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- Charles V was the Holy Roman Emperor from 1519 to 1556, as well as the King of Spain from 1516 to 1556. He was a central figure in the political and religious upheavals of the 16th century, playing a significant role in both the Portuguese exploration and the Spanish conquest of the Americas.
Charles V [d] [e] (24 February 1500 – 21 September 1558) was Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austria from 1519 to 1556, King of Spain from 1516 to 1556, and Lord of the Netherlands as titular Duke of Burgundy from 1506 to 1555. He was heir to and then head of the rising House of Habsburg.
- Overview
- Early life
- Imperialist goals, rivalry with Francis I, and fight against Protestantism
- Assessment of Charles’s character
Although establishing a universal empire was chief among Charles V’s goals as Holy Roman emperor, he was unable to do so. Protestantism’s growing momentum made it impossible for Charles to prevent the fragmentation of his Catholic empire, and his attempts to unite Europe were further confounded by his enmity with France. He was also unable to establish profitable landholdings overseas: his attempts to conquer North Africa failed, and Spain’s territories in the Americas wouldn’t become lucrative until the reigns of later kings. Charles V abdicated in 1556 without achieving his goal of a universal empire.
Read more below: Imperialist goals, rivalry with Francis I, and fight against Protestantism
Reformation
Read more about the Protestant Reformation.
What were the greatest threats to Charles V’s empire?
Charles V spent his reign trying to maintain the integrity of the Holy Roman Empire against the many forces that sought to undermine it. An emerging Protestantism proved to be one of the biggest internal threats. Although the papacy lent Charles V military and fiscal aid in the fight against the Protestants, it was occasionally a thorn in the emperor’s side, particularly when it was allied with Charles’s longtime nemesis, King Francis I of France. The biggest external menace to Europe came from the Ottoman Empire, which applied pressure from the east for much of Charles’s rule.
Charles was the son of Philip I the Handsome, king of Castile, and Joan the Mad. His paternal grandparents were the Holy Roman emperor Maximilian I and Mary, duchess of Burgundy, and his maternal grandparents were Isabella I and Ferdinand II, the Roman Catholic king and queen of Spain. After his father’s death in 1506, Charles was raised by his paternal aunt Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands. His spiritual guide was the theologian Adrian of Utrecht (later Pope Adrian VI), a member of the devotio moderna, a religious and educational reform movement promoting literacy among the masses.
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In 1515 Charles came of age as duke of Burgundy and assumed rule over the Netherlands. His scope of activities soon widened. On January 23, 1516, Ferdinand II died. As a result, the problem of the succession in Spain became acute, since by the terms of Ferdinand’s will, Charles was to govern in Aragon and Castile together with his mother (who, however, suffered from a nervous illness and never reigned). Furthermore, the will provided that Francisco, Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros, who was the archbishop of Toledo and one of Ferdinand and Isabella’s most-influential advisers, should direct the administration in Castile. The Spanish opponents of Ferdinand who had fled to Brussels succeeded in having the will set aside, however, and on March 14, 1516, Charles was proclaimed king in Brussels as Charles I of Aragon and Castile.
In October 1520 Charles was accordingly crowned king of Germany in Aachen, assuming at the same time the title of Roman emperor-elect. In the spring of 1521 the imperial Diet, before which Martin Luther had to defend his theses, assembled at Worms. The reformer’s appearance represented a first challenge to Charles, beginning with a sweeping invocation of his Roman Catholic ancestors, read out to the Diet. After Luther refused to recant the substance of his writings and left the Diet, Charles drew up the Edict of Worms. With it, he rejected Luther’s doctrines and essentially declared war on Protestantism.
Gradually, the other chief task of his reign also unfolded: the struggle for hegemony in western Europe. That goal was a legacy of his Burgundian forefathers, including his ancestor Charles the Bold, who had come to naught in his fight against the French Valois Louis XI. His great-grandfather’s quest was to become a fateful problem for Charles as well.
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After defeating Duke Massimiliano Sforza at the Battle of Marignano in 1515, Francis I of France compelled him, in the Treaty of Noyon, to renounce his claim to the duchy of Milan. The vanquished Sforza turned for help to Pope Leo X and Charles V, with whom he concluded a treaty in 1521. Despite the outbreak of war with France, Charles hurried back to Spain, where his followers had meanwhile gained the upper hand over the comuneros. Even though he granted an amnesty, the young monarch proved to be an intransigent ruler, bloodily suppressing the revolt and signing 270 death warrants. Those actions were nevertheless followed by a rapid and complete rapprochement between the pacified people and their sovereign; in fact, it was during that second and protracted sojourn in Spain (1522–29) that Charles became a Spaniard, with Castilian grandees replacing the Burgundians. There soon developed an emotionally tinged understanding between Charles and his Spanish subjects that was to be steadily deepened during his long rule. Henceforth, it was primarily the material resources of his Spanish domains that sustained his far-flung policies and his Spanish troops who acquitted themselves most bravely and successfully in his wars.
In 1522 his teacher Adrian of Utrecht became pope, as Adrian VI. His efforts to reconcile Francis I and the emperor failed, and three years later Charles’s army defeated Francis I at the Battle of Pavia, taking prisoner the king himself. The victory ensured Spanish supremacy in Italy. Held in the alcazar of Madrid, the royal captive feigned agreement with the conditions imposed by Charles, even taking the emperor’s oldest sister, Eleanora, the dowager queen of Portugal, for his wife and handing over his sons as hostages. The Treaty of Madrid concluding hostilities between the two countries was signed in January 1526, but as soon as he had regained his freedom, Francis rejected the treaty and refused to ratify it.
Not only the task but the man to whom it was given had a dual nature. By background and training, Charles was a medieval ruler whose outlook on life was stamped throughout by a deeply experienced Roman Catholic faith and by the knightly ideals of the late chivalric age. Yet his sober, rational, and pragmatic thinking again mark him as a man of his age. Although Charles’s moral uprightness and sense of personal honour make it impossible to regard him as a truly Machiavellian statesman, his unswerving resolve and his refusal to give up any part whatsoever of his patrimony are evidence of a strong and unconditional will to power. More than that, it is precisely this individual claim to power that forms the core of his personality and explains his aims and actions.
Charles’s abdication has been variously interpreted. While many saw in it an unsuccessful man’s escape from the world, his contemporaries thought differently. Charles himself had been considering the idea even in his prime. In 1532 his secretary, Alfonso de Valdés, suggested to him the thought that a ruler who was incapable of preserving the peace and, indeed, who had to consider himself an obstacle to its establishment was obliged to retire from affairs of state. Once the abdication had become a fact, St. Ignatius of Loyola had this to say:
The emperor gave a rare example to his successors…in so doing, he proved himself to be a true Christian prince…may the Lord in all His goodness now grant the emperor freedom.
In this last, metaphysically tinged period of his life, Charles’s freedom consisted in his conscious and conscientious preparation for the buen morir, for a lucid death.
The Empire of Charles V, also known by the umbrella term Habsburg Empire, included the Holy Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Burgundian inheritance, the Austrian lands, and all the territories and dominions ruled in personal union by Charles V from 1519 to 1556.
Charles V, the most powerful man of his time, failed to achieve his dream of a universal empire, thwarted by the political realities of Western Europe. He also failed to stop the Reformation...
Although he failed to achieve many of his goals in Europe, Charles V oversaw great Spanish ventures overseas. He encouraged the Spanish explorers who conquered large portions of the Americas and sponsored the plans of Ferdinand Magellan to sail around the world.
Charles defeated a group of Protestant princes at Mühlberg in April 1547, but only eight years later he was forced to allow the Peace of Augsburg, which acknowledged the legitimacy of Lutheranism within the Holy Roman Empire.
Oct 2, 2020 · Hailing from the influential House of Habsburg, Charles V (1500-1558) was arguably the most powerful person in the world during his reign. His Holy Roman Empire covered the length and breadth of Europe, stretching from the states in Germany to the northern states in Italy.
