Charles V

“ But that which marks the position of Charles V. as the representative man of his epoch, and as the founder of the policy of modern times, is that, wherever he was victorious, the effect of his success was to crush the last efforts of the spirit of the middle ages, and of the independence of nations. In Italy, in Spain, in Germany, and in the Low Countries, his triumphs were so much gain to the cause of absolute monarchy and so much loss to the liberty derived from the old state of society. ”

“ To the enthusiastic and the eager the cause which touches themselves the nearest seems always the most important in the world. Charles V. had struggled long to escape the duty which the Pope and destiny appeared to be combining to thrust upon him. With Germany unsettled, with the Turks in Hungary, with Barbarossa’s corsair-fleet commanding the Mediterranean and harassing the Spanish coast, with another French war visibly ahead, and a renewed invasion of Italy, Charles was in no condition to add Henry to the number of his enemies. ”

“ Charles V, emperor of Germany, was born at Ghent in 1500. From his father he inherited the Low Countries and from his mother Spain and Naples, together with the Spanish colonies In America. In 1516 he became joint-ruler of Spain with his mother Juana, and in 1519 he was made emperor of Germany. The history of western Europe for the next quarter of a century is largely made up of the rivalry of Charles and Francis I of France. The other powers Henry VIII of England and the different popes favored first one and then the other, which resulted in war between the monarchs during much of the era. ”

“ Charles V was on the point of becoming as despotic in Germany as he was in Spain. The long interval of peace, though not very profound—war being always threatened and attempts to provoke it frequent—yet was sufficiently so to enable him to devote himself to his favorite scheme of humbling the princes and free states of the empire. He had sown dissension among them, succeeded in breaking up the League of Smalkald, and detained in prison, threatened with perpetual captivity, the Landgrave of Hesse and the elector John Frederick of Saxony. ”

“ The world could not forbear making a comparison between Charles V., a prince who, though educated amidst wars and intrigues of state, had prevented the decline of age, and had descended from the throne, in order to set apart an interval for thought and reflection; and a priest who, in the extremity of old age, exulted in his dominion, and from restless ambition and revenge was throwing all nations into combustion. ”

“ The greater part of his life was passed under the reign of Charles V., when the spirit of the nation was not yet broken by arbitrary power, nor debased by the melancholy superstition which settled on it under his successor; an age, in which the memory of ancient liberty had not wholly faded away, and when, if men did not dare express all they thought, they at least thought with a degree of independence which gave a masculine character to their expression. ”

“ In 1520 Charles V started for Germany to receive the imperial crown at Aix-la-Chapelle. On his way he landed in England with the purpose of keeping Henry from forming an alliance with Francis. He judged the best means to be that of freely bribing Wolsey, who had been made a cardinal by Leo X, and who was all-powerful with Henry. Charles therefore bestowed on the cardinal a large annuity in addition to one which he had granted him somewhat earlier. He then set sail for the Netherlands, where he was duly crowned king of the Romans. ”

“ The triumph and coronation of the Emperor Charles V, when he was superior to all that Europe had beheld since Charlemagne, revived the ancient belief in a supreme authority elevated on alliance with the priesthood, at the expense of the independence and the equipoise of nations. The exploits of Magellan and Cortez, upsetting all habits of perspective, called up vain dreams of the coming immensity of Spain, and roused the phantom of universal empire. The motive of domination became a reigning force in Europe ”

“ At fifteen he became guardsman to Charles V, and his qualities of heart and brain soon won him the affectionate admiration of the court. "Comely in action, noble in speech, gentle in sentiment, vehement in friendship, nature had made his body a fitting temple for his soul." ”

“ Charles was less fortunate in the part he took in the wars between Francis I and Charles V, the brother-in-law of his wife. He tried to maintain a strict neutrality, but his attendance at the emperor’s coronation at Bologna in 1530 was imperative in his double character of kinsman and vassal. The visit was fatal to him, for he was rewarded with the county of Asti, and this so displeased the French king that on the revolt of Geneva to Protestantism in 1532, Francis sent help to the citizens. Berne and Fribourg did likewise, and so expelled the duke from Lausanne and Vaud. ”

“ Highway plundering and even private war were still going on, to a considerable extent, far into the sixteenth century. Charles V pursued the same line of policy as his predecessor; but it was not until after the suppression of the lower nobility in 1523, and finally of the peasants in 1526, that any material change took place; and then the centralization, such as it was, was in favour of the princes, rather than of the Imperial power, which, after Charles V's time, grew weaker and weaker. ”

“ Hence, if Charles should also become sovereign of Spain and the Indies, the vast empire of Charles V. would be again united in one person; and that very evil of an almost universal monarchy would be established, the prevention of which had been the chief cause for taking up arms against Philip V. ... After an interregnum of half a year, during which the affairs of the Empire had been conducted by the Elector Palatine and the Elector of Saxony, as imperial vicars for South and North Germany, the Archduke Charles was unanimously named Emperor by the Electoral College (Oct. 12th) . ”

“ An effort was made to perfect a union between the Protestants in Germany, but without success, and a divided Germany awaited the coming of the emperor. Charles V was now at the zenith of his power, and was determined to visit Germany and by his personal presence and influence end the religious difficulty which was distracting that portion of his vast dominions. He meant to use every persuasion possible, to make what compromises his conscience permitted, to effect a peaceful settlement. But if these failed he was determined to crush the Reformers by force. ”

“ You know how closely the king and the man are allied in the person of our sovereign, and to what lengths the man can lead the king on. If we could be, not rivals but allies, not mistresses but friends; if, while one held sway over François, the other might hold sway over François I., France would be ours, count, and at what a moment! just as Charles V. is about to plunge into our net of his own free will, when we can hold him to ransom on such terms as we choose, and take advantage of his imprudence to assure ourselves a magnificent future in case of accident. ”

“ Then Charles V. retired to his own rooms; his brothers with the King of the Romans, who wanted to see the lions, went to find Louis, Comte de Valois, who probably wished to go with them, and the Duchesse de Bourbon came to the apartment of the Emperor, her brother-in-law. For a long time they sat together, talking of old times, as people will who were companions in childhood after being separated for half a lifetime. Later on they were joined by the Queen and her two little sons, and they all stayed with the Emperor till the hour of vespers. ”

“ When we look at the world as it appeared in the year 1500, an easy date to remember, and the year in which the Emperor Charles V was born, this is what we see. The feudal disorder of the Middle Ages has given way before the order of a number of highly centralised kingdoms. The most powerful of all sovereigns is the great Charles, then a baby in a cradle. ”

“ AVILA Y ZUNIGA, Luis D', author of a Spanish history of the wars of Charles V. Nothing is known as to the place or date either of his birth or of his death. He was probably of low origin, but married a wealthy heiress of the house of Zuniga, whose name he added to his own. He rose rapidly in the favour of the Emperor Charles V., served in the army and as ambassador to Rome, and was present at the funeral of Charles in 1558. ”

“ Under Maximilian, the Diet became an effective council, fist-right was abolished, independent robber-lords put down, civilization began to effect an entrance, the system of circles was arranged, and the empire again became a leading power in Europe, instead of a mere vortex of disorder and misrule. Never would Charles V. have held the position he occupied had he come after an ordinary man, instead of after an able and sagacious reformer like that Maximilian who is popularly regarded as a fantastic caricature of a knight-errant, marred by avarice and weakness of purpose. ”

“ Charles V would have nothing to do with these innovations. He left it all to his brother Ferdinand, King of Bohemia and Hungary, who was more elastic and pliable than himself. With the Turk over the border, he could not exist without the goodwill of both parties; and he desired the vote of Lutheran electors to make him emperor. He had no Inquisition in one part of his dominions contradicting and condemning toleration in the rest. He was an earnest promoter of reform in the shape of concession. The embers of Hussitism were not extinct in the region of which Bohemia was the centre. ”

“ Charles V did not choose to surrender that which alone gave unity to his complicated empire. The German princes were allowed to have subjects of one religion only. That prerogative was denied to the Emperor. The imperial dignity, in its ideal character as the appointed defender and advocate of the universal Church, existed no longer. A monarch reigning over Catholic and Protestant alike was an inferior representative of unity and authority, and a poor copy of Charlemagne. ”

“ Little had France to hope from the boy who was now called on to fill the throne. Charles VI. was not twelve years old, a light-wined, handsome boy, under the guardianship of the royal Dukes his uncles, who had no principles except that of their own interest to guide them in bringing up the King and ruling the people. Before Charles VI. had reached years of discretion, he was involved by the French nobles in war against the Flemish cities, which, under guidance of the great Philip van Arteveldt, had overthrown the authority of the Count of Flanders. ”

“ The historian must give him a quite unmerited and accidental prominence side by side with such marked individualities as Alexander and Charlemagne and Frederick II. This was the Emperor Charles V. For a time he had an air of being the greatest monarch in Europe since Charlemagne. Both he and his illusory greatness were the results of the matrimonial statecraft{v2-200} of his grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian I (born 1459, died 1519) .
Some families have fought, others have intrigued their way to world power; the Habsburgs married their way. ”

“ It would seem that Charles V., harassed as he was with the intrigues and difficulties of his own empire, already revolving the design which he put in practice later, of retiring from the world, had himself selected for his first representative in the new country a man whom he knew personally to be equal to the task, one not only of noble blood, but honorable character. ”

“ While Spain, agitated by a general discontent, was ready for rebellion, a spacious field was opened to the ambition of her monarch. The death of the Emperor Maximilian [1519] had left vacant the imperial throne of Germany. The Kings of Spain, of France, and of England, offered themselves as candidates for this high dignity," and Charles was chosen, entering now upon his great career as the renowned Emperor, Charles V. See GERMANY: A. D. 1519. "Charles received the news of his election to the imperial throne with the joy that was natural to a young and aspiring mind. ”

“ He missed that opportunity, and the mediæval Empire, though it survived that extraordinary calamity, yet continued ramshackle, feeble, and mediævally glorious until long past the Protestant Reformation. Being Roman, of course it was anti-Lutheran, and devoted its lumbering energies to the destruction of the Protestants. No Holy Roman Emperor ever rivalled the greatness of Charles V, in whose frame shone all the romance and glamour of centuries. How vast was his power is shown when we consider that he ruled over the Netherlands, Burgundy, Spain, Austria, much of what is now Germany, and Italy ”

“ Seldom has a nation had better cause to repent a fit of enthusiasm than Germany had when it realised the effects of the election of Charles V. Of his rivals Francis I would no doubt have made a worse Emperor, but the choice of Ferdinand-a suggestion made by Margaret of Savoy and peremptorily rejected by Charles himself-or of Frederick of Saxony, would probably have been attended with less disastrous consequences to the German national cause. In personal tastes and sympathies, in the aims he pursued within his German kingdom, and in his foreign policy Charles V was an alien ”

“ But great events, which were to shape the history of Europe for centuries to come, were convulsing Germany in those middle years of the sixteenth century. And the amount of misery suffered by the hod–men and day–labourers in this history–building business, was in proportion to the greatness of the work in hand. That "great man" Charles V. was a notable provider of "fine subjects" for history. Poor, gouty, narrow–minded specimen of humanity as he was, rising up early, and late taking rest, at his weary kingcraft and history–making, with a very unsound mind in a scarcely sounder body ”