The New International Encyclopædia/Charles V. (emperor)

​CHARLES V. (1500–58). Holy Roman Emperor, and, under the title of Charles I., King of Spain. He was born at Ghent, February 24, 1500, and was the eldest son of Philip, Archduke of Austria, and of Joanna, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Philip’s parents were the Emperor Maximilian and Mary, daughter and heiress of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. On the death of his father in 1506, Charles, at the age of six, inherited the Burgundian realm, consisting in the main of the rich and populous provinces of the Netherlands, then at the height of their prosperity. On the death of his grandfather, Ferdinand, in 1516, he became King of Spain, as his mother, Joanna, was of disordered intellect and incapable of reigning. To the Spanish Crown belonged Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia; the Spaniards were just entering upon their great career of conquest in the New World. Charles was not very favorably received by the Spanish nobles, who were doubtful of his rights and jealous of the followers whom he brought from Flanders, where he had been educated. The repression of the liberties of the people, which had already gone far under his grandfather, and which his son was to reduce to a system, continued unchecked under Charles, in spite of the appeals of the Cortes. All the abilities of his famous minister, Cardinal Ximenes, were requisite to prevent an open rupture. In the early part of his reign (1520) the towns of Castile were driven to revolt for the maintenance of their ancient liberties. It was with difficulty that the insurrection was put down (1521). (See Padilla, Juan de.) On the death of his grandfather, Maximilian, in 1519, Charles conjointly with his younger brother, Ferdinand, succeeded to the possession of the hereditary dominions of the House of Hapsburg (House of Austria). On June 28, 1519, he was raised to the imperial throne of Germany by the choice of the electors, the rival candidates being Francis I. of France and Henry VIII. of England, and was crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, October 23, 1520. Owing to the jealousy of his Spanish connections, he was required to sign an election agreement (Wahlkapitulation) guaranteeing certain rights to the German nation, a practice followed by his successors in the imperial office. Charles was now by far the most powerful sovereign in Christendom. In his earlier years he had been frivolous and dissolute, but he now became mindful of the duties and dignity of his high position. He ascended the imperial throne at a time when Germany was in a state of unprecedented agitation, because of the movement set on foot by Luther (q.v.). To restore tranquillity, a great diet was held at Worms in 1521, before which Luther made the memorable defense of his doctrines. Just at this moment the great struggle between France and Spain broke out afresh, Francis I. taking up arms against his rival, whose attention was drawn away from the internal affairs of Germany. Thus, instead of vigorously assailing the Protestant movement when it might still have been in his power to quell it, Charles, who was not alive to its significance, permitted it to take deep root.

The war between Charles and Francis, in which the former had Henry VIII. of England as an ally, and was strengthened by the defection of the powerful Charles of Bourbon (q.v.), proved disastrous to France. The French were swept out of Lombardy, and in an attempt to regain possession of it, Francis was defeated before the walls of Pavia, February 24, 1525, and taken prisoner. He was forced to sign a humiliating treaty at Madrid, January, 1526; but hardly had he been set at liberty, when he prepared to renew the struggle, with Henry VIII. now on his side and with the support of Pope Clement VII., of the House of Medici, who, alarmed at the victories of Charles, was anxious to rid Italy of the Imperialists, and induced some of the Italian States to join him. The Emperor’s forces, under Frundsberg and Charles of Bourbon, took Rome itself by storm (1527), plundered it, and made the Pope a prisoner. Charles pretended great regret, went into mourning with all his Court, and caused prayers to be said for the Pope’s liberation, while, by his own direction, the Pope was kept for seven months a captive. The Peace of Cambrai, between Charles and Francis, in 1529, deprived France of Lombardy, for the possession of which she had fought so furiously. In 1530 Clement VII., into whose scheme for the restoration of the Medici in Florence Charles had entered, crowned the victorious monarch at Bologna as King of Lombardy and Emperor of the Romans (the last coronation of a German Emperor by the Pope). Simultaneously with these events, a great drama was being enacted in the basin of the Danube, which brought a still greater concentration of power in the hands of the Hapsburg dynasty. In 1526 the Ottoman Sultan, Solyman the Magnificent, laid low the power of Hungary in the battle of Mohács. The Hungarian monarch, Louis II., who was also King of Bohemia, did not survive the defeat, and Ferdinand of Hapsburg, his brother-in-law, was chosen his successor in Bohemia, while some of the nobles in Hungary also conferred upon him the royal crown. Thus were laid the foundations of the modern Hapsburg monarchy of Austria-Hungary. Previous to this, in 1521–22, Charles had relinquished to Ferdinand the sole sovereignty over the principal portion of the old hereditary Austrian dominions. Having made peace with his formidable rival, Charles now thought to put an end to the religious differences in Germany, and to repel the Turks, who had overrun Hungary and laid siege to Vienna. But the diet at Augsburg, in 1530, proved how vain was the hope of restoring the former state of things in Germany; and when the Emperor refused to recognize the confession of the Protestants (see Augsburg Confession), they refused

​to help him against the Turks. In 1531 the Protestant princes formed the League of Schmalkald (q.v.), and allied themselves with France and England for their own protection. This, and the continued assaults of the Turks, compelled the Emperor to yield in some measure to the demands of the Protestants, and to conclude the Peace of Nuremberg (1532). In 1535 Charles undertook an expedition from Spain against the pirate Barbarossa, who had established himself in Tunis, and whose vessels did great injury to the commerce of Spain and Italy. In this expedition he was completely successful, and set free no fewer than 22,000 Christians, who had been held as slaves. War again broke out with France. An armistice for ten years was concluded at Nice in 1538, which left the bulk of the dominions of the despoiled Duke of Savoy in the hands of Francis. Charles visited Paris, where he was magnificently entertained. In 1540 the proud city of Ghent, the birthplace of the Emperor, received a terrible chastisement at his hands for daring to resist his mandates. In 1541 Charles undertook an expedition against Algiers, but returned discomfited. In 1542–44 Charles was engaged in a fresh war with France, Henry VIII. being once more his ally. It was terminated by the Treaty of Crespy, advantageous to the Emperor. The suspension of the struggle with France left the Emperor at liberty to turn his arms against the Protestants of Germany, at whose head were Philip the Magnanimous, Landgrave of Hesse, and John Frederick, Elector of Saxony. Charles received the support of the ambitious Protestant prince, Maurice, Duke of Saxony (of the Albertine line). The victory of Mühlberg, April 24, 1547, placed the Protestants at the mercy of Charles, who deprived John Frederick of his territories. In 1548 the Augsburg Interim was published, fixing the degree of religious toleration to be accorded in Germany pending the decision of the Council of Trent, which had been opened in 1545. In 1551 Magdeburg, a great stronghold of Protestantism, succumbed to the arms of Maurice of Saxony. But this prince himself now became thoroughly alarmed at the arbitrary manner in which the Emperor was proceeding to carry out his political aims, and suddenly turned his arms against him, allying himself with Henry II. of France. Charles was compelled to flee before the arms of the Protestants, and in 1552, through his brother Ferdinand, he concluded with them the Peace of Passau, by which the Lutheran States were allowed the exercise of their religion. A more definite settlement was made, in the Peace of Augsburg, in 1555. In the meanwhile Henry II. seized the three bishoprics of Toul, Metz, and Verdun (1552), and an attempt of the Emperor to reconquer Metz failed miserably. Weary of the constant struggles and heavy responsibilities of his ill-assorted realms, Charles now declared his resolution to seek repose and devote the remainder of his days to God. In 1555–56 he resigned the Netherlands and Spain to his son Philip, and abdicated the imperial crown in favor of his brother Ferdinand, and retired to the Monastery of Yuste, in Estremadura. At Yuste Charles spent two years, partly in mechanical pursuits, partly in religious exercises, which are said to have assumed a character of the most rigid asceticism, and partly in active participation in politics. He died September 21, 1558. By his wife, Isabella, daughter of King Emmanuel of Portugal, he had one son, his successor, Philip II. of Spain, and two daughters. Charles V. was a prince of remarkable executive powers. He showed a shrewd and sometimes statesmanlike ability in meeting the difficult problems of his reign; but this gave way more and more to the religious temperament inherited from the Spanish side of his house. While he spared his Protestant subjects in Germany for political reasons, he persecuted heresy unsparingly in Spain, where policy imposed upon him no restraint. As a general he ranks high. In temperament and disposition he was cold, phlegmatic, stoical, and devoid of chivalry.

Consult: W. Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles V., with an account of the Emperor’s life after his abdication by Prescott (Philadelphia, 1864–67); Baumgarten, Geschichte Karls V. (Stuttgart, 1885–92); Lanz, Korrespondenz des Kaisers Karl V. (Leipzig, 1844–46); Sandoval, Historia de la vida y hechos del Emperador Carlos V. (Valladolid, 1604); Sepulœda, De Rebus Gestis Caroli V. (Madrid, 1780); Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (Leipzig, 1894).