LI The Emperor Charles V THE Holy Roman Empire came to a sort of climax in the reign of the Emperor Charles V. He was one of the most extra- ordinary monarchs that Europe has ever seen. For a time he had the air of being the greatest monarch since Charlemagne. His greatness was not of his own making. It was largely the creation of his grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519). Some families have fought, others have intrigued their way to world power ; the Habsburgs married their way. Maximilian began his career with Austria, Styria, part of Alsace and other districts, the original Habsburg patrimony ; he married^the lady's name scarcely matters to us — ^the Netherlands and Burgundy. Most of Burgundy slipped from him after his first wife's death, but the Nether- lands he held. Then he tried unsuccessfully to marry Brittany. He became emperor in succession to his father, Frederick III, in 1493, and married the duchy of Milan. Finally he married his son to the weak-minded daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Ferdinand and Isabella of Columbus, who not only reigned over a freshly united Spain and over Sardinia and the kingdom of the two Sicilies, but over all America west of Brazil. So it was that this Charles V, his grandson, inherited most of the American continent and between a third and a half of what the Turks had left of Europe. He succeeded to the Netherlands in 1506. When his grandfather Ferdinand died in 1516, he became practically king of the Spanish dominions, his mother being imbecile ; and his grandfather Maxi- milian dying in 1519, he was in 1520 elected Emperor at the still comparatively tender age of twenty. He was a fair young man with a not very intelligent face, a thick upper lip and a long clumsy chin. He found himself in a world of young and vigorous personalities. It was an age of brilliant young monarchs. Francis I had succeeded to the French throne in 1515 293
