(1500-1558)
[Illustration: Charles V. [TN]]
Charles V., who ruled over more kingdoms than any other European monarch
before or since, who was the most powerful ruler of his century, and
who, on the whole, used his great power wisely and well, was born at
Ghent, February 24, 1500. His parents were the Archduke Philip, son of
the Emperor Maximilian, and Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon 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 ring leaders 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 Comte, 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.
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 favorite, 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
Angouleme: "Everything is lost, except our honor." This Spartan spirit
has been much admired; but whether justly, may be a question. From a
Bayard, nothing could have been better; but the honor 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 his 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. 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 honor,
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 Angouleme 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 honorable conduct on Luther's appearance before the diet
of Worms, the reader may refer to the life of the reformer in the
present volume. The cause of Lutheranism gained ground at the diet of
Nuremberg; and if Charles had declared in favor 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
aggrandizement; 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 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 counties 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, 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 forever
excluded from that body, on the ground that men who pay no taxes have no
right to a voice in the national assemblies. 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, afterward
Philip II.
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 Aragon in her grave. The
war was continued during the two following years with varying 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, 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 toward 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 Frederick 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 honor
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. 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 clamors 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, afterward
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. of France 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 had lain a plan
for surprising Charles at Innspruck, 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. 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.
[Illustration: Charles V. on his way to the convent.]
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 favors 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 favor 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. "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 health,
when only between fifty-eight and fifty-nine years of age. His activity
and talents had been the theme of universal admiration, the ardor of his
ambitious policy had been extreme, and his knowledge of mankind
profound; but he should have followed up the objects of his high
aspirations 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.