Empire of Charles V

The imperial name prevailed due to the politico-religious primacy held by the Holy Roman Empire among European monarchies since the Middle Ages, which Charles V intended to preserve as part of his (ultimately failed) project to unite Christendom under his leadership.

He had access to vast resources consisting of flows of silver from the Americas to Spain, loans received from German and Italian bankers, and financial revenues of his states, especially the rich Low Countries; he used this wealth to wage war in Europe, but failed to contain religious divisions and French and Ottoman hostility, while his regime became more and more indebted and suffered from inflation.

The political marriage of Philip and Joanna was first conceived in a letter sent by Maximilian to Ferdinand in order to seal an Austro-Spanish alliance, established as part of the League of Venice directed against the Kingdom of France during the Italian Wars.

Although both John and Isabella died in 1498, the Catholic Monarchs desired to keep the Spanish kingdoms in Iberian hands and designated their Portuguese grandson Miguel da Paz as heir presumptive of Spain by naming him prince of Asturias.

Ferdinand took control of all the Spanish kingdoms, under the pretext of protecting Charles's rights, which in reality he wanted to elude, but his new marriage with Germaine de Foix failed to produce a surviving Trastámara heir to the throne.

The basis of Charles's beliefs was formed in this environment, including his Burgundian chivalric culture and the desire of Christian unity to fight the infidel in the tradition of medieval figures born in the Low Countries such as Charlemagne and Godfrey of Bouillon, whose biographies he often read.

In 1519, he agreed that he would learn to speak Spanish, would cease to appoint foreigners to the high offices of Spain, was prohibited from taking more than a fifth (Quinto Real) of the precious metals coming from the Americas, and would respect the rights of his mother Joanna as queen and co-monarch.

[32] Charles put forward his candidacy to the seven prince-electors (Palatinate, Saxony, Brandenburg, Mainz, Trier, Cologne, and Bohemia) in order to succeed his grandfather as Holy Roman Emperor, a title held by the Habsburg archdukes of Austria since 1440.

Finally, Charles advised the princes against electing a foreign king and declared himself a "German by blood and stock" on the ground that Austria, the home of his dynasty, and the Low Countries, where he was born, were then considered part of Germany.

The Italian statesman Mercurino di Gattinara, a Piedmontese counselor of Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy, known for his appreciation of Dante Alighieri's political treatise De Monarchia, reproposed the medieval idea and wrote to the Emperor: "Sire, God has been very merciful to you: he has raised you above all the kings and princes of Christendom to a power such as no sovereign has enjoyed since your ancestor Charles the Great.

Seated on the throne of Charlemagne while holding the Imperial regalia, namely the globus cruciger in his right hand and the Carolingian sceptre in his left, he promised to defend and expand the Empire, administer justice, observe the Roman Catholic faith, and become the protector of the Church (Defensor Ecclesiae).

"[45] Precious metals and treasures coming from the colonies were minted into coins in Spain, incidentally contributing to a period of inflation known as the "Spanish price revolution", and then transferred to the financial centres of the Low Countries in order to repay Charles's debts contracted with the local agencies of German and Italian bankers.

Those resources sustained the wars of the Holy Roman Empire and made the fortunes of Genoa and Augsburg (seat of the most important banks of the time), of Seville's Casa de la Moneda, and of the Flemish port city of Antwerp, which became the centre of the entire international economy.

Influenced by the Papal legate Girolamo Aleandro, Charles V outlawed Luther and issued the Edict of Worms (26 May 1521), making a declaration reflective not only of his thought on the matter but of his world view in general: "You know that my ancestors were the most Christian Emperors of the great nation of Germany, the Catholic kings of Spain, the archdukes of Austria, and the dukes of Burgundy, who all were, until death, faithful sons of the Roman Church...I am therefore resolved to maintain everything which these my forebears have established to the present…and to settle this matter I will use all my dominions and possessions, my friends, my body, my blood, my life, and my soul.

Renaissance Italy was described by Mercurino di Gattinara as "the principal foundation of empire" and both Francis I and Charles V, who were considered the most powerful European monarchs of the time, aspired to primacy in the rich peninsula.

He successfully defended Flanders and won a battle at Tournai, while the Papal-Imperial army led by Prospero Colonna drove the French out of Milan, installed Francesco II Sforza to the ducal throne, and restored the provinces of Parma and Piacenza to the Papal States.

Thus, Spanish subjects were reconciled with Charles V. On the other hand, the price of reconciliation effectively consisted in accepting that a sizeable part of Spain's American resources was being used to sustain a foreign policy, that of the Holy Roman Empire, perceived to be in contrast to the country's interest by many Spaniards.

A regency council was also established in Germany, set up in the context of the imperial government, but proved ineffective in containing two major rebellions caused by the spread of Lutheranism: the Knights' War of 1522–1523 and the peasants' revolt led by Thomas Muntzer in 1524–1525.

On 24 February 1525, Charles's twenty-fifth birthday, an Imperial army of pike and shot regiments, consisting primarily of 12,000 Germans (Landsknechts) and 5,000 Spaniards (Tercios), arrived in Lombardy and destroyed the French cavalry at the Battle of Pavia.

[62] Charles V and some of his principal counselors were informed of the victorious Battle of Pavia by Lannoy's couriers during a meeting of the Imperial court held at the Royal Alcazar of Madrid, where the Emperor was residing in preparation for his Spanish marriage with Isabella of Portugal.

An Imperial army formed primarily by German landsknechts led by Georg Frundsberg and Charles III, Duke of Bourbon defeated the League's forces commanded by Giovanni dalle Bande Nere in Tuscany, causing the end of Medici rule in Florence and the restoration of a Florentine Republic, and marched on Rome.

At the Diet of Augsburg (1530), the greatest Imperial assembly organized in Germany during the 16th century, Charles V recalled his recent success in pacifying Spain and Italy, rejected the Augsburg confession proposed by Luther's assistant Philip Melanchthon to recognize and regulate the Reformers' beliefs, and proclaimed his supreme authority in Christendom: "We have been hearing about the dispute over Our holy Christian faith, which in Our absence has spread and rooted itself in many dangerous sects that give rise to no little confusion and schism in Our common German nation...And so, having issued several laws for keeping the subjects of Our Spanish kingdom united and peaceful during Our absence, and in view of Our special love for and inclination to the German Nation and the Holy Roman Empire… We were able, praise be to God, to restore peace and order to Italy… and now, As Roman emperor and supreme steward of Christendom, it pertains to Our Imperial office to confess Our obligation to guard, protect, and maintain the holy Christian faith as it has been preserved until now.

The problem of two emperors (Zweikaiserproblem) overlapped with the emerging Turkish threat (Turkengefahr): in 1526, Louis II, king of Hungary and Bohemia was defeated and killed at the Battle of Mohács by an army of Ottoman Turks; the event "sent a wave of terror over Europe".

Informed of the capture of Inca Emperor Atahualpa by Francisco Pizarro at the Battle of Cajamarca (1532), Charles V ratified the beginning of the Spanish conquest of Peru and ordered the collection of resources for a Mediterranean enterprise in Ottoman Africa.

He was replaced (1534) by Pope Paul III, who opted to remain neutral in the rivalry between Charles V and Francis I, displeasing both monarchs, in order to facilitate a Catholic alliance against the Ottoman Turks and the Protestants (Lutherans in Germany and Calvinists in France).

[81] Meanwhile, due to difficulties encountered by the Pope in organizing a general council to avoid a schism in the Church, the Emperor decided to summon a German religious meeting and presided over the Colloquy of Regensburg (1541) between Catholics and Lutherans.

This event, combined with the unification of the Low Countries, solemnly declared by the Emperor in Brussels, and with the discovery of the largest American silver mines in Potosí by the Spaniards, meant that Charles V was at the zenith of his power.

[89] During the ceremony, the gout-afflicted Emperor Charles V leaned on the shoulder of his advisor William the Silent and, crying, pronounced his resignation speech: "When I was nineteen, upon my grandfather's death, I undertook to be a candidate for the Imperial crown, not to increase my possessions but rather to engage myself more vigorously in working for the welfare of Germany and my other realms…and in the hopes of thereby bringing peace among the Christian peoples and uniting their fighting forces for the defense of the Catholic faith against the Turks...I had almost reached my goal, when the attack by the French king and some German princes called me once more to arms.

Against my enemies I accomplished what I could, but success in war lies in the hands of God, Who gives victory or takes it away, as He pleases…I must for my part confess that I have often misled myself, either from youthful inexperience, from the pride of mature years, or from some other weakness of human nature.

[97] In his last public speech, Charles V described his life as "one long journey" and recalled that he travelled ten times to the Low Countries, nine to Germany,[98] seven to Spain,[99] seven to Italy,[100] four to France, two to England, and two to North Africa.