chapter 25 and 27 (volume 1).

_W. Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles V., book 1._

See, also, SPAIN: A. D. 1496-1517.

AUSTRIA: A. D. 1519. Death of Maximilian. Election of Charles V., "Emperor of the Romans."

See GERMANY: A. D. 1519.

AUSTRIA: A. D. 1519-1555. The imperial reign of Charles V. The objects of his policy. His conflict with the Reformation and with France.

"Charles V. did not receive from nature all the gifts nor all the charms she can bestow, nor did experience give him every talent; but he was equal to the part he had to play in the world. He was sufficiently great to keep his many-jewelled diadem. ... His ambition was cold and wise. The scope of his ideas, which are not quite easy to divine, was vast enough to control a state composed of divers and distant portions, so as to make it always very difficult to amalgamate his armies, and to supply them with food, or to procure money. Indeed its very existence would have been exposed to permanent danger from powerful coalitions, had Francis I. known how to place its most vulnerable points under a united pressure from the armies of France, of England, of Venice, and of the Ottoman Empire. Charles V. attained his first object when he prevented the French monarch from taking possession of the inheritance of the house of Anjou, at Naples, and of that of the Viscontis at Milan. He was more successful in stopping the march of Solyman into Austria than in checking the spread of the Reformation in Germany. ... Charles V. had four objects very much at heart: he wished to be the master in Italy, to check the progress of the Ottoman power in the west of Europe, to conquer the King of France, and to govern the Germanic body by dividing it, and by making the Reformation a religious pretext for oppressing the political defenders of that belief. In three out of four of these objects he succeeded. Germany alone was not conquered: if she was beaten in battle, neither any political triumph nor any religious results ensued. In Germany, Charles V. began his work too late, and acted too slowly; he undertook to subdue it at a time when the abettors of the Reformation had grown strong, when he himself was growing weaker. ... Like many other brilliant careers, the career of Charles V. was more successful and more striking at the commencement and the middle than at the end, of its course. At Madrid, at Cambrai, at Nice, he made his rival bow down his head. At Crespy he again forced him to obey his will, but as he had completely made up his mind to have peace, Charles dictated it, in some manner, to his own detriment. {206} At Passau he had to yield to the terms of his enemy--of an enemy whom Charles V. encountered in his old age, and when his powers had decayed. Although it may be said that the extent and the power of the sovereignty which Charles V. left to his successor at his death were not diminished, still his armies were weakened, his finances were exhausted, and the country was weary of the tyranny of the imperial lieutenants. The supremacy of the empire in Germany, for which he had struggled so much, was as little established at the end as at the beginning of his reign; religious unity was solemnly destroyed by the 'Recess' of Augsburg. But that which marks the position of Charles V. as the representative man of his epoch, and as the founder of the policy of modern times, is that, wherever he was victorious, the effect of his success was to crush the last efforts of the spirit of the middle ages, and of the independence of nations. In Italy, in Spain, in Germany, and in the Low Countries, his triumphs were so much gain to the cause of absolute monarchy and so much loss to the liberty derived from the old state of society. Whatever was the character of liberty in the middle ages--whether it were contested or incomplete, or a mockery--it played a greater part than in the four succeeding centuries. Charles V. was assuredly one of those who contributed the most to found and consolidate the political system of modern governments. His history has an aspect of grandeur. Had Francis I. been as sagacious in the closet as he was bold in the field, by a vigorous alliance with England, with Protestant Germany, and with some of the republics of Italy, he might perhaps have balanced and controlled the power of Charles V. But the French monarch did not possess the foresight and the solid understanding necessary to pursue such a policy with success. His rival, therefore, occupies the first place in the historical picture of the epoch. Charles V. had the sentiment of his position and of the part he had to play."

_J. Van Praet, Essays on the Political History of the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries, pages 190-194._

See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 1519 to 1152-1561, and FRANCE: A. D. 1520-1523, to 1547-1559.

AUSTRIA: A. D. 1525-1527. Successful Contest for the Hungarian and Bohemian Crowns.

In Hungary, "under King Matthias the house of Zapolya, so called from a Slavonic village near Poschega, whence it originated, rose to peculiar eminence. To this house, in particular, King Wladislas had owed his accession to the throne; whence, however, it thought itself entitled to claim a share in the sovereign power, and even a sort of prospective right to the throne. Its members were the wealthiest of all the magnates; they possessed seventy-two castles. ... It is said that a prophecy early promised the crown to the young John Zapolya. Possessed of all the power conferred by his rich inheritance, Count of Zips, and Woiwode of Transylvania, he soon collected a strong party around him. It was he who mainly persuaded the Hungarians, in the year 1505, to exclude all foreigners from the throne by a formal decree; which, though they were not always able to maintain in force, they could never be induced absolutely to revoke. In the year 1514 the Woiwode succeeded in putting down an exceedingly formidable insurrection of the peasants with his own forces; a service which the lesser nobility prized the more highly, because it enabled them to reduce the peasantry to a still harder state of servitude. His wish was, on the death of Wladislas, to become Gubernator of the kingdom, to marry the deceased king's daughter Anne, and then to await the course of events. But he was here encountered by the policy of Maximilian. Anne was married to the Archduke Ferdinand; Zapolya was excluded from the administration of the kingdom; even the vacant Palatinate was refused him and given to his old rival Stephen Bathory. He was highly incensed. ... But it was not till the year 1525 that Zapolya got the upper hand at the Rakosch. ... No one entertained a doubt that he aimed at the throne. ... But before anything was accomplished--on the contrary, just as these party conflicts had thrown the country into the utmost confusion, the mighty enemy, Soliman, appeared on the frontiers of Hungary, determined to put an end to the anarchy. ... In his prison at Madrid, Francis I. had found means to entreat the assistance of Soliman; urging that it well beseemed a great emperor to succour the oppressed. Plans were laid at Constantinople, according to which the two sovereigns were to attack Spain with a combined fleet, and to send armies to invade Hungary and the north of Italy. Soliman, without any formal treaty, was by his position an ally of the Ligue, as the king of Hungary was, of the emperor. On the 23d of April, 1526, Soliman, after visiting the groves of his forefathers and of the old Moslem martyrs, marched out of Constantinople with a mighty host, consisting of about a hundred thousand men, and incessantly strengthened by fresh recruits on its road. ... What power had Hungary, in the condition we have just described, of resisting such an attack? ... The young king took the field with a following of not more than three thousand men. ... He proceeded to the fatal plain of Mohaez, fully resolved with his small band to await in the open field the overwhelming force of the enemy. ... Personal valour could avail nothing. The Hungarians were immediately thrown into disorder, their best men fell, the others took to flight. The young king was compelled to flee. It was not even granted him to die in the field of battle; a far more miserable end a waited him. Mounted behind a Silesian soldier, who served him as a guide, he had already been carried across the dark waters that divide the plain; his horse was already climbing the bank, when he slipped, fell back, and buried himself and his rider in the morass. This rendered the defeat decisive. ... Soliman had gained one of those victories which decide the fate of nations during long epochs. ... That two thrones, the succession to which was not entirely free from doubt, had thus been left vacant, was an event that necessarily caused a great agitation throughout Christendom. It was still a question whether such a European power as Austria would continue to exist;--a question which it is only necessary to state, in order to be aware of its vast importance to the fate of mankind at large, and of Germany in particular. ... The claims of Ferdinand to both crowns, unquestionable as they might be in reference to the treaties with the reigning houses, were opposed in the nations themselves, by the right of ejection and the authority of considerable rivals. {207} In Hungary, as soon as the Turks had retired, John Zapolya appeared with the fine army which he had kept back from the conflict; the fall of the king was at the same time the fall of his adversaries. ... Even in Tokay, however, John Zapolya was saluted as king. Meanwhile, the dukes of Bavaria conceived the design of getting possession of the throne of Bohemia. ... Nor was it in the two kingdoms alone that these pretenders had a considerable party. The state of politics in Europe was such as to insure them powerful supporters abroad. In the first place, Francis I. was intimately connected with Zapolya: in a short time a delegate from the pope was at his side, and the Germans in Rome maintained that Clement assisted the faction of the Woiwode with money. Zapolya sent an agent to Venice with a direct request to be admitted a member of the Ligue of Cognac. In Bohemia, too, the French had long had devoted partisans. ... The consequences that must have resulted, had this scheme succeeded, are so incalculable, that it is not too much to say they would have completely changed the political history of Europe. The power of Bavaria would have outweighed that of Austria in both German and Slavonian countries, and Zapolya, thus supported, would have been able to maintain his station; the Ligue, and with it high ultra-montane opinions would have held the ascendency in eastern Europe. Never was there a project more pregnant with danger to the growing power of the house of Austria. Ferdinand behaved with all the prudence and energy which that house has so often displayed in difficult emergencies. For the present, the all-important object was the crown of Bohemia. ... All his measures were taken with such skill and prudence, that on the day of election, though the Bavarian agent had, up to the last moment, not the slightest doubt of the success of his negotiations, an overwhelming majority in the three estates elected Ferdinand to the throne of Bohemia. This took place on the 23d October, 1526. ... On his brother's birth-day, the 24th of February, 1527, Ferdinand was crowned at Prague. .... The affairs of Hungary were not so easily or so peacefully settled. ... At first, when Zapolya came forward, full armed and powerful out of the general desolation, he had the uncontested superiority. The capital of the kingdom sought his protection, after which he marched to Stuhlweissenburg, where his partisans bore down all attempts at opposition: he was elected and crowned (11th of November, 1526); in Croatia, too, he was acknowledged king at a diet; he filled all the numerous places, temporal and spiritual, left vacant by the disaster of Mohaez, with his friends. ... [But] the Germans advanced without interruption; and as soon as it appeared possible that Ferdinand might be successful, Zapolya's followers began to desert him. ... Never did the German troops display more bravery and constancy. They had often neither meat nor bread, and were obliged to live on such fruits as they found in the gardens: the inhabitants were wavering and uncertain--they submitted, and then revolted again to the enemy; Zapolya's troops, aided by their knowledge of the ground, made several very formidable attacks by night; but the Germans evinced, in the moment of danger, the skill and determination of a Roman legion: they showed, too, a noble constancy under difficulties and privations. At Tokay they defeated Zapolya and compelled him to quit Hungary. ... On the 3rd November, 1527, Ferdinand was crowned in Stuhlweissenburg: only five of the magnates of the kingdom adhered to Zapolya. The victory appeared complete. Ferdinand, however, distinctly felt that this appearance was delusive. ... In Bohemia, too, his power was far from secure. His Bavarian neighbours had not relinquished the hope of driving him from the throne at the first general turn of affairs. The Ottomans, meanwhile, acting upon the persuasion that every land in which the head of their chief had rested belonged of right to them, were preparing to return to Hungary; either to take possession of it themselves, or at first, as was their custom, to bestow it on a native ruler--Zapolya, who now eagerly sought an alliance with them--as their vassal."

_L. Von Ranke, History of the Reformation in Germany,