Charles V | Biography, Reign, Abdication, & Facts | Britannica.com - 0 views
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the problem of the succession in Spain became acute, since by the terms of Ferdinand’s will, Charles was to govern in Aragon and Castile together with his mother (who, however, suffered from a nervous illness and never reigned).
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Making the most of their candidate’s German parentage and buying up German electoral votes (mostly with money supplied by the powerful Fugger banking family), Charles’s adherents had meanwhile pushed through his election as emperor over his powerful rival, Francis I of France.
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Gradually, the other chief task of his reign also unfolded: the struggle for hegemony in western Europe. That goal was a legacy of his Burgundian forefathers, including his ancestor Charles the Bold, who had come to naught in his fight against the French Valois Louis XI. His great-grandfather’s quest was to become a fateful problem for Charles as well.
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The Roman Catholics, however, condemned the Augsburg Confession—the basic confession of the Lutheran doctrine faith presented to Charles at the Diet of Augsburg—and responded with the Confutation, which met with Charles’s approval.
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In 1522 his teacher Adrian of Utrecht became pope, as Adrian VI. His efforts to reconcile Francis I and the emperor failed, and three years later Charles’s army defeated Francis I at the Battle of Pavia, taking prisoner the king himself.
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Although Ferdinand, having lost his Hungarian capital in August 1541, pleaded for a land campaign against Süleyman I, Charles again decided on a naval venture, which failed dismally after an unsuccessful attack on Algiers.
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North Germany was now on the brink of revolt. The new king of France, Henry II, was eagerly awaiting an opportunity to renew the old rivalry between the houses of Valois and Burgundy, while the German princes believed that the moment was at hand to repay Charles for Mühlberg.
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In order to save what he could of that hegemony, Charles, already severely racked by gout, tried new paths by preparing the ground for his widowed son’s marriage with Mary I of England.
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There he laid the groundwork for the eventual bequest of Portugal to the Habsburgs after the eventual death of King Sebastian (who was then still a child) with the help of his sister Catherine, grandmother of Sebastian and regent of Portugal. He aided his son in procuring funds in Spain for the continuation of the war against France, and he helped his daughter Joan, regent of Spain during Philip’s absence in the Netherlands, in persecuting Spanish heretics.