Birthday Greetings # 33

Happy birthday to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.  In extent of territory nominally under his control Charles quite possibly ruled more of the world than anybody before or since.  The Habsburg predilection for useful marriage contracts reached its apotheosis in the figure of Charles.  Emperor Maximilian, Charles' grandfather had been married to Mary daughter and heir of the Duke of Burgundy.  Their son Philip was married to Joanna, who was queen of both Castile and Aragon (now known by the collective title of Spain).  Their son Charles thus inherited Burgundy, Spain, Spain's empire in the New World, Spain's empire in the Old World (largely bits of Italy and the Netherlands) and, thanks to some equally skillful marriages on the other side of the Habsburg family the traditional family heartland of Austria plus Bohemia and those bits of Hungary not overrun by the Turks.  When his grandfather died he was also elected Holy Roman Emperor.  The unanimous decision of the electors being a testimony to his birth, talents and capacity for bribery.

Charles also inherited a bucketload of problems.  To start with when he started ruling Spain it was technically as regent for his mother (who was insane and insisted on carting the corpse of her dead husband around everywhere she went).  Having been raised in Burgundy he didn't have much of a natural affinity for the Spanish and irritated everyone (by everyone I mean the nobility) by bringing a bunch of Burgundian advisers with him to help him rule Spain.  There were some revolts, some uprisings, a bit of crushing of the recalcitrant but eventually Charles managed to get a handle on the Spanish.  The eastern territories of the Habsburgs were under threat from the Turks under Suleiman the Lawgiver, one of their greatest sultans and in Germany some meddling priest was nailing theses to cathedral doors and upsetting religious harmony in the empire.

The biggest problem Charles had though was a guy named Francis.  Francis was charming, talented and ambitious.  He was also the King of France.  When old Maximilian died Francis had tossed his hat into the ring in the imperial election and the unanimous election of Charles didn't please him at all.  Neither did the fact that Charles controlled much of Burgundy, traditionally a vassal state of France.  And the fact that Charles controlled chunks of Italy that Francis felt more rightly belonged to France (it would be several centuries before anybody gave mind room to the concept that Italy might belong to the Italians) pissed him off no end.  Francis, in short, was a casus belli looking for a war.  He lost no time in starting one.  As a matter of fact he started several, mostly with Charles, over the course of his career and the fact that he lost most of them didn't really slow him down too much.

The contest between Francis and Charles was much more even than a strict measurement of the size of their territories would imply.  France was a compact, well governed kingdom with a uniform set of laws and the capacity to direct a goodly proportion of its spare resources where its monarch willed.  Charles' Habsburg empire was what the Habsburg empire had always been and always would be up to its end in 1918, a lunatic Frankenstein's monster of a state with various non compatible bits stitched together by marriage contracts and dynastic coincidence.  Every one of Charles' realms had their own laws, rights, limits on the power of the monarch and interests.  Nobody in Austria really gave a shit what was happening in Burgundy, nobody in Spain had likely heard of Transylvania, nobody in the empire cared much about what was happening outside the empire and nobody in Hungary really wanted the Habsburgs at all.  Charles had vast resources but a crippled and threadbare administration that could barely exploit let alone apply them.  Like his Habsburg predecessors (and successors) Charles lived on debt.  Vast loans from Jewish and Genoese banking houses kept his empire afloat, the interest being covered by the huge quantities of gold and silver ripped out of the New World and which were usually mortgaged years in advance.

By comparison with the sparkling personality of Francis Charles was a rather dull stick but if he lacked genius he had the Habsburg quality of remorseless, unimaginative determination in full measure.  Somehow just enough money was found to stop the soldiers from deserting.  Somehow just enough work got through his sclerotic administration to stop things from completely falling apart and whenever things were at their toughest and their worst there was Charles grimly determined that he would win and refusing to accept any scenario where that didn't happen.  He beat Francis, not once but several times.  He failed to stamp out Protestantism in the empire but he somehow kept enough of a lid on it so that the explosion was postponed for several decades.  And always he travelled.  His entire realm needed his personal supervision and things started falling apart when he wasn't there.  Charles spent his entire life roaming Europe patching the edifice and doing just enough to stop the collapse before moving on to the next crisis point.  The Turks ravaged Hungary but failed at the siege of Vienna.  In his downtime Charles even managed to briefly conquer Tunis.

That left the Protestants.  As a good son of the Catholic church Charles was violently (as it turned out very violently) opposed to Protestantism.  He was however well aware that Luther's complaints of corruption and incompetence in the church were thoroughly justified and he kept nagging the pope to do something about it.  He was thus the first (although not the last) Catholic ruler to be simultaneously in bad odour with both Protestants and the Papacy.  The Protestant princes of the empire formed a league to protect their interests and promptly found themselves attacked by Charles who decided that he wasn't keen on the idea of heretics with a power base.  The problem for the Protestants was that if Charles could focus his attention for long enough he had the firepower to stamp them flat.  The problem for the pope was if Charles succeeded in doing so he would have not just the firepower but the moral authority to demand reforms in the church.  The War of the Schmalkaldic League which followed proved that Charles couldn't quite focus his attention for long enough and despite some ghastly moments the Protestant movement survived.  One of the most heartfelt (although silent) sighs of relief probably emanated from the Vatican.

Amidst all these troubles Charles was fortunate in his brother Ferdinand; with a sigh of relief Charles handed over the Austrian hereditary lands to his brother and from that point the issues with the Turks became mainly Ferdinand's problem.  Charles also promised the crown of the Holy Roman Empire (sorry, promised to support Ferdinand's bid for election) to his brother.  Charles would be the only "world emperor", it must have been obvious to him that it was just too much work for one man.  His coat of arms had so many quarterings it looked like a pizza.  After thirty years Charles decided enough.  He resigned all his titles.  To his son he gave the Spanish territories (bankrupt, rebellious Dutch, ongoing troubles in Italy) and to his brother he left the hereditary Habsburg lands and the empire itself (Turkish invasions, religious strife, political intrigue) and having successfully apportioned out this nest of troubles retired to a monastery in Spain where he lived out the rest of his life in relative seclusion.

Whether his heirs were grateful for their respective inheritances is left unrecorded.