Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Aragon and Castile.

Charles V (24 February 1500 – 21 September 1558) was Holy Roman Emperor, King of Aragon, Castile, Naples, and Sicily, and ruler of the Burgundian territories. In Spain, he ruled officially as Carlos I, though he is often referred to as Carlos V.

He was the son of Philip the Handsome and Joanna the Mad of Castile. His maternal grandparents were Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, whose marriage had first united Spain. His paternal grandparents were Emperor Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy.

Charles V's reign also introduced the first documented use of the styles of His Majesty or His Imperial Majesty. Because of his far-reaching territories he was described as ruling an Empire "in which the sun does not set".

Heritage and early life

Plus Oultre, Charles' personal motto on the gable of a Flemish house in Ghent, Charles V's birthplace.

Combining in himself the heritage of the German Habsburgs, the House of Burgundy, and the Spanish heritage of his mother, Charles transcended ethnic and national boundaries.

Charles was born in the Flemish city of Ghent and brought up in the Low Countries until 1517. The culture and courtly life of the Burgundian Low Countries was the prime influence in his early life. He was brought up to speak French and Dutch, but soon added Spanish and some German . Charles sent him a letter to thank him for his services, but Cisneros died before meeting the King.

Negotiations with the Castilian Cortes proved difficult, and in the end Charles was accepted under the following conditions: he would learn to speak Castillian; 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 1518. In 1519 he was crowned before the Cortes of Aragon in Zaragoza, and the Cortes of Catalonia followed.

Charles was accepted as sovereign, even though the Spanish felt uneasy with the Imperial style; Spanish monarchs until then had been bound by the laws, the monarchy was a contract with the people. With Charles it would become more absolute, even though until his mother's death in 1555 Charles did not hold the full kingship of the country.

Soon resistance against the Emperor rose, because of the heavy taxation – funds that were used to fight wars abroad, wars most Castilians had no interest in – and because Charles tended to select Flemings for high offices in Spain and America, ignoring Castilian candidates. The resistance culminated in the Castilian War of the Communities, which was suppressed by Charles. After this, Castile became integrated into the Habsburgs' empire, and would provide the bulk of the Habsburg's military and financial resources.

America

During Charles' reign, the territories in New Spain were considerably extended by conquistadores like Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro, who brought the Aztec and Inca empires to fall in little more than a decade. Combined with the circumnavigation of the globe in 1522, this gave to Charles a strong impression of his divine mission to become the leader of a christian world. The conquests also provided the state treasury with enormous amounts of bullion. The conquistador Bernal Diaz had already observed: "We came to serve God and our Majesty, ... and also to get rich." In 1550, Charles convened a conference at Valladolid in order to consider the morality of the force used against the indigenous populations of Spanish America.

Holy Roman Empire

After the death of his other grandfather, Maximilian, in 1519, he inherited Habsburg lands in Austria. Naturally, he also was the candidate for succeeding Maximilian as Emperor, but he had to face the competition of the French King Francis I, who also had the support of Pope Leo X. Francis used promises and bribes to win the favour of the electors, but with the help of the wealthy Fugger family, Charles could oust Francis and was elected on June 28, 1519.

Charles was Holy Roman Emperor over the German states, but his real power was limited by the princes. Protestantism gained a lot of support in Germany, 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 heresy. Political dissention was also firmly controlled, most notably in his place of birth: the Revolt of Ghent in 1539, which Charles personally suppressed.

Wars against France

Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg, painted in 1548 by Titian.

Much of Charles's reign was taken up with wars with France, which found itself encircled by Charles's empire and still maintained ambitions in Italy. 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, and forcing him to sign the humiliating Treaty of Madrid the next year, in which the French king was forced to cede Burgundy to Charles.

When he was released, however, Francis had the Parliament of Paris denounce the treaty because it had been signed under duress. Already the Pope had formed the League of Cognac with Henry VIII of England, the Venetians, the Florentines, and the Milanese to resist imperial domination of Italy, and Francis soon joined. This war was notable for the sack of Rome by Charles's forces in 1527, which took the Pope out of the war. Charles's occupation of Rome and virtual imprisonment of Pope Clement VII allowed him to keep the Pope from annulling the marriage of Henry VIII of England and Charles's aunt Catherine of Aragon, with important consequences. Besides the sack, the war itself was inconclusive, and came to an end with the compromise Treaty of Cambrai in 1529, called the "Ladies' Peace" because it was negotiated between Charles's aunt and Francis's mother, in which Francis renounced his claims in Italy but retained control of Burgundy.

A third war erupted in 1535, when, following the death of the last Sforza Duke of Milan, Charles installed his own son, Philip in the duchy, despite Francis's claims on it. The war was inconclusive. Francis failed to conquer Milan, but was successful 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 only for a short time. War resumed in 1542, with Francis now actively 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 Milan, 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 in 1544.

A final war erupted with Francis's son and successor, Henry II, in 1551. This war saw early successes by Henry in Lorraine, where he captured Metz, but continued failure of French offensives in Italy. Charles abdicated midway through this conflict, leaving further conduct of the war to his son, Philip II.

Wars against the Ottoman Empire

Charles had been fighting with the Ottoman Empire and its sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, for a number of years. The expeditions of the Ottoman force along the Mediterranean coast posed a threat to Hapsburg lands and the peace of Western Europe. In Central Europe, the Turkish advance was halted at Vienna in 1529, which they besieged unsuccessfully. In 1535 Charles won an important victory at Tunis, but 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 1543 Charles allied himself with Henry VIII and forced Francis to sign the Truce of Crepy-en-Laonnois. Charles later signed a humiliating treaty with the Ottomans, to gain him some respite from the huge expenses of their war, although it wasn't over. However, the Protestant powers in the Holy Roman Empire Diet often voted against money for his Turkish wars, as many Protestants saw the Muslim advance as a counterweight to the Catholic powers. The great Hungarian defeat at the 1526 Battle of Mohacs was in some ways a moral defeat for the West as a whole.

Humanism and Reformation

As Holy Roman Emperor, he called Martin Luther to the Diet of Worms in 1521, promising him safe conduct if he would appear. He initially dismissed Luther's idea of reformation 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 try to stamp out Protestantism.

1524 to 1526 saw the Peasants' Revolt in Germany and the formation of the Lutheran Schmalkaldic League, and Charles delegated increasing responsibility for Germany to his brother Ferdinand while he concentrated on problems abroad.

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. He also attacked the Schmalkaldic League in 1546 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 doctrinal compromise that he felt Catholics and Protestants alike might share. A more permanent settlement followed with the 1555 Peace of Augsburg.

Abdication and later life

In 1556 Charles abdicated his various positions, giving his personal empire to his son, Philip II of Spain, and the Holy Empire to his brother, Ferdinand. 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 and some scholars think Charles V decided to abdicate after a gout attack in 1552 forced him to postpone an attempt to recapture the French city of Metz, where he was later defeated."The Severe Gout of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V", from the The New England Journal of Medicine Volume 355:516-520 August 3, 2006.

Charles died on September 21, 1558. Twenty-six years later his remains were transferred to the Royal Pantheon of The Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial.

Trivia

*He had an overshot lower jaw, the so-called Hapsburg lip which persisted for generations in European royalty.

References