Germany During the Reformation
Charles V
Charles grew up sincerely believing he had a divinely-ordained mission to protect Christendom. He took this duty seriously. He was God's champion against the infidel; at home his chief mission was peace. He was serious, competent, and sincere. Only the Reformation proved too great a task.
Everything in Charles' life pointed toward greatness. His grandfather, Maximilian, had quite consciously arranged marriages so that his children would be in the leading houses of Europe. His goal was to create a dynastically united front against the infidel. After all, the Byzantine Empire had been lost only recently, in 1453. If he or his heirs could liberate it, Christendom would be united. It was a vision at once heady and unrealistic.
Charles inherited this tradition, and saw himself as being in a divinely-ordained position to bring it about. It was a lifelong disappointment to him that Germany distracted him with heresy, France opposed him with armies, and the Vatican proved so weak and wayward that it was a liability.
Charles' father died when he was six. From him he inherited Franche-Comté
, the Netherlands, the duchies of Brabant and Luxemburg, and the counties of Flanders, Holland, Artois, Hainault, and Zeeland. Hee also inherited the claim to the duchy of Burgundy, held by France since 1477.
His mother was Joanna of Castile, Joanna the Mad, who lived until 1555. Charles' authority was exercised by Grandpa Max, who delegated it to his daughter, Margaret of Austria, dowager of Savoy. Charles was declared of age in 1515. The following January 23, Ferdinand of Aragon died and all of Spain also fell to Charles.
Charles' first challenge was Spain. It was only recently united and various forces would have been glad to return to the old days. Cardinal Cisneros, who had served as regent, was old and dying when Charles arrived in September 1517. Most of his court was Burgundian, in style on of the most lavish in Europe, while the Spanish court of Castile was one of the most sober and conservative. The estates granted money but grudgingly and with commentary. Aragon was even more difficult.
With Aragon came the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which included Sardinia and the Balearics. The Italian connection embroiled Charles with the Turks in the Mediterranean, and with the French.
He scarcely had Spain in hand when Grandpa Max died, and Charles became preoccupied with trying to get elected Emperor. He borrowed prodigiouslly, bribed widely, and was elected on 28 June 1519. This, too, brought him into conflict with France, for Francis I had decided he wanted the imperial title and he had been supported by the pope.
Chief architect of the election, and Charles' chief political adviser until 1530, was Mercurino Arborio di Gattinara. This man convinced Charles that control of Italy was the key to the Empire, which is why the next years focused on the peninsula.
No one called it an empire at the time, or thought of it as such. Reference was usually in the plural: his lands, his realms. If in the singular, the term used was monarchia The Holy Roman Empire was a phrase that did not yet exist, nor did anyone think it included Spain. Gattinara, though, pressed to unify the realms in practice, but Charles wasn't so sure. When he ruled on his own, after Gattinara's death, Charles mostly let each of his realms be ruled according to their own laws and made no move toward unity. In practical terms, Charles relied on a Spanish secretariat to handle Italy, Spain and the New World, and on a Burgundian staff to handle Germany and the Low Countries.
Charles treated his lands like a set of family possessions, given this one to a son, that to a sister, another to a daughter or brother. The far-flung clan was only united in his own person. He kept in touch with weekly correspondence.