Question

Why was Charles V's control of such a large Empire a mixed blessing?

Answer 1

Charles V inherited a vast empire that stretched from one end of Europe to the other. He acquired the Spanish throne from his parents, Philip I and Queen Joan, and his maternal grandparents and Burgundy through his father's mother—who had been the duchess of Burgundy.He expanded Spain into the first truly international empire. It was in his lifetime that the Spanish Empire was first referred to as the empire upon which the Sun would never set, and the massive wealth of the empire inspired a new era of European colonialism.The Emperor’s health began to fail in his mid-forties and he suffered agonies from gout. He had been considering abdication long before it became clear, in the 1550s, that Protestantism in Germany would have to be tolerated. It was not something he could accept. He handed the running of the Holy Roman Empire over to his brother Ferdinand in 1554, and in October 1555, in the Hall of the Golden Fleece in Brussels, he resigned the sovereignty of the Netherlands to his son Philip of Spain, asking those present to forgive him if, from the love he bore them, he shed some tears. Some of those who heard him shed them too. The following January he resigned Spain and Spanish America to Philip. In August he formally abdicated as Holy Roman Emperor.