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Charles V: Spain Charles
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The legacy of Charles V was shaped largely within the context of these struggles. As the reign progressed, he became more dependent upon Spanish wealth and the Spanish army that formed the core of his military system. The cost of never-ending warfare forced him to raise taxes, especially in Spain and the Netherlands, and to borrow heavily in the international money markets against his projected Spanish revenues. His son and successor as king of Spain, Philip II (ruled 1556รข€“1598), was forced to restructure this debt in ways that increased borrowing costs in the future, thereby setting a disastrous precedent. Otherwise, Charles made serious efforts to improve administration in each of his realms. Basing his efforts wherever possible on existing institutions, he developed an improved conciliar system of government in Spain and its possessions that lasted until the eighteenth century.
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Charles V was the most powerful man in Europe for 35 years. Despite this he was forced to divide his kingdoms between his son and brother before his death and his Holy Roman Empire was left split between Protestant and Catholic Princes and remains so to this day. The reasons for this lie in the huge problems involved in ruling Spain, parts of Italy, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and most of Eastern Europe and the cancerous fire of reformation that spread throughout his lands.
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Had Charles had his way, he would have devoted himself for some time to the pressing internal needs of his country. The constitution especially needed improvement; the finances were so disordered, and the debt so large, that the monarch was hampered in whatever he did, and could provide for the foreign interests of the empire only by very careful management. Owing to the primitive development of means of communication, he could not keep watch over the whole empire, which he therefore decided to divide into districts. Already convinced that he must make Spain the centre of his dominions and the mainstay of his politics, he for that reason determined to make it his personal charge, and went thither in the summer of 1522. Once in Spain, remote from Germany and his hereditary Hapsburg estates, he at first purposed to make them almost entirely independent of him, although he was more dissatisfied with the conditions there than with those of any other part of his empire. Reserving to himself only the general policy of the empire as a whole, he gave his Austrian possessions to his brother Ferdinand, in 1522, making him, at the same time, his representative at the head of the imperial government.
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Charles's maternal grandfather, Ferdinand of Aragon, who had long tried to block a Spanish-Hapsburg union, favored the succession of Charles's younger brother, Ferdinand, to the Spanish crown. But the grandfather died in 1516 before he was able to alter the succession. Charles, who in 1515 had already taken over the government of the Netherlands, became regent of Aragon and Castile for his mother, who was confined because of mental illness to the castle of Tordesillas. In 1517 Charles went to Spain, where he met his brother, Ferdinand, for the first time. The 17-year-old Charles acted with remarkable authority and self-confidence and firmly rejected the suggestions of his family that he give his brother either Spain or the Netherlands.
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With individuals Charles dealt still more effectively—in Spain chiefly with the burghers, in the Netherlands with the higher nobility. The latter he won to his support by bestowing on them the most important offices and holding out hopes of the Golden Fleece; the former he hoped to win by leaving them the control of taxation, so that they might regulate it uniformly, and therefore less oppressively. He controlled the clergy by transferring to them an almost general right to the disposal of benefices, which had been granted by the popes either to his predecessors or to himself. He strove especially to foster the progressive industrial elements of the middle class. At the beginning of the century the old cloth industries of Flanders had been seriously threatened by English competition; under Charles the industries of the Netherlands were effectually protected by an entire change in system which may be regarded as a first step towards capitalistic industry. Antwerp became the world's great centre of commerce and finance.
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Charles V abdicated the throne of Spain in 1556 and Philip II replaced his father as king of Spain. What Philip II inherited was to have a marked impact on the decades as king of Spain.
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