Charles inherited the shrewdness of Ferdinand, the piety of Isabella, and the melancholy
temper of his mother which plunged her into insanity, and induced him to exchange the imperial
throne for a monastic cell. The same temper reappeared in the gloomy bigotry of his son Philip II.,
who lived the life of a despot and a monk in his cloister-palace of the Escorial. The persecuting
Queen Mary of England, a granddaughter of Isabella, and wife of Philip of Spain, had likewise a
melancholy and desponding disposition.
From his ancestry Charles fell heir to an empire within whose boundaries the sun never set.
At the death of his father (Sept. 25, 1506), he became, by right of succession, the sovereign of
Burgundy and the Netherlands; at the death of Ferdinand (Jan. 23, 1516), he inherited the crown
of Spain with her Italian dependencies (Naples, Sicily, Sardinia), and her newly acquired American
possessions (to which were afterwards added the conquests of Mexico and Peru); at the death of
Maximilian, he succeeded to the hereditary provinces of the house of Habsburg, and soon afterwards
to the empire of Germany. In 1530 he was also crowned king of Lombardy, and emperor of the
Romans, by the Pope.
The imperial crown of Germany was hotly contested between him and Francis I. All the
arts of diplomacy and enormous sums of money were spent on electioneering by both parties. The
details reveal a rotten state of the political morals of the times. Pope Leo at first favored the claims
of King Francis, who was the natural rival of the Austrian and Burgundian power, but a stranger
to the language and manners of Germany. The seven electors assembled at Frankfurt offered the
dignity to the wisest of their number, Frederick of Saxony; but he modestly and wisely declined
the golden burden lined with thorns. He would have protected the cause of the Reformation, but
was too weak and too old for the government of an empire threatened by danger from without and
within.^299 He nominated Charles; and this self-denying act of a Protestant prince decided the election,
June 28, 1520. When the ambassadors of Spain offered him a large reward for his generosity, he
promptly refused for himself, and declared that he would dismiss any of his servants for taking a
bribe.
Charles was crowned with unusual splendor, Oct. 23, at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), where
the founder of the German Empire lies buried. In his oath he pledged himself to protect the Catholic
faith, the Roman Church, and its head the Pope.
The new emperor was then only twenty years of age, and showed no signs of greatness.
"Nondum" ("Not yet") was the motto which he had adopted for his maiden shield in a tournament
at Valladolid two years before. He afterwards exchanged it for "Plus Ultra." He was a good rider,
and skilled in military exercises; he could break a lance with any Knight, and vanquish a bull in
the ring, like an expert espada; but he was in feeble health, with a pale, beardless, and melancholy
face, and without interest in public affairs. He had no sympathy with the German nation, and was
ignorant of their language. But as soon as he took the reins of power into his own hands, he began
to develop a rare genius for political and military government. His beard grew, and he acquired
some knowledge of most of the dialects of his subjects. He usually spoke and wrote French and
Spanish.
Letters, Despatches, and State Papers relating to the negotiations between England and Spain preserved in the archives of Simancas and
elsewhere. Suppl. to vol. I. and II., London, 1868; Gachard, Jeanne la Folle, Bruxelles, 1869; and Jeanne la Folle et Charles V., in the
Bulletin of the Brussels Academy, 1870 and 1872; Rösler, Johanna die Wahnsinnige, Königin von Castilien, Wien, 1870, Maurenbrecher,
Johanna die Wahnsinnige, in his "Studien und Skizzen zur Gesch. der Reformationszeit." Leipzig, 1874, pp. 75-98.(^299) Martin (Histoire de France, VII. 496) says: "L’électeur Frédéric n’a vait ni la hardiesse ni le génie d’un tel rôle."