April 16, 1520 – Rebellion in Toledo Begins the End of Charles I in Castile

Rather than ruling a coherent kingdom, the House of Habsburg had assembled a complex federation all over Europe through marriages, conquests, and inheritance, ultimately culminating in Charles to become heir of the Holy Roman Empire as a Habsburg, the Empire of Spain through his mother Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, as well as ruler of the Burgundian Netherlands. Charles grew up in his holdings in the Netherlands until he became King of Spain to rule alongside his mother in 1516. He brought with him his Flemish entourage as advisors, sowing distrust between himself and local nobles and the bourgeoisie that had grown up following the Reconquista.

In 1519, Charles was elected Holy Roman Emperor after the death of his grandfather Maximilian. With great aplomb, he set off for a papal coronation, leaving behind a lengthy list of taxes to cover his debts for extravagant living and bribery for his new office. The Castillian parliament, the Cortes, stood up to refuse the new taxes, so Charles suspended the council and reconvened it later to achieve his goals.

In the meantime, Castile erupted. It began in Toledo when royal bureaucrats arrived to remove the anti-Imperial city council with the aim of replacing them with new councilors on the king’s bankroll. Riots broke out, driving away the royalists and installing a new council elected by its own citizens. The success in Toledo spread quickly through central Spain, with city after city falling to revolution. Southern Castile, which was stocked with large garrisons on royal salaries as guards against the Moriscos (converts from Islam to Christianity), maintained its loyalty to Charles.

The revolution continued with wild ideas of establishing themselves as free city-states modeled on those in Italy and ending the monarchy. Peasants began to overthrow their local lords, declaring their freedom and looting estates. Eventually more moderate opinions won out, seeking a Castile liberated from Charles and ruled by Joanna, loyal nobles, and the popular voice. The Comuneros formed up an army and marched on Tordesillas, creating a new Cortes to be presided over by Joanna.

Joanna was called “the Mad” and had always ruled with a co-regent, first her husband, Philip the Handsome, and then her father, Ferdinand II of Aragon. During the time of her father’s tenure, he confined Joanna, the proper heir to Castile, to a convent and surrounded her with servants and advisors loyal only to him. During this time, stories of her madness began to spread, which modern historians speculate as depression, perhaps due to her confinement. She was believed to have exhumed her husband’s body and kept it with her as company in Tordesillas.

The new Cortes asked Joanna to sign an edict legitimizing their political actions, but she paused. Charles had scoffed at the revolt and sent new orders to retrieve the taxes. His regent in Spain and former tutor, Adrian of Utrecht served as General of the Reunited Inquisitions of Castile and Aragon struggled to maintain peace with new policies to win over the favor of nobles, but assassins had struck before Adrian could convince Charles of the seriousness of the Comuneros. With Charles hundreds of miles away and seemingly ignorant, Joanna’s confessors advised that she take over the country before the noble-killers gained their way.

With Joanna as queen, the Comuneros continued to grow. In the north, the royalists assembled an army at Medina de Rioseco, and a Comuneros army under Pedro Téllez-Girón marched to face them. Girón feinted a raid on nearby Villalpando, prompting the royalists to de-entrench and charge for Tordesillas. The Comuneros cut them off in a sweeping victory. Armies in the south began to question the sources of their pay, debts from the royalists stacked up, and soon defection became rampant.

Charles turned his attention to Spain too late. A similar revolt by the Germanies in Aragon occurred at the same time, but their lack of legitimacy and death of leading moderate Llorenç brought about a new alliance between the royalists and nobles there to protect their holdings from peasant uprising. Charles secured his claim in Aragon and soon after repelled an invasion by the French-backed King of Navarre to reclaim his lands seized by Charles’ grandfather Ferdinand II. While he still held eastern Spain, nothing short of war with his own mother could retake the west. Charles at last reasoned that his mother was decades older than he and simply waiting for her death would bring the lands back under his control, even if through his younger brother Ferdinand as a puppet.

Unfortunately for Charles’s plan, Joanna’s simple life loosely presiding over the Comuneros-led Cortes enabled her to live until 1555. Charles, meanwhile, became fervent about maintaining his holdings, never to let another slip away. Conquests in New Spain stayed loyal to his side, and he encouraged settlement of rich new lands in America loyal to his centralized government. He established an ongoing inquisition in the Netherlands in 1522 and personally led the violent suppression of anyone opposing him. He later installed a similar inquisition in Germany to halt the teachings of Luther and crush the Peasant’s Revolt of 1524, simultaneously weakening the power of the princes. When Henry VIII of England requested to divorce his aunt Catherine of Aragon, Charles marched on London. Throughout Charles’s rule, he would fight a two-front conflict with France and the Ottomans, establishing a centralized military bureaucracy loyal only to him.

Upon the death of Joanna, Charles was near death himself, suffering from epilepsy and gout. Rule of Castile passed to Ferdinand, who soon granted it to Charles’s son Philip, now the Holy Roman Emperor. Threats of revolt prevented Philip from uniting Castile with royalist Aragon, making it one of the most liberal pieces of the grand militaristic empire under the Hapsburgs, which ultimately unified the Catholic World in the Treaty of Joinville with France against the threat of Protestants in Northern Europe.

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In reality, Adrian of Utrecht had not been assassinated. After he announced what the revolt would do to her son’s name, Joanna refused to support the Comuneros, greatly weakening their position. Pedro Téllez-Girón’s military blunder, often perceived as treachery since the royalist general was his uncle, allowed the royalists to seize Tordesillas. Charles was restored to rule after the Battle of Villalar ended the revolt in 1521 and ensured his reign by again confining his mother to rooms in the convent. Toward the end of his life, Charles abdicated his lands piecemeal.

June 28, 1519 – Henry VIII Elected Holy Roman Emperor

After the death of Archduke of Austria, King of the Romans, and Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I in January of 1519, many of his titles went directly by inheritance to his Habsburg grandson Charles V. The title emperor, however, would be given by decision of the seven elector-princes of the Germans, Albert of Mainz; Richard von Greiffenklau zu Vollrads of Trier; Hermann of Wied of Cologne; Frederick III of Saxony; Joachim I of Brandenburg; Louis V, Elector Palatine; and Louis II Jagiellon, King of Bohemia. Charles was most obvious choice as brother-in-law to Louis of Bohemia, but others were nervous about too much power being placed in one man's hands. Along with his grandfather's titles, Charles had also recently inherited the title “King of Spain”, which he ruled alongside his mother, Joanna the Mad of Castile.

Francis I of France also wished to hold the powerful title, rejoining lands that had all once been Carolingian. Francis and Charles were bitter rivals since a French victory at the Battle of Marignano the year before brought the twenty-one-year-old Francis to the forefront of European politics. The two began a bribing war for votes, which made some electors all the more nervous. Ideally, a German would be emperor, which was suggested to Fredrick of Saxony, but he refused. Another possibility for the election was Henry VIII of England, but he did not have nearly the money or influence to compete with the Bourbons of France and all the holdings of the Habsburgs. The decision seemed to settle toward Charles until Cardinal Thomas Woolsey, the Lord Chancellor who had conducted matters of state for the young Henry, presented in secret a new plan: Francis use his influence to support Henry's election. Francis, though disappointed that he would not win the title, was at least satisfied that Charles would be deprived of it. The electors were amiable toward an English king (since at least they could relate the language to German) and were more comfortable with a less overwhelming force. The election of Henry was announced to the shock of Europe and instant dismay of Habsburg-supporters.

In 1520, Francis and Henry met in a garish display at the Camp du Drap d'Or (“Field of the Cloth of Gold”) in northern France as Henry began a tour of his new lands. Wolsey orchestrated this meeting as well, but it proved ineffectual as, despite Francis' generosity, Henry declined forging an alliance. Wolsey, who was quietly campaigning for himself as pope, also organized a meeting with Charles while in Germany, but this meeting also came to no avail. Instead, Europe was in a tense peace as Henry threatened to attack whoever began a war.

Meanwhile, Henry focused on the problems of the Reformation beginning in his new empire. Reacting to the sale of indulgences as part of the funding for construction on St. Peter's Basilica, Augustinian friar Martin Luther had posted Ninety-Five Theses critiquing the Catholic Church. During the latter part of Henry's tour in 1521, he heard Luther's case at Worms. In the end, and to the frustration of Pope Leo X, Henry determined to appease his subjects and declared the matter religious debate and did not seek any punishment for him. The support for Luther won over the respect of disgruntled knights in the Rhineland who were nervous of new money but reaffirmed by Henry out of his fanaticism for jousting. The knights' loyalty proved key to Henry's defeat of the German Peasants' Uprising a few years later.

Despite his great realms, Henry struggled to produce an heir. His wife, Catherine of Aragon, six years his senior, had not had a pregnancy since the birth of their daughter Mary. Henry had become fascinated with one of Catherine's maidens, Anne Boleyn. Anne refused to become a mistress and replied that she could only meet Henry's advances if she were queen. Henry asked Pope Clement VII for an annulment of his marriage as Catherine had earlier been married to his brother Arthur, but the pope declined. After the debate dragged for years, Henry decided to break with Rome as the Swedes has had done, name himself Supreme Head of the Church of England in 1533, and bring about his marriage to Anne.

This led to the question of what to do with his holdings in the Holy Roman Empire. Catholic regions saw Henry as an adulterer, but the Protestants saw a chance for freedom from Rome. When Henry dissolved the monasteries of England and seized their valuables, Charles took a stand as defender of Catholicism and invaded the Holy Roman Empire to seize the title he long believed to have been stolen. Henry counterattacked with Swedish assistance, and the war spilled across the Alps as Italian states saw a chance to rebel. Germany served as the principal battleground with towns razed and re-razed as Protestant and Catholic armies carried on campaigns. France attempted to remain neutral as internal strife with the Huguenots grew up, and eventually Francis I determined a policy of religious freedom to maintain his allies. The war threatened to expand further with an unprecedented alliance with Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire who had previously besieged Vienna and threatened Hungary, and Charles knew when to capitulate and agreed to a treaty.

Upon the death of Henry in 1547, the electors met again and, thanks to Henry's urgings, named his son Edward VI of England as the new, ten-year-old emperor. Edward proved a great mover in Protestantism, but he was sickly, dying in 1553. His half-sister Mary ascended the throne of England; the electors, however, could not have a female emperor and instead chose Henry II of France, whose consort Catherine de Medici had great influence and policies of religious tolerance were a healthy compromise between electors optioning Protestant King Christian of Denmark or staunchly Catholic Habsburg Ferdinand I. Bourbons continued to be Holy Roman Emperors until 1685 when Louis XIV worked to affirm his autocracy by promoting Catholicism as the single state religion. Many Protestants fled to Germany, but when Louis began to enact strict religious rule in the Empire as well, the electors refused and stripped him of his title. The Franco-German War brought about a liberated Germany at the expense of France. The electors named Frederick, King in Prussia, as emperor; Augustus II of Saxony, King of Poland, also stood had allegiances outside of Germany, and the time had come for German self-rule. United Germany became a powerful central figure in Europe, leading modernization and industrialization through the next two centuries.

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In reality, there was no alliance between Francis I and Henry VIII, even at the later a lavish meeting at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Wars between Catholics and Protestants would flare up in Germany to a height in the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). The Habsburgs held onto the Holy Roman Empire nearly continuously for hundreds of years until it was dissolved by Napoleon in 1806.