Charles V[b][c] 

(24 February 1500 – 21 September 1558) was Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke

of Austria from 1519 to 1556, King of Spain (Castile and Aragon) from 1516 to 1556, and Lord of
the Netherlands as titular Duke of Burgundy from 1506 to 1555. As he was head of the
rising House of Habsburg during the first half of the 16th century, his dominions in Europe
included the Holy Roman Empire, extending from Germany to northern Italy with direct rule over
the Austrian hereditary lands and the Burgundian Low Countries, and the Kingdom of Spain with
its southern Italian possessions of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia. Furthermore, he oversaw both the
continuation of the long-lasting Spanish colonization of the Americas and the short-lived German
colonization of the Americas. The personal union of the European and American territories of
Charles V was the first collection of realms labelled "the empire on which the Sun never sets".[9]
Charles was born in the County of Flanders to Philip of Habsburg (son of Maximilian I of
Habsburg and Mary of Burgundy) and Joanna of Trastámara (daughter of Isabella I of
Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain). The ultimate heir of his four
grandparents, Charles inherited all of his family dominions at a young age. After the death of
Philip in 1506, he inherited the Burgundian states originally held by his paternal grandmother
Mary.[10] In 1516, inheriting the dynastic union formed by his maternal grandparents Isabella I and
Ferdinand II, he became king of Spain as co-monarch of the Spanish kingdoms with his mother.
The Spanish possessions at his accession also included the Castilian West Indies and the
Aragonese kingdoms of Naples, Sicily and Sardinia. At the death of his paternal grandfather
Maximilian in 1519, he inherited Austria and was elected to succeed him as Holy Roman
Emperor. He adopted the Imperial name of Charles V as his main title, and styled himself as a
new Charlemagne.[11]
Charles V revitalized the medieval concept of universal monarchy and spent most of his life
defending the integrity of the Holy Roman Empire from the Protestant Reformation, the expansion
of the Ottoman Empire, and a series of wars with France.[12] [13] With no fixed capital city, he made
40 journeys, travelling from country to country; he spent a quarter of his reign on the road.[14] The
imperial wars were fought by German Landsknechte, Spanish tercios, Burgundian knights, and
Italian condottieri. Charles V borrowed money from German and Italian bankers and, in order to
repay such loans, he relied on the proto-capitalist economy of the Low Countries and on the flows
of gold and especially silver from South America to Spain, which caused widespread inflation. He
ratified the Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires by the
Spanish conquistadores Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro, as well as the establishment
of Klein-Venedig by the German Welser family in search of the legendary El Dorado. In order to
consolidate power in his early reign, Charles overcame two Spanish insurrections
(the Comuneros' Revolt and Brotherhoods' Revolt) and two German rebellions (the Knights'
Revolt and Great Peasants' Revolt).
Crowned King in Germany, Charles sided with Pope Leo X and declared Martin Luther an outlaw
at the Diet of Worms (1521).[15] The same year, Francis I of France, surrounded by the Habsburg
possessions, started a conflict in Lombardy that lasted until the Battle of Pavia (1525), which led
to the French king's temporary imprisonment. The Protestant affair re-emerged in 1527 as Rome
was sacked by an army of Charles's mutinous soldiers, largely of Lutheran faith. After his forces
left the Papal States, Charles V defended Vienna from the Turks and obtained the coronation
as King in Italy by Pope Clement VII. In 1535, he annexed the vacant Duchy of
Milan and captured Tunis. Nevertheless, the loss of Buda during the struggle for Hungary and
the Algiers expedition in the early 1540s frustrated his anti-Ottoman policies. Meanwhile, Charles
V had come to an agreement with Pope Paul III for the organisation of the Council of
Trent (1545). The refusal of the Lutheran Schmalkaldic League to recognize the council's validity
led to a war, won by Charles V with the imprisonment of the Protestant princes. However, Henry
II of France offered new support to the Lutheran cause and strengthened a close alliance with the
sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, the ruler of the Ottoman Empire since 1520.
Ultimately, Charles V conceded the Peace of Augsburg and abandoned his multi-national project
with a series of abdications in 1556 that divided his hereditary and imperial domains between the
Spanish Habsburgs headed by his son Philip II of Spain and the Austrian Habsburgs headed by
his brother Ferdinand, who had been archduke of Austria in Charles's name since 1521 and the
designated successor as emperor since 1531.[16][17][18] The Duchy of Milan and the Habsburg
Netherlands were also left in personal union to the king of Spain, although initially also belonging
to the Holy Roman Empire. The two Habsburg dynasties remained allied until the extinction of the
Spanish line in 1700. In 1557, Charles retired to the Monastery of Yuste in Extremadura and died
there a year later.