Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/425

] Edward III. of England, then the Marquis of Meissen, and lastly, when both of these refused the honour, Count Gunther of Schwarzburg. On the death of the last, how ever (an event which he was accused of having accelerated by poison), Charles, who had married Anne, daughter of the Elector Palatine, and given his own daughter, with Tyrol as dowry, to the duke of Austria, was unanimously elected. He devoted all his care to the aggrandizement of himself and his family ; and the government of the empire was very negligently administered. In 1354 he visited Italy, and was crowned at Milan, Rome, and Ostia; but he received many indignities, being, for example, refused entrance to several cities, and only allowed to remain at Rome a single day. He was obliged to confirm the Viscontis in their usurpation ; and he left the country, after amassing a large sum of money, a mockery to both Guelf and Ghibelline. As third wife Charles took the daughter of the duke of Jauer, to whose dukedom he hoped thus to obtain the succession. He also added Brandenburg, Silesia, and Lower Lusatia to the possessions of the House of Luxembourg ; and he obtained from the electors, by means of large bribes, the recognition of Wenceslas as his suc cessor. He allowed the empire meanwhile to be overrun by banditti, and he only once took up arms. This was at the call of the Pope, to whom he was always submissive ; but even on this occasion he allowed himself to be bought off by his adversaries, the tyrannous Viscontis The only important measure which he effected was the publication of the Golden Bull (1356), which determined the method of election for the dignity of emperor. It decreed that the number of the electors should be seven : three ecclesiasti cal, viz., those of Mayence, Cologne, and Treves ; and four secular, viz., the king of Bohemia, the Count Palatine, the duke of Saxony, and the margrave of Brandenburg. The king of the Romans, and future emperor, was to be elected by the majority in a meeting to be held at Frankfort. The Pope thus lost all influence over elections ; and to escape his anger Charles granted him a tithe of all ecclesiastical incomes, together with some other concessions. Charles died at Prague in 1378, having immensely enriched the house of Luxembourg, but leaving the empire greatly the worse for his reign.

1em  CHARLES V. (1500-1558), emperor, the ablest and most powerful monarch of the IGth century, was born at Ghent, February 24, 1500. He was the converging point and heir of four great royal lines, which had become united by a series of fortunate matrimonial alliances. His father was Philip of Austria, who being the son of the Emperor Maximilian and of Mary, only daughter and heiress of Charles the Bold, transmitted to him the posses sion of the Netherlands, and of the hereditary dominions of Austria, as well as a solid claim to the imperial crown of Germany at the next election. His mother was Joanna, second daughter, and finally heiress, of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, joint rulers of Spain, who handed down to their grandson the united monarchy, increased by the conquest of Granada in 1492, by the addition of the two Sicilies in 1504, by the annexation of the southern part of Xavarre in 1512, and by the discovery of the New World. Seldom, if ever, in the history of the world has any one been born to such vast possessions and to such weighty responsibilities. He fell heir to the Netherlands on the death of his father in 1506, to the crown of Spain and Naples on the death of his grandfather Ferdinand in 1516, and to the archdukedom of Austria on the death of his grandfather Maximilian in 1519. Before the future emperor was born, Columbus had been discover ing for him territories of unlimited extent and fabulous wealth beyond the pillars of Hercules. When he was only fifteen years of age the first European saw the Pacific Ocean ; and while the crown of Charlemagne and Bar- barossa was being placed on his head at Aix-la-Chapelle, Magellan was prosecuting the great voyage which was to result in the circumnavigation of the globe, and Cortes was engaged in the arduous conquest of Mexico. Ere he had been twenty years on the throne of Spain, Pizarro had completed the conquest of Peru. This was not all. It must be remembered that two at least of the countries he was destined to rule were approaching the very highest point of their intellectual, moral, and material development. The ingenious and energetic population of the Netherlands were carrying industry to a pitch till that time unexampled in the history of the world, while the vast wealth they accumulated could in the hands of a politic ruler become an almost exhaustless source of revenue. It was the heroic period in the history of Spain, the period of .final victory over the Moors, and of the romantic conquest of a new world, when religious and military enthusiasm elevated the national character in such an extraordinary manner ; in war, diplomacy, and government the pre-eminence of the Spaniards was acknowledged and dreaded. In fact, the material wealth of great countries and the genius necessary to form it and to guide it were available to an extent which has seldom been surpassed. Onto 1517, when he went to enter upon the government of Spain, Charles lived in the Netherlands. He was carefully educated, though his tastes attracted him more to the active exercises of the chase and of the tilting ground than lo the dry and pedantic learning of the time. William of Croy, Lord of Chievres, was appointed to superintend his education, while under him Adrian of Utrecht, afterwards Pope by the name of Adrian VI., was the teacher of the young prince. The latter was not able to inspire him with any love for the scholastic learning in which he excelled, while the former did not attempt to lay any constraint upon his natural bent. He took care, how ever, to instruct him in the knowledge more directly useful to a prince, in the study of history and the science of government, and especially sought to interest him in the practical direction of affairs. If we may judge from the result he was perfectly successful, as his pupil grew up to be a great adept in the arts of government, and to be the active and direct moving power in everything that tran spired during lais reign. Yet his character was late in developing. His excessive deference to his teachers and the undue place he gave them in the government rendered him very unpopular during his first visit to Spain (1517-19). In 1519 the news arrived of the death of his grandfather Maximilian, and then of his own election to the imperial crown. The contest between him and Francis I. had excited universal attention in Europe. The crown had been first offered to Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, but that prince recommended Charles on the plea that the critical state of the empire, especially on account of the alarming progress of the Turks, required for it a powerful protector. And, indeed, now that Charles had attained to the highest position in Christendom, he found that the vast extent of an empire, consisting of nations geographically disconnected and brought under the same head, not through any real affinity, but by the accident of matrimonial alliances, had only increased the number of his rivals and the many-sided complexity of his duties. Between Charles s dominions in Spain and the Netherlands, holding the duchy of Burgundy, which Charles claimed by hereditary right, and the duchy of Milan, over which he was bound to assert the old imperial claims, angry because of the 