Charles V (1500 - 1558) was Holy Roman Emperor from 1519 to 1556 and, as Charles I, king of Spain from 1516. [1] Through inheritance he came to rule the Burgundian Netherlands, the Spanish kingdoms with their expanding American possessions, the Austrian Habsburg lands, and large parts of Italy, an accumulation of territories without precedent in Europe since Charlemagne. [2] His reign was dominated by the Protestant Reformation, recurring war with France, and the Ottoman advance, and ended with his abdication and retirement to the monastery of Yuste.
Inheritance and accession
Charles was born on 24 February 1500 in Ghent, in the Burgundian Netherlands, the son of Philip the Handsome of Habsburg and Joanna of Castile. [1] Four inheritances converged on him: the Low Countries from his father in 1506, the crowns of Castile and Aragon from his maternal grandparents Ferdinand and Isabella in 1516, and the Austrian Habsburg lands from his paternal grandfather Maximilian I in 1519.
In 1519 the imperial electors chose him as Holy Roman Emperor, a contest decided partly by enormous loans from the Fugger banking house. [2] His arrival in Spain as a Flemish-speaking outsider provoked the Revolt of the Comuneros in Castile, which he suppressed by 1521.
The Reformation
At the Diet of Worms in 1521 Charles summoned Martin Luther to recant. Luther refused, and the emperor issued the Edict of Worms placing him under imperial ban. [3] Charles remained committed to the unity of Latin Christendom, but his repeated wars elsewhere left him unable to enforce the ban across the empire, and Lutheranism spread among German princes and cities.
Military victory over the Protestant Schmalkaldic League at Mühlberg in 1547 did not produce a lasting settlement. A renewed princely revolt forced him to negotiate, and in 1555 the Peace of Augsburg, concluded on his behalf by his brother Ferdinand, allowed each German prince to determine whether his territory would be Lutheran or Catholic. [4]
Wars and empire
Charles fought a long rivalry with Francis I of France over Italy and Burgundy. Imperial forces captured Francis at Pavia in 1525; two years later unpaid imperial troops sacked Rome. [2] In the east and the Mediterranean he confronted the Ottoman Empire under Suleiman the Magnificent, whose forces besieged Vienna in 1529, while Charles led an expedition that took Tunis in 1535 and a costly failure at Algiers in 1541.
Under his rule Spanish expeditions conquered the Aztec and Inca states and established viceroyalties in Mexico and Peru, and American silver increasingly financed his campaigns. [1] Debate over the treatment of indigenous peoples led him to promulgate the New Laws of 1542 restricting the encomienda system, and to convene the Valladolid debate on the question later in his reign.
Abdication and death
Exhausted by decades of travel, war, and gout, Charles divided his inheritance rather than passing it whole. Between 1555 and 1556 he ceded the Netherlands and the Spanish kingdoms with their overseas empire to his son Philip II, and the imperial title to his brother Ferdinand I. [1]
He withdrew to the Hieronymite monastery of Yuste in Extremadura, where he died on 21 September 1558. [2] The division he made split the Habsburg dynasty into Spanish and Austrian branches, a separation that shaped European politics for the following two centuries.
