278Chapter 15
A Clash of Empires: The Ottoman
Challenge and the Emperor Charles V
The wars that plagued sixteenth- and early seventeenth-
century Europe were for the most part a continuation
of old dynastic rivalries, complicated after 1560 by
rebellion and civil war in nearly all of the major states.
These struggles were pursued with unparalleled vigor
even though most Europeans believed, or claimed to be-
lieve, that the survival of Christendom was threatened
by Ottoman expansion.
The Turks first became a serious threat to western
Europe in the reign of Süleyman I (the Magnificent,
reigned 1520–66). In 1522 his fleet drove the Knights
of St. John from their stronghold at Rhodes, thereby
permitting unimpeded communications between Con-
stantinople and Egypt. After defeating the Hungarians
at Mohács in 1526, Süleyman established control of the
central Hungarian plain. The Austrian Hapsburgs were
able to claim a narrow strip of northwestern Hungary,
but Transylvania under the voivod János Zapolya
(d. 1540) became a Turkish tributary, Calvinist in reli-
gion, and bitterly hostile to the Catholic west. Then, in
1529 and again in 1532, Süleyman besieged Vienna.
He failed on both occasions, largely because Vienna
was beyond the effective limits of Ottoman logistics.
But the effort made a profound impression. The Turk
was at the gates.
In retrospect, the attacks on Vienna probably were
intended only to prevent a Hapsburg reconquest of
Hungary. They were not repeated until 1689. In 1533
a new Turkish offensive was launched at sea. Fleets
under the command of Khair-ed-Din, a Christian con-
vert to Islam known as “Barbarossa” for his flaming red
beard, ravaged the coasts of Italy, Sicily, and Spain and
threatened Christian commerce throughout the
Mediterranean.
The brunt of these struggles ultimately fell upon
the Spanish Empire. In 1517 Charles of Hapsburg
(1500–58) ascended the thrones of Castile and Aragon
to become Charles I, first king of a united Spain. He
was the son of Juana “la Loca” (the Crazy), daughter of
Ferdinand and Isabella, and Philip “the Handsome”
(d. 1506), son of the emperor Maximilian I and Mary of
Burgundy. His mother lived until 1555, but she was
thought to be insane and had been excluded from the
succession. From her, Charles inherited Spain, its pos-
sessions in the New World, and much of Italy, includ-
ing Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia. On the death of his
grandfather Maximilian in 1519, he gained the Haps-
burg lands in Austria and Germany and the remaining
inheritance of the dukes of Burgundy including the sev-
enteen provinces of the Netherlands. In 1521 he was
elected Holy Roman emperor as Charles V (see illustra-
tion 15.2).
The massive accumulation of states and resources
embroiled the young emperor in endless conflict.
Though he had placed the Austrian lands under the
rule of his brother Ferdinand, king of the Romans,
Charles was forced to defend Vienna in person against
the Turks. Because Turkish naval efforts were directed
primarily against his possessions in Spain and Italy, he
thought it necessary to invade Tunis in 1535 and Al-
giers in 1541. The Valois kings of France, seeing them-
selves surrounded by Charles’s territories, fought seven
wars with him in thirty years. This Hapsburg-Valois ri-
valry was in some ways a continuation of the Italian
wars at the beginning of the century, but it was fought
on three fronts: northern Italy, the Netherlands, and
the Pyrenees. As a devout Catholic, the emperor also
tried in 1546–47 and again in 1552–55 to bring the
German Protestants to heel but received no help from
the papacy. Paul III, fearing imperial domination of
Italy, allied himself with the Most Christian King of
France, who was in turn the ally of the major Protestant
princes and of the Turks.
The empire of Charles V was multinational, but in
time its center of gravity shifted toward Spain.
Charles, born in the Low Countries and whose native
tongue was French, became dependent upon the rev-
enues of Castile, the only one of his realms in which
permanent taxation had been established. Spanish sol-
diers, trained in the Italian wars, became the core of
his army. Castilian administrators produced results,
not endless complaints about the violation of tradi-
tional rights or procedures, and by 1545 his secretary,
his chief military adviser, and his confessor were
Spanish. Charles retired in 1556, sick and exhausted,
to the remote monastery of Yuste in the heart of
Spanish Extremadura. His son, Philip II (reigned
1556–98), was Spanish to his fingertips. His father’s
abdication left him Italy, the Netherlands, and the
Spanish Empire, while the Hapsburg lands in central
Europe were given to Charles’s brother Ferdinand,
who was elected emperor in 1558.
The war between France and Spain came to an end
in 1559 with the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, but the
underlying rivalry remained. Both sides were simply ex-
hausted. Though Philip was forced to repudiate his fa-
ther’s debts, the predictability of Castilian revenues and
a dramatic increase in wealth from the American mines