Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/246

 234 THE AGE OF HAPSBURG ASCENDENCY heiress of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. They had two sons, Charles and Ferdinand. Charles, therefore, was heir to the Hapsburg inheritance, the Burgundian inheritance, and the whole Spanish inheritance including the New World, which had been discovered by Christopher Columbus, and had been bestowed upon Spain by a bull of Pope Alexander vr. The Spanish inheritance also included possession or claims to possession of the Crowns of the two Sicilies as well as sundry Italian duchies. With this vast inheritance Charles also obtained the succession to the empire; but, on the other hand, while he retained his Burgundian possessions, he transferred the Austrian claims to his brother Ferdinand. When Charles himself disappeared from the scene, the succession to the empire as well as to the Austrian dominion went to Ferdinand and the Austrian Hapsburgs; while everything derived from Mary of Burgundy or Joanna of Castile remained to his son Philip and the Spanish branch of the Hapsburgs. It would naturally have appeared that with such ^ast domains under his control, Charles v. might have completely dominated Charles v., Europe. That he did not do so was due to his Emperor. inability to control the German Empire; because that empire was split into two camps by the Reformation, and he could never be sure that one half of the German princes would not make common cause with his opponents. The Reformation, if we date its commencement from the challenge thrown down by Luther to the papacy, began precisely at the moment when the young Charles was entering upon his in- heritance. When, later, the Spanish Crown was separated from The Spanish the empire, Spain seemed to its own king and to and Austrian the world to wield a power still mightier than that Branches. w hich Charles v. had been able to exercise, and she could always feel assured that the Austrian Hapsburgs would not actively oppose her, though they might be either unable or unwilling to lend her direct support. In the follow- ing century, the seventeenth, the Spanish power waned, but that of the Austrian Hapsburgs increased, so that a Hapsburg ascendency was maintained on the continent until France was able to win the ascendency for her own royal family.