General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

1. REIGN OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. (1519-1556).

CHARLES' DOMINIONS.—Charles I. of Spain, better known to fame as Emperor Charles V., was the son of Philip the Handsome, Archduke of Austria, and Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. He was "the converging point and heir of four great royal lines, which had become united by a series of happy matrimonial alliances." These were the houses of Austria, Burgundy, Castile, and Aragon. Before Charles had completed his nineteenth year, there were heaped upon his head, through the removal of his ancestors by death, the crowns of the four dynasties.

But vast as were the hereditary possessions of the young prince, there was straightway added to these (in 1519), by the vote of the Electors of Germany, the sovereignty of the Holy Roman Empire. After this election he was known as Emperor Charles V., whereas hitherto he had borne the title of Don Carlos I. of Spain.

CHARLES AND THE REFORMATION.—It is Charles' relations to the Lutheran movement which constitute the significant feature of his life and work. Here his policies and acts concerned universal history. It would hardly be asserting too much to say that Charles, at the moment he ascended the Imperial throne, held in his hands the fortunes of the Reformation, so far as regards the countries of Southern Europe. Whether these were to be saved to Rome or not, seemed at this time to depend largely upon the attitude which Charles should assume towards the reform movement. Fortunately for the Catholic Church, the young emperor placed himself at the head of the Catholic party, and during his reign employed the strength and resources of his empire in repressing the heresy of the reformers.

[Illustration: THE SPANISH KINGDOMS And Their European Dependencies under
Charles the Fifth]

HIS TWO CHIEF ENEMIES.—Had Charles been free from the outset to devote all his energies to the work of suppressing the Lutheran heresy, it is difficult to see what could have saved the reform doctrines within his dominions from total extirpation. But fortunately for the cause of the reformers, Charles' attention, during all the first part of his reign, was drawn away from the serious consideration of Church questions, by the attacks upon his dominions of two of the most powerful monarchs of the times,—Francis I. (1515-1547) of France, and Solyman the Magnificent (1520-1566), Sultan of Turkey. Whenever Charles was inclined to proceed to severe measures against the Protestant princes of Germany, the threatening movements of one or both of these enemies, at times acting in concert and alliance, forced him to postpone his proposed crusade against heretics for a campaign against foreign foes.

RIVALRY AND WARS BETWEEN CHARLES AND FRANCIS [Footnote: Table of Wars:— First War (ended by Peace of Madrid). . 1521-1526 Second War (ended by Ladies' Peace) . . 1527-1529 Third War (ended by Truce of Nice). . . 1536-1538 Fourth War (ended by Peace of Crespy).. 1542-1544] (1521-1544).—Francis I. was the rival of Charles in the contest for Imperial honors. When the Electors conferred the title of emperor upon the Spanish monarch, Francis was sorely disappointed, and during all the remainder of his reign kept up a jealous and almost incessant warfare with Charles, whose enormous possessions now nearly surrounded the French kingdom. Italy was the field of much of the fighting, as the securing of dominion in that peninsula was the chief aim of each of the rivals.

The so-called First War between Francis and the emperor was full of misfortunes for Francis. His army was driven out of Northern Italy by the Imperial forces; his most skilful and trusted commander, the Constable of Bourbon, turned traitor and went over to Charles, and another of his most valiant nobles, the celebrated Chevalier Bayard, the knight sans peur, sans reproche, "without fear and without reproach," was killed; while, to crown all, Francis himself, after suffering a crushing defeat at Pavia, in Italy, was wounded and taken prisoner. In his letter to his mother informing her of the disaster, he is said to have laconically written, "All is lost save honor." He was liberated by the Peace of Madrid (1526).

The most memorable incident of the Second War between the king and the emperor, was the sack of Rome by an Imperial army, made up chiefly of Lutherans. Rome had not witnessed such scenes since the terrible days of the Goth and Vandal.

In the Third War Francis shocked all Christendom by forming an alliance with the Turkish Sultan, who ravaged with his fleets the Italian coasts, and sold his plunder and captives in the port of Marseilles. Thus was a Christian city shamefully opened to the Moslems as a refuge and a slave-market.

The Fourth War, which was the last between the rivals, left their respective possessions substantially the same as at the beginning of the strife, in 1521.

DISASTROUS EFFECTS OF THE WAR.—The results of these royal contentions had been extremely calamitous. For a quarter of a century they had kept nearly all Europe in a perfect turmoil, and by preventing alliances of the Christian states, had been the occasion of the severe losses which Christendom during this period suffered at the hands of the Turks. Hungary had been ravaged with fire and sword; Rhodes had been captured from the Knights of St. John; and all the Mediterranean shores pillaged, and thousands of Christian captives chained to the oars of Turkish galleys. [Footnote: The worst feature of this advance of the Sultan's authority in the Mediterranean was the growth, under his protection, of the power of the Algerian pirates. One of the chief strongholds of the pirates on the African coast was Tunis, which was held by the famous Barbarossa. In the interval between his second and third wars with Francis, Charles, with a large army and fleet, made an assault upon this place, defeated the corsair, and set free 20,000 Christian captives. For this brilliant and knightly achievement, the emperor received great applause throughout Europe. Just after his third war with Francis, the emperor made an unsuccessful and most disastrous assault upon Algiers, another stronghold of the corsairs.]

PERSECUTION OF THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS BY FRANCIS.—The cessation of the wars between Francis and Charles left each free to give his attention to his heretical subjects. And both had work enough on hand; for while the king and the emperor had been fighting each other, the doctrines of the reformers had been spreading rapidly in all directions and among all classes.

The severest blow dealt by Francis against the heretics of his kingdom fell upon the Vaudois, or Waldenses, [Footnote: So called from the founder of the sect, Peter Waldo, or Pierre de Vaux, who lived about the beginning of the thirteenth century.] the inhabitants of a number of hamlets in Piedmont and Provence. Thousands were put to death by the sword, thousands more were burned at the stake, and the land was reduced to a wilderness. Only a miserable remnant, who found an asylum among the mountains, were left to hand down their faith to later times.

CHARLES' WARS WITH THE PROTESTANT GERMAN PRINCES.—Charles, on his part, turned his attention to the reformers in Germany. Inspired by religious motives and convictions, and apprehensive, further, of the effect upon his authority in Germany of the growth there of a confederacy of the Protestant princes, known as the League of Schmalkald, Charles resolved to suppress the reform movement by force. He was at first successful, but in the end, the war proved the most disastrous and humiliating to him of any in which he had engaged. Successive defeats of his armies forced him to give up his undertaking to make all his German subjects think alike in matters of religion.

THE RELIGIOUS PEACE OF AUGSBURG (1555).—In the celebrated Diet of Augsburg, convened in 1555 to compose the distracted affairs of the German states, it was arranged and agreed that every prince should be allowed to choose between the Catholic religion and the Augsburg Confession, [Footnote: The "Augsburg Confession" was the formula of belief of the adherents of Luther. It was drawn up by the scholar Melanchthon, and laid before the Imperial Diet assembled at Augsburg by Charles V. in 1530.] and should have the right to make his religion the worship of his people. This, it will be noted, was simply toleration as concerns princes or governments. The people individually had no freedom of choice; every subject must follow his prince, and think and believe as he thought and believed. Of course, this was no real toleration.

Even to the article of toleration as stated above, the Diet made one important exception. The Catholics insisted that ecclesiastical princes, i.e., bishops and abbots who were heads of states, on becoming Protestants, should lose their offices and revenues; and this provision, under the name of the Ecclesiastical Reservation, was finally made a part of the treaty. This was a most fortunate article for the Catholics.

ABDICATION AND DEATH OF CHARLES.—While the Diet of Augsburg was arranging the Religious Peace, the Emperor Charles was enacting the part of a second Diocletian (see p. 331). There had long been forming in his mind the purpose of spending his last days in monastic seclusion. The disappointing issue of his contest with the Protestant princes of Germany, the weight of advancing years, together with menacing troubles which began "to thicken like dark clouds about the evening of his reign," now led the emperor to carry this resolution into effect. Accordingly he abdicated in favor of his son Philip the crown of the Netherlands (1555), and that of Spain and its colonies (1556), and then retired to the monastery of San Yuste, situated in a secluded region in the western part of Spain (1556).

[Illustration: EMPEROR CHARLES THE FIFTH. (After a painting by Angel
Lizcano.)]

In his retreat at Yuste, Charles passed the remaining short term of his life in participating with the monks in the exercises of religion, and in watching the current of events without; for Charles never lost interest in the affairs of the empire over which he had ruled, and Philip constantly had the benefit of his father's wisdom and experience.

There is a tradition which tells how. Charles, after vainly endeavoring to make some clocks that he had about him at Yuste run together, made the following reflection: "How foolish I have been to think I could make all men believe alike about religion, when here I cannot make even two clocks keep the same time."

This story is probably mythical. Charles seems never to have doubted either the practicability or the policy of securing uniformity of belief by force. While in retirement at Yuste, he expressed the deepest regret that he did not burn Luther at Worms. He was constantly urging Philip to use greater severity in dealing with his heretical subjects, and could scarcely restrain himself from leaving his retreat, in order to engage personally in the work of extirpating the pestilent doctrines, which he heard were spreading in Spain.