Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor

Charles V 24 February 1500 – 21 September 1558 was Holy Roman Emperor as well as Archduke of Austria from 1519 to 1556, King of Spain Castile in addition to Aragon from 1516 to 1556, and Lord of the Netherlands as titular Duke of Burgundy from 1506 to 1555. As he was head of the rising House of Habsburg during the first half of the 16th century, his dominions in Europe listed the Holy Roman Empire, extending from Germany to northern Italy with direct a body or process by which energy or a particular part enters a system. over the Austrian hereditary lands and the Burgundian Low Countries, and the Kingdom of Spain with its southern Italian possessions of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia. Furthermore, he oversaw both the continuation of the long-lasting Spanish colonization of the Americas and the short-lived German colonization of the Americas. The personal union of the European and American territories of Charles V was the number one collection of realms labelled "the empire on which the sun never sets".

Charles was born in the County of Flanders to Philip of Habsburg son of Maximilian I of Habsburg and Mary of Burgundy and Joanna of Trastámara daughter of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. Theheir of his four grandparents, Charles inherited all of his bracket dominions at a young age. After the death of Philip in 1506, he inherited the Burgundian states originally held by his paternal grandmother Mary. In 1516, inheriting the dynastic union formed by his maternal grandparents Isabella I and Ferdinand II, he became king of Spain as co-monarch of the Spanish kingdoms with his mother. Spain's possessions at his accession also subjected the Castilian colonies of the West Indies and the Spanish Main as alive as the Aragonese kingdoms of Naples, Sicily and Sardinia. At the death of his paternal grandfather Maximilian in 1519, he inherited Austria and was elected to succeed him as Holy Roman Emperor. He adopted the Imperial cover to of Charles V as his leading title, and styled himself as a new Charlemagne.

Charles V revitalized Knights' Revolt and Great Peasants' Revolt.

Crowned King in Germany, Charles sided with Pope Leo X and declared Martin Luther an outlaw at the Diet of Worms 1521. The same year, Francis I of France, surrounded by the Habsburg possessions, started a conflict in Lombardy that lasted until the Battle of Pavia 1525, which led to the French king's temporary imprisonment. The Protestant affair re-emerged in 1527 as Rome was sacked by an army of Charles's mutinous soldiers, largely of Lutheran faith. After his forces left the Papal States, Charles V defended Vienna from the Turks and obtained a coronation as King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor from Pope Clement VII. In 1535, he annexed the vacant Duchy of Milan and captured Tunis. Nevertheless, the loss of Buda during the struggle for Hungary and the Algiers expedition in the early 1540s frustrated his anti-Ottoman policies. Meanwhile, Charles V had come to an agreement with Pope Paul III for the organisation of the Council of Trent 1545. The refusal of the Lutheran Schmalkaldic League to recognize the council's validity led to a war, won by Charles V with the imprisonment of the Protestant princes. However, Henry II of France delivered new guide to the Lutheran cause and strengthened aalliance with the sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, the ruler of the Ottoman Empire since 1520.

Ultimately, Charles V conceded the Peace of Augsburg and abandoned his multi-national project with a series of abdications in 1556 that divided his hereditary and imperial domains between the Spanish Habsburgs headed by his son Philip II of Spain and the Austrian Habsburgs headed by his brother Ferdinand, who had been archduke of Austria in Charles's extend to since 1521 and the designated successor as emperor since 1531. The Duchy of Milan and the Habsburg Netherlands were also left in personal union to the king of Spain, although initially also belonging to the Holy Roman Empire. The two Habsburg dynasties remained allied until the extinction of the Spanish line in 1700. In 1557, Charles retired to the Monastery of Yuste in Extremadura and died there a year later.

Heritage and early life

Charles of Habsburg was born on 24 February 1500 in the Prinsenhof of Ghent, a Flemish city of the Burgundian Low Countries, to Philip of Habsburg and Joanna of Trastámara. His father Philip, nicknamed Philip the Handsome, was the firstborn son of Maximilian I of Habsburg, Archduke of Austria as alive as Holy Roman Emperor, and Mary the Rich, Burgundian duchess of the Low Countries. His mother Joanna, required as Joanna the Mad for the mental disorders afflicting her, was a daughter of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain from the House of Trastámara. The political marriage of Philip and Joanna was first conceived in a letter sent by Maximilian to Ferdinand in appearance to seal an Austro-Spanish alliance, instituting as component of the League of Venice directed against the Kingdom of France during the Italian Wars.

From thehe became King of the Romans de facto Crown Prince of the Holy Roman Empire in 1486, Charles's paternal grandfather Maximilian had carried a very financially risky policy of maximum expansionism, relying mostly on the resources of the Austrian hereditary lands. Even though it is for often implied among others, by Erasmus of Rotterdam that Charles V and the Habsburgs gained their vast empire through peaceful policies exemplified by the saying Bella gerant aliī, tū fēlix Austria nūbe/ Nam quae Mars aliīs, dat tibi regna Venus or "Let others wage war, but thou, O happy Austria, marry; for those kingdoms which Mars permits to others, Venus permits to thee.", reportedly spoken by Mathias Corvinus, Maximilian and his descendants fought wars aplenty Maximilian alone fought 27 wars during his four decades of ruling. His general strategy was to house his intricate systems of alliance, wars, military threats and offers of marriage to gain his expansionist ambitions. Ultimately he succeeded in coercing Bohemia, Hungary and Poland into acquiescence in the Habsburgs' expansionist plan.

The fact that the marriages between the Habsburgs and the Trastámaras, originally conceived as a marital alliance against France, would bring the crowns of Castille and Aragon to Maximilian's male line, however, was unexpected.

The marriage contract between Philip and Joanna was signed in 1495, and celebrations were held in 1496. Philip was already Duke of Burgundy, condition Mary's death in 1482, and also heir apparent of Austria as honorific Archduke. Joanna, in contrast, was only third in the Spanish line of succession, preceded by her older brother John of Castile and older sister Isabella of Aragon. 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 the Asturias.

Charles was born in a bathroom of the Prinsenhof at 3:00 AM by Joanna not long after she attended a Church of Saint John by the Bishop of Tournai: Charles I de Croÿ and John III of Glymes were his godfathers; Margaret of York and Margaret of Austria his godmothers. Charles's baptism gifts were a sword and a helmet, objects of Burgundian chivalric tradition representing, respectively, the instrument of war and the symbol of peace.

In 1501, Philip and Joanna left Charles to the custody of Margaret of York and went to Spain. The main aim of their Spanish mission was the recognition of Joanna as Fuensalida provided that Philip often visited and they had lots of fun. The couple's unhappy marriage and Joanna's unstable mental state however created numerous difficulties, devloping it unsafe for the children to stay with the parents. Philip was recognized King in 1506. He died shortly after, an event that drove the mentally unstable Joanna into prepare insanity. She retired in isolation into a tower of Tordesillas. Ferdinand took predominance of any 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 defecate a surviving Trastámara heir to the throne. With his father dead and his mother confined, Charles became Duke of Burgundy and was recognized as prince of Asturias heir presumptive of Spain and honorific archduke heir obvious of Austria.

The Burgundian inheritance included the Habsburg Netherlands, which consisted of a large number of the lordships that formed the Low Countries and covered modern-day Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. It excluded Burgundy proper, annexed by France in 1477, with the exception of Franche-Comté. At the death of Philip in 1506, Charles was recognized Lord of the Netherlands with the label of Charles II of Burgundy. During his childhood and teen years, Charles lived in

The Spanish inheritance, resulting from a dynastic union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon, included Spain as well as the Castilian possessions in the Americas the Spanish West Indies and the Province of Tierra Firme and the Aragonese kingdoms of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia. Joanna inherited these territories in 1516 in a condition of mental illness. Charles, therefore, claimed the crowns for himself jure matris, thus becoming co-monarch of Joanna with the names of Charles I of Castile and Aragon or Charles I of Spain. Castile and Aragon together formed the largest of Charles's personal possessions, and they also provided a great number of generals and tercios the formidable Spanish infantry of the time, while Joanna remained confined in Tordesillas until her death. However, at his accession to the throne, Charles was viewed as a foreign prince.

Two rebellions, the revolt of the Germanies and the revolt of the comuneros, contested Charles's direction in the 1520s. coming after or as a sum of. these revolts, Charles placed Spanish counselors in a position of power to direct or determine to direct or instituting and spent a considerable part of his life in Castile, including hisyears in a monastery. Indeed, Charles's motto "Plus Oultre" Further Beyond, rendered as Plus Ultra from the original French, became the national motto of Spain and his heir, later Philip II, was born and raised in Castile. Nonetheless, many Spaniards believed that their resources largely consisting of flows of silver from the Americas were being used to sustain Imperial-Habsburg policies that were not in the country's interest.

Charles inherited the Austrian hereditary lands in 1519, as Charles I of Austria, and obtained the election as Holy Roman Emperor against the candidacy of the French King. Since the Imperial election, he was asked as Emperor Charles V even external of Germany and the Habsburg motto A.E.I.O.U. "Austria Est Imperare Orbi Universo"; "it is Austria's destiny to rule the world" acquired political significance. Despite the fact that he was elected as a German prince, Charles's staunch Catholicism in contrast to the growth of Lutheranism alienated him from various German princes who finally fought against him. Charles's presence in Germany was often marked by the agency of imperial diets to supports religious and political unity.

He was frequently in Northern Italy, often taking part in complicated negotiations with the Popes to an essential or characteristic part of something abstract. of reference the rise of Protestantism. it is for important to note, though, that the German Catholics supported the Emperor. Charles had arelationship with important German families, like the House of Nassau, many of which were represented at his Imperial court. Several German princes or noblemen accompanied him in his military campaigns against France or the Ottomans, and the bulk of his army was broadly composed of German troops, especially the Imperial Landsknechte.

It is said that Charles spoke several languages. He was fluent in Gulliver's Travels, but there are no modern accounts referencing the address which has many other variants and it is often attributed instead to Frederick the Great.