Albert I
Albert I (1248?-1308?), Holy Roman emperor (1298-1308) and duke of Austria (1282-1308). He received the duchy of Austria in 1282 from his father, Rudolf I of Habsburg, king of Germany and Holy Roman emperor. After Rudolf's death in 1291, the German imperial electors refused to recognize Albert's claim to the throne and named Adolf of Nassau king of Germany. With the help of a coalition of German princes, Albert deposed and succeeded Adolf in 1298. Pope Boniface VIII recognized him as Holy Roman emperor in 1303, but he was never crowned. During his reign he adopted measures beneficial to serfs, Jews, and the mercantile class; obtained the crown of Bohemia for his son Rudolf; and in 1307 waged an unsuccessful war against Thüringen. He was murdered by a nephew, John of Swabia, whose inheritance he had withheld. He was succeeded by Henry of Luxemburg, Holy Roman emperor as Henry VII.
Charles II
Charles II, called The Bald (823-877), Holy Roman emperor (875-877), and, as Charles I, king of France, born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He was the fourth son of Holy Roman Emperor Louis I; his mother, Louis's second wife, was Judith of Bavaria. Judith's determination to secure a kingdom for her only son led to civil war with Louis's other two surviving sons, Holy Roman Emperor Lothair I and King Louis II of Germany. The war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Verdun in 843. Charles received the western portion of the empire, which from this time may be called the kingdom of France, or the West Frankish Kingdom. Charles was a weak ruler; the great nobles were rapidly becoming independent, and the Vikings pillaged the country without meeting much resistance from Charles, who preferred to buy them off. Nevertheless, when Holy Roman Emperor Louis II died in 875, Charles received the imperial crown through the favor of Pope John VIII. Charles was succeeded as king of France by his son, Louis II, but the imperial throne was vacant until 881.
Charles III
Charles III, called The Fat (839-888), Holy Roman emperor (881-887), king of the East Franks, or Germans (876-887), and, as Charles II, king of the West Franks, or French (884-887). He was the son of Emperor Louis II and the great-grandson of Charlemagne. Charles was deposed from his thrones in 887 by his nephew, Arnulf, duke of Kärnten (Carinthia). His deposition marked the dissolution of the Frankish Empire.
Charles IV
Charles IV, called Charles of Luxemburg (1316-78), king of Bohemia and of the Germans, Holy Roman emperor (1347-78; crowned 1355). His reign was marked by his issuance of the Golden Bull, a document establishing the method of imperial election.
Charles V
Charles V(1500-1558),Holy Roman emperor (1519-1558), and, as Charles I, king of Spain (1516-1556), who fought a losing battle to keep his Roman Catholic empire together in the face of emergent Protestantism and outside pressure.
Charles was the son of Philip I, king of Castile, and Joanna the Mad; maternal grandson of Ferdinand V of Castile and Isabella I; paternal grandson of the Habsburg Holy Roman emperor Maximilian I; and great-grandson of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy. He was born in Ghent (Gent) (now in Belgium) on February 24, 1500. On the death of his father in 1506, Charles inherited the Burgundian realm; following the death of Ferdinand in 1516, he became ruler of the vast Spanish kingdom; and when Maximilian died in 1519, he gained the Habsburg lands in central Europe, where his younger brother, Ferdinand, later Emperor Ferdinand I, was governor. Also in 1519, Charles, having bribed the electors, was designated Holy Roman emperor; he was crowned king of Germany in Aix-la-Chapelle (now Aachen, Germany), on October 23, 1520.
Charles was now by far the most powerful sovereign in Christendom. His inherited lands far exceeded those of the Frankish emperor Charlemagne. His territory included the Spanish kingdoms of Aragón and Castile; the Netherlands; the Italian states of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia; Spanish conquests in America and Africa; and the Habsburg lands. He ascended the imperial throne at a time when Germany was agitated by Martin Luther. In an unsuccessful attempt to restore tranquillity, a great diet was held in Worms in 1521, before which Luther made a memorable defense of his doctrines. The diet rejected his position, and Charles subsequently issued an edict condemning Luther. At this time rivalry between France and Spain over the Italian lands and Burgundy led King Francis I of France to take up arms against Charles, whose attention was drawn away from Germany's internal affairs.
The war between Charles and Francis, in which Charles was allied with Henry VIII of England and the powerful Charles, duke of Bourbon, proved disastrous to France. Francis was taken prisoner in 1525, when the French were defeated at Pavia (near Milan, Italy). In January 1526 he was forced to sign the Treaty of Madrid, relinquishing his claim to Italy and abandoning Burgundy. Soon after his release the following year, Francis renewed the struggle, now aided by Henry VIII and Pope Clement VII, who was anxious to rid Italy of the imperial armies. The pope was captured at Rome in 1527 and was kept captive for seven months. The war ended with the signing by Charles and Francis of the Peace of Cambrai in 1529. Francis again renounced the Italian lands, and Charles ceded Burgundy to France. In 1530 the pope crowned the victorious monarch in Bologna as Holy Roman emperor, the last coronation of a German emperor by the pope.
Charles had been anxious to end the war with the French so that he could put down the religious revolt in Germany and prevent the Ottoman Turks from overrunning Europe. The Turks controlled the Balkan Peninsula, and in 1526, the year that Ferdinand I laid claim to the Hungarian throne, Sultan Suleiman swept over Hungary. Three years later the Turks laid siege to Vienna. In 1535 the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria, in the service of Charles, led an expedition to Africa, defeated the Turks at Tunis, and freed about 20,000 Christian slaves. In 1538 Charles formed an anti-Turkish alliance with Pope Paul III and the city-state of Venice. The alliance was unsuccessful, and in 1547 Ferdinand signed a 5-year treaty with the Turks.
The failure of Charles to repel the Turks resulted in part from his inability to bring religious peace to his empire, particularly Germany. The spread of disorder during the Reformation emboldened the German princes to seek autonomy for their states. The peasants took advantage of the turmoil in 1524 and revolted. In 1530, shortly after his coronation, Charles convoked a diet in Augsburg to discuss the religious problem. The Protestant princes stated their creed in the Augsburg Confession, which was unacceptable to Charles. Negotiations thereafter failed, and in 1531 the princes formed the Schmalkaldic League. The domestic unrest and the continued war with the Turks forced the emperor to postpone his suppression of the Protestants and to grant them some liberties in 1532 in the Peace of Nuremberg.
In 1536 Charles was again at war with France. The war was terminated by the Treaty of Nice in 1538, granting Francis most of the Piedmont (Piemonte) region of Italy. The war was resumed in 1542 and ended in 1544 by the Treaty of Crépy, which largely reaffirmed the earlier Peace of Cambrai. Charles, no longer fighting the French or Turks, turned his attention to the princes and the city-states of the Schmalkaldic League. In 1546 the emperor moved against the southern German principalities, and at Mühlberg, Saxony (Sachsen), on April 24, 1547, he scored a decisive victory against the Protestants. His success was temporary; in 1551 Magdeburg, a great stronghold of Protestantism, fell to Maurice, duke of Saxony, but Maurice, who had previously supported the emperor, suddenly deserted Charles, allying himself with King Henry II of France. Charles fled before the Protestants. In 1552, through his brother Ferdinand, he concluded the Peace of Passau, by which the Lutheran states were allowed the exercise of their religion. In 1555 the settlement was reaffirmed in the Peace of Augsburg. Meanwhile, in 1552, Henry II had seized the bishoprics of Toul, Metz, and Verdun, and an attempt by the emperor to reconquer Metz failed.
Weary of the constant struggles and heavy responsibilities of his scattered realms, Charles in 1555 resigned the Netherlands and, in 1556, Spain, to his son Philip II. In 1556 Charles announced his intention to abdicate the imperial crown in favor of his brother, Ferdinand I, who officially became emperor in 1558. Charles retired that year to the monastery of San Jerónimo de Yuste in Extremadura, Spain, where he died on September 21, 1558.
Charles VI
Charles VI(1685-1740), Holy Roman emperor (1711-1740) and, as Charles III, king of Hungary (1712-1740), the son of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, born in Vienna. When Charles II, king of Spain, died childless in 1700, Leopold proclaimed his son king of Spain in opposition to Duke Philip of Anjou, who had been willed the Spanish throne. Philip became king as Philip V and thus precipitated the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). Charles had numerous allies and Philip was aided only by France, but after alternate successes and reverses Charles renounced his claim to Spain in the treaties of Rastatt and Baden (1714). In 1711 Charles had succeeded his brother Joseph I as Holy Roman emperor; in 1713 he issued the Pragmatic Sanction to secure the succession of his daughter Maria Theresa in the event that he should die without a male heir. In 1716 the emperor renewed an alliance with Venice and entered into successful warfare against the Turks, with the help of his able general, Prince Eugene of Savoy. By the 1718 Treaty of Passarowitz, Charles gained control of parts of Serbia and Walachia. In 1733, he engaged unsuccessfully in the War of the Polish Succession. Under the Treaty of Vienna, which terminated the war in 1735 (but was not ratified until 1738), Charles ceded the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily to Spain in exchange for the duchies of Parma and Piacenza. During a second war with the Turks from 1737 to 1739, Charles lost most of the territory he had won in 1718. He was succeeded by Maria Theresa, but her right to the throne was contested in the War of the Austrian Succession.
Charles VII
Charles VII, also known as Charles Albert (1697-1745), Holy Roman emperor (1742-45), born in Brussels. In 1726 he succeeded his father Maximilian II Emanuel as elector of Bavaria. During the War of the Spanish Succession, Charles was captured and taken to Vienna, where he was educated by the Jesuits. Released in 1714 after the Peace of Rastatt and Baden, Charles led the Bavarian branch of the imperial army in the war against the Ottoman Turks in 1717. Although he claimed to respect the Pragmatic Sanction, under which the Austrian crown was to pass to Maria Theresa, he immediately contested the document after the death of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI in 1740. His claim, and those of Philip V, king of Spain, and Augustus III, elector of Saxony (Sachsen), led to the War of the Austrian Succession. Charles became king of Bohemia in 1741 and the following year was unanimously elected Holy Roman emperor and crowned Charles VII. Even as the coronation was taking place, the Austrian army invaded Bavaria, and Charles VII held no real power during the greater part of his reign. He was reinstated by Frederick II (the Great), king of Prussia, in October 1744, but died a few months later. His son Maximilian III Joseph was forced to renounce his imperial candidacy; Charles was succeeded as emperor by Francis I, husband of Maria Theresa, and founder of the house of Habsburg-Lorraine.
Ferdinand I
Ferdinand I(1503-1564), Holy Roman emperor (1558-1564), king of Bohemia (1526-1564), and king of Germany (1531-1564). The son of Philip I, king of Castile, and Joanna the Mad, queen of Castile, he was born on March 10, 1503, at Alcalá de Henares, Spain. In 1521, he became governor of the duchy of Württemberg and of the Habsburg hereditary lands, where he sought to check the spread of the Reformation. When his brother-in-law, King Louis II of Hungary, died in 1526, Ferdinand claimed through his wife the thrones of Bohemia and Hungary. He was crowned king by the Bohemians early in 1527. Although crowned almost simultaneously in Hungary, he was rejected there by the nobles, who were led by John I Zápolya and supported by the Turks. A long series of indecisive wars ensued against the Ottoman Turks and the forces of John I and his son, John II. A truce finally concluded in 1562 gave Ferdinand sovereignty over a small part of Hungary, for which he was obliged to pay tribute to the Turks.
Meanwhile, in 1531, Ferdinand had been elected king of Germany as a reward for his loyalty to his brother, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Good relations between the brothers, however, did not continue because Charles reserved the imperial crown for his son Philip, later King Philip II of Spain, instead of for Ferdinand. Friendly feeling was restored in 1555, largely because Ferdinand successfully arranged the Treaty of Passau in 1552 and the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. On Charles's abdication in 1556 of the Spanish crown, Philip was made king of Spain, while Ferdinand assumed the duties of emperor; he was not crowned, however, until after Charles's formal abdication as emperor in 1558. Subsequently Ferdinand attempted to effect a reunion of Roman Catholics and Protestants but failed because he insisted that bishops retain their secular authority. He died on July 25, 1564, in Vienna.
Ferdinand II
Ferdinand II(1578-1637), Holy Roman emperor (1619-1637), king of Bohemia (1617-1619), and king of Hungary (1621-1625). He was born in Graz, Austria, the grandson of Emperor Ferdinand I, and was educated by Jesuits, from whom he acquired a deep antipathy toward Protestantism. In 1618, in protest against Ferdinand's efforts to restore Catholicism, Bohemian rebels threw two of Ferdinand's ministers out of a window. This incident, known as the Defenestration of Prague, was the immediate cause of the Thirty Years' War. The Bohemians replaced Ferdinand with Frederick V, elector of the Rhenish Palatinate. Ferdinand, as a Habsburg, became Holy Roman emperor in 1619 and, allied with Bavaria and the Catholic League, defeated the Bohemians at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. He deposed Frederick and sent him into exile. Ferdinand was waging war simultaneously against a force of Hungarian Protestants led by Gabriel Bethlen. Following his victory Ferdinand negotiated with Bethlen and secured the title of king of Hungary. The imperial forces, commanded by the count of Tilly and Albrecht von Wallenstein, were successful in the war against the Protestant forces in Germany in 1625.
By 1627 Ferdinand had outlawed all religions but Roman Catholicism and had banished the Protestant laity and clergy from Bohemia. In 1629 the Edict of Restitution empowered the Roman Catholic church to recover all property seized by Protestants since the Treaty of Passau had imposed a religious settlement on Germany in 1552. The edict, however, alienated some of Ferdinand's allies, and this, together with the assumption of Protestant King Gustav II Adolph of Sweden and the assassination of Wallenstein, weakened the imperial authority. Although his armies won the Battle of Nördlingen in 1634, Ferdinand was unable to carry out his plan to repress Protestantism throughout the empire. The termination of the Thirty Years' War was left to his son Ferdinand III.
Ferdinand III
Ferdinand III(1608-1657), Holy Roman emperor (1637-1657), king of Hungary (1625-1657), and king of Bohemia (1627-1657). He was born in Graz, Austria, the son of Emperor Ferdinand II. He was educated by Jesuits and was a noted scholar and musician. Two years after being crowned king of Hungary, Ferdinand was made king of Bohemia. He became the nominal commander of the imperial armies fighting the Thirty Years' War after the Austrian general Albrecht von Wallenstein was assassinated in 1634. In that capacity he headed the forces that defeated the Swedes at Nördlingen later in the year. Ferdinand became Holy Roman emperor upon his father's death in 1637. He was willing to end the Thirty Years' War but he did not want to proceed without his ally, Spain. He refused to accept the proposal made by the diet of Regensburg in 1640 for a general amnesty to Protestants. In 1648, however, he signed the Peace of Westphalia, which decreed that the prevailing religion in each part of the empire should be determined by the ruler of that part. This solution was based on the Peace of Augsburg (1555), which helped to resolve religious conflict by recognizing Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism and allowing states to decide which religion could be practiced. The Peace of Westphalia considerably weakened the Holy Roman Empire because it recognized the sovereignty and independence of the individual states. Because Ferdinand was a Roman Catholic, and his religion was permitted by the terms of the peace to dominate in his hereditary dominions, the Protestants there were not accorded religious freedom. In 1656 he dispatched an army to Italy to aid Spain against France and in the following year entered into an alliance with Poland against Sweden.
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