yet strictly speaking an Empire, was yet called the Holy Roman Empire,
began when Charlemagne crossed the Alps to rescue the reigning Pope
from the Lombards in A.D. 800. The Pope crowned him Roman Emperor of
the West, a title which had been extinct since the time of Odoacer more
than three hundred years before. The revival of the resplendent title
caused the unhappy people of the Dark Ages to think for a moment in
their misery that the mighty days of Augustus and Marcus Aurelius had
returned; it seemed to add the power of God to the romance of ages and
the brute power of kings. During the next two centuries the peoples of
France and Germany gradually evolved into two separate nations, but it
was impossible for men to forget the great brooding power which had
given the _Pax Romana_ to the world, and its hallowed memory survived
more beneficent than possibly it really was; it appeared to their
imaginations that if it were possible to unite the sanctity of the Pope
with the organizing power of Rome the blessed times might again return
when a man might reap in peace what he had sown in peace, and the
long agony of the Dark Ages might be lifted from mankind. When Henry
the Fowler had welded the Germans into a people with a powerful king
the time appeared to have arisen, and his son Otto was crowned Holy
Roman Emperor. He was not Emperor of Germany, nor German Emperor; he
was _Holy Roman Emperor_ of the German people, wielding power, partly
derived from the religious power of the Pope, and partly from the
military resources of whatever fiefs he might hold; and this enormous
and loosely knit organization persisted until 1806--nearly seven
hundred years from the time of Otto, and more than 1,000 years after
the time of Charlemagne.
This mediæval Roman Empire was founded on sentiment; it took its power
from blessed--and probably distorted--memories of a golden age, when
one mighty Imperator really did rule the civilized world with a strong
and autocratic hand. It was a pathetic attempt to put back the hands
of the clock. It bespoke the misery through which mankind was passing
in the attempt to combine feudalism with justice. When the mediæval
Emperor was not fighting with the Pope he was generally fighting
with his presumed subjects; occasionally he tried to defend Europe
from the Turks. He might have justified his existence by defending
Constantinople in 1453, by which he would have averted the greatest
disaster that has ever befallen Europe. He missed that opportunity, and
the mediæval Empire, though it survived that extraordinary calamity,
yet continued ramshackle, feeble, and mediævally glorious until
long past the Protestant Reformation. Being Roman, of course it was
anti-Lutheran, and devoted its lumbering energies to the destruction
of the Protestants. No Holy Roman Emperor ever rivalled the greatness
of Charles V, in whose frame shone all the romance and glamour of
centuries. How vast was his power is shown when we consider that he
ruled over the Netherlands, Burgundy, Spain, Austria, much of what is
now Germany, and Italy; and he was not a man to be contented with a
nominal rule.
He was born in Ghent in 1500 to Philip, Duke of Burgundy, and Juana,
who is commonly known as “Crazy Jane”; it is now generally believed
that she was insane, though the Spaniards shrank from imputing insanity
to a queen. From his father he inherited the principalities of the
Netherlands and Burgundy; from his mother he inherited the kingships
of Spain, Naples, and the Spanish colonies. When his grandfather,
the Hapsburg Emperor Maximilian, died, Charles was elected Emperor
in 1519; the other candidate was Francis I of France. The electors
were the seven _Kurfursten_ of Germany, and Charles bribed the harder
of the two. What power on earth could summon before a magistrate the
kings of France and Spain on a charge of improperly influencing the
vote of a German princelet? Once having attained to the title of Roman
Emperor, added to the enormous military power of King of Spain, Charles
immediately became the greatest man in the world. He was strong,
cautious, athletic, brave, and immeasurably sagacious; his reputation
for wisdom long survived him.
Francis did not forgive him his victory, and for the next quarter of a
century--until 1544--Europe resounded with the rival cries of the two
monarchs, unhappy Italy being usually the actual scene of battle. At
Pavia in 1525 Francis had to say “All is lost save honour”--the precise
definition of “honour” in Francis’s mind being something very different
from what it is to-day. Francis was captured and haled to Madrid to
meet his grim conqueror, who kept him in prison until he consented to
marry Charles’s favourite sister Eleanor of Austria, and to join with
him in an alliance against the heretics. This Eleanor was a gentle and
beautiful lady whom Charles treated with true brotherly contempt; yet
she loved him. As soon as Francis was out of prison he forgot that he
was married, and made love to every pretty girl that came his way.
Francis being safely out of the way, Charles turned to the great aim
of his life--to reconcile Protestants with Catholics throughout his
colossal Empire. He was a strong Catholic, and displayed immense energy
in the reconciliation. According to Gibbon, who quotes the learned
Grotius,[6] he burned 100,000 Netherlanders, and Gibbon dolefully
remarks that this one Holy Roman Emperor slew more Christians than
all the pagan Roman Emperors put together. Charles appears to have
grown gradually into the habit of persecution; he began comparatively
mildly, and it was not till 1550 that he began to see that there was
really nothing else to do with these dull and obstinate Lutherans but
to burn them. He could not understand it. He was sure he was right, and
yet the more Netherlanders he burned the fewer seemed to attend mass.
Moreover, it was impossible to believe that those things the miscreant
Luther had said about the immoral conduct of the monks could be true;
once upon a time he had met the fellow, and had him in his power;
why had he not burned him once and for all and saved the world from
this miserable holocaust which had now become necessary through the
man’s pestilential teaching? So Charles went on with his conciliation,
driven by conscience--the most terrible spur that can be applied to the
flanks of a righteous man. No doubt Torquemada acted from conscience,
and Robespierre; possibly even Nero could have raked up some sort of
a conscientious motive for all he did--the love of pure art, perhaps.
“_Qualis artifex pereo!_” said he in one of those terse untranslatable
Latin phrases when he was summoning up his courage to fall upon his
sword in the high Roman manner; surely there spoke the artist: “How
artistically I die!”
The activities of Charles were so enormous that it is impossible in
this short sketch even to mention them all. Besides his conquest of
Francis and, through him, Italy, he saved Europe from the Turk. To
Francis’s eternal dishonour he had made an alliance with the last
great Turkish Sultan, Solyman the Magnificent. The baleful power which
had conquered Constantinople less than a century before seemed to
be sweeping on to spread its abominations over Western Europe; and
history finds it difficult to forgive Francis for assisting its latest
conqueror. Men remembered how Constantine Palæologus had fallen amidst
smoke and carnage in his empurpled blazonry, heroic to the last; they
forgot that the destruction of 1453 was probably the direct result
of the Venetian and French attack under Dandolo in 1204, from which
Constantinople never recovered. In talking of the “Terrible Turk” they
forgot that Dandolo and his Venetians and Frenchmen had committed
atrocities quite as terrible as the Turks’ during those days and nights
when Constantinople was given over to rapine; and now the brilliant
Francis appeared to be carrying on Dandolo’s war against civilization.
So when Charles stepped forward as the great hero of Europe, and drove
the Turks down the Danube with an army under his own leadership he was
hailed as the saviour of Christendom; it is to this that he owes a
good deal of his glory, and he nobly prepared the world for the still
greater victory of Lepanto to be won by his son Don John of Austria.
Moreover, it was during his reign that the great American conquests of
the Spanish armies occurred, and the name of Fernando Cortes attained
to eternal glory; and the Portuguese voyager Maghellan made those
wonderful discoveries which have so profoundly influenced the course of
history. There had been no man so great and energetic as Charles since
Charlemagne; since him his only rival for almost super-human energy has
been Napoleon.
That pathetic and unhappy queen whom we call “Bloody Mary” had been
betrothed to Charles for diplomatic reasons when she was an infant,
but he had broken off the engagement and ultimately married Isabella
of Portugal, whose fair face is immortalized by Titian in the portrait
that still hangs in the Prado, Madrid. Auburn of hair, with blue eyes
and delicate features, she looks the very type of what we used to call
the tubercular diathesis; and there can be no doubt that Charles really
loved her. Before he married her he had had an illegitimate daughter by
a Flemish girl; ten years after she died Barbara Blomberg, a flighty
German, bore him a son, the famous Don John of Austria. But while
Isabella lived no scandal attached to his name. Unhappily his only
legitimate son was Philip, afterwards Philip II of Spain.
When Mary came to the throne she was intensely unhappy. During the
dreadful years that preceded the divorce of Catherine of Aragon,
Charles had strongly supported Catherine’s cause; and Mary did not
forget his aid when she found herself a monarch, lonely and friendless.
She let him know that she would be quite prepared to marry him if he
would take her.[7] Probably Charles was terrified by the advances of
the plain-faced old maid, but the opportunity of strengthening the
Catholic cause was too good to miss. The house of Austria was always
famous for its matrimonial skill; the hexameter pasquinade went:
“Bella gerant alii--tu, felix Austria, nube!”
(“Others wage war for a throne--you, happy Austria, marry!”)
Charles, in his dilemma, turned to his son Philip, who nobly responded
to the call of duty. Of him Gibbon might have said that “he sighed as a
lover, but obeyed as a son” if he had not said it concerning himself;
and Philip broke off his engagement to the Infanta of Portugal, and
married the fair English bride himself.
Charles was still the greatest and most romantic figure in Europe--a
mighty conqueror and famous Emperor; any woman would have preferred him
to his mean-spirited son; and Mary was grateful to him for powerful
support during years of anguish. She obeyed his wishes, and took the
son instead of the father.
Queen Mary’s sad life deserves a word of sympathetic study. With
her mother she had passed through years of hideous suffering,
culminating in her being forced by her father to declare herself a
bastard--probably the most utterly brutal act of Henry’s reign. She had
seen the fruits of ungovernable sexuality in the fate of her enemy Anne
Boleyn; added to her plain face this probably caused her to repress
her own sex-complex; finally she married the wretched young creature
Philip, who, having stirred her sexual passions, left her to pursue
his tortuous policy in Spain. All the time, as I read the story, she
was really desirous of Charles, his brilliant father. Love-sick for
Charles; love-sick for Philip, to whom she had a lawful right set at
naught by leagues of sea; love-sick for _any_ man whom her pride would
allow her to possess--and I do not hint a word against her virtue--she
is not a creature to scorn; she is rather to be pitied. Her father
had been a man of strong passions and violent deeds; from him she had
inherited that tendency to early degeneration of the cardiovascular
system which led to her death from dropsy at the early age of
forty-two; and her repressed sex-complex led her into the ways of a
ruthless religious persecution, probably increased by the object-lesson
set her by her hero. From this repressed sex-complex also sprang her
fierce desire for a child, though the historians commonly attribute
this emotion to a desire for some one to carry on her hatred of the
Protestants. I remember the case of a young woman who was a violent
Labour politician; unfortunately it became necessary for her to lose
her uterus because of a fibroid tumour. She professed to be frantically
sorry because she could no longer bear a son to go into Parliament to
fight the battle of the proletariat against the wicked capitalist; but
once in a moment of weakness she confessed that what she had really
wanted was not a bouncing young politician, but merely a dear little
baby to be her own child. Probably some such motive weighed with
Mary. People laughed at her because she used to mistake any abdominal
swelling, or even the normal diminution of menstruation that occurs
with middle age, for a sign of pregnancy[8]; but possibly if she had
married Charles instead of Philip, and had lived happily with him as
his wife, she would not have given her people occasion to call her
“Bloody Mary.” She is the saddest figure in English history. From her
earliest infancy she had been taught to look forward to a marriage
with the wonderful man who to her mind--and to the world’s--typified
the noblest qualities of humanity--courage, bravery, rich and profound
wisdom, learning and love of the beautiful in art and music and
literature; friend and admirer of Titian and gallant helper of her
mother. Her disappointment must have been terrible when she found him
snatched from her grasp and saw herself condemned either to a life of
old maidenhood or to a loveless marriage with a mean religious fanatic
twelve years younger than herself. The mentality which led Mary to
persecute the English Protestants contained the same qualities as had
led Joan of Arc to her career of unrivalled heroism, and to-day leads
an old maid to keep parrots. When an old maid undresses it is said that
she puts a cover over the parrot’s cage lest the bird should see her
nakedness; that is a phase of the same mentality as Mary’s and Joan’s.
Loneliness, sadness, suppressed longing for the unattainable--it is
cruel to laugh at an old maid.
But Charles was to show himself mortal. He had always been a colossal
eater, and had never spared himself either in the field or at the
table. One has to pay for these things; if a man wishes to be a great
leader and to undertake great responsibilities he must be content
to forswear carnal delights and eat sparingly; and it is hardly an
exaggeration to say that it is less harmful to drink too much than
to eat too much. At the age of thirty Charles began to suffer from
“gout”--whatever it was that they called gout in those days. At the
age of fifty he began to lose his teeth--apparently from pyorrhœa.
Possibly his “gout” may have really been the result of focal infection
from his septic teeth. At fifty his gout “flew to his head,” and
threatened him with sudden death. When he was fifty-two he suddenly
became pale and thin, and it was noticed that his hair was rapidly
turning grey. Clearly his enormous gluttony was beginning to result in
arterio-sclerosis, and at fifty-four it was reported to his enemy the
Sultan that Charles had lost the use of an arm and a leg. Sir William
Stirling-Maxwell thought that this report was the exaggeration of an
enemy; but it is quite possible that Charles really suffered from that
annoying condition known as “intermittent claudication,” which is such
a nuisance to both patient and doctor in cases of arterio-sclerosis. In
these attacks there may be temporary paralysis and loss of the power
of speech. The cause of them is not quite clear, because they seldom
prove fatal; but it is supposed that there is spasm of some small
artery in the brain, or perhaps a transitory dropsy of some motor area.
Charles’s speech became indistinct, so that towards the end of his
life it was difficult to understand what he meant. It has generally
been supposed that this was due to his underhung lower jaw and loss of
teeth; but it is equally probable that dropsy of the speech-centre may
have been at the root of the trouble, such as is so frequently observed
in arterio-sclerosis or its congener chronic Bright’s disease, and is
also often caused by over-strain and over-eating. He began to feel
the cold intensely, and sat shivering even under the warmest wraps;
he said himself that the cold seemed to be in his bones. Probably
there was some spasm of the arterioles, such as is often seen in
arterio-sclerosis.
By this time, what with the failure of his plans against the
Protestants and his wretched health, he had made up his mind to resign
the burden of Empire, and to seek repose in some warmer climate, where
he could rest in the congenial atmosphere of a monastery. No Roman
Emperor had voluntarily resigned the greatest position in the world
since Diocletian in A.D. 305; curiously enough he too had been a
persecutor, so that his reign is known among the hagiographers as “the
age of martyrs.”
Charles called together a great meeting at the Castle of Caudenburg
in Brussels in 1556. All the great ones of the Empire were there,
and the Knights of the Golden Fleece, an order which still vies for
greatness with our own order of the Garter; possibly it may now even
excel that order, because it is unlikely that it will ever again be
conferred by an Austrian Emperor. Like the Garter, it had “no damned
pretence of merit about it.” If you were entitled to wear the chain
and insignia of the Golden Fleece, you were a man of very noble birth.
Yet, like the Order of the Thistle, the Fleece may yet be revived, and
may recover its ancient splendour. On the right of the Emperor sat his
son Philip, just returned, a not-impetuous bridegroom, from marrying
Mary of England. On his left he leant painfully and short of breath
upon the shoulder of William the Silent, who was soon to become of
some little note in the world. It was a strange group: the great, bold
Emperor whose course was so nearly run; the mean little king-consort of
England; and the noble patriot statesman who was soon to drag Philip’s
name in the dust of ignominy. Charles spoke at some length, recounting
how he had won many victories and suffered many defeats, yet, though so
constantly at war, he had always striven for peace; how he had crossed
the Mediterranean many times against the Turk, and had made forty
long journeys and many short ones to see for himself the troubles of
his subjects. He insisted proudly that he had never done any man a
cruelty or an injustice. He burst into tears and sat down, showing the
emotionalism that so often attends upon high blood-pressure; and the
crowd, seeing the great soldier weep, wept with him. Eleanor gave him
a cordial to drink, and he resumed, saying that at last he had found
the trials of Empire more than his health would allow him to sustain.
He had decided to abdicate in favour of his beloved son Philip. It was
given to few monarchs to die and yet to live--to see his own glory
continued in the glory which he expected for his son. It seems to have
been a really touching and dramatic scene, causing an immense sensation
throughout Europe. If there were ever an indispensable man it would
have appeared at that time to be the Emperor Charles V; the world
quaked in apprehension.
It was some time before Charles could carry out his design, but
ultimately he went, by a long and dangerous journey, to the place
of his retirement, Yuste, in Estremadura, Northern Spain, where
there slept a little monastery of followers of St. Jerome; why he--a
Fleming--should have picked on this lonely and inaccessible place is
not known. With him went a little band of attendants, chief among whom
was his stout old chamberlain, Don Luis Quixada, of whom we shall hear
more when we come to consider Don John of Austria. This Quixada seems
to have been a fine type of Spanish grandee, loyal and faithful; a
merry grandee also, who added sound sense to jocund playfulness. Note
well the name; we shall meet it again to some purpose.
Charles was mistaken in supposing that he could find rest at Yuste; the
world would not let him rest. He had been a figure too overwhelming. He
spent his days in reading dispatches from all who were in trouble and
fancied that the great man could pluck them from the toils. Chief of
his suppliants was his son Philip, who found the mantle that had seemed
to sit so easily on his father’s mighty shoulders intolerably heavy
when he came to wear it himself. To the man who is strong in his wisdom
and resolution difficulties disappear when they are boldly faced.
Philip was timorous, poor-spirited, pedantic, and procrastinating. He
constantly appealed to his father for advice, and Charles responded
in letters which seem to show, in their evidence of annoyance, the
irritability that goes with a high blood-pressure. An epidemic of
Reformation was breaking out in Spain, however sterile might seem the
soil of that nation for Protestantism to flourish. It is not quite
clear why no serious move towards the Reformed Religion ever took
place among the Spaniards. It is probable that the ancient faith had
thrust its roots too deeply into their hearts during the centuries of
struggle against the Moors. In the minds of the Spanish people it had
been the Church which had inspired their ancestors--not the kings;
and they were not going to desert the old religion now that they saw
it attacked by the Germans. Moreover, the fierce repression which was
practised by the Spanish Inquisition must have had its effect. Lecky
formed the opinion that no new idea could survive in the teeth of
really determined persecution; and the history of religion in Spain and
France seems to bear him out.
However, the old war-horse in his retirement snuffed the battle and the
joyous smell of the burnings, and stoutly urged on the Inquisitors,
at whatever cost to his own quiet. Spain remained diligently Roman
Catholic at the orders of the Holy Roman Emperor and his son Philip;
and at this moment, when Charles was so urgently longing for peace and
retirement, English Mary, his cousin and daughter-in-law, in whose
interests he had loyally braved God, man, and Pope, lost Calais; the
French, under the Duke of Guise, took it from her. She might well
grieve and say the name would be found written on her heart; she but
echoed the feelings of her beloved Emperor. For weeks he mumbled with
toothless jaws the agony of his soul over this crowning misfortune, and
from this he never really recovered. Already how had the times changed
since the Spanish infantry had overrun Europe at his command!
But he could do nothing; he had abdicated. That iron hand was now so
crippled with gout that it could hardly even open an envelope, had to
sign its letters with a seal, and constantly held a tiny chafing-dish
to keep itself warm. Charles sat shivering and helpless, wrapped in a
great eiderdown cloak even in midsummer; his eyes fell on the portrait
of his beloved wife and of that plain Mary who had wished to marry
him, and on several favourite pictures by Titian. He listened to the
singing of the friars, and was resentful of the slightest wrong note,
for he had an exceedingly acute musical ear. The good fathers, in their
attempts to entertain him, brought famous preachers to preach to him;
he listened dutifully--he, whose lightest word had once shaken Europe,
but who now could hardly mumble in a slurring voice! And in spite of
the protests of Quixada he heroically sat down to eat himself to death.
It has been said that marriage for an old man is merely a pleasant way
of committing suicide; it is doubtful whether Charles enjoyed his
chosen method of self-poisoning, for he had lost the sense of taste,
and no food could be too richly seasoned for his tired palate. Vast
quantities of beef, mutton, venison, ham, and highly flavoured sausages
went past those toothless jaws, washed down by the richest wines, the
heaviest beers; the local hidalgoes quickly discovered that to reach
the Emperor’s heart all they had to do was to appeal to his stomach,
so they poured in upon him every kind of rich dainty, to the despair
of Quixada, who did his best to protect his master. “Really,” said he,
“kings seem to think that their stomachs are not made like other men’s!”
He sometimes used to go riding, but one day, when he was mounting his
pony, he was suddenly seized with an attack of giddiness so severe that
he nearly fell into the arms of Quixada, so that the Emperor, who had
once upon a time been the _beau ideal_ of a light cavalryman, had to
toil about heavily on foot in the woods, and to strive to hold his gun
steadily enough to shoot a wood-pigeon.
He spent his spare time watching men lay out for him new parterres and
planting trees; man began with a garden, and in sickness and sorrow
ends with one. The Earth-Mother is the one friend that never deserts
us.