him in his military campaigns against France or the Ottomans, and the bulk of his army was generally composed of German troops, especially the Imperial Landsknechte. Indeed, in 1519, he was elected because he was considered a German prince while his main opponent was French. Nonetheless, in the long term, the growth of Lutheranism and Charles' staunch Catholicism alienated him from various German princes who finally fought against him in the 1540s and the 1550s. It is important to note, though, that other states of the Empire chose to support him in his war, and that he had the constant support of his brother, in spite of their strained personal relationship. Whereas Charles spent much of his final years as a ruler trying to address the issue of religion in the Empire, it would ultimately be Ferdinand, by then much more popular in Germany, who would bring peace to the German lands.
Though Spain was the core of his personal possessions and though he had many Iberian ancestors, in his earlier years Charles felt as if he were viewed as a foreign prince. He became fluent in Spanish late in his life, as it was not his first language. Nonetheless, he spent much of his life in Spain, including his final years in a Spanish monastery, and his heir, later Philip II, was born and raised in Spain. Indeed, Charles's motto, Plus Ultra ('Further Beyond'), became the national motto of Spain. He had many Spanish counselors and, except for the revolt of the comuneros in the 1520s, Spain remained mostly loyal to him. Spain was also his most important military asset, as it provided a great number of generals, as well as the formidable Spanish tercios, considered the best infantry of its time. Many Spaniards, however, believed that their resources were being used to sustain a policy that was not in the country's interest. They usually believed that Charles should have focused on the Mediterranean and North Africa instead of Northern or Central Europe.
Reign
Charles V's European territories. Red represents the Crown of Aragon, magenta the Crown of Castile, orange his Burgundian inheritances, mustard yellow his Austrian inheritances, and pale yellow the balance of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1506, Charles inherited his father's Burgundian territories, most notably the Low Countries and Franche-Comté. Most of the holdings were fiefs of the German Kingdom (part of the Holy Roman Empire), except his birthplace of Flanders, which was still a French fief, a last remnant of what had been a powerful player in the Hundred Years' War. As he was a minor, his aunt Margaret of Austria (born as Archduchess of Austria and in both her marriages as the Dowager Princess of Asturias and Dowager Duchess of Savoy) acted as regent, as appointed by Emperor Maximilian until 1515. She soon found herself at war with France over the question of Charles' requirement to pay homage to the French king for Flanders, as his father had done. The outcome was that France relinquished its ancient claim on Flanders in 1528.
From 1515 to 1523, Charles's government in the Netherlands also had to contend with the rebellion of Frisian peasants (led by Pier Gerlofs Donia and Wijard Jelckama). The rebels were initially successful but after a series of defeats, the remaining leaders were captured and decapitated in 1523.
Charles extended the Burgundian territory with the annexation of Tournai, Artois, Utrecht, Groningen and Guelders. The Seventeen Provinces had been unified by Charles's Burgundian ancestors, but nominally were fiefs of either France or the Holy Roman Empire. In 1549, Charles issued a Pragmatic Sanction, declaring the Low Countries to be a unified entity of which his family would be the heirs.
The Low Countries held an important place in the Empire. For Charles V personally they were his home, the region where he was born and spent his childhood. Because of trade and industry and the wealth of the region's cities, the Low Countries also represented an important income for the Imperial treasury.
The Burgundian territories were generally loyal to Charles throughout his reign. The important port city of Ghent rebelled in 1539 due to heavy tax payments demanded by Charles. The rebellion did not last long, however, as Charles's military response, with reinforcement from the Duke of Alba, was swift and humiliating to the rebels of Ghent.
Spain
In the Castilian Cortes of Valladolid in 1506 and of Madrid in 1510, Charles was sworn as the Prince of Asturias, heir-apparent to his mother the Queen Joanna. On the other hand, in 1502, the Aragonese Corts gathered in Saragossa and pledged an oath to Joanna as heiress-presumptive, but the Archbishop of Saragossa expressed firmly that this oath could not establish jurisprudence, that is to say, modify the right of the succession, except by virtue of a formal agreement between the Cortes and the King. So, upon the death of King Ferdinand II of Aragon, on 23 January 1516, Joanna inherited the Crown of Aragon, which consisted of Catalonia, Valencia, Naples, Sicily and Sardinia, while Charles became Governor General. Nevertheless, the Flemings wished Charles to assume the royal title, and this was supported by his grandfather the emperor Maximilian I and Pope Leo X. Thus, after the celebration of Ferdinand II's obsequies on 14 March 1516, Charles was proclaimed king of the crowns of Castile and Aragon jointly with his mother. Finally, when the Castilian regent Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros accepted the fait accompli, he acceded to Charles's desire to be proclaimed king and imposed his enstatement throughout the kingdom.[ Charles arrived in his new kingdoms in autumn of 1517. Jiménez de Cisneros came to meet him but fell ill along the way, not without a suspicion of poison, and he died before meeting the King.
Charles V with Armor by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, according to Titian. El Escorial. Madrid, Spain
Due to the irregularity of Charles assuming the royal title while his mother, the legitimate queen, was alive, the negotiations with the Castilian Cortes in Valladolid (1518) proved difficult. In the end Charles was accepted under the following conditions: he would learn to speak Castilian; he would not appoint foreigners; he was prohibited from taking precious metals from Castile; and he would respect the rights of his mother, Queen Joanna. The Cortes paid homage to him in Valladolid in February 1518. After this, Charles departed to the crown of Aragon. He managed to overcome the resistance of the Aragonese Cortes and Catalan Corts, and he was finally recognized as king of Aragon and count of Barcelona jointly with his mother. The Kingdom of Navarre had been invaded by Ferdinand of Aragon jointly with Castile in 1512, but he pledged a formal oath to respect the kingdom. On Charles's accession to the Spanish throne, the Parliament of Navarre (Cortes) required him to attend the coronation ceremony (to become Charles IV of Navarre), but this demand fell on deaf ears, and the Parliament kept piling up grievances.
Charles was accepted as sovereign, even though the Spanish felt uneasy with the Imperial style. Spanish kingdoms varied in their traditions. Castile was an authoritarian kingdom, where the monarch's own will easily overrode law and the Cortes. By contrast, in the kingdoms of the crown of Aragon, and especially in the Pyrenean kingdom of Navarre, law prevailed, and the monarchy was a contract with the people. This became an inconvenience and a matter of dispute for Charles V and later kings, since realm-specific traditions limited their absolute power. With Charles, government became more absolute, even though until his mother's death in 1555 Charles did not hold the full kingship of the country.
Soon resistance to the Emperor arose because of heavy taxation to support foreign wars in which Castilians had little interest, and because Charles tended to select Flemings for high offices in Spain and America, ignoring Castilian candidates. The resistance culminated in the Revolt of the Comuneros, which Charles suppressed. Immediately after crushing the Castilian revolt, Charles was confronted again with the hot issue of Navarre when King Henry II attempted to reconquer the kingdom. Main military operations lasted until 1524, when Hondarribia surrendered to Charles's forces, but frequent cross-border clashes in the western Pyrenees only stopped in 1528 (Treaties of Madrid and Cambrai).
After these events, Navarre remained a matter of domestic and international litigation still for a century (a French dynastic claim to the throne did not end until the French Revolution in 1789). Castile became integrated into Charles's empire, and provided the bulk of the empire's financial resources as well as its most effective military units. The enormous budget deficit accumulated during Charles's reign resulted in Spain declaring bankruptcy during the reign of Philip II.
Italy
The Crown of Aragon inherited by Charles included the Kingdom of Naples, the Kingdom of Sicily and the Kingdom of Sardinia. Aragon also previously controlled the Duchy of Milan, but a year before Charles ascended to the throne, it was annexed by France after the Battle of Marignano in 1515. Charles succeeded in re-capturing Milan in 1522, when Imperial troops defeated the Franco-Swiss army at Bicocca. Yet in 1524 Francis I of France retook the initiative, crossing into Lombardy where Milan, along with a number of other cities, once again fell to his attack. Pavia alone held out, and on 24 February 1525 (Charles's twenty-fifth birthday), Charles's Spanish forces captured Francis and crushed his army in the Battle of Pavia, yet again retaking Milan and Lombardy. Spain successfully held on to all of its Italian territories, though they were invaded again on multiple occasions during the Italian Wars.
In addition, Habsburg trade in the Mediterranean was consistently disrupted by the Ottoman Empire. In 1538 a Holy League consisting of all the Italian states and Spain was formed to drive the Ottomans back, but it was defeated at the Battle of Preveza. Decisive naval victory eluded Charles; it would not be achieved until after Charles's death, at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.
America
During Charles's reign, the Spanish territories in the Americas were considerably extended by conquistadores like Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro. They conquered the large Aztec and Inca empires and incorporated them into the Empire as the Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru between 1519 and 1542. Combined with the circumnavigation of the globe by the Magellan expedition in 1522, these successes convinced Charles of his divine mission to become the leader of Christendom, which still perceived a significant threat from Islam. The conquests also helped solidify Charles's rule by providing the state treasury with enormous amounts of bullion. As the conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo observed, "We came to serve God and his Majesty, to give light to those in darkness, and also to acquire that wealth which most men covet."
In 1528 Charles assigned a concession in Venezuela Province to Bartholomeus V. Welser, in compensation for his inability to repay debts owed. The concession, known as Klein-Venedig (little Venice), was revoked in 1546. In 1550, Charles convened a conference at Valladolid in order to consider the morality of the force used against the indigenous populations of the New World, which included figures such as Bartolomé de las Casas. Charles V is credited with the first idea of constructing an American Isthmus canal in Panama as early as 1520.
Holy Roman Empire
After the death of his paternal grandfather, Maximilian, in 1519, Charles inherited the Habsburg Monarchy. He was also the natural candidate of the electors to succeed his grandfather as Holy Roman Emperor. He defeated the candidacies of Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, Francis I of France, and Henry VIII of England. The electors gave Charles the crown on 28 June 1519. In 1530, he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Clement VII in Bologna, the last emperor to receive a papal coronation.
Despite holding the imperial throne, Charles's real authority was limited by the German princes. They gained a strong foothold in the Empire's territories, and Charles was determined not to let this happen in the Netherlands. An inquisition was established as early as 1522. In 1550, the death penalty was introduced for all cases of unrepentant heresy. Political dissent was also firmly controlled, most notably in his place of birth, where Charles, assisted by the Duke of Alba, personally suppressed the Revolt of Ghent in mid-February 1540.
Charles abdicated as emperor in 1556 in favor of his brother Ferdinand; however, due to lengthy debate and bureaucratic procedure, the Imperial Diet did not accept the abdication (and thus make it legally valid) until 24 February 1558. Up to that date, Charles continued to use the title of emperor.
France
Much of Charles's reign was taken up by conflicts with France, which found itself encircled by Charles's empire while it still maintained ambitions in Italy. In 1520, Charles visited England, where his aunt, Catherine of Aragon, urged her husband, Henry VIII, to ally himself with the emperor. In 1508 Charles was nominated by Henry VII to the Order of the Garter. His Garter stall plate survives in Saint George's Chapel.
The first war with Charles's great nemesis Francis I of France began in 1521. Charles allied with England and Pope Leo X against the French and the Venetians, and was highly successful, driving the French out of Milan and defeating and capturing Francis at the Battle of Pavia in 1525. To gain his freedom, the French king was forced to cede Burgundy to Charles in the Treaty of Madrid, as well as renouncing his support of Henry II's claim over Navarre.
When he was released, however, Francis had the Parliament of Paris denounce the treaty because it had been signed under duress. France then joined the League of Cognac that Pope Clement VII had formed with Henry VIII of England, the Venetians, the Florentines, and the Milanese to resist imperial domination of Italy. In the ensuing war, Charles's sack of Rome (1527) and virtual imprisonment of Pope Clement VII in 1527 prevented the Pope from annulling the marriage of Henry VIII of England and Charles's aunt Catherine of Aragon, so Henry eventually broke with Rome, thus leading to the English Reformation. In other respects, the war was inconclusive. In the Treaty of Cambrai (1529), called the "Ladies' Peace" because it was negotiated between Charles's aunt and Francis' mother, Francis renounced his claims in Italy but retained control of Burgundy.
A third war erupted in 1535. Following the death of the last Sforza Duke of Milan, Charles installed his son Philip in the duchy, despite Francis's claims on it. This war too was inconclusive. Francis failed to conquer Milan, but he succeeded in conquering most of the lands of Charles's ally, the Duke of Savoy, including his capital Turin. A truce at Nice in 1538 on the basis of uti possidetis ended the war but lasted only a short time. War resumed in 1542, with Francis now allied with Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I and Charles once again allied with Henry VIII. Despite the conquest of Nice by a Franco-Ottoman fleet, the French remained unable to advance into Juarez, while a joint Anglo-Imperial invasion of northern France, led by Charles himself, won some successes but was ultimately abandoned, leading to another peace and restoration of the status quo ante bellum in 1544.
A final war erupted with Francis' son and successor, Henry II, in 1551. Henry won early success in Lorraine, where he captured Metz, but French offensives in Italy failed. Charles abdicated midway through this conflict, leaving further conduct of the war to his son, Philip II and his brother, Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor.
Conflicts with the Ottoman Empire
Charles fought continually with the Ottoman Empire and its sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent. The defeat of Hungary at the Battle of Mohács in 1526 "sent a wave of terror over Europe." The Muslim advance in Central Europe was halted at the Siege of Vienna in 1529.
Suleiman won the contest for mastery of the Mediterranean, in spite of Spanish victories such as the conquest of Tunis in 1535. The regular Ottoman fleet came to dominate the Eastern Mediterranean after its victories at Preveza in 1538 and Djerba in 1560 (shortly after Charles's death), which severely decimated the Spanish marine arm. At the same time, the Muslim Barbary corsairs, acting under the general authority and supervision of the sultan, regularly devastated the Spanish and Italian coasts, crippling Spanish trade and chipping at the foundations of Habsburg power.
In 1536 Francis I of France allied himself with Suleiman against Charles. While Francis was persuaded to sign a peace treaty in 1538, he again allied himself with the Ottomans in 1542 in a Franco-Ottoman alliance. In 1543 Charles allied himself with Henry VIII and forced Francis to sign the Truce of Crépy-en-Laonnois. Later, in 1547, Charles signed a humiliating treaty with the Ottomans to gain himself some respite from the huge expenses of their war.
Charles V made overtures to the Safavid Empire to open a second front against the Ottomans, in an attempt at creating a Habsburg-Persian alliance. Contacts were positive, but rendered difficult by enormous distances. In effect, however, the Safavids did enter in conflict with the Ottoman Empire in the Ottoman-Safavid War, forcing it to split its military resources.
Protestant Reformation
As Holy Roman Emperor, Charles called Martin Luther to the Diet of Worms in 1521, promising him safe conduct if he would appear. Initially dismissing Luther's theses as "an argument between monks", he later outlawed Luther and his followers in that same year but was tied up with other concerns and unable to take action against Protestantism. 1524 to 1526 saw the Peasants' Revolt in Germany and in 1531 the formation of the Lutheran Schmalkaldic League. Charles delegated increasing responsibility for Germany to his brother Ferdinand while he concentrated on problems elsewhere.
In 1545, the opening of the Council of Trent began the Counter-Reformation, and Charles won to the Catholic cause some of the princes of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1546 (the year of Luther's natural death), he outlawed the Schmalkaldic League (which had occupied the territory of another prince). He drove the League's troops out of southern Germany and at the Battle of Mühlberg defeated John Frederick, Elector of Saxony and imprisoned Philip of Hesse in 1547. At the Augsburg Interim in 1548 he created a solution giving certain allowances to Protestants until the Council of Trent would restore unity. However, Catholics mostly resented the Interim and some actively opposed it. Protestant princes, in alliance with Henry II of France, rebelled against Charles in 1555, which caused Charles to retreat to the Netherlands.
Health
Charles suffered from an enlarged lower jaw, a deformity that became considerably worse in later Habsburg generations, giving rise to the term Habsburg jaw. This deformity was caused by the family's long history of inbreeding, which was commonly practiced in royal families of that era to maintain dynastic control of territory. He struggled to chew his food properly and consequently experienced bad digestion for much of his life. As a result, he usually ate alone. He suffered from epilepsy and was seriously afflicted with gout, presumably caused by a diet consisting mainly of red meat. As he aged, his gout progressed from painful to crippling. In his retirement, he was carried around the monastery of St. Yuste in a sedan chair. A ramp was specially constructed to allow him easy access to his rooms.
Abdications and later life
Charles abdicated the parts of his empire piecemeal. First he abdicated the thrones of Sicily and Naples, both fiefs of the Papacy, and the Duchy of Milan to his son Philip in 1554. Upon Charles's abdication of Naples on 25 July, Philip was invested with the kingdom (officially "Naples and Sicily") on 2 October by Pope Julius III. The abdication of the throne of Sicily, sometimes dated to 16 January 1556, must have taken place before Joanna's death in 1555. There is a record of Philip being invested with this kingdom (officially "Sicily and Jerusalem") on 18 November 1554 by Julius. These resignations are confirmed in Charles's will from the same year. The most famous—and public—abdication of Charles took place a year later, on 25 October 1555, when he announced to the States General of the Netherlands his abdication of those territories and the county of Charolais and his intention to retire to a monastery. He abdicated as ruler of the Spanish Empire in January 1556, with no fanfare, and gave these possessions to Philip. In September 1556, he abdicated as Holy Roman Emperor in favor of his brother Ferdinand, although the abdication was not formally accepted by the Electors of the Empire until 1558. The delay had been at Ferdinand's request who had been concerned about holding a risky election in 1556.
Charles retired to the monastery of Yuste in Extremadura, but continued to correspond widely and kept an interest in the situation of the empire. He suffered from severe gout. Some scholars think Charles decided to abdicate after a gout attack in 1552 forced him to postpone an attempt to recapture the city of Metz, where he was later defeated. He lived alone in a secluded monastery, with clocks lining every wall, which some historians believe were symbols of his reign and his lack of time. Charles died on 21 September 1558 from malaria. Twenty-six years later, his remains were transferred to the Royal Pantheon of the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial.
Coat of arms of Charles V
Coat of arms of Charles I of Spain and V of Germany according to the description: Arms of Charles I added to those of Castile, Leon, Aragon, Two Sicilies and Granada present in the previous coat, those of Austria, ancient Burgundy, modern Burgundy, Brabant, Flanders and Tyrol. Charles I also incorporates the pillars of Hercules with the inscription "Plus Ultra", representing the overseas empire and surrounding coat with the collar of the Golden Fleece, as sovereign of the Order ringing the shield with the imperial crown and Acola double-headed eagle of the Holy Roman Empire and behind it the Spanish Cross of Burgundy. From 1520 added to the corresponding quarter to Aragon and Sicily, one in which the arms of Jerusalem, Naples and Navarre are incorporated.
Titles of Charles V
The titles of King of Hungary, of Bohemia, and of Croatia, were incorporated into the imperial family during Charles's reign, but they were held, both nominally and substantively, by his brother Ferdinand, who initiated a four-century-long Habsburg rule over these eastern territories. However, according Charles V testament, the titles of King of Hungary, of Dalmatia, and of Croatia and others were legated to his grandson, Infante Carlos, Prince of Asturias who was the son of Philip II of Spain, and who died young. Charles's full titulature went as follows:
Charles, by the grace of God, Holy Roman Emperor, forever August, King of Germany, King of Italy, King of all Spains, of Castile, Aragon, León, of Hungary, of Dalmatia, of Croatia, Navarra, Grenada, Toledo, Valencia, Galicia, Majorca, Sevilla, Cordova, Murcia, Jaén, Algarves, Algeciras, Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, King of Two Sicilies, of Sardinia, Corsica, King of Jerusalem, King of the Western and Eastern Indies, of the Islands and Mainland of the Ocean Sea, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Lorraine, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Limburg, Luxembourg, Gelderland, Neopatria, Württemberg, Landgrave of Alsace, Prince of Swabia, Asturia and Catalonia, Count of Flanders, Habsburg, Tyrol, Gorizia, Barcelona, Artois, Burgundy Palatine, Hainaut, Holland, Seeland, Ferrette, Kyburg, Namur, Roussillon, Cerdagne, Drenthe, Zutphen, Margrave of the Holy Roman Empire, Burgau, Oristano and Gociano, Lord of Frisia, the Wendish March, Pordenone, Biscay, Molin, Salins, Tripoli and Mechelen."
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V - 1519-1556
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SGT (Join to see) good day my friend from Akron, Ohio which is my hometown too. Good historical read/share of King Carlos I was elected Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor on June 28, 1519, some 501 years ago.
Maj Marty Hogan SPC Margaret Higgins COL Mikel J. Burroughs CPL Dave Hoover Lt Col Charlie Brown Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen SCPO Morris Ramsey TSgt Joe C. PVT Mark Zehner Sgt (Join to see) SSG Michael Noll SSG Robert Mark Odom CPL Douglas Chrysler PO1 Tony Holland SGT Steve McFarland SPC Mark Huddleston PO3 Craig Phillips CW5 Jack Cardwell PO3 Phyllis Maynard
Maj Marty Hogan SPC Margaret Higgins COL Mikel J. Burroughs CPL Dave Hoover Lt Col Charlie Brown Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen SCPO Morris Ramsey TSgt Joe C. PVT Mark Zehner Sgt (Join to see) SSG Michael Noll SSG Robert Mark Odom CPL Douglas Chrysler PO1 Tony Holland SGT Steve McFarland SPC Mark Huddleston PO3 Craig Phillips CW5 Jack Cardwell PO3 Phyllis Maynard
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Charles V and the Holy Roman Empire: Crash Course World History #219
Get the new Crash Course World History Character poster here: http://store.dftba.com/products/crashcourse-characters-poster In which John Green teaches you a...
Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on June 28, 1519, King Carlos I was elected Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.
Charles V and the Holy Roman Empire: Crash Course World History #219
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRYzW3BSj0I
Images:
1. Bust of Emperor Charles V circa 1555 by Leone Leoni Arezzo
2. Master of the Legend of Mary Magdalene; Emperor Charles V at the age of seven with a gyrfalcon, half-length portrait circa 1507
3. Charles’s wife was Isabella of Portugal (1503–1539). Celebrated in 1526. original painted by Jacob Seisenegger
4. Coronation of Charles V at Bologna, historical paining circa 1681 by Jan Erasmus Quellinus
Background from {[https://reformation500.csl.edu/bio/charles-v/]}
"Born in 1500, Charles I of Spain was successor of the Austrian Habsburg dynasty and ruled the majority of Europe during the Reformation as Emperor Charles V. On the side of his father, Philip of Burgundy, were the Habsburg Austrian Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy. On the side of his mother, Joana “The Mad” of Castile, were Ferdinand and Isabella, who had united the Spanish crowns of Aragon and Castile. This made Charles the heir to numerous lands that he began to inherit at the age of sixteen. Raised in French Burgundy, his first language was French and he was steeped in the diplomacy of Burgundy politics. Adrian of Utrecht, who would briefly become pope in 1522 before dying a year later, was a member of his court. Between 1516 and the death of his emperor father in 1519, Charles successively inherited the Austrian duchies of Austria, Carinthia, Moravia, Tyrol, and Styria; the Netherlands along with France-Comte from the Burgundy line; and Spain and the Spanish territories abroad, including Milan, Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, and the growing expansion of the New World in Central and South America. The massive land and financial holdings associated with this expansive empire led to grandiose visions of political domination on his part that would result in conflict throughout Europe.
The final step for Charles was election as Holy Roman Emperor over the German territories and the imperial free cities. When Charles’ father Maximilian died, the then-King of Spain was the most likely candidate. While Henry VIII of England and Frederick the Wise of Saxony were early competitors, Francis I of France emerged as the primary opposition. Francis was of the French Valois line that had been at odds with the Austrian Habsburgs. The papacy supported Francis due to growing monarchy of the Habsburgs and its encroachment onto Italian soil, but Charles had something the fiscally strapped papacy did not: recourse to immense funds, including the backing of the Fugger House of Augsburg, to bribe the electors into selecting him. The cost to Charles was 850,000 florins, 500,000 of which were subsidized with a loan from the Fuggers. Charles I of Spain was elected emperor in June 1519 and coronated Charles V in October 1520 at Aix-la-Chapelle, an imperial free city in Germany. He would receive his imperial crown from Pope Clement VII in 1520 at Bologna, the last emperor to be so crowned by a pope.
There were three challenges facing Charles upon taking the mantle of emperor: rivalry with the French Valois, war with the Turks on the eastern edge of the Empire, and the growing Protestant movement. The first two were intertwined and distracted him from addressing the third. The Habsburg-Valois rivalry commanded the most attention during the first decade of his reign. Intermittent war with France led to Charles’ defeat of Francis in 1525. He took the French king prisoner and forced him to sign the 1526 Peace of Madrid, which surrendered French lands in Burgundy and Italy and included an agreement with Francis to marry Charles’ sister, Eleanor. Once back on Spanish soil, Francis rejected the pact claiming it had come under duress and renewed war against imperial troops. Throughout the Habsburg-Valois wars, the papacy had remained on the side of Francis out of fear of Charles’ excursions onto Italian soil, leading Clement VII to join the defensive League of Cognac with France, Venice, Florence, and Mila. In response, Charles conscripted imperial troops to Italy, where they eventually sacked Rome in 1527—on their own initiative, not the emperor’s—and virtually imprisoned the pope until 1528. The Peace of Cambrai in 1529 put an end to the episode so France and the Empire could address more pressing issues, primarily war with the Turks. France would later break with Charles again to make an alliance with the Turks, but eventually reversed course and in 1544 forged the Peace of Crépy with the Empire to stand as a united front against the Turks, in exchange for either Milan or the Netherlands and this time the marriage of a son of Charles to Francis’ daughter.
The complexities of the Habsburg-Valois contest and the Turkish front distracted Charles from what would become the defining feature of his reign: the growth of Protestantism. The emperor had been crowned for only three months when the fateful Diet of Worms convened in January 1521. At Worms, Luther made his famous confession before the emperor that he would not recant of his writings and was subsequently hidden at Frederick the Wise’s behest in the Wartburg Castle. In the meantime, Charles executed the Edict of Worms making Luther an outlaw in the empire and proscribing all public teaching of his views. The Edict of Worms, however, evoked criticism from Rome. Papal legate Jerome Aleander questioned why an imperial edict was needed of Luther had already been subject to the ban by verdict of the papal bull of excommunication drafted earlier in 1521, Decet Romanem Pontificem. This only served to increase tensions with Rome politically, even though Charles considered himself a devout Catholic and supporter of the papacy who took it as a personal goal to protect church orthodoxy against Luther.
One further complicating factor in Charles’ relationship to the Protestant Reformation was the hesitancy on the part of Rome to call a council. It was never the emperor’s aim to circumvent the ecclesiastical system, but he had anticipated a general council that would rule on Luther’s doctrine and bring peace to the church. Consequently, the 1526 Diet of Speyer passed the recess of the Edict of Worms allowing all princes and cities in the empire to practice religion as they saw fit pending a general council to resolve the theological questions. The 1529 Diet of Speyer revoked the recess and led to the 1530 Diet of Augsburg, where the German princes presented the Lutheran Augsburg Confession and the southern Germans their Tetropolitana, after which the Catholic contingent responded with a hastily written reply of the Roman Confutation. Charles accepted the Confutation and promised to enforce the prohibition of Lutheran doctrine as protector of the church. Nevertheless, he still oversaw several attempts at reconciliation between the two parties over the years. The first came at Augsburg itself following the public presentation of the confessions. Then later, from 1539 to 1541, Charles directed a series of three colloquies in Hagenau, Worms, and Regensburg to reach agreement between Catholics and Protestants in the empire, all with limited results and no lasting impact. Repeated papal promises of a council led him to support the conciliar solution, which finally came to realization with the 1543 convocation of Trent. The actual convening of the council was finally made possible after the 1544 Peace of Crépy brought truce to the war with France and combined support of both Habsburg and Valois rulers for the Tridentine assembly.
After the first sessions of Trent closed, Charles made one final attempt at restoring religious peace within the empire. The 1548 Augsburg Interim gave small concessions to the Protestants, such as clerical marriage and communion in both kinds, but left much of Catholic doctrine largely unchanged. Charles then sought to impose it on the empire until a general council could enforce it more broadly, though numerous German territories vigorously rejected the measures. The religious conflict under Charles’ watch was not resolved until the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, which established the right of both Lutheran and Catholic territories to choose which religion they would follow. The agreement itself was brokered by Ferdinand, the emperor’s younger brother, to whom he had deputed all governing affairs in Germany by 1553.
Charles progressively abdicated his position until finally stepping down in 1556. His younger brother, Ferdinand, succeeded him as emperor. Ferdinand had governed Habsburg lands in Germany and Austria since 1521 and the Hungary and Bohemia since 1526 and had also been named King of the Romans, an honorific designating him as next pope over Charles’ own son Philip II. Philip instead took over the Spanish and Burgundy territories of his father. Charles would spend the remaining two years of his life in Spain, at a villa near the monastery of St. Juste. He died in September 1558."
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Charles V and the Holy Roman Empire: Crash Course World History #219
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRYzW3BSj0I
Images:
1. Bust of Emperor Charles V circa 1555 by Leone Leoni Arezzo
2. Master of the Legend of Mary Magdalene; Emperor Charles V at the age of seven with a gyrfalcon, half-length portrait circa 1507
3. Charles’s wife was Isabella of Portugal (1503–1539). Celebrated in 1526. original painted by Jacob Seisenegger
4. Coronation of Charles V at Bologna, historical paining circa 1681 by Jan Erasmus Quellinus
Background from {[https://reformation500.csl.edu/bio/charles-v/]}
"Born in 1500, Charles I of Spain was successor of the Austrian Habsburg dynasty and ruled the majority of Europe during the Reformation as Emperor Charles V. On the side of his father, Philip of Burgundy, were the Habsburg Austrian Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy. On the side of his mother, Joana “The Mad” of Castile, were Ferdinand and Isabella, who had united the Spanish crowns of Aragon and Castile. This made Charles the heir to numerous lands that he began to inherit at the age of sixteen. Raised in French Burgundy, his first language was French and he was steeped in the diplomacy of Burgundy politics. Adrian of Utrecht, who would briefly become pope in 1522 before dying a year later, was a member of his court. Between 1516 and the death of his emperor father in 1519, Charles successively inherited the Austrian duchies of Austria, Carinthia, Moravia, Tyrol, and Styria; the Netherlands along with France-Comte from the Burgundy line; and Spain and the Spanish territories abroad, including Milan, Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, and the growing expansion of the New World in Central and South America. The massive land and financial holdings associated with this expansive empire led to grandiose visions of political domination on his part that would result in conflict throughout Europe.
The final step for Charles was election as Holy Roman Emperor over the German territories and the imperial free cities. When Charles’ father Maximilian died, the then-King of Spain was the most likely candidate. While Henry VIII of England and Frederick the Wise of Saxony were early competitors, Francis I of France emerged as the primary opposition. Francis was of the French Valois line that had been at odds with the Austrian Habsburgs. The papacy supported Francis due to growing monarchy of the Habsburgs and its encroachment onto Italian soil, but Charles had something the fiscally strapped papacy did not: recourse to immense funds, including the backing of the Fugger House of Augsburg, to bribe the electors into selecting him. The cost to Charles was 850,000 florins, 500,000 of which were subsidized with a loan from the Fuggers. Charles I of Spain was elected emperor in June 1519 and coronated Charles V in October 1520 at Aix-la-Chapelle, an imperial free city in Germany. He would receive his imperial crown from Pope Clement VII in 1520 at Bologna, the last emperor to be so crowned by a pope.
There were three challenges facing Charles upon taking the mantle of emperor: rivalry with the French Valois, war with the Turks on the eastern edge of the Empire, and the growing Protestant movement. The first two were intertwined and distracted him from addressing the third. The Habsburg-Valois rivalry commanded the most attention during the first decade of his reign. Intermittent war with France led to Charles’ defeat of Francis in 1525. He took the French king prisoner and forced him to sign the 1526 Peace of Madrid, which surrendered French lands in Burgundy and Italy and included an agreement with Francis to marry Charles’ sister, Eleanor. Once back on Spanish soil, Francis rejected the pact claiming it had come under duress and renewed war against imperial troops. Throughout the Habsburg-Valois wars, the papacy had remained on the side of Francis out of fear of Charles’ excursions onto Italian soil, leading Clement VII to join the defensive League of Cognac with France, Venice, Florence, and Mila. In response, Charles conscripted imperial troops to Italy, where they eventually sacked Rome in 1527—on their own initiative, not the emperor’s—and virtually imprisoned the pope until 1528. The Peace of Cambrai in 1529 put an end to the episode so France and the Empire could address more pressing issues, primarily war with the Turks. France would later break with Charles again to make an alliance with the Turks, but eventually reversed course and in 1544 forged the Peace of Crépy with the Empire to stand as a united front against the Turks, in exchange for either Milan or the Netherlands and this time the marriage of a son of Charles to Francis’ daughter.
The complexities of the Habsburg-Valois contest and the Turkish front distracted Charles from what would become the defining feature of his reign: the growth of Protestantism. The emperor had been crowned for only three months when the fateful Diet of Worms convened in January 1521. At Worms, Luther made his famous confession before the emperor that he would not recant of his writings and was subsequently hidden at Frederick the Wise’s behest in the Wartburg Castle. In the meantime, Charles executed the Edict of Worms making Luther an outlaw in the empire and proscribing all public teaching of his views. The Edict of Worms, however, evoked criticism from Rome. Papal legate Jerome Aleander questioned why an imperial edict was needed of Luther had already been subject to the ban by verdict of the papal bull of excommunication drafted earlier in 1521, Decet Romanem Pontificem. This only served to increase tensions with Rome politically, even though Charles considered himself a devout Catholic and supporter of the papacy who took it as a personal goal to protect church orthodoxy against Luther.
One further complicating factor in Charles’ relationship to the Protestant Reformation was the hesitancy on the part of Rome to call a council. It was never the emperor’s aim to circumvent the ecclesiastical system, but he had anticipated a general council that would rule on Luther’s doctrine and bring peace to the church. Consequently, the 1526 Diet of Speyer passed the recess of the Edict of Worms allowing all princes and cities in the empire to practice religion as they saw fit pending a general council to resolve the theological questions. The 1529 Diet of Speyer revoked the recess and led to the 1530 Diet of Augsburg, where the German princes presented the Lutheran Augsburg Confession and the southern Germans their Tetropolitana, after which the Catholic contingent responded with a hastily written reply of the Roman Confutation. Charles accepted the Confutation and promised to enforce the prohibition of Lutheran doctrine as protector of the church. Nevertheless, he still oversaw several attempts at reconciliation between the two parties over the years. The first came at Augsburg itself following the public presentation of the confessions. Then later, from 1539 to 1541, Charles directed a series of three colloquies in Hagenau, Worms, and Regensburg to reach agreement between Catholics and Protestants in the empire, all with limited results and no lasting impact. Repeated papal promises of a council led him to support the conciliar solution, which finally came to realization with the 1543 convocation of Trent. The actual convening of the council was finally made possible after the 1544 Peace of Crépy brought truce to the war with France and combined support of both Habsburg and Valois rulers for the Tridentine assembly.
After the first sessions of Trent closed, Charles made one final attempt at restoring religious peace within the empire. The 1548 Augsburg Interim gave small concessions to the Protestants, such as clerical marriage and communion in both kinds, but left much of Catholic doctrine largely unchanged. Charles then sought to impose it on the empire until a general council could enforce it more broadly, though numerous German territories vigorously rejected the measures. The religious conflict under Charles’ watch was not resolved until the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, which established the right of both Lutheran and Catholic territories to choose which religion they would follow. The agreement itself was brokered by Ferdinand, the emperor’s younger brother, to whom he had deputed all governing affairs in Germany by 1553.
Charles progressively abdicated his position until finally stepping down in 1556. His younger brother, Ferdinand, succeeded him as emperor. Ferdinand had governed Habsburg lands in Germany and Austria since 1521 and the Hungary and Bohemia since 1526 and had also been named King of the Romans, an honorific designating him as next pope over Charles’ own son Philip II. Philip instead took over the Spanish and Burgundy territories of his father. Charles would spend the remaining two years of his life in Spain, at a villa near the monastery of St. Juste. He died in September 1558."
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(0)
PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
LTC Stephen F. Vas is Das Holy Roman Empire *SARCASM MUCH* Now Called Germany.
(1)
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LTC Stephen F.
KINGS OF SPAIN - EPISODE 3 - CHARLES I
In the Series KINGS OF SPAIN we will travel through the history of a nation that became one of the most powerful empires on earth: SPAIN, through the perspec...
KINGS OF SPAIN - EPISODE 3 - CHARLES I Spanish with [English subtitles]
In the Series KINGS OF SPAIN we will travel through the history of a nation that became one of the most powerful empires on earth: SPAIN, through the perspective of its Monarchs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i83uqOvv2vE
Images:
1. Habsburgs Possessions in 1547
2. Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg, painted in 1548 by Titian.
3. Portrait of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen (manner of), c. 1530.
Background from {[ https://www.habsburger.net/en/chapter/charles-v-heir-many-crowns]}
"Charles V: heir to many crowns written by Martin Mutschlechner
In the figure of Charles were united the Habsburg claims to various territories that had passed to the dynasty thanks to the nuptial policies of his grandfather, Maximilian I.
Charles was the eldest son of Philip I (the Fair) and Joan (the Mad) of Castile. He was born in Ghent, where his father was acting as regent of the Low Countries, a group of territories that had passed to the Habsburg dynasty as part of the Burgundian inheritance transmitted by Charles’s paternal grandmother, Mary of Burgundy.
In his physical appearance Charles conformed to the classic Habsburg type that was particularly prevalent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He had a narrow, elongated face dominated by an aquiline nose and a heavy, protruding lower jaw together with thick, fleshy lips. It is said that the deformation of his jaw was so extreme that he could not close his mouth properly and had problems with his speech. His rapid and staccato way of speaking made him trip over his tongue constantly and as a consequence he was hard to understand.
Charles grew up at the court of his aunt, Archduchess Margaret, in the Low Country city of Mechelen (Malines, traditionally known in English as Mechlin) together with his sisters Eleonora and Isabella. He was shaped to a great degree by Burgundian-Netherlandish culture. His parents were mostly absent, as the securing of their claim to the Spanish crown took priority. After the early death of his father in 1506 the latter’s claims to the throne passed to Charles. At first he remained in the Netherlands, where his aunt Margaret ruled as tutelary regent in his stead. In 1515 Charles attained his majority and was appointed sovereign. However, the fifteen-year-old prince was unable to cope with his duties and his aunt and her advisors therefore continued to administer the affairs of government.
Over the next few years, however, the focus of his interests switched to Spain. The ruler of the united kingdoms of Castile, Aragon and Granada was Charles’s maternal grandfather, Ferdinand of Aragon. Charles shared his claim on these thrones with his mother Joan, which led to considerable problems after the death of Ferdinand in 1516. It was only after lengthy negotiations that his claim was recognized by the Estates, Charles using his mother’s mental illness as an argument to establish his rule in Spain in her name.
Charles V: marriage and offspring
Charles’s wife was Isabella of Portugal (1503–1539). Celebrated in 1526, this marriage was a dynastic project and the product of long-term planning, the object of which was to strengthen the links between the rival kingdoms of Spain and Portugal.
Isabella was the daughter of the Portuguese king Manuel I and Maria of Castile. Thus she was closely related to Charles on her mother’s side, as the bridal couple’s mothers were sisters. The marriage was a purely political partnership. During Charles’s long absences from Spain Isabella administered the country in his stead.
Lasting thirteen years, the marriage produced four children:
Their first-born son Philip II (1527–1598) succeeded Charles as king of Spain.
Maria (1528–1603) was married to her cousin from the Austrian line of the dynasty, Emperor Maximilian II. This was the first of many unions between the two lines of the dynasty, which were intended to guarantee their cohesion. This intermarriage between such closely related individuals was of political importance but from the biological point of view had dubious genetic consequences which in the long term impaired the vitality of the dynasty.
A son, named Ferdinand, who died in infancy, was followed by a daughter, Joan (1535–1573). Joan married back into the family of her mother, but her husband, John, the heir to the Portuguese throne, died before the birth of their first child. The young widow returned to Spain, where she ruled in the stead of her absent father. After Charles handed over the affairs of government to his son Philip in 1556, Joan retired to a convent.
The couple’s last child, called John, died shortly after he was born in 1539. Weakened by the birth, his mother followed him to the grave two weeks later.
Before and after his marriage Charles had a number of unofficial relationships that resulted in illegitimate offspring.
With Jeanne van der Gheynst, a servant girl at his aunt’s court, Charles had a daughter, Margaret (1522–1586). Like his legitimate children, she was used for dynastic marriage projects. In 1536, at the age of fourteen, Margaret was married to Alexander de Medici, who was murdered in the following year. In 1538 she was married to another Italian prince. This was Ottavio Farnese, who owed his sovereignty over the northern Italian principality of Parma to his union with Charles’s daughter. There Margaret found herself in a problematic position when her husband temporarily changed sides to the French camp.
Margaret was given an important position when she was appointed governor of the Netherlands by her step-brother Philip II. She assumed her office at a difficult time: opposition by the Estates in the northern provinces to Habsburg rule was forming, reinforced by the religious schism. Although Margaret showed a willingness to compromise, the situation came to a head. In 1567 she was forced to make way for the notorious Duke of Alba, an appointment that led to an escalation of the violence. The result was open rebellion. In 1579 Margaret was again entrusted with the office of governor in the Netherlands, now in competition with her son Alexander Farnese, who had been made commander of the Spanish troops in the turbulent provinces. After long-drawn-out conflicts with her son she retired from the fray in 1583.
Charles’s illegitimate son Juan d’Austria (1547–1578) was the result of his relationship with Barbara Blomberg, the daughter of a Regensburg merchant, which he began in 1546, after he had been widowed. At first the boy was not officially acknowledged as Charles’s natural son, and it was not until 1561 after his father’s death that Juan was legitimized by his half-brother Philip II. Juan was initially brought up together with Philip’s son, Don Carlos. Originally intended for a career in the Church, he developed military ambitions. As commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Spanish fleet he won an important victory over the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Appointed governor of the Netherlands in 1576, Juan died of typhus in camp while fighting rebel Dutch forces in 1578.
Charles V: the empire on which the sun never set
In the person of Charles, the Habsburgs attained the status of a Great Power for the first time. Extending over several continents, his dominions were referred to by contemporaries as the empire ‘on which the sun never set’.
The basis of his power was Spain: uniting in his person for the first time the crowns of Castile, Navarra and Aragón, Charles was the first king of Spain as a unified whole. His dominions also included the kingdoms of Naples, Sicily and Sardinia together with the Low Countries as part of the Burgundian inheritance.
Charles is also associated with the beginnings of the Spanish colonial empire in South and Central America. During his rule the destruction of the ancient American civilizations together with the exploitation and enslavement of indigenous peoples reached its zenith. The orders that Charles issued to the conquistadors and missionaries from his distant throne in Europe that enjoined them to protect the native population and to convert them to Christianity using convincing arguments rather than force remained – given the brutal reality – nothing more than half-hearted attempts to provide moral justification for the Spanish conquest of the Americas.
For a short time Austria too belonged to Charles’s global empire. On the death of his grandfather Maximilian I in 1519 Charles had inherited the Austrian patrimonial lands. However, in 1521/22 he transferred his dominion over these Central European dynastic territories to his younger brother Ferdinand, the founder of the Austrian line of the Habsburgs.
The division of the lineage was undertaken to secure the hereditary succession. Since in the preceding generations there had only ever been one surviving male successor, there was always a constant risk that the dynasty would die out and the empire that had been accumulated with such effort would collapse. Efforts to cement the succession on both sides led to marriages between the two lines in each generation. From a genealogical perspective the two branches of the dynasty constituted a single family entity.
Within the dynasty Charles held the position of head of the family, and his siblings were bound to obey him. His brother Ferdinand was for a long time overshadowed by Charles and was slow to develop an independent profile of his own as a ruler. Later on he sometimes found himself opposing his powerful brother.
The women in the family were equally subordinate to the demands of imperial politics. Charles’s sisters and daughters played an important role as pawns of his marriage policies but also exercised political functions as governors, for example Charles’s sister Maria, who represented Habsburg interests in the Netherlands with great skill.
Charles V and the emergence of the ‘hereditary enmity’ with France
Charles was the possessor of several crowns and yet more claims to sovereignty which served as a basis for his attempt to establish a universal dynastic monarchy with Habsburg hegemony over Europe. His fiercest enemies were France and its king, Francis I.
France saw itself surrounded. To the south lay the Iberian heartland of Spain, a rising Great Power. Along the borders of France with the Holy Roman Empire to the north and east was the diverse agglomeration of territories that had passed into Habsburg dominion through the Burgundian inheritance.
The dukes of Burgundy, a collateral branch of the Valois, had died out in the male line following the death of Charles the Bold in 1477, and France, ruled by the House of Valois, occupied those Burgundian territories that had been fiefs of the French crown.
France also cemented its position in Italy, bringing Milan under its control. Francis then staked claim to territories in southern Italy, which since the end of the fifteenth century had been first part of the crown of Aragon and later of Spain as a whole.
Charles for his part derived claims on parts of southern France as heir to the crown of Aragon. In rivalry with Francis he also laid claim to Milan; in ancient and Mediterranean tradition, power over Italy was regarded as the key to hegemony in Europe, for which both monarchs felt themselves predestined.
The conflict ended in a war, fought on Italian and French soil. While Charles was unable to achieve any great successes in France, his army in Italy won a number of victories. At the Battle of Pavia in 1525 the French king was even taken prisoner by the Spanish. In 1526 Francis was forced to accept the terms of the Treaty of Madrid, renouncing his claims to Burgundy, Naples and Milan. After his release he immediately revoked his agreement to the terms that had been extracted from him under coercion. The situation was not finally resolved until the Peace of Cambrai in 1529, according to the terms of which France retained the old Burgundian territories while renouncing its claims to those in Italy.
Meanwhile the situation in Italy had escalated. The imperial troops, including German mercenaries, made their way down the peninsula without any effective leaders, sacking Rome in 1527. This had not been ordered by Charles and he distanced himself from it. However, it proved politically advantageous for him, as the Pope, one of Charles’s adversaries, was deprived of his power. Charles had thus proved his dominance in Italy.
Charles’s triumph was affirmed by his coronation as emperor by the pope in Bologna in 1530. After Milan had come under Habsburg dominion in 1535 and Charles’s troops had won a victory over the Turks at the Siege of Tunis, Charles found himself at the apogee of his power.
Charles V and the dream of a universal monarchy
The enormous increase in his power soon led Charles to develop the idea of a global monarchy. The title of Holy Roman Emperor was to serve as the ideological basis for his claim on hegemony in Europe.
Charles’s rivals for the imperial succession to Maximilian were Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England. In June 1519 the electors voted at Frankfurt for Charles as king, the prerequisite step to attaining the imperial title. Nevertheless, Charles’s lofty ambitions were confronted with a thoroughly mundane problem: lack of money. The electors expected to be rewarded for their votes. Charles’s election campaign was mainly funded by the Fugger merchant family, subsequently making the emperor financially dependent upon them. Charles V was also the last emperor to be crowned by a pope, his coronation being performed by Clement VII at Bologna.
Charles’s claim to the leading role in the concert of powers was not uncontested: France became the ‘hereditary enemy’ for the next two centuries. A powerful adversary arose to the east in the shape of the Ottoman Empire. In a late continuation of the Spanish Reconquista against the Moors, Charles pursued campaigns in North Africa, leaving his brother Ferdinand to resist the inexorable expansion of the Turks in the Balkan territories.
Although Charles saw himself as a defender of Christianity, it was during his reign that the unity of the Roman Catholic Church finally collapsed due to his underestimating the power of the Reformation within the empire. This was not solely a question of theology but a political trial of strength between the emperor and the princes of empire who were insisting on their privileges and independence. Charles’s claim to universal rule is also evident in his attempts to solve the confessional conflict. The emperor wanted to effect a radical reform of the Church and saw himself as an impartial arbiter seeking to preserve the unity of Christendom.
It was with this intention that Charles persuaded the Pope to convene the Council of Trent. Conceived by Charles as an attempt to preserve the unity of the Catholic Church, its reforms led to the emergence of the Counter-Reformation and to an entrenching of positions, contrary to Charles’s intentions. He thus signally failed in what he had set out to achieve: religious schism had become reality.
Charles’s attempts to buttress imperial authority within the Holy Roman Empire and to privilege the monarchical element over the principle of an Estates-based, federal approach to government led to a conflict which initially ended in Charles’s favour with his victory in the Schmalkaldic War of 1547. Charles forced the ‘Augsburg Interim’ on the Protestant princes of the Empire, an agreement that was intended to implement a compromise until the theological disputes were resolved. This led to fundamental opposition from the Protestant Estates. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 managed to steer a middle course between the emperor, as represented by his more pragmatic brother Ferdinand, and the Empire. Nonetheless, the limits of imperial power had been demonstrated, and it became clear that Charles’s policies within the Empire had failed. He had been unable to assert his ideal of strong imperial rule against the princes of the Empire. This remained the declared aim of the following generations of Habsburgs, who were to fail just as he had done before them.
Charles V: resignation and abdication
In 1556, at the age of 55, Charles, then the most powerful man in the world, Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of the global Spanish Empire, decided to lay down his crown and abdicate all his offices.
…I sought the imperial crown not in order to rule over a multitude of kingdoms but merely to ensure the welfare and prosperity of the country and my other kingdoms, and to preserve peace and concord in the whole of Christendom… To this purpose have I made many arduous journeys and have been compelled to wage many wars… but never wantonly, always very much against my own will. … I had great hopes – only few have been fulfilled and few have remained to me, and at the cost of what travails! This has made me sick and weary. Do not think that I seek to avoid any travails or perils; my powers no longer suffice. Place your trust in my son, be united, observe justice at all times and do not let unbelief appear in your midst…
Charles V on his conception of imperial office
Throughout his reign Charles struggled with the contradiction between his claim to universal power and the difficulty of actually implementing this dominion in the various different parts of his vast empire. Charles was forced to be constantly on the move to compensate for the lack of an effective modern administrative apparatus. A not unimportant factor in his failure was the nature of communications at that time: strung out over whole continents, his monarchy had become ungovernable.
Charles also had to battle with the resistance of regional forces in Spain, the Netherlands and within the empire to a universal, supranational Habsburg monarchy. Eventually he abandoned his hopes, accepting the unfeasibility of the undertaking. The office of Holy Roman Emperor passed to his brother Ferdinand and the Spanish crown to his son Philip. Even within the dynasty it was no longer possible to prevent power being split between several different lines.
The emperor’s last refuge was the Hieronymite monastery of Yuste on the uplands of the Estremadura south-west of Madrid. The Order of St Jerome was an eremitic community devoted to an ascetic and solitary life as the path to finding God. Charles spent his last two years at Yuste, incapacitated by various ailments, in particular gout. Riddled with pain, he had to be carried about in sedan chairs or on litters. While Charles did not enter the order, he lived within the monastic community and had a small palace built in the Italian style with eight rooms adjoining the monastery. His bedchamber shared a connecting door with the sanctuary of the monastery church, making it possible for Charles to follow Mass from his bed even when he was virtually immobilized by his gout.
The gout was a consequence of Charles’s eating habits. The emperor was devoted to the pleasures of the table, a gourmand who spent huge sums on obtaining specialities for his meals. He ate immoderately and hastily, causing problems with his health. In the end, however, it was malaria which killed him.
Following his death in 1558 the emperor’s mortal remains were initially interred beneath the altar of the monastery church. Later on his son Philip II had his coffin transferred to the pantheon of the Spanish kings in the palatial monastery of El Escorial. Yuste monastery was destroyed during the Peninsular War and abandoned. In 1958, to mark the fourth centenary of Charles’s death, it was restored and given back to the Order of St Jerome. Today the Hieronymites at Yuste continue to preserve the memory of the emperor who came to grief with his vision of universal monarchy."
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In the Series KINGS OF SPAIN we will travel through the history of a nation that became one of the most powerful empires on earth: SPAIN, through the perspective of its Monarchs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i83uqOvv2vE
Images:
1. Habsburgs Possessions in 1547
2. Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg, painted in 1548 by Titian.
3. Portrait of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen (manner of), c. 1530.
Background from {[ https://www.habsburger.net/en/chapter/charles-v-heir-many-crowns]}
"Charles V: heir to many crowns written by Martin Mutschlechner
In the figure of Charles were united the Habsburg claims to various territories that had passed to the dynasty thanks to the nuptial policies of his grandfather, Maximilian I.
Charles was the eldest son of Philip I (the Fair) and Joan (the Mad) of Castile. He was born in Ghent, where his father was acting as regent of the Low Countries, a group of territories that had passed to the Habsburg dynasty as part of the Burgundian inheritance transmitted by Charles’s paternal grandmother, Mary of Burgundy.
In his physical appearance Charles conformed to the classic Habsburg type that was particularly prevalent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He had a narrow, elongated face dominated by an aquiline nose and a heavy, protruding lower jaw together with thick, fleshy lips. It is said that the deformation of his jaw was so extreme that he could not close his mouth properly and had problems with his speech. His rapid and staccato way of speaking made him trip over his tongue constantly and as a consequence he was hard to understand.
Charles grew up at the court of his aunt, Archduchess Margaret, in the Low Country city of Mechelen (Malines, traditionally known in English as Mechlin) together with his sisters Eleonora and Isabella. He was shaped to a great degree by Burgundian-Netherlandish culture. His parents were mostly absent, as the securing of their claim to the Spanish crown took priority. After the early death of his father in 1506 the latter’s claims to the throne passed to Charles. At first he remained in the Netherlands, where his aunt Margaret ruled as tutelary regent in his stead. In 1515 Charles attained his majority and was appointed sovereign. However, the fifteen-year-old prince was unable to cope with his duties and his aunt and her advisors therefore continued to administer the affairs of government.
Over the next few years, however, the focus of his interests switched to Spain. The ruler of the united kingdoms of Castile, Aragon and Granada was Charles’s maternal grandfather, Ferdinand of Aragon. Charles shared his claim on these thrones with his mother Joan, which led to considerable problems after the death of Ferdinand in 1516. It was only after lengthy negotiations that his claim was recognized by the Estates, Charles using his mother’s mental illness as an argument to establish his rule in Spain in her name.
Charles V: marriage and offspring
Charles’s wife was Isabella of Portugal (1503–1539). Celebrated in 1526, this marriage was a dynastic project and the product of long-term planning, the object of which was to strengthen the links between the rival kingdoms of Spain and Portugal.
Isabella was the daughter of the Portuguese king Manuel I and Maria of Castile. Thus she was closely related to Charles on her mother’s side, as the bridal couple’s mothers were sisters. The marriage was a purely political partnership. During Charles’s long absences from Spain Isabella administered the country in his stead.
Lasting thirteen years, the marriage produced four children:
Their first-born son Philip II (1527–1598) succeeded Charles as king of Spain.
Maria (1528–1603) was married to her cousin from the Austrian line of the dynasty, Emperor Maximilian II. This was the first of many unions between the two lines of the dynasty, which were intended to guarantee their cohesion. This intermarriage between such closely related individuals was of political importance but from the biological point of view had dubious genetic consequences which in the long term impaired the vitality of the dynasty.
A son, named Ferdinand, who died in infancy, was followed by a daughter, Joan (1535–1573). Joan married back into the family of her mother, but her husband, John, the heir to the Portuguese throne, died before the birth of their first child. The young widow returned to Spain, where she ruled in the stead of her absent father. After Charles handed over the affairs of government to his son Philip in 1556, Joan retired to a convent.
The couple’s last child, called John, died shortly after he was born in 1539. Weakened by the birth, his mother followed him to the grave two weeks later.
Before and after his marriage Charles had a number of unofficial relationships that resulted in illegitimate offspring.
With Jeanne van der Gheynst, a servant girl at his aunt’s court, Charles had a daughter, Margaret (1522–1586). Like his legitimate children, she was used for dynastic marriage projects. In 1536, at the age of fourteen, Margaret was married to Alexander de Medici, who was murdered in the following year. In 1538 she was married to another Italian prince. This was Ottavio Farnese, who owed his sovereignty over the northern Italian principality of Parma to his union with Charles’s daughter. There Margaret found herself in a problematic position when her husband temporarily changed sides to the French camp.
Margaret was given an important position when she was appointed governor of the Netherlands by her step-brother Philip II. She assumed her office at a difficult time: opposition by the Estates in the northern provinces to Habsburg rule was forming, reinforced by the religious schism. Although Margaret showed a willingness to compromise, the situation came to a head. In 1567 she was forced to make way for the notorious Duke of Alba, an appointment that led to an escalation of the violence. The result was open rebellion. In 1579 Margaret was again entrusted with the office of governor in the Netherlands, now in competition with her son Alexander Farnese, who had been made commander of the Spanish troops in the turbulent provinces. After long-drawn-out conflicts with her son she retired from the fray in 1583.
Charles’s illegitimate son Juan d’Austria (1547–1578) was the result of his relationship with Barbara Blomberg, the daughter of a Regensburg merchant, which he began in 1546, after he had been widowed. At first the boy was not officially acknowledged as Charles’s natural son, and it was not until 1561 after his father’s death that Juan was legitimized by his half-brother Philip II. Juan was initially brought up together with Philip’s son, Don Carlos. Originally intended for a career in the Church, he developed military ambitions. As commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Spanish fleet he won an important victory over the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Appointed governor of the Netherlands in 1576, Juan died of typhus in camp while fighting rebel Dutch forces in 1578.
Charles V: the empire on which the sun never set
In the person of Charles, the Habsburgs attained the status of a Great Power for the first time. Extending over several continents, his dominions were referred to by contemporaries as the empire ‘on which the sun never set’.
The basis of his power was Spain: uniting in his person for the first time the crowns of Castile, Navarra and Aragón, Charles was the first king of Spain as a unified whole. His dominions also included the kingdoms of Naples, Sicily and Sardinia together with the Low Countries as part of the Burgundian inheritance.
Charles is also associated with the beginnings of the Spanish colonial empire in South and Central America. During his rule the destruction of the ancient American civilizations together with the exploitation and enslavement of indigenous peoples reached its zenith. The orders that Charles issued to the conquistadors and missionaries from his distant throne in Europe that enjoined them to protect the native population and to convert them to Christianity using convincing arguments rather than force remained – given the brutal reality – nothing more than half-hearted attempts to provide moral justification for the Spanish conquest of the Americas.
For a short time Austria too belonged to Charles’s global empire. On the death of his grandfather Maximilian I in 1519 Charles had inherited the Austrian patrimonial lands. However, in 1521/22 he transferred his dominion over these Central European dynastic territories to his younger brother Ferdinand, the founder of the Austrian line of the Habsburgs.
The division of the lineage was undertaken to secure the hereditary succession. Since in the preceding generations there had only ever been one surviving male successor, there was always a constant risk that the dynasty would die out and the empire that had been accumulated with such effort would collapse. Efforts to cement the succession on both sides led to marriages between the two lines in each generation. From a genealogical perspective the two branches of the dynasty constituted a single family entity.
Within the dynasty Charles held the position of head of the family, and his siblings were bound to obey him. His brother Ferdinand was for a long time overshadowed by Charles and was slow to develop an independent profile of his own as a ruler. Later on he sometimes found himself opposing his powerful brother.
The women in the family were equally subordinate to the demands of imperial politics. Charles’s sisters and daughters played an important role as pawns of his marriage policies but also exercised political functions as governors, for example Charles’s sister Maria, who represented Habsburg interests in the Netherlands with great skill.
Charles V and the emergence of the ‘hereditary enmity’ with France
Charles was the possessor of several crowns and yet more claims to sovereignty which served as a basis for his attempt to establish a universal dynastic monarchy with Habsburg hegemony over Europe. His fiercest enemies were France and its king, Francis I.
France saw itself surrounded. To the south lay the Iberian heartland of Spain, a rising Great Power. Along the borders of France with the Holy Roman Empire to the north and east was the diverse agglomeration of territories that had passed into Habsburg dominion through the Burgundian inheritance.
The dukes of Burgundy, a collateral branch of the Valois, had died out in the male line following the death of Charles the Bold in 1477, and France, ruled by the House of Valois, occupied those Burgundian territories that had been fiefs of the French crown.
France also cemented its position in Italy, bringing Milan under its control. Francis then staked claim to territories in southern Italy, which since the end of the fifteenth century had been first part of the crown of Aragon and later of Spain as a whole.
Charles for his part derived claims on parts of southern France as heir to the crown of Aragon. In rivalry with Francis he also laid claim to Milan; in ancient and Mediterranean tradition, power over Italy was regarded as the key to hegemony in Europe, for which both monarchs felt themselves predestined.
The conflict ended in a war, fought on Italian and French soil. While Charles was unable to achieve any great successes in France, his army in Italy won a number of victories. At the Battle of Pavia in 1525 the French king was even taken prisoner by the Spanish. In 1526 Francis was forced to accept the terms of the Treaty of Madrid, renouncing his claims to Burgundy, Naples and Milan. After his release he immediately revoked his agreement to the terms that had been extracted from him under coercion. The situation was not finally resolved until the Peace of Cambrai in 1529, according to the terms of which France retained the old Burgundian territories while renouncing its claims to those in Italy.
Meanwhile the situation in Italy had escalated. The imperial troops, including German mercenaries, made their way down the peninsula without any effective leaders, sacking Rome in 1527. This had not been ordered by Charles and he distanced himself from it. However, it proved politically advantageous for him, as the Pope, one of Charles’s adversaries, was deprived of his power. Charles had thus proved his dominance in Italy.
Charles’s triumph was affirmed by his coronation as emperor by the pope in Bologna in 1530. After Milan had come under Habsburg dominion in 1535 and Charles’s troops had won a victory over the Turks at the Siege of Tunis, Charles found himself at the apogee of his power.
Charles V and the dream of a universal monarchy
The enormous increase in his power soon led Charles to develop the idea of a global monarchy. The title of Holy Roman Emperor was to serve as the ideological basis for his claim on hegemony in Europe.
Charles’s rivals for the imperial succession to Maximilian were Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England. In June 1519 the electors voted at Frankfurt for Charles as king, the prerequisite step to attaining the imperial title. Nevertheless, Charles’s lofty ambitions were confronted with a thoroughly mundane problem: lack of money. The electors expected to be rewarded for their votes. Charles’s election campaign was mainly funded by the Fugger merchant family, subsequently making the emperor financially dependent upon them. Charles V was also the last emperor to be crowned by a pope, his coronation being performed by Clement VII at Bologna.
Charles’s claim to the leading role in the concert of powers was not uncontested: France became the ‘hereditary enemy’ for the next two centuries. A powerful adversary arose to the east in the shape of the Ottoman Empire. In a late continuation of the Spanish Reconquista against the Moors, Charles pursued campaigns in North Africa, leaving his brother Ferdinand to resist the inexorable expansion of the Turks in the Balkan territories.
Although Charles saw himself as a defender of Christianity, it was during his reign that the unity of the Roman Catholic Church finally collapsed due to his underestimating the power of the Reformation within the empire. This was not solely a question of theology but a political trial of strength between the emperor and the princes of empire who were insisting on their privileges and independence. Charles’s claim to universal rule is also evident in his attempts to solve the confessional conflict. The emperor wanted to effect a radical reform of the Church and saw himself as an impartial arbiter seeking to preserve the unity of Christendom.
It was with this intention that Charles persuaded the Pope to convene the Council of Trent. Conceived by Charles as an attempt to preserve the unity of the Catholic Church, its reforms led to the emergence of the Counter-Reformation and to an entrenching of positions, contrary to Charles’s intentions. He thus signally failed in what he had set out to achieve: religious schism had become reality.
Charles’s attempts to buttress imperial authority within the Holy Roman Empire and to privilege the monarchical element over the principle of an Estates-based, federal approach to government led to a conflict which initially ended in Charles’s favour with his victory in the Schmalkaldic War of 1547. Charles forced the ‘Augsburg Interim’ on the Protestant princes of the Empire, an agreement that was intended to implement a compromise until the theological disputes were resolved. This led to fundamental opposition from the Protestant Estates. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 managed to steer a middle course between the emperor, as represented by his more pragmatic brother Ferdinand, and the Empire. Nonetheless, the limits of imperial power had been demonstrated, and it became clear that Charles’s policies within the Empire had failed. He had been unable to assert his ideal of strong imperial rule against the princes of the Empire. This remained the declared aim of the following generations of Habsburgs, who were to fail just as he had done before them.
Charles V: resignation and abdication
In 1556, at the age of 55, Charles, then the most powerful man in the world, Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of the global Spanish Empire, decided to lay down his crown and abdicate all his offices.
…I sought the imperial crown not in order to rule over a multitude of kingdoms but merely to ensure the welfare and prosperity of the country and my other kingdoms, and to preserve peace and concord in the whole of Christendom… To this purpose have I made many arduous journeys and have been compelled to wage many wars… but never wantonly, always very much against my own will. … I had great hopes – only few have been fulfilled and few have remained to me, and at the cost of what travails! This has made me sick and weary. Do not think that I seek to avoid any travails or perils; my powers no longer suffice. Place your trust in my son, be united, observe justice at all times and do not let unbelief appear in your midst…
Charles V on his conception of imperial office
Throughout his reign Charles struggled with the contradiction between his claim to universal power and the difficulty of actually implementing this dominion in the various different parts of his vast empire. Charles was forced to be constantly on the move to compensate for the lack of an effective modern administrative apparatus. A not unimportant factor in his failure was the nature of communications at that time: strung out over whole continents, his monarchy had become ungovernable.
Charles also had to battle with the resistance of regional forces in Spain, the Netherlands and within the empire to a universal, supranational Habsburg monarchy. Eventually he abandoned his hopes, accepting the unfeasibility of the undertaking. The office of Holy Roman Emperor passed to his brother Ferdinand and the Spanish crown to his son Philip. Even within the dynasty it was no longer possible to prevent power being split between several different lines.
The emperor’s last refuge was the Hieronymite monastery of Yuste on the uplands of the Estremadura south-west of Madrid. The Order of St Jerome was an eremitic community devoted to an ascetic and solitary life as the path to finding God. Charles spent his last two years at Yuste, incapacitated by various ailments, in particular gout. Riddled with pain, he had to be carried about in sedan chairs or on litters. While Charles did not enter the order, he lived within the monastic community and had a small palace built in the Italian style with eight rooms adjoining the monastery. His bedchamber shared a connecting door with the sanctuary of the monastery church, making it possible for Charles to follow Mass from his bed even when he was virtually immobilized by his gout.
The gout was a consequence of Charles’s eating habits. The emperor was devoted to the pleasures of the table, a gourmand who spent huge sums on obtaining specialities for his meals. He ate immoderately and hastily, causing problems with his health. In the end, however, it was malaria which killed him.
Following his death in 1558 the emperor’s mortal remains were initially interred beneath the altar of the monastery church. Later on his son Philip II had his coffin transferred to the pantheon of the Spanish kings in the palatial monastery of El Escorial. Yuste monastery was destroyed during the Peninsular War and abandoned. In 1958, to mark the fourth centenary of Charles’s death, it was restored and given back to the Order of St Jerome. Today the Hieronymites at Yuste continue to preserve the memory of the emperor who came to grief with his vision of universal monarchy."
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