Soon after the death of Ximenes, Charles made his public entry, with great pomp, into Valladolid, whither be had summoned the Cortes of Castile. Though he assumed on all occasions the name of king, that title had never been acknowledged in the Cortes. The Spaniards considered Joanna as possessed of the sole right to the crown, and no example of a son's having enjoyed the title of king during the life of his parents occurring in their history, the Cortes discovered all that scrupulous respect for ancient forms, and that aversion to innovation, which are conspicuous in popular assemblies. The presence, however, of their prince, the address, the artifices, and the threats of his ministers, prevailed on them at last to proclaim him king, in conjunction with his mother, whose name they appointed to be placed before that of her son in all public acts. But when they made this concession, they declared, that if, at any future period, Joanna should recover the exercise of reason, the whole royal authority should return into her hands. At the same time, they voted a free gift of six hundred thousand ducats, to be paid in three years, a sum more considerable than had ever been granted to any former monarch.

Notwithstanding this obsequiousness of the Cortes to the will of the king, the most violent symptoms of dissatisfaction with his government began to break out in the kingdom. Chievres had acquired over the mind of the young monarch the ascendant, not only of a tutor, but of a parent. Charles seemed to have no sentiments but those which his minister inspired, and scarcely uttered a word but what he put into his mouth. He was constantly surrounded by Flemings; no person got access to him without their permission; nor was any admitted to audience but in their presence. As he spoke the Spanish language very imperfectly, his answers were always extremely short, and often delivered with hesitation. From all these circumstances, many of the Spaniards were led to believe, that he was a prince of a slow and narrow genius.

Some pretended to discover a strong resemblance between him and his mother, and began to whisper that his capacity for government would never be far superior to hers; and though they who had the best opportunity of judging concerning his character, maintained, that notwithstanding such unpromising appearances, he possessed a large fund of knowledge, as well as of sagacity; yet all agreed in condemning his partiality towards the Flemings, and his attachment to his favorites, as unreasonable and immoderate. Unfortunately for Charles, these favorites were unworthy of his confidence. To amass wealth seems to have been their only aim: and as they had reason to fear, that either their master’s good sense, or the indignation of the Spaniards, might soon abridge their power, they hastened to improve the present opportunity, and their avarice was the more rapacious, because they expected their authority to be of no long duration. All honors, offices, and benefices, were either engrossed by the Flemings, or publicly sold by them. Chievres, his wife, and Sauvage, whom Charles, on the death of Ximenes, had imprudently raised to be Chancellor of Castile, vied with each other in all the refinements of extortion and venality. Not only the Spanish historians, who, from resentment, may be suspected of exaggera­tion, but Peter Martyr Angleria, an Italian, who resided at that time in the court of Spain, and who was under no temptation to deceive the persons to whom his letters are addressed, gives a description which is almost incredible, of the insatiable and shameless covetousness of the Flemings. According to Angleria’s calculation, which he asserts to be extremely moderate, they remitted into the Low-Countries, in the space of ten months, no less a sum than a million and one hundred thousand ducats. The nomination of William de Croy, Chievres’ nephew, a young man not of canonical age, to the archbishopric of Toledo, exasperated the Spaniards more than all these exactions. They considered the elevation of a stranger to the head of their church, and to the richest benefice in the kingdom, not only as an injury, but as an insult to the whole nation; both clergy and laity, the former from interest, the latter from indignation, joined in, exclaiming against it.

Charles leaving Castile thus disgusted with his administration, set out for Saragossa, the capital of Aragon, that he might be present in the Cortes of that kingdom. On his way thither, he took leave of his brother Ferdinand, who he sent to Germany on the pretence of visiting their grandfather, Maximilian, in his old age. To this prudent precaution, Charles owed the preservation of the Spanish dominions. During the violent commotions which arose there soon after this period, the Spaniards would infallibly have offered the crown to a prince, who was the darling of the whole nation ; nor did Ferdinand want ambition, or counselors, that might have prompted him to accept of the offer.

The Aragonese had not hitherto acknowledged Charles as king, nor would they allow the Cortes to be assembled in his name, but in that of the Justiza, to whom, during an interregnum, this privilege belonged. The opposition Charles had to struggle with in the Cortes of Aragon, was more violent and obstinate than that which he had overcome in Castile; after long delay’s, however, and with much difficulty, he persuaded the members to confer on him the title of king, in conjunction with his mother. At the same time he bound himself by that solemn oath, which the Aragonese exacted of their kings, never to violate any of their rights or liberties. When a donative was demanded, the members were still more intractable; many months elapsed before they would agree to grant Charles two hundred thousand ducats, and that sum they appropriated so strictly for paying the debts of the crown, which had long been forgotten, that a very small part of it came into the king’s hands. What had happened in Castile taught them caution, and determined them rather to satisfy the claims of their fellow-citizens, how obsolete soever, than to furnish strangers the means of enriching themselves with the spoils of their country.

During these proceedings of the Cortes, ambassadors arrived at Saragossa from Francis I and the young king of Navarre, demanding the restitution of that kingdom in terms of' the treaty of Noyon. But neither Charles, nor the Castilian nobles whom he consulted on this occasion, discovered any inclination to part with this acquisition. A conference held soon after at Montpelier, in order to bring this matter to an amicable issue, was altogether fruitless; while the French urged the injustice of the usurpation, the Spaniards were attentive only to its importance.

From Aragon Charles proceeded to Catalonia, where he wasted as much time, encountered more difficulties, and gained less money. The Flemings were now become so odious in every province of Spain by their exactions, that the desire of mortifying them, and of disappointing their avarice, augmented the jealousy with which a free people usually conducted their deliberations.

The Castilians, who had felt most sensibly the weight and rigor of the oppressive schemes carried on by the Flemings, resolved no longer to submit with a tameness fatal to themselves, and which rendered them the objects of scorn to their fellow-subjects in the other kingdoms, of which the Spanish monarchy was composed. Segovia, Toledo, Seville, and several other cities of the first rank, entered into a confederacy for the defence of their rights and privileges; and notwithstanding the silence of the nobility, who, on this occasion, discovered neither the public spirit, nor the resolution which became their order, the confederates laid before the king a full view of the state of the kingdom, and of the maladministration of his favorites.

The preferment of strangers, the exportation of the current coin, the increase of taxes, were the grievances of which they chiefly complained; and of these they demanded redress with that boldness which is natural to a free people. These remonstrances, presented at first at Saragossa, and renewed afterwards at Barcelona, Charles treated with great neglect. The confederacy, however, of these cities, at this juncture, was the beginning of that famous union among the commons of Castile, which not long after threw the kingdom into such violent convulsions as shook the throne, and almost overturned the constitution.

Soon after Charles’s arrival at Barcelona, he received the account of an event which interested him much more than the murmurs of the Castilians, or the scruples of the Cortes of Catalonia. This was the death of the emperor Maximilian [Jan. 12]; an occurrence of small importance in itself, for he was a prince conspicuous neither for his virtues, nor his power, nor his abilities; but rendered by its consequences more memorable than any that had happened during several ages. It broke that profound and universal peace which then signed in the Christian world; it excited a rivalship between two princes, which threw all Europe into agitation, and kindled wars more general, and of longer duration, than had hitherto been known in modern times.

The revolutions occasioned by the expedition of the French king, Charles VIII into Italy, had inspired the European princes with new ideas concerning the importance of the Imperial dignity. The claims of the empire upon some of the Italian states were numerous; its jurisdiction over others was extensive; and though the former had been almost abandoned, and the latter seldom exercised, under princes of slender abilities and of little influence, it was obvious, that in the hands of an emperor pos­sessed of power or of genius, they might be employed as engines for stretching his dominion over the greater part of that country. Even Maxi­milian, feeble and unsteady as his conduct always was, had availed him­self of the infinite pretensions of the empire, and had reaped advantage from every war and every negotiation in Italy during his reign. These considerations, added to the dignity of the station, confessedly the first among Christian princes, and to the rights inherent in the office, which, if exerted with vigour, were far from being inconsiderable, rendered the Imperial crown more than ever an object of ambition.

 

Charles V of Germany, King of the Romans