The Rise of Spain 175The Expansion of the Spanish
EmpireThrough marriage and inheritance,
Spain’s territorial interests reached
far and wide. The Spanish throne
passed to the Austrian branch of
the Habsburg dynasty in 1496,
with Ferdinand and Isabella’s
daughter, Princess Joanna, marry
ing Philip the Fair, the Flabsburg
duke of Burgundy, the son of Maxi
milian, the Holy Roman emperor.
A year after Isabella’s death in
1504, Ferdinand, hoping to pro
duce an heir to the Spanish throne,
married a niece of King Louis XII
of France. But their infant son died
three years later—royal families
were also subject to the harsh
raphic realities of the age.
In 1516, the Flanders-born son of
Joanna and Philip the Fair inher
ited the throne of Castile and
Aragon as Charles I of Spain. In
1519, he became Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (ruled 1519-1558) upon
the death of his grandfather, Maximilian I. Along with Spain’s American ter
ritories, he inherited Aragon’s Italian possessions. The emperor only briefly
resided in Catalonia and rarely visited Castile. But with far-flung dynastic
interests, he demanded extraordinary taxes from his Spanish subjects to pay
for his wars abroad, including the defense of the Spanish-Italian possessions
of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia against France during the 1520s.
The king’s departure from Spain in 1520 was followed by open revolt
against royal taxation. The revolt of the Comuneros (urban communities)
began in Toledo and spread to other towns in northern Castile. Bourgeois
and artisans opposed the royal officials Charles had imported from Flan
ders, but the revolt was also directed against Castilian nobles. After
royal forces burned the arsenal and town of Medina del Campo in north
central Castile in August 1520, the young king suddenly switched tac
tics. He suspended supplementary tax collections and agreed not to
appoint any more foreigners to office in Spain. When uprisings continued,
Charles’s army gradually restored order, brutally executing the leaders of
the rebellion.
With an eye toward his succession, Charles V arranged the marriage of his
son, Philip, to the English princess Mary Tudor of England in 1554. Charles
Charles V was the grandson of Ferdinand
and Isabella. This portrait is by Titian