The Emperor Charles V

Martyn Rady

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317880813
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Charles V was elected Holy Roman Emperor and, until his death in 1558, he was to play a central role on the European political stage. The book is a clear introduction to the often confusing train of events in the first half of the sixteenth century. It looks at Charles's response to the Protestant Reformation in Germany; his efforts to retain the Netherlands under Habsburg control; his struggle with France for domination over Italy; and his attempts to check the expansion of Ottoman power in the Mediterranean.

Part One: The Background

1 The Burgundian Inheritance

Charles was born in the Flemish town of Ghent on 24 February 1500. His father was the Habsburg Archduke Philip the Handsome, ruler of the Netherlands and son of the Emperor Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy. Charles's mother was Juana, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain and heiress to the monarchies of Aragon and Castile. From his illustrious parents, though, the young prince received little attention. During the earliest years of Charles's life, both were abroad surveying their future Spanish realms. It was there in 1503 that Philip and Juana's second son, Ferdinand, was born, to be subsequently brought up in Castile as a stranger to his brother. In 1506, after the death of Isabella, and just as he and Juana had assumed control of the Queen's inheritance, Philip died. This unexpected tragedy drove the already melancholic Juana to insanity. Refusing to desert her husband's tomb, Juana retreated into fitful delusion in the castle of Tordesillas in Castile. Thus effectively orphaned, Charles at the age of six became titular ruler of the Netherlands under the regency of his aunt, Margaret.

Surrounded by gifted tutors, Charles began his formal and political education in the palace of Malines. For the former, he cared little, regarding his studies as unnecessarily academic; he assumed a dutiful pose in the latter, uncomplainingly signing love-letters to the princess Mary Tudor when the interests of international diplomacy so demanded. Above all else, Charles enjoyed his sledge, fashioned in the form of a ship, and later on the more adult pursuits of the tourney and the hunt. In both these last activities Charles excelled.

Yet for all this, Charles remained a lonely boy. Inarticulate and shy, he would always eat alone, a habit which persisted into later life. Furthermore, despite his skill in horsemanship and mock-battles, Charles's appearance made him look rather less than princely. He was pale; his eyes seemed to pop out; his jaw was large to the point of deformity. Even well-disposed observers could not fail to remark on these blemishes; less charitable ones diagnosed mental retardation. However they interpreted his outward appearance, though, contemporaries were agreed that the young prince was a model of religious devotion. The habit of attendance at mass and frequent confession, learnt at this time, remained with Charles all his life: so much so that one historian has felt justified to seek in the identity of his confessors the inspiration for Charles's later actions (15).

Charles's inheritance in the Netherlands was an unusual one. Originally these lands had been acquired, as an annex almost, by his forebears, the Valois Dukes of Burgundy (42). But in 1477, the last of these, Charles the Bold, was defeated and killed by the Swiss. In the confusion which attended the succession of Charles's daughter, Mary, King Louis XI of France seized ancestral Burgundy, which was the heart of the dead Duke's territories. What was left of his lands fell to the Habsburgs by virtue of Mary's speedy marriage to Maximilian, son and heir of the Emperor Frederick III. Mary, Maximilian, their son Philip, and finally Charles himself thus came to possess only a rump. Constantly impressed on the young prince's mind was the obligation enjoined on him by the past to reconquer from France the lost family possessions [doc. 1].

The lands remaining to the 'Duchy of Burgundy' comprised no recognisable state. Instead, there was a loose confederation of provinces, split in two by the interposing bishopric of Liege. Moreover, while Hainaut and Luxembourg were held to be parts of the Holy Roman Empire, homage was owed to the king of France for Flanders and Artois. As Henri Pirenne has neatly put it, the Netherlands was at this time little more than 'a state made up of the frontier provinces of two kingdoms' (37). Far to the south, and cut off from Luxembourg by the Duchy of Lorraine, lay an additional part of Charles's Burgundian inheritance, Franche-Comté. Unsurprisingly, in the shadow of division and defeat, separatism was the dominant political force rather than princely centralisation. Priding themselves on their local liberties and freedoms, the constituent provinces of the Netherlands maintained a long tradition of independence. Each had its own parliament, laws and administration headed by a council and a governor called a stadholder. The towns, likewise, sheltered behind their charters and right to self-government. As evidence of this division Charles held as ruler of the Netherlands no one single title to give expression to the idea of political unity. Instead, he was simply Duke of Brabant, Limburg and Luxembourg; Count of Flanders, Artois, Hainaut, Holland, Zeeland, Namur and Zutphen; and Lord of Friesland.

If the Netherlands seems at this time strangely out of joint with the developing Renaissance monarchies of the rest of Europe, it was at the forefront in its commercial and industrial life. Building their fortunes on the cloth industry and North Sea herring fishing, and as entrepôts for trade, the cities of this region were among the most substantial in Europe. The population of Antwerp touched 50,000; Bruges and Ghent 30,000 apiece. Altogether, about twenty towns had a population of 10,000 or more; by contrast, England had only three. Foreign visitors quickly noticed the variety of commodities, range of business and sheer wealth exuding from these nascent centres of capitalist enterprise (32).

Despite the vigour of its urban life, political power rested less with the merchant oligarchs than with the nobles. Great tracts of land lay in their hands, particularly in the south (44). While the townsmen enjoyed a preponderant role within the provincial assemblies, the nobility dominated the great offices of state, both in the localities and in the central government. With the nobility, the policy of the Burgundian dukes and their successors was one of partnership rather than opposition. Patronage, pensions and military commands were given to them; their presence at the court was encouraged. More particularly, in the chivalric Order of the Golden Fleece (founded in 1430), the ruler and his mightiest noble subjects established a forum within which to resolve discords and identify their mutual advantage. In the shared ethos of knight-errantry and valorous endeavour, a psychological and moral unity was forged which transcended political barriers.

Throughout Charles's minority, the leading nobles acted as a powerful brake on the Regent Margaret. In particular, they opposed her policy of extending Habsburg interests abroad, even at the expense of French wrath. Culturally inclined towards France anyway, the nobles calculated that in any confrontation with their powerful neighbour to the south-west, they and their lands would be the worse off. Eventually, in a palace coup in 1514, the nobles' foremost representative, William Chièvres de Croy, effected the removal of Margaret from the centre of power by abolishing the regency. Early the next year, Charles was declared of age. The young prince, so Chièvres and his allies reasoned, would prove a pliant instrument.

Chièvres's triumph was short-lived. Belatedly supporting his daughter, the Emperor Maximilian conspired with Chièvres's rivals at court to put an end to his 'excessive presumption and pride'. Meanwhile, Margaret continued to ply family foreign policy without reference to Chièvres and so prepared the way for Charles's acquisition of the crowns of Spain. Outmanoeuvred, and with Margaret's own influence persisting within the courts of Europe, Chièvres was obliged to come to terms with the former regent. Henceforward, a joint policy of peace with France and of promoting Charles's accession to the Spanish thrones satisfied the interests of both the House of Habsburg and the francophile nobility headed by Chièvres (27, 33).

2 The Habsburgs and Spain

The House of Habsburg had emerged as a major power in central Europe with the family's acquisition of the Duchy of Austria in 1278. Over the succeeding century-and-a-half, as the Wittelsbach and Luxemburg families fought for the imperial throne, the Habsburgs engaged in the less glamorous task of extending and building up their newly-acquired Austrian possessions. In 1438, with the extinction of the Luxemburg family, a Habsburg was elected Holy Roman Emperor. Henceforward, until 1806, the imperial title lay in Habsburg hands. Under the Habsburg Frederick III (1440—93) and his son and co-ruler, Maximilian (1486-1519), the dignity of emperor was made to lend a quasi-mystical character to what became known as the 'House of Austria'. The House was portrayed as preordained by God to hold sway not just in Germany but in all of Christendom, AEIOU was the cabbalistic acronym devised by Frederick to give expression to this purpose: Alles Erdreich Ist Österreich Untertan (The whole world is subject to Austria). The chosen instrument by which the Habsburgs sought to realise their sublime ambition was not warfare with but marriage into the ruling dynasties of Europe (88). It was by this method that Burgundy was acquired in 1477 and, fifty years later, Hungary and Bohemia. By the same route, and by considerable good fortune, Charles himself was led to the kingdoms of Spain.

When Maximilian's son, the Archduke Philip, married Juana of Castile in 1496, his bride was only fourth in line to the kingdoms of Spain. The untimely death of a brother, sister and nephew meant that in 1504, when Queen Isabella died, it was Juana and her husband, Philip, who became the new rulers of Castile. Two years later, with Philip dead and Juana mentally unfit, their son Charles succeeded to the throne. Charles's grandfather, Ferdinand of Aragon, held the reins of power in Castile as governor until the young prince came of age (59.)

Even though Charles was the recognised heir to Castile, the other half of Spain, Aragon, almost eluded him. In 1505 King Ferdinand remarried. His new wife, Germaine de Foix, gave birth to a son in 1509. The boy lived only a few hours. Had he survived, or had a second child been produced from the marriage, then Aragon would have been theirs. And, since Ferdinand held such influence in Castile, this kingdom also might have been wrenched away for the new heir. But no such misfortune overtook the Habsburgs. Nor, thanks to the diplomacy of Charles's aunt Margaret, did anything come of Ferdinand's personal preference for Charles's younger brother, the namesake who had been raised in Spain.

On the news of Ferdinand's death in January 1516, Charles was immediately proclaimed in Brussels as King of Castile and Aragon and co-ruler with his mother (throughout her long life the unhappy Juana remained Queen in title). Seeing in the Spanish kingdoms an opportunity for new offices and rewards, the nobility of the Netherlands embraced Charles's accession enthusiastically and in the 1516 meeting of the Golden Fleece readily agreed to admit Spaniards to their number. The opinion in the courts of Europe that Charles's acquisition of Castile and Aragon would almost certainly upset the balance of international politics and result in a war with France, seems to have disturbed neither the Dutch nobility nor the influential Chièvres de Croy. Any misgivings these may have had were dispelled by the treaty of friendship between the Netherlands and France which was concluded that year by Chièvres at Noyon.

With a regency council appointed to govern the Netherlands in his absence, Charles embarked for Spain in September 1517 to take formal possession of his new kingdoms. After a sea voyage of ten days, he landed on the rugged coast of the Asturias. Bullfights, jousts and festive processions attended his journey inland.

Charles's Spanish inheritance extended beyond the Iberian peninsula to the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples and, westwards, to the New World. But, despite its burgeoning Mediterranean and Atlantic empires, Spain was troubled internally. In their long reigns, Charles's grandparents had imposed only the veneer of order and stability on Castile and not even that on Aragon, Certainly, Ferdinand and Isabella had reorganised the Castilian administration and established departments of state, headed by councils, to oversee their domains. They had set up rural police forces (the hermandades), imposed their own governors or corregidores on the towns, and brought under their control the wealthy military orders of Castile. But these achievements had been secured at the cost of granting major concessions to the class of nobility which had for so long usurped the sovereignty of Spain's rulers. In return for their co-operation, the nobility and aristocracy were confirmed in their possessions and seigneurial rights; their inheritances were secured by new laws of entail; their private armies were allowed to expand. A blind eye was turned when nobles seized town lands, impeded merchants and set up their own fairs in competition with municipal markets. By the last years of Ferdinand's reign, the nobles had even won appointment as corregidores and forced an entry into town councils (57). Thus, at the very time when the discovery of the Americas was offering new opportunities for commercial expansion, aristocratic power and privilege were extended even at the expense of Spain's urban middle class.

Beset with internal rivalries and divided one from another by competing economic interests, the towns found it hard to provide a united front against noble encroachments on their lands, government and jurisdiction. Nevertheless, two factors in particular facilitated their co-operation. Firstly, by their membership of the Holy Brotherhood, the Castilian peace-keeping militia, the towns had acquired a wider awareness of their common problems and what may loosely be called a 'national outlook'. Secondly, in the institution of the Cortes or parliament of Castile, the foremost towns of the realm regularly met together with the monarch to discuss legislation and give their consent to the raising of royal subsidies. In theory, meetings of the Cortes should have included representatives of the clergy and nobility. But since the nobles and clergy paid no taxes, and the monarchs of Castile summoned the Cortes mainly to have these voted, attendance at the Castilian parliament became largely confined to members of the townsfolk.

It was from the Castilian Cortes which Charles met tor the first time at Valladolid in early 1518 that the earliest indications of disaffection were brought to the attention of the new monarch. Already, Charles had angered opinion by a perceived delay in visiting Spain, by his appointment of Burgundians to high office in Castile, and by the diversion of Spanish revenues to the Netherlands. The Castilian Cortes, while prepared to vote the subsidy requested by Charles, expressed itself plainly: 'In fact the King is our paid master and for that reason his subjects share with him part of their profits and benefits . . .' (9). The representatives adumbrated a favourite theme of Castilian political theory: the reciprocation of duties which marked the contractual bond between the monarch and his subjects. In return for cash, they asked Charles to dismiss his Burgundians, learn Castilian, attend to his people's grievances, and stay in Spain.

Ill-advised by Chièvres de Croy, who accompanied Charles throughout his sojourn, the new King paid little heed to the Cortes's advice and remonstrations. Charles continued to dispense offices to his Burgundian followers, veiling this disregard for Castilian wishes with certificates of naturalisation (60). Most notoriously, the wealthiest see in Spain, the archbishopric of Toledo, was handed over to Chièvres's teenage nephew. Moreover, it seemed to Castilians that no sooner had Charles secured money from them than he was off to Aragon to raise further revenues there. Their final disappointment came in early 1519. On receiving the news that his grandfather, Maximilian, had died in January, Charles immediately began negotiations for his own succession to the imperial throne and gave every indication that he planned shortly to quit Spain for the beckoning lands of Germany.

3 The Prospect of Germany

The outstanding political feature of the Holy Roman Empire was the tremendous accumulation of power in the hands of princes. Throughout the later middle ages, the leading princely families of the Empire had been engaged in the task of territorial consolidation. Out of a medley of scattered estates, ancestral lands and ancient rights, they had welded together 'mini-kingdoms' of their own. By swapping distant properties for others closer, by conquering or marrying into neighbouring families, and by establishing the principle of primogeniture (whereby all property was passed down to the eldest son), the princes had built up for themselves geographically compact units of government. In these emergent states, the old feudal network of interlocking rights and obligations, shared equally by lord and vassal, was gradually dissolved. In its place came a new arrangement which recognised only the status of ruler and subject. The feudal lordship thus gave way to the modern principality (94).

A crucial component in the development of the greater territorial states was administrative reform and the centralisation of financial and judicial institutions. In each state, a permanent council was established to advise the prince and execute policy; tax exemptions were eroded and the collection of revenues improved; prerogative rights were fully exploited to swell further the prince's income. In the exercise of justice, nobles and clergy were now obliged to sue before the prince's own judges and not present cases outside his jurisdiction. Local seigneurial justice, hitherto virtually autonomous, was tied to the central courts of the state by new appeal procedures. In a number of places also, the princes turned to their provincial parliaments to assist in the business of state government and revenue-raising. Dynastic squabbles which might through civil war or partition have endangered the process of territorial consolidation were settled peacefully by the estates (93).

Yet the partnership of prince and estates in some areas should not obscure the tensions imposed by state-building. Individual and collective liberties had to be reduced if all those living within the principality's confines were to be confirmed as the prince's subjects and brought under his jurisdiction. It was for this reason that the independent existence of the great imperial towns was gradually eroded and their elected councils either reduced to puppet instruments or abolished altogether (92). Ecclesiastical privileges were likewise remov...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES
• GENEALOGY
• Part One: The Background
• Part Two: The Imperial Election (1519)
• Part Three: Consolidation
• Part Four: Italy and the Lutherans
• Part Five: The Standard-bearer
• Part Six: War in Germany
• Part Seven: Succession and Abdication
• Part Eight: Assessment — Charles and his Biographers
• Part Nine: Documents
• CHRONOLOGY
• MAPS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX