Charles V. was born at Ghent, February 24, 1500. His parents were the
Archduke Philip, son of the Emperor Maximilian, and Joanna, daughter of
Ferdinand of Arragon and Isabella of Castile. To those united kingdoms
Charles succeeded on the death of his grandfather Ferdinand, in 1516.
The early part of his reign was stormy: a Flemish regency and Flemish
ministers became hateful to the Spaniards: and their discontent broke
out into civil war. The Castilian rebels assumed the name of The Holy
League, and seemed animated by a spirit not unlike that of the English
Commons under the Stuarts. Spain was harassed by these internal contests
until 1522, when they were calmed by the presence of Charles, whose
prudence, and we may hope his humanity, put an end to the rebellion. He
made some examples; but soon held his hand, with the declaration, that
“too much blood had been spilt.” An amnesty was more effectual than
severities, and the royal authority was strengthened, as it will seldom
fail to be, by clemency. Some of his courtiers informed him of the place
where one of the ringleaders was concealed. His answer is worthy of
everlasting remembrance,—“You ought to warn him that I am here, rather
than acquaint me where he is.”
Spain, the Two Sicilies, the Low Countries, and Franche Comté, belonged
to Charles V. by inheritance; and by his grandfather Maximilian’s
intervention, he was elected King of the Romans: nor had he to wait long
before that prince’s death, in 1519, cleared his path to the empire. But
Francis I. of France was also a candidate for the imperial crown, with
the advantage of being six years senior to Charles, and of having
already given proof of military talent. The Germans, however, were
jealous of their liberties; and not unreasonably dreading the power of
each competitor, rejected both. Their choice fell on Frederic, Elector
of Saxony, surnamed the Wise, celebrated as the protector of Luther; but
that prince declined the splendid boon, and recommended Charles, on the
plea that a powerful emperor was required to stop the rapid progress of
the Turkish arms. It was, however, surmised, that two thousand marks of
gold, judiciously distributed by the Spanish ambassador, had some little
influence in fixing the votes. On his election, Charles was required to
sign a capitulation for the maintenance of the liberties and rights of
the Germanic body, with a proviso against converting the empire into an
heir-loom in his family. From the time of Otho IV. it had been customary
for new emperors to send an embassy to Rome, giving notice of their
election, and promising obedience to the papal court; but Charles V.
thought this more honoured in the breach than the observance; nor have
the pretensions of the Holy See been since strong enough to recover that
long established claim. So true it is, that practices resting on no
better foundation than absurd or pernicious precedents, require only a
successful example of resistance, to ensure their abolition.
The political jealousy, embittered by personal emulation, which existed
between the Emperor and the King of France, broke out into war in 1521.
France, Navarre, and the Low Countries, were at times the seat of the
long contest which ensued; but chiefly Italy. The duchy of Milan had
been conquered by Francis in 1515. It was again wrested from the French
by the Emperor in 1522. In 1523, a strong confederacy was formed against
France, by the Pope, the Emperor, the King of England, the Archduke
Ferdinand, to whom his brother Charles had ceded the German dominions of
the House of Austria; the states of Milan, Venice, and Genoa; all united
against a single power. And in addition, the celebrated Constable of
Bourbon became a traitor to France, to gratify his revenge; brought his
brilliant military talents to the Emperor’s service; and was invested
with the command of the Imperial troops in Italy. To this formidable
enemy Francis opposed his weak and presumptuous favourite, the Admiral
Bonnivet, who was driven out of Italy in 1524, the year in which the
gallant Bayard lost his life, in striving to redeem his commander’s
errors.
The confidence of Francis seemed to increase with his dangers, and his
faults with his confidence. He again entered the Milanese, in 1525, and
retook the capital. But Bonnivet was his only counsellor; and, under
such guidance, the siege of Pavia was prosecuted with inconceivable
rashness, and the battle of Pavia fought without a chance of gaining it.
Francis was taken prisoner, and wrote thus to his mother, the Duchess of
Angoulême;—“Everything is lost, except our honour.” This Spartan spirit
has been much admired; but whether justly, may be a question. From a
Bayard, nothing could have been better: but the honour of a king is not
confined to fighting a battle; and this specimen, like the conduct of
Francis in general, proves him to have been the mirror of knighthood,
rather than of royalty.
Charles, notwithstanding his victory at Pavia, did not invade France,
but, as the price of freedom, he prescribed the harshest conditions to
the captive king. At first they were rejected; but haughty spirit and
conscience were at length both reconciled to the casuistry, that the
fulfilment of forced promises may be eluded. Francis therefore consented
to the treaty of Madrid, made in 1526, by which it was stipulated that
he should give up his claims in Italy and the Low Countries; surrender
the duchy of Burgundy to Spain; and return into captivity, if these
conditions were not fulfilled in six weeks. When once at large, instead
of executing the treaty, he formed a league with the Pope, the King of
England, and the Venetians, to maintain the liberty of Italy. The Pope
absolved him from his oaths, and he refused to return into Spain. This
deliberate infraction of an oath savoured neither of the mirror of
knighthood, nor royalty. Nor did the Emperor appear to advantage in this
transaction: his want of generosity was conspicuous in his extravagant
demands, and his failure in the higher tone of princely feeling was not
compensated to himself by the success of his politics.
In 1527, Bourbon laid siege to Rome, and was slain in the assault; but
the Imperialists took and plundered the city, and are said in derision
to have proclaimed Martin Luther Pope. The Emperor’s conduct on this
occasion was not less farcical, than his hypocrisy was disgusting. On
receiving news of the captivity of the head of the church, instead of
setting him at liberty, he commanded processions for his deliverance,
and ultimately exacted from him a heavy ransom. Meanwhile the treaty of
Madrid was not fulfilled; and this was the cause of another war between
Spain, and France supported by England. The passions of the rival
monarchs were now much excited, and challenges and the lie were
exchanged between them. No duel was fought, nor probably intended; but
the notoriety of the challenge went far to establish a false point of
punctilio, we will not call it honour, among gentlemen, and single
combats became more frequent than in the ages of barbarism.
In 1529, the course of these calamities was suspended by the treaty of
Cambray, negotiated in person by two women. The Duchess of Angoulême,
and Margaret of Austria, governess of the Low Countries, met in that
city, and settled the terms of pacification between the rival monarchs.
For Charles’s honourable conduct on Luther’s appearance before the diet
of Worms, the reader may refer to the life of the Reformer in our second
volume. The cause of Lutheranism gained ground at the diet of Nuremberg;
and if Charles had declared in favour of the Lutherans, all Germany
would probably have changed its religion. As it was, the Reformation
made progress during the war between the Emperor and Clement VII. All
that Charles acquired from the diet of Spire in 1526, was to wait
patiently for a general council, without encouraging novelties. In 1530,
he assisted in person at the diet of Augsburg, when the Protestants (a
name bestowed on the Reformers in consequence of the protest entered by
the Elector of Saxony and others at the second diet of Spire) presented
their confession, drawn up by Melancthon, the most moderate of Luther’s
disciples. About this time Charles procured the election of his brother
Ferdinand as king of the Romans, on the plea that, in his absence, the
empire required a powerful chief to make head against the Turks. This
might be only a pretence for family aggrandisement: but the Emperor
became seriously apprehensive lest the Lutherans, if provoked, should
abandon the cause of Christendom; and policy therefore conceded what
zeal would have refused. By a treaty concluded with the Protestants at
Nuremberg, and ratified at Ratisbon in 1531, Charles granted them
liberty of conscience, till a council should be held, and annulled all
sentences passed against them by the Imperial chamber: on this they
engaged to give him powerful assistance against the Turks.
In 1535, Muley Hassan, the exiled king of Tunis, implored Charles’s aid
against the pirate Barbarossa, who had usurped his throne. The Emperor
eagerly seized the opportunity of acquiring fame, by the destruction of
that pest of Spain and Italy. He carried a large army into Africa,
defeated Barbarossa, and marched to Tunis. The city surrendered, being
in no condition to resist: and while the conqueror was deliberating what
terms to grant, the soldiery sacked it, committed the most atrocious
violence, and are said to have massacred more than thirty thousand
persons. This outrage tarnished the glory of the expedition, which was
entirely successful. Muley Hassan was restored to his throne.
In 1536 a fresh dispute for the possession of the Milanese broke out
between the King of France and the Emperor. It began with a negotiation,
artfully protracted by Charles, who promised the investiture, sometimes
to the second, sometimes to the youngest son of his formerly impetuous
rival, whom he thus amused, while he took measures to crush him by the
weight of his arms. But if misfortune had made the King of France too
cautious, prosperity had inspired Charles with a haughty presumption,
which gave the semblance of stability to every chimerical vision of
pride. In 1536 he attempted the conquest of France by invading Provence;
but his designs were frustrated by a conduct so opposite to the national
genius of the French, that it induced them to murmur against their
general. Charles however felt by experience the prudence of those
measures, which sacrificed individual interests to the general good, by
making a desert of the whole country. Francis marked his impotent hatred
by summoning the Emperor before parliament by the simple name of Charles
of Austria, as his vassal for the countries of Artois and Flanders. The
charge was the infraction of the treaty of Cambray, the offence was laid
as felony, to abide the judgment of the court of peers: on the
expiration of the legal term, the two fiefs were decreed to be
confiscated. A fresh source of hostility broke out on the death of the
young Dauphin of France, who was said to have been poisoned, and the
king accused Charles V. of the crime. But there is neither proof nor
probability to support the charge: and the accused could have no
interest to commit the act imputed to him, since there were two
surviving sons still left to Francis.
But the resources even of Charles were exhausted by his great exertions:
arrears were due to his troops, who mutinied everywhere, from his
inability to pay them. He therefore assembled the Cortes, or
states-general, of Castile, at Toledo, in 1539, stated his wants, and
demanded subsidies. The clergy and nobility pleaded their own exemption,
and refused to impose new taxes on the other orders. Charles in anger
dissolved the Cortes, and declared the nobles and prelates for ever
excluded from that body, on the ground that men who pay no taxes have no
right to a voice in the national assemblies. Toledo at that time
witnessed a singular instance of power and haughtiness in the Spanish
grandees. The Emperor with his court was returning from a tournament,
when one of the officers making way before him struck the Duke
d’Infantado’s horse: the proud nobleman drew his sword, and wounded the
offender. Charles ordered the grand provost to arrest the duke; but the
Constable of Castile compelled the provost to retire, claimed his
exclusive right to judge a grandee, and took the duke, whom the other
nobles rallied round, to his own house. Only one cardinal remained with
the king, who had the good sense to pocket the affront. He offered to
punish the officer; but Infantado considered the proposal as sufficient
reparation, and the grandees returned to court. But the people of Ghent
made a more serious resistance to authority, on account of a tax which
infringed their privileges. They offered to transfer their allegiance to
Francis, who did not avail himself of the proposal, not from either
conscientious or chivalrous scruples, but because his views were all
centred in Milan: he therefore betrayed his Flemish clients to the
Emperor, in hopes of obtaining the investiture of the Italian duchy. By
holding out the expectation of this boon, Charles obtained a
safe-conduct for his passage through France into Flanders, whither he
was anxious to repair without loss of time. His presence soon reduced
the insurgents. The inhabitants of Ghent opened their gates to him on
his fortieth birthday, in 1540; and he entered his native city, in his
own words, “as their sovereign and their judge, with the sceptre and the
sword.” He punished twenty-nine of the principal citizens with death,
the town with the forfeiture of its privileges, and the people by a
heavy fine for the building of a citadel to coerce them. He broke his
word with Francis by bestowing the Milanese on his own son, afterwards
Philip II. If his duplicity be hateful, the credulity of Francis is
contemptible.
Our limits will not allow of our detailing the circumstances of the
Emperor’s calamitous expedition against Algiers; but his courage,
constancy, and humanity in distress and danger, claim a sympathy for his
misfortunes, which is withheld from the selfish and wily career of his
prosperity.
Francis devised new grounds for war, and allied himself with Sweden,
Denmark, and the Sultan Soliman. This is the first instance of a
confederacy with the North. But he had alienated the Protestants of
Germany by his severe measures against the Lutherans, and Henry VIII. by
crossing the marriage of his son Edward with Mary of Scotland, yet in
her cradle. Henry therefore leagued with the Emperor, who found it
convenient to bury the injuries of Catherine of Arragon in her grave.
The war was continued during the two following years with various
success: the most remarkable events were the capture of Boulogne by the
English, and the great victory won by the French over the Imperialists
at Cerisolles, in Piedmont, in 1544. In the autumn of that year a treaty
was concluded at Crespi, between Charles and Francis, involving the
ordinary conditions of marriage and mutual renunciations, with the
curious clause that both should make joint war against the Turks. In the
same year the embarrassments created by the war, and the imminent danger
of Hungary, increased the boldness of the German Protestants belonging
to the league of Smalkald, and the Emperor, while presiding at the diet
of Spire, won them over by consenting to the free exercise of their
religion.
The Catholics had always demanded a council, which was convened at Trent
in 1545. The Protestants refused to acknowledge its authority, and the
Emperor no longer affected fairness towards them. In 1546 he joined Pope
Paul III. in a league against them, by a treaty in terms contradictory
to his own public protestations. Paul himself was so imprudent as to
reveal the secret, and it enabled the Protestants to raise a formidable
army in defence of their religion and liberties. But the Electors of
Cologne and Brandenburg, and the Elector Palatine, resolved to remain
neuter. Notwithstanding this secession, the war might have been ended at
once, had the confederates attacked Charles while he lay at Ratisbon
with very few troops, instead of wasting time by writing a manifesto,
which he answered by putting the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of
Hesse under the ban of the empire. He foresaw those divisions which soon
came to pass, by Maurice of Saxony’s seizure of his cousin’s electorate.
Delivered by the death of Francis in 1547, in which year Henry VIII.
also died, from the watchful supervision of a jealous and powerful
rival, and relieved from the fear of the Turks by a five years truce,
Charles was at liberty to bend his whole strength against the revolted
princes of Germany. He marched against the Elector Frederic of Saxony,
who was defeated at Mulhausen, taken prisoner, and condemned to death by
a court-martial composed of Italians and Spaniards, in contempt of the
laws of the empire. The sentence was communicated to the prisoner while
playing at chess: his firmness was not shaken, and he tranquilly said,
“I shall die without reluctance, if my death will save the honour of my
family and the inheritance of my children.” He then finished his game.
But his wife and family could not look at his death so calmly: at their
entreaty he surrendered his electorate into the Emperor’s hands. The
other chief of the Protestant league, the Landgrave of Hesse, was also
forced to submit, and detained in captivity, contrary to the pledged
word of the Emperor; who, fearless of any further resistance to his
supreme authority, convoked a diet at Augsburg in 1548. At that assembly
Maurice was invested with Saxony: and the Emperor, in the vain hope of
enforcing a uniformity of religious practice, published by his own
authority a body of doctrine called the “Interim,” to be in force till a
general council should be assembled. The divines by whom that “Interim”
was composed, had inserted the fundamentals of Catholic doctrine, and
preserved the ancient form of worship; but they allowed the communion in
both kinds, and permitted married priests to perform sacerdotal
functions. This necessarily was unsatisfactory to both parties; but its
observance was enforced by a master, with whom terror was the engine of
obedience.
These measures, however, did not preserve tranquillity long in Germany.
Maurice of Saxony and the Elector of Brandenburg urged the deliverance
of the Landgrave of Hesse, as having made themselves sureties against
violence to his person. Charles answered by absolving them from their
pledges. The Protestants of course charged him as arrogating the same
spiritual authority with the popes. And Maurice, offended at the slight
put upon him, directed his artful policy to the humiliation of Charles.
He had compelled his subjects to conform to the Interim by the help of
the timid Melancthon, who was no longer supported by the firmness of
Luther. On the other hand, he had silenced the clamours of the more
sturdy by a public avowal of his zeal for the Reformation. In the
meantime, the diet of Augsburg, completely at the Emperor’s devotion,
had named him general of the war against Magdeburg, which had been
placed under the ban of the empire for opposition to the Interim. He
took that Lutheran city, but by private assurances regained the good
will of the inhabitants. He also engaged in a league with France, but
still wore the mask. He even deceived the able Granville, Bishop of
Arras, afterwards cardinal, who boasted that “a drunken German could
never impose on him;” yet was he of all others most imposed on. At last,
in 1552, Maurice declared himself, and Henry II. published a manifesto,
assuming the title of “Protector of the liberties of Germany and its
captive princes.” He began with the conquest of the three bishoprics of
Toul, Baden, and Metz. In conjunction with Maurice he laid a plan for
surprising Charles at Inspruck, and getting possession of his person;
and the daring attempt had almost succeeded. Charles was forced to
escape by night during a storm, in a paroxysm of gout, and was carried
across the Alps in a litter. In the subsequent conferences at Passau,
the deliverance of the Landgrave of Hesse, the abolition of the Interim,
and the assembling of a diet within six months, to end all religious
differences, were the conditions imposed upon the Emperor. In the
meantime, liberty of conscience was to be enjoyed in the fullest manner,
and Protestants were made admissible into the imperial chamber. The
examination of grievances affecting the liberties of the empire was to
be referred to the approaching diet; and if the ecclesiastical disputes
were not then adjusted, the treaty now concluded was to remain in
perpetual force. These disputes were adjusted, in 1555, at the diet of
Augsburg, by the solemn grant of entire freedom of worship to the
Protestants. The King of France was abandoned by his allies, and
scarcely named in the treaty. Dr. Robertson’s remark on this is worth
quoting: “Henry experienced the same treatment which every prince who
lends his aid to the authors of a civil war may expect. As soon as the
rage of faction began to subside and any prospect of accommodation to
open, his services were forgotten, and his associates made a merit with
their sovereign of the ingratitude with which they abandoned their
protector.” Henry resolved to defend his acquisition of the three
bishoprics, and Charles to employ his whole force for their recovery.
The Duke of Guise made adequate preparations for the defence of Metz,
the siege of which the Emperor was compelled to raise, after sixty-five
days spent in fruitless efforts, with the loss of 30,000 men by
skirmishes and battles, and by diseases incident to the severity of the
season. “I perceive,” said he, “that Fortune, like other females,
forsakes old men, to lavish her favours on the young.” This sentiment
probably sunk deeper into his reflections, than might be inferred from
the sarcastic terms in which it was clothed: for in the year 1556, after
various events of war, alternately calamitous to the subjects of both
nations, he astonished Europe by his abdication in favour of his son. In
an assembly of the states at Brussels, he addressed Philip in a speech
which melted the audience into tears. The concluding passage, as given
by Robertson, is worth transcribing, to show how much easier it is to
utter the suggestions of wisdom and virtue than to act up to them, and
how much an experienced observer of human character may be misled to
gratuitous assumptions by parental affection. “Preserve an inviolable
regard for religion; maintain the Catholic faith in its purity; let the
laws of your country be sacred in your eyes; encroach not on the rights
and privileges of your people; and if the time should ever come when you
shall wish to enjoy the tranquillity of private life, may you have a son
endowed with such qualities that you can resign your sceptre to him with
as much satisfaction as I give up mine to you!” Charles retired into a
monastery, where he died, after more than two years passed in deep
melancholy, and in practices of devotion inconsistent with sound
intellect, when only between fifty-eight and fifty-nine years of age.
His activity and talents had been the theme of universal admiration: the
ardour of his ambitious policy had been extreme, and his knowledge of
mankind profound: but he should have followed up the objects of his high
aspiring by a straighter road. His glory would have been truly enviable
had he devoted his efforts to the happiness of his subjects, instead of
harassing their minds by dissensions, and mowing down their lives by
hundreds of thousands in war.
To the statesman or the politician the history of this period is an
inexhaustible fund of instruction and interest, and to the general
reader it is rendered more than usually attractive by the almost
dramatic contrast of character among the principal actors in the scene.
Francis seems to have been the representative of the expiring school of
chivalry; Charles was not the representative, but the founder of the
modern system of state policy: Henry was the representative of
ostentation, violence, and selfishness, to be found in all ages.
We are absolved from the necessity of dilating on the state of the fine
arts at this era of their glory, by referring the reader to the lives of
the artists of the time scattered through our volumes. The life of
Titian affords the most ample evidence of Charles’s personal taste, and
feeling of painting; and his warm and generous friendship for that great
artist is at once a proof of his discernment, and perhaps the most
attractive feature in his character.
It is scarcely necessary to name Robertson as the modern historian of
Charles, and his work is the best direction to original authorities.
Sismondi may also be consulted.
[Illustration:
[Charles V., from a picture by Vandyke.]
]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by W. Holl._