EUROPE AT THE OPENING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
129. Two events took place in the early sixteenth century which
fundamentally influenced the history of Europe. (1) By a series of royal
marriages a great part of western Europe was brought under the control
of a single ruler, Emperor Charles V. He inherited Burgundy, Spain,
portions of Italy, and the Austrian territories; and, in 1519, he was
chosen emperor. There had been no such dominion as his in Europe since
the time of Charlemagne. Within its bounds lay Vienna, Brussels, Madrid,
Palermo, Naples, Milan, even the city of Mexico. Its creation and the
struggles which accompanied its dissolution form one of the most
important chapters in the history of modern Europe. (2) Just at the time
that Charles was assuming the responsibilities that his vast domains
brought with them, the first successful revolt against the mediæval
Church was beginning. This was to result in the disruption of the Church
and the establishment of two great religious parties, the Catholic and
the Protestant, which have endured down to the present time. The purpose
of the present chapter is to describe the origin, extent, and character
of the empire of Charles V, and to prepare the reader to grasp the
_political_ import of the Protestant revolt.
Before mentioning the family alliances which led to the consolidation of
such tremendous political power in the hands of one person, it will be
necessary, first, to note the rise of the house of Hapsburg to which
Charles belonged, and secondly, to account for the appearance in
European affairs of Spain, which has hitherto scarcely come into our
story.
[Sidenote: Reasons why the German kings failed to establish a strong
state.]
The German kings had failed to create a strong kingdom such as those
over which Louis XI of France and Henry VII of England ruled. Their fine
title of "emperor" had made them a great deal of trouble, as we have
seen.[249] Their attempts to keep Italy as well as Germany under their
rule, and the alliance of the mighty Bishop of Rome with their enemies
had well-nigh ruined them. Their position was further weakened by their
failure to render their office strictly hereditary. Although the
emperors were often succeeded by their sons, each new emperor had to be
_elected_, and those great vassals who controlled the election naturally
took care to bind the candidate by solemn promises not to interfere with
their privileges and independence. The result was that, after the
downfall of the Hohenstaufens, Germany fell apart into a great number of
practically independent states, of which none were very large and some
were extremely small.
[Sidenote: Rudolf of Hapsburg gets possession of Austria.]
After an interregnum, Rudolf of Hapsburg had been chosen emperor in
1273.[250] The original seat of the Hapsburgs, who were destined to play
a great part in European affairs, was in northern Switzerland, where the
vestiges of their original castle may still be seen. Rudolf was the
first prominent member of the family; he established its position and
influence by seizing the duchies of Austria and Styria, which were to
become, under his successors, the nucleus of the extensive Austrian
possessions.
[Sidenote: The imperial title becomes practically hereditary in the
house of Austria.]
About a century and a half after the death of Rudolf the electors began
regularly to choose as emperor the ruler of the Austrian possessions, so
that the imperial title became, to all intents and purposes, hereditary
in the Hapsburg line.[251] The Hapsburgs were, however, far more
interested in adding to their family domains than in advancing the
interests of the now almost defunct Holy Roman Empire. This, in the
memorable words of Voltaire, had ceased to be either holy, or Roman, or
an empire.
[Sidenote: Maximilian I, 1493-1519, extends the power of the Hapsburgs
over the Netherlands and Spain.]
Maximilian I, who was emperor at the opening of the sixteenth century,
was absorbed in his foreign enterprises rather than in the improvement
of the German government. Like so many of his predecessors, he was
especially anxious to get possession of northern Italy. By his marriage
with the daughter of Charles the Bold he brought the Netherlands into
what proved a fateful union with Austria.[252] Still more important was
the extension of the power of the Hapsburgs over Spain, a country which
had hitherto had almost no connection with Germany.
[Sidenote: Arab civilization in Spain.]
130. The Mohammedan conquest served to make the history of Spain very
different from that of the other states of Europe. One of its first and
most important results was the conversion of a great part of the
inhabitants to Mohammedanism.[253] During the tenth century, which was
so dark a period in the rest of Europe, the Arab civilization in Spain
reached its highest development. The various elements in the population,
Roman, Gothic, Arab, and Berber, appear to have been thoroughly
amalgamated. Agriculture, industry, commerce, art, and the sciences made
rapid progress. Cordova, with its half million of inhabitants, its
stately palaces, its university, its three thousand mosques and three
hundred public baths, was perhaps unrivaled at that period in the whole
world. There were thousands of students at the university of Cordova at
a time when, in the North, only clergymen had mastered even the simple
arts of reading and writing. This brilliant civilization lasted,
however, for hardly more than a hundred years. By the middle of the
eleventh century the caliphate of Cordova had fallen to pieces, and
shortly afterwards the country was overrun by new invaders from Africa.
[Sidenote: The rise of new Christian kingdoms in Spain.]
Meanwhile the vestiges of the earlier Christian rule continued to exist
in the mountain fastnesses of northern Spain. Even as early as the year
1000,[254] several small Christian kingdoms--Castile, Aragon, and
Navarre--had come into existence. Castile, in particular, began to push
back the demoralized Arabs and, in 1085, reconquered Toledo from them.
Aragon also widened its bounds by incorporating Barcelona and conquering
the territory watered by the Ebro. By 1250, the long war of the
Christians against the Mohammedans, which fills the mediæval annals of
Spain, had been so successfully prosecuted that Castile extended to the
south coast and included the great towns of Cordova and Seville. The
kingdom of Portugal was already as large as it is to-day.
[Sidenote: Granada and Castile.]
The Moors, as the Spanish Mohammedans were called, maintained themselves
for two centuries more in the mountainous kingdom of Granada, in the
southern part of the peninsula. During this period, Castile, which was
the largest of the Spanish kingdoms and embraced all the central part of
the peninsula, was too much occupied by internal feuds and struggles
over the crown to wage successful war against the Moorish kingdom to the
south.
[Sidenote: Marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon.]
[Sidenote: Granada, the last Moorish stronghold, falls.]
The first Spanish monarch whose name need be mentioned here was Queen
Isabella of Castile, who, in 1469, concluded an all-important marriage
with Ferdinand, the heir of the crown of Aragon. It is with the
resulting union of Castile and Aragon that the great importance of Spain
in European history begins. For the next hundred years Spain was to
enjoy more military power than any other European state. Ferdinand and
Isabella undertook to complete the conquest of the peninsula, and in
1492, after a long siege, the city of Granada fell into their hands, and
therewith the last vestige of Moorish domination disappeared.[255]
[Illustration: EUROPE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY]
[Sidenote: Spain's income from the New World enables her to become a
European power.]
In the same year that the conquest of the peninsula was completed, the
discoveries of Columbus, made under the auspices of Queen Isabella,
opened up the sources of undreamed-of wealth beyond the seas. The
transient greatness of Spain in the sixteenth century is largely to be
attributed to the riches which poured in from her American possessions.
The shameless and cruel looting of the Mexican and Peruvian cities by
Cortez and Pizarro, and the products of the silver mines of the New
World, enabled Spain to assume, for a time, a position in Europe which
her internal strength and normal resources would never have permitted.
[Sidenote: Persecution of the Jews and Moors.]
[Sidenote: The revival of the Inquisition.]
Unfortunately, the most industrious, skillful, and thrifty among the
inhabitants of Spain, i.e., the Moors and the Jews, who well-nigh
supported the whole kingdom with the products of their toil, were
bitterly persecuted by the Christians. So anxious was Isabella to rid
her kingdom of the infidels that she revived the court of the
Inquisition.[256] For several decades its tribunals arrested and
condemned innumerable persons who were suspected of heresy, and
thousands were burned at the stake during this period. These wholesale
executions have served to associate Spain especially with the horrors of
the Inquisition. Finally, in 1609, the Moors were driven out of the
country altogether. The persecution diminished or disheartened the most
useful and enterprising portion of the Spanish people, and speedily and
permanently crippled a country which in the sixteenth century was
granted an unrivaled opportunity to become a flourishing and powerful
monarchy.
[Sidenote: Heritage of Charles V.]
Maximilian, the German emperor, was not satisfied with securing Burgundy
for his house by his marriage with the daughter of Charles the Bold. He
also arranged a marriage between their son, Philip, and Joanna, the
daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. Philip died in 1506, and his poor
wife, Joanna, became insane with grief and was thus incapacitated for
ruling. So their eldest son, Charles, could look forward to an
unprecedented accumulation of glorious titles as soon as his
grand-fathers, Maximilian and Ferdinand, should pass away.[257] He was
soon to be duke of Brabant, margrave of Antwerp, count of Holland,
archduke of Austria, count of Tyrol, king of Castile, Aragon, and
Naples, and of the vast Spanish possessions in America,--to mention a
few of his more important titles.
[Sidenote: Charles and his Spanish possessions.]
Ferdinand died in 1516, and Charles, now a lad of sixteen, who had been
born and reared in the Netherlands, was much bewildered when he landed
in his Spanish dominions. His Flemish advisers were distasteful to the
haughty Spaniards; suspicion and opposition awaited him in each of his
several Spanish kingdoms, for he found by no means a united Spain. Each
kingdom demanded special recognition of its rights and suggested
important reforms before it would acknowledge Charles as its king.
[Sidenote: Charles elected emperor, 1519.]
It seemed as if the boy would have his hands full in asserting his
authority as "king of Spain"; nevertheless, a still more imposing title
and still more perplexing responsibilities were to fall upon his
shoulders before he was twenty years old. It had long been Maximilian's
ambition that his grandson should succeed him upon the imperial throne.
After his death in 1519 the electors finally chose Charles instead of
the rival candidate, Francis I of France. By this election the king of
Spain, who had not yet been in Germany and who never learned its
language, became its ruler at a critical juncture, when the teachings of
Luther were producing unprecedented dissension and political
distraction. We shall hereafter refer to him by his imperial title of
Charles V.
[Illustration: Charles V]
131. In order to understand the Europe of Charles V and the constant
wars which occupied him all his life, we must turn back and review the
questions which had been engaging the attention of his fellow-kings
before he came to the throne. It is particularly necessary to see
clearly how Italy had suddenly become the center of commotion,--the
battlefield for Spain, France, and Germany.
[Sidenote: Charles VIII of France invades Italy.]
Charles VIII of France (1483-1498) possessed little of the practical
sagacity of his father, Louis XI. He dreamed of a mighty expedition
against the Turks and of the conquest of Constantinople. As the first
step he determined to lead an army into Italy and assert his claim,
inherited from his father, to the kingdom of Naples, which was in the
hands of the house of Aragon.[258] While Italy had everything to lose by
permitting a powerful monarch to get a foothold in the South, there was
no probability that the various little states into which the peninsula
was divided would lay aside their perpetual animosities and combine
against the invader. On the contrary, Charles VIII was urged by some of
the Italians themselves to come.
[Sidenote: Savonarola and Charles VIII.]
Had Lorenzo the Magnificent still been alive, he might have organized a
league to oppose the French king, but he had died in 1492, two years
before Charles started. Lorenzo's sons failed to maintain the influence
over the people of Florence which their father had enjoyed; and the
leadership of the city fell into the hands of the Dominican friar,
Savonarola, whose fervid preaching attracted and held for a time the
attention of the fickle Florentine populace. He believed himself to be a
prophet, and proclaimed that God was about to scourge Italy for its
iniquities, and that men should flee before His wrath by renouncing
their lives of sin and pleasure.
When Savonarola heard of the French invasion, it appeared to him that
this was indeed the looked-for scourge of God, which might afflict, but
would also purify, the Church. His prophecies seemed to be fulfilled,
and his listeners were stricken with terror. As Charles approached
Florence, the people rose in revolt against the Medici, sacked their
palaces, and drove out the three sons of Lorenzo. Savonarola became the
chief figure in the new republic which was established. Charles was
admitted into Florence, but his ugly, insignificant figure disappointed
the Florentines. They soon made it clear to him that they would not
regard him in any sense as a conqueror, and would oppose a prolonged
occupation by the French. Savonarola said to him: "The people are
afflicted by your stay in Florence, and you waste your time. God has
called you to renew His Church. Go forth to your high calling lest God
visit you in His wrath and choose another instrument in your stead to
carry out His designs." So, after a week's stay, the French army left
Florence and proceeded on its southward journey.
[Sidenote: The popes since the Great Schism.]
The next power with which Charles VIII had to deal was represented by a
person in every way the opposite of the Dominican monk--Pope Alexander
VI. After the troubles of the Great Schism and the councils, the popes
had set to work to organize their possessions in central Italy into a
compact principality. For a time they seemed to be little more than
Italian princes. But they did not make rapid progress in their political
enterprises because, in the first place, they were usually advanced in
years before they came to power and so had little time to carry out
their projects; and, in the second place, they showed too much anxiety
to promote the interests of their relatives. The selfish, unscrupulous
means employed by these worldly prelates naturally brought great
discredit upon the Church.
[Sidenote: Pope Alexander VI and Cæsar Borgia.]
There was probably never a more openly profligate Italian despot than
Alexander VI (1493-1503) of the notorious Spanish house of Borgia. He
frankly set to work to advance the interests of his children, as if he
were merely a secular ruler. For one of his sons, Cæsar Borgia, he
proposed to form a duchy east of Florence. Cæsar outdid his father in
crime. He not only entrapped and mercilessly slaughtered his enemies,
but had his brother assassinated and thrown into the Tiber. Both he and
his father were accused of constant recourse to poisoning, in which art
they were popularly supposed to have gained extraordinary proficiency.
It is noteworthy that when Machiavelli prepared his _Prince_,[259] he
chose for his hero Cæsar Borgia, as possessing in the highest degree
those qualities which went to make up a successful Italian ruler.
The pope was greatly perturbed by the French invasion, and in spite of
the fact that he was the head of Christendom, he entered into
negotiations with the Turkish sultan in the hope of gaining aid against
the French king. He could not, however, prevent Charles from entering
Rome and later continuing on his way to Naples.
[Sidenote: Charles VIII leaves Italy unconquered.]
The success of the French king seemed marvelous, for even Naples
speedily fell into his hands. But he and his troops were demoralized by
the wines and other pleasures of the South, and meanwhile his enemies at
last began to form a combination against him. Ferdinand of Aragon was
fearful lest he might lose Sicily, and Maximilian objected to having the
French control Italy. Charles' situation became so precarious that he
may well have thought himself fortunate, at the close of 1495, to
escape, with the loss of only a single battle, from the country he had
hoped to conquer.
[Sidenote: Results of Charles' expedition.]
The results of Charles' expedition appear at first sight trivial; in
reality they were momentous. In the first place, it was now clear to
Europe that the Italians had no real national feeling, however much they
might despise the "barbarians" who lived north of the Alps. From this
time down to the latter half of the nineteenth century, Italy was
dominated by foreign nations, especially Spain and Austria. In the
second place, the French learned to admire the art and culture of Italy.
The nobles began to change their feudal castles, which since the
invention of gunpowder were no longer impregnable, into luxurious
country houses. The new scholarship of Italy took root and flourished
not only in France, but in England and Germany as well. Consequently,
just as Italy was becoming, politically, the victim of foreign
aggressions, it was also losing, never to regain, that intellectual
preëminence which it had enjoyed since the revival of interest in
classical literature.
[Sidenote: Savonarola's reforms in Florence.]
After Charles VIII's departure, Savonarola continued his reformation
with the hope of making Florence a model state which should lead to the
regeneration of the world. At first he carried all before him, and at
the Carnival of 1496 there were no more of the gorgeous exhibitions and
reckless gayety which had pleased the people under Lorenzo the
Magnificent. The next year the people were induced to make a great
bonfire, in the spacious square before the City Hall, of all the
"vanities" which stood in the way of a godly life--frivolous and immoral
books, pictures, jewels, and trinkets.
[Sidenote: Savonarola condemned and executed, 1498.]
Savonarola had enemies, however, even in his own Dominican order, while
the Franciscans were naturally jealous of his renown and maintained that
he was no real prophet. What was more serious, Alexander VI was bitterly
hostile to the reforming friar because he urged the Florentines to
remain in alliance with France. Before long even the people began to
lose confidence in him. He was arrested by the pope's order in 1497 and
condemned as a heretic and despiser of the Holy See. He was hanged, and
his body burned, in the same square where the "vanities" had been
sacrificed hardly more than a twelvemonth before.
[Sidenote: Louis XII's Italian policy.]
In the same year (1498), the romantic Charles VIII died without leaving
any male heirs and was succeeded by a distant relative, Louis XII, who
renewed the Italian adventures of his predecessor. As his grandmother
was a member of the Milanese house of the Visconti, Louis laid claim to
Milan as well as to Naples. He quickly conquered Milan, and then
arranged a secret treaty with Ferdinand of Aragon (1500) for the
division of the kingdom of Naples between them. It was not hard for the
combined French and Spanish troops to conquer the country, but the two
allies soon disagreed, and four years later Louis sold his title to
Naples for a large sum to Ferdinand.
[Sidenote: Pope Julius II.]
132. Pope Julius II, who succeeded the unspeakable Alexander VI (1503),
was hardly more spiritual than his predecessor. He was a warlike and
intrepid old man, who did not hesitate on at least one occasion to put
on a soldier's armor and lead his troops in person. Julius was a
Genoese, and harbored an inveterate hatred against Genoa's great
commercial rival, Venice. The Venetians especially enraged the pope by
taking possession of some of the towns on the northern border of his
dominions, and he threatened to reduce their city to a fishing village.
The Venetian ambassador replied, "As for you, Holy Father, if you are
not more reasonable, we shall reduce you to a village priest."
[Sidenote: League of Cambray against Venice, 1508.]
With the pope's encouragement, the League of Cambray was formed in 1508
for the express purpose of destroying one of the most important Italian
states. The Empire, France, Spain, and the pope were to divide among
them Venice's possessions on the mainland. Maximilian was anxious to
gain the districts bordering upon Austria, Louis XII to extend the
boundaries of his new duchy of Milan, while the pope and Ferdinand were
also to have their appropriate shares.
Venice was quickly reduced to a few remnants of its Italian domains, but
the Venetians hastened to make their peace with the pope, who, after
receiving their humble submission, gave them his forgiveness. In spite
of his previous pledges to his allies, the pope now swore to exterminate
the "barbarians" whom he had so recklessly called in. He formed an
alliance with Venice and induced the new king of England, Henry VIII, to
attack the French king. As for Maximilian, the pope declared him as
"harmless as a newborn babe." This "Holy League" against the French led
to their loss of Milan and their expulsion from the Italian peninsula in
1512, but it in no way put an end to the troubles in Italy.
[Sidenote: Pope Leo X, 1513-1521.]
The bellicose Julius was followed in 1513 by Leo X, a son of Lorenzo the
Magnificent. Like his father, he loved art and literature, but he was
apparently utterly without religious feelings. He was willing that the
war should continue, in the hope that he might be able to gain a couple
of duchies for his nephews.
[Sidenote: Francis I of France, 1515-1547.]
Louis XII died and left his brilliant cousin and successor, Francis I,
to attempt once more to regain Milan. The new king was but twenty years
old, gracious in manner, and chivalrous in his ideals of conduct. His
proudest title was "the gentleman king." Like his contemporaries, Leo X,
and Henry VIII of England, he patronized the arts, and literature
flourished during his reign. He was not, however, a wise statesman; he
was unable to pursue a consistent policy, but, as Voltaire says, "did
everything by fits and starts."
[Sidenote: Francis I in Italy.]
[Sidenote: The republic of Florence becomes the grand duchy of Tuscany.]
He opened his reign by a very astonishing victory. He led his troops
into Italy over a pass which had hitherto been regarded as impracticable
for cavalry, and defeated the Swiss--who were in the pope's pay--at
Marignano. He then occupied Milan and opened negotiations with Leo X,
who was glad to make terms with the victorious young king. The pope
agreed that Francis should retain Milan, and Francis on his part acceded
to Leo's plan for turning over Florence once more to the Medici. This
was done, and some years later this wonderful republic became the grand
duchy of Tuscany, governed by a line of petty princes under whom its
former glories were never renewed.[260]
[Sidenote: Sources of discord between France and the Hapsburgs.]
Friendly relations existed at first between the two young sovereigns,
Francis I and Charles V, but there were several circumstances which led
to an almost incessant series of wars between them. France was clamped
in between the northern and southern possessions of Charles, and had at
that time no natural boundaries. Moreover, there was a standing dispute
over portions of the Burgundian realms, for both Charles and Francis
claimed the _duchy_ of Burgundy and the neighboring _county_ of
Burgundy--commonly called Franche-Comté. Charles also believed that,
through his grandfather, Maximilian, he was entitled to Milan, which the
French kings had set their hearts upon acquiring. For a generation the
rivals fought over these and other matters, and the wars between Charles
and Francis were but the prelude to a conflict lasting over two
centuries between France and the overgrown power of the house of
Hapsburg.
[Sidenote: Henry VIII of England, 1509-1547.]
In the impending struggle it was natural that both monarchs should try
to gain the aid of the king of England, whose friendship was of the
greatest importance to each of them, and who was by no means loath to
take a hand in European affairs. Henry VIII had succeeded his father
(Henry VII) in 1509 at the age of eighteen. Like Francis, he was
good-looking and graceful, and in his early years made a very happy
impression upon those who came in contact with him. He gained much
popularity by condemning to death the two men who had been most active
in extorting the "benevolences" which his father had been wont to
require of unwilling givers. With a small but important class, his
learning brought him credit. He married, for his first wife, an aunt of
Charles V, Catherine of Aragon, and chose as his chief adviser Thomas
Wolsey, whose career and sudden downfall were to be strangely associated
with the fate of the unfortunate Spanish princess.[261]
[Sidenote: Charles V goes to Germany.]
In 1520 Charles V started for Germany to receive the imperial crown at
Aix-la-Chapelle. On his way he landed in England with the purpose of
keeping Henry from forming an alliance with Francis. He judged the best
means to be that of freely bribing Wolsey, who had been made a cardinal
by Leo X, and who was all-powerful with Henry. Charles therefore
bestowed on the cardinal a large annuity in addition to one which he had
granted him somewhat earlier. He then set sail for the Netherlands,
where he was duly crowned king of the Romans. From there he proceeded,
for the first time, to Germany, where he summoned his first diet at
Worms. The most important business of the assembly proved to be the
consideration of the case of a university professor, Martin Luther, who
was accused of writing heretical books, and who had in reality begun
what proved to be the first successful revolt against the seemingly
all-powerful mediæval Church.
General Reading.--For the Italian wars of Charles VIII and Louis
XII, _Cambridge Modern History_ (The Macmillan Company, $3.75 per
vol.), Vol. I, Chapter IV; JOHNSON, _Europe in the Sixteenth
Century_ (The Macmillan Company, $1.75), Chapter I; DYER and
HASSALL, _Modern Europe_ (The Macmillan Company, 6 vols., $2.00
each), Vol. I; CREIGHTON, _History of the Papacy_ (see above, p.
320), Vols. IV, V. For Savonarola, _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol.
I, Chapter V; CREIGHTON, Vol. IV, Chapter VIII; LEA, _History of
the Inquisition_ (see above, p. 232), Vol. III, pp. 209-237;
SYMONDS, _Age of Despots_ (see above, p. 352), Chapter IX; PASTOR,
_History of the Popes_ (see above, p. 320), Vol. V. For Spain,
_Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. I, Chapter XI.