Charles, leaving Castile thus disgusted with his administration, set out for Saragossa, the capital of Aragon, that he might be present in the cortes of that kingdom. On his way thither, he took leave of his brother Ferdinand, whom he sent into Germany on the pretence of visiting their grandfather, Maximilian, in his old age. To this prudent precaution Charles owed the preservation of his Spanish dominions. During the violent commotions which arose there soon after this period, the Spaniards would infallibly have offered the crown to a prince who was the darling of the whole nation; nor did Ferdinand want ambition nor councillors that might have prompted him to accept of the offer.
The Aragonese had not hitherto acknowledged Charles as king, nor would they allow the cortes to be assembled in his name, but in that of the justicia, to whom, during an interregnum, this privilege belonged. After long delays, however, and with much difficulty, he persuaded the members to confer on him the title of king, in conjunction with his mother. At the same time, he bound himself by that solemn oath, which the Aragonese exacted of their kings, never to violate any of their rights or liberties. When a donative was demanded, the members were still more intractable; many months elapsed before they would agree to grant Charles 200,000 ducats, and that sum they appropriated so strictly for paying debts of the crown, which had long been forgotten, that a very small part of it came into the king’s hands. What had happened in Castile taught them caution, and determined them rather to satisfy the claims of their fellow-citizens, how obsolete soever, than to furnish strangers the means of enriching themselves with the spoils of their country.
From Aragon, Charles proceeded to Catalonia, where he wasted much time, encountered more difficulties, and gained less money. The Flemings were now become so odious to every province in Spain by their exactions that the desire of mortifying them, and of disappointing their avarice, augmented the jealousy with which a free people usually conduct their deliberations. Segovia, Toledo, Seville, and several other cities of the first rank entered into a confederacy for the defence of their rights and privileges; and, notwithstanding the silence of the nobility, who, on this occasion, discovered neither the public spirit nor the resolution which became their order, the confederates laid before the king a full view of the state of the kingdom, and of the maladministration of his favourites. The preferment of strangers, the exportation of the current coin, the increase of taxes, were the grievances of which they chiefly complained; and of these they demanded redress with that boldness which is natural to a free people. These remonstrances, presented at first at Saragossa, and renewed afterwards at Barcelona, Charles treated with great neglect. The confederacy, however, of these cities, at this juncture, was the beginning of that famous union among the commons [comuneros] of Castile, which not long after threw the kingdom into such violent convulsions as shook the throne, and almost overturned the constitution.
KING CHARLES BECOMES EMPEROR
[1518-1519 A.D.]
Soon after Charles’ arrival at Barcelona, he received the account of an event which interested him much more than the murmurs of the Castilians or the scruples of the cortes of Catalonia. This was the death of the emperor Maximilian—an occurrence of small importance in itself, for he was a prince conspicuous neither for his virtues, nor his power, nor his abilities; but rendered by its consequences more memorable than any that had happened during several ages. It broke that profound and universal peace which then reigned in the Christian world; it excited a rivalship between two princes, which threw all Europe into agitation, and kindled wars more general, and of longer duration, than had hitherto been known in modern times.
The revolution occasioned by the expedition of the French king Charles VIII, into Italy, had inspired the European princes with new ideas concerning the importance of the imperial dignity. The claims of the empire upon some of the Italian states were numerous; its jurisdiction over others was extensive; and though the former had been almost abandoned, and the latter seldom exercised, under princes of slender abilities and of little influence, it was obvious that, in the hands of an emperor possessed of power or of genius, they might be employed as engines for stretching his dominion over the greater part of that country. Even Maximilian, feeble and unsteady as his conduct always was, had availed himself of the infinite pretensions of the empire, and had reaped advantage from every war and every negotiation in Italy during his reign. These considerations, added to the dignity of the station, confessedly the first among Christian princes, and to the rights inherent in the office, which, if exerted with vigour, were far from being inconsiderable, rendered the imperial crown more than ever an object of ambition.
Not long before his death, Maximilian had discovered great solicitude to preserve this dignity in the Austrian family, and to procure the king of Spain to be chosen his successor. But he himself, having never been crowned by the pope, a ceremony deemed essential in that age, was considered only as emperor “elect.” Though historians have not attended to that distinction, neither the Italian nor the German chancery bestowed any other title upon him than that of king of the Romans; and no example occurring in history of any person’s being chosen a successor to a king of the Romans, the Germans, always tenacious of their forms, and unwilling to confer upon Charles an office for which their constitution knew no name, obstinately refused to gratify Maximilian in that point. By his death, this difficulty was at once removed, and Charles openly aspired to that dignity which his grandfather attempted, without success, to secure for him. At the same time Francis I, a powerful rival, entered the lists against him; and the attention of all Europe was fixed upon this competition, no less illustrious from the high rank of the candidates than from the importance of the prize for which they contended. Each of them urged his pretensions with sanguine expectations, and with no unpromising prospect of success. Charles considered the imperial crown as belonging to him of right, from its long continuance in the Austrian line; he knew that none of the German princes possessed power or influence enough to appear as his antagonist; he flattered himself that no consideration would induce the natives of Germany to exalt any foreign prince to a dignity which during so many ages had been deemed peculiar to their own nation; and, least of all, that they would confer this honour upon Francis I, the sovereign of a people whose genius, and laws, and manners differed so widely from those of the Germans that it was hardly possible to establish any cordial union between them. He did not, however, trust the success of his cause to this alone. Great sums of money were remitted from Spain; all the refinements and artifices of negotiation were employed; and a considerable body of troops, kept on foot at that time by the states of the circle of Swabia, was secretly taken into his pay. The venal were gained by presents; the objections of the more scrupulous were answered or eluded; some feeble princes were threatened or overawed.
A Spanish Gentleman, early Sixteenth Century