Death of a Nation

by Stephen R A'Barrow

  THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE OF THE GERMAN NATION: HUBRIS AND NEMESIS

  In 1519, Charles V succeeded Maximillian I as Emperor, having bought the votes of the college of Electors.xx Upon his accession, he agreed to a formal electoral capitulation (Wahlkapitulation) before his fellow electors and the Estates, something that all his successors subsequently had to do until the end of the empire. It formally acknowledged all the ancient rights and privileges ceded to them, and promised that there would be no attempts to introduce a hereditary monarchy.(1) Having made his concession, Charles V arguably became the most powerful Habsburg emperor of them all, pushing the territorial and spiritual limits of the empire to their breaking point.

  Charles was born in Ghent and raised in Mechelen, in Flanders (northern Belgium), by an Austrian aunt. His first languages were Flemish and French; he never managed complete fluency in German or Spanish. He was once famously quoted as saying, ‘I speak French to men, Spanish to women and German to my horse!’(2) Through the incredible matrimonial dynasty that the Habsburgs had woven across Continental Europe, Charles ruled not only over Germany, but also inherited Burgundy and the Netherlands in 1506 and Spain, along with all her colonies in the New World, in 1516. All of this took place before he became Holy Roman Emperor elect in 1519. Later, in 1526 he went on to gain Bohemia and Hungary. No emperor would be confronted with more monumental crises during his reign than Charles V.xxi His reign coincided with an explosion of human creativity and brutality that had not been seen since antiquity, with the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Inquisition, the conquest of the New World, the Ottoman Islamic expansion into the Balkans, the peasant uprisings against feudal overlordship and the emergence of powerful new mercantile nations whose kings sought wealth and independence at the expense of the Roman Church and the Holy Roman Emperor. To that end Charles V fought four wars against France, endured a ceaseless struggle against Ottoman Turkish expansion through the Balkans and took on the Reformation and the Protestant German princes, whenever his wars against the French and the Turks allowed.

  Charles would also be the last emperor to believe in the eternal spiritual nature of the empire with his heart and soul. He attempted to harness its Roman Christian foundations and the idea of a universal monarchy, which the emperor had once personified, to that end. The problem was that the shelf life of both these ideas had come and gone, and not just within the confines of the empire. After Martin Luther pinned his ninety-five treaties to the door of the church in Saxon Wittenberg in 1517, many German princes converted to Lutheranism or Calvinism, and seized the land, property and wealth of the Church, just as Henry VIII would come to do in England. Luther had appealed to ‘the Christian nobility of the German nation’ to rise up against the corruption of the Roman Church.(3) The peasantry used the Reformation, and Lutheran ideas of ‘the equality of all men before God’, to rise up, not only against the corruption and elitism of the Church, but also the ruling Estates. This brought chaos and bloodshed to large parts of Germany during the Bauernkrieg (Peasants’ War). Luther was horrified by the fact that his preachings (and those of much more radical egalitarian surrogates such as Thomas Müntzer) had unleashed such murderous chaos. Consequently, he sided with the princes and worked towards restoring order and reform from above. But this was not the end of Charles’s problems; rather, it was the beginning. Believing that Luther’s ‘rantings’ were an argument among priests, at the urging of the Duke of Saxony, Charles offered him safe passage to a Reichstag meeting in the old Imperial City of Worms in January 1521. But Charles was so outraged by Luther’s comments, and his refusal to recant, that he wanted him put to death. All the princes and the Emperor could scarcely have been unaware of the parallels this situation held with the Hussite rebellion in Bohemia that had blown up after Jan Hus had been offered safe passage to the city of Konstanz, only to be burned at the stake. In the end, the Emperor’s hand was stayed not least by the fact that the Duke of Saxony and many other German princes were already won over to the Lutheran cause, as were the crowd outside the hall who were chanting Luther’s name.xxii

  At this Reichstag, Charles V also had other more pressing concerns; he needed more money and reforms to create a permanent standing army and required additional taxes to help fight the French and the Turks. The electors and Estates on the other hand wanted a diminution of the power of the Habsburgs and a national council with an agenda to reform the Catholic Church. Neither side got what they wanted. The Kaiser received a commitment to funds and soldiers as and when they were required but no permanent standing army or taxation. Charles then effectively left the day-to-day affairs of the empire (Reich) in the hands of Ferdinand, his more pragmatic brother, enabling him to concentrate his efforts on fighting France and Ottoman Turkey.xxiii

  A year later, in 1522, Charles vented his fury over the Reformation in his native Flanders, where he introduced the Inquisition. He was determined that his native soil was not to be ‘infected’ with the spirit of the Reformation. Unbeknownst to him, this was the beginning of a struggle that eventually laid waste to his empire. In 1525, Germany descended into anarchy with the Bauernkrieg, when large swathes of the peasantry rose up, inspired by Thomas Müntzer’s call to reform not only the Church but society as a whole; with the aim of achieving equality on earth here and now rather than simply sit and wait obediently for it in the afterlife. In response the German princes united to crush the rebellion, killing up to 100,000 people in the process. In this time of great turmoil the Reich was internally divided as it faced threats to its very existence from outside its borders. The seemingly unstoppable Turks were at the height of their powers; they inflicted a massive defeat on the combined imperial armies at the Battle of Mohacs in Hungary and overran the country in 1526.xxiv (4) To gain the funds he needed, Charles convened a Reichstag in Speyer in the same year, where he was pragmatic enough not to force confessional issues to ensure the Reich remained unified against the common external threat. The princes were allowed to decide confessional issues within their own lands. Consequently the empire stood firm as the vanguard of Christian Europe and pushed the Muslim Turks back, but it was not capable of recovering much of Hungary. An uneasy stand-off ensued but this was merely a breathing space before the hostilities resumed.xxv

  Charles used the 1529xxvi Reichstag in Speyer to ensure the Reichstag retained the right to make decisions relating to confessional issues within the empire, which benefited the Catholic majority. The death sentence was pronounced on members of the Anabaptists and other heretical sects. The only legal recourse left to the Lutheran electors and fourteen imperial towns was for a formal ‘protestation’ to be put on the record. From that moment on, the term ‘Protestants’ became the term for those opposed to the hegemony of the Catholic Church. In 1530,xxvii Charles had the Reichstag at Augsburg declare the Reformation as Landfriedensbruch — a breach of the peace established in 1495, and effectively declared war against the Reformation. In turn, the Protestant princes formed the Schmalkaldischen Bund (League of Schmalkaden) to protect their interests against further encroachment by the Emperor and the Reichstag.(5) The battle lines were drawn for a looming civil war, essentially based on the age-old particularism of the electors and their refusal to cede more power to the Emperor, now also sharpened by confessional differences. An uneasy truce remained whilst Charles and Ferdinand were busy battling France and the Ottomans. Charles borrowed another fortune in 1530 from the Fuggers — the German banking dynasty — using the money to buy the votes of the electors to support his brother Ferdinand’s succession as German King and Holy Roman Emperor. But many of the Protestant princes and those who were not electors with no votes to buy, were not content to let things rest and have the reactionary arch-Catholic Ferdinand imposed upon them. A powerful alliance of princes, including the Elector of Saxony and the Duke of Hesse, engaged Charles and Ferdinand in fifteen years of back and forth talks, conflicts and conciliations.

  In 1532, at the Reichstag in Regensburg, Charles again became mo
re conciliatory, promising to respect the Protestants’ rights to free religious expression until matters were settled at a final future Reichstag. A commitment was given that no attack would be made upon them, and all legal processes against them were put on hold. Both sides then agreed to unite against the Turks and the Anabaptist heresy in Münster. In 1535, Charles embarked a huge new fleet which set sail for Tunis (paid for with Inca gold brought back from Peru by Francisco Pizarro), where it proceeded to crush the Ottoman fleet and captured the city. But Charles’s deeply held Catholic convictions could still not tolerate the Reformation in the region of his birth, and in 1539 he personally suppressed Protestant rebellions in his native Ghent. There was a peaceful coexistence of sorts between Catholics and Protestants in the Reich between 1541 (when the Turks took Budapest) and 1545. But when Charles again defeated France in 1544, and the Turkish threat abated, his reasons for being reasonable began to diminish.

  In 1545, at the Council of Trent, Charles fired the starting gun for the Counter-Reformation that was intended to bring the entire Habsburg dominion to heel and stop the Reformation in its tracks. For a time, it looked as though Charles was going to triumph. He defeated his two greatest rivals, the Elector of Saxony and the Grand Duke of Hesse on the battlefield at Moenchenberg in 1547, crushing the Schmalkaldian Protestant League. But at the moment of triumph, hubris turned into nemesis as, feeling emboldened, Charles clearly lost all sense of what was practically achievable and went on the offensive with the aim of completely wiping out Protestantism within the empire. Charles then alienated his brother Ferdinand, whom he believed was developing greater sympathy for the German Protestants, and appointed his son Philip as his successor within the empire. The German princes of both denominations went up in arms. Not only was Philip the Antichrist incarnate for the Protestant princes, who saw him as the devil’s envoy straight from Rome, but he was also a rank outsider, a foreigner who did not speak a word of German. German identity within the empire had been on the rise since the mid fifteenth century. The fact that Martin Luther had translated the Bible into German, one of the first modern European languages in which the Bible was to appear since its translation from ancient Greek into Latin, had only enhanced its momentum. And its message had been disseminated in greater numbers than ever before by the German invention of printing which, at this juncture, made the German empire the centre of the world for the written word. German was the language of the administration of the empire, of its courts, its nobility and the broad mass of its people. German-speaking emperors had ruled the empire since the time of Charlemagne but now they faced the prospect of a Spaniard and an arch Catholic becoming emperor. No amount of money would have bought Philip’s election. It was a disastrous move on Charles’s part and was the start of his undoing.

  Charles’s ‘last hurrah’ came in 1548 with yet another Reichstag in Augsburg. This was the last time he was able to impose his will. He alienated every Elector, both Catholic and Protestant, by proposing to enhance his own power as emperor at their expense. The Reich was to have a new federal structure with equal voting rights for the nobility, permanent tax raising powers and a standing army at the disposal of the emperor. The electors would have had seven votes among hundreds. It was political suicide. His increasing fanaticism to bring not only the empire but the entire world to heel, witnessed by the brutality with which the Inquisition raged,xxviii set light to tinder across the Continent and enflamed the passions and the sense of righteousness of those fighting for their liberties. The Reformation could not be put back in its box, either through repression or the incredible and alluring architectural splendour of the Counter-Reformation. Nor could the particularism of the empire be reversed in the interests of greater central authority, especially not under this emperor.

  As ever, Charles wrought the maximum vengeance on his foes on his native Flemish soil, and in 1550 introduced the death penalty for heresy throughout the Spanish Netherlands. In 1552, during the Fürstenaufstand (Uprising of the Princes), the princes were so desperate to be rid of the repressive reign of Charles V they allied themselves with the King of France, who was the arch-enemy not only of the emperor and the Reich, but also of the Protestant cause. France was to be paid in its favourite currency: Reich territory, namely the Reich bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun. The balance of power was tilted against the emperor, Charles was consequently beaten, and he and Ferdinand were forced to sign the Treaty of Passau in the same year.(6) Princes of both confessions were of one mind and by the time of the next Reichstag they had formed an overwhelming consensus in favour of a pragmatic compromise, to end the bloodletting and bring the empire back to equilibrium.

  By 1555, Charles’s ambitions and much of his empire lay in ruins. He had antagonised the world and all now seemed to be against him. He must have felt that his God had abandoned him, for he stood a forlorn, gout-ridden figure at the end of his wits and strength. All the wars had been in vain. Only seven years previously, he had stood in Augsburg at the moment of his greatest triumph. Now, in the same city, the ‘Freedom of Augsburg’ was declared, essentially enshrining the status quo of the confessional map of the empire as it had stood in 1530. It did not yet proffer the right of individuals to choose their own religion but it was an important step in that direction. The princes were now entitled to choose the religion of their own territories.

  In 1556, Charles abdicated and retreated to a monastery in Spain where he ate alone, fished and communed with his God — it was the first time since the tenth century that an emperor had abdicated. His legacy left Germany more confessionally divided than any of her neighbours, and marked the start of a real religious and cultural divide between the Protestant north and the Catholic south, which had not existed prior to 1520. Where the Reformation had helped to unify England, it divided Germany and this confessional divide remained the most enduring division within the German-speaking world. Germany had failed to find a unifying religious domination. In the Netherlands, Calvinism ruled unchallenged, while the Anglican Church took hold across England. France, Spain, Portugal, Austria and Italy remained uniformly Catholic. The religious divide contributed to the failure of Germany to unify politically and these divisions exploded spectacularly with the onset of the Thirty Years War, with unimaginably devastating consequences.

  In a small territory outside the frontiers of the empire, at Martin Luther’s urging, a seemingly insignificant act occurred: the leader of the remnants of the Teutonic Order (which had founded the Prussian State during the Crusades), who just happened to be a cousin of the Elector of Brandenburg, laid down his spiritual title and took an earthly one. He became the Duke of Prussia and immediately set about confiscating the wealth, land and property of the Order (who were still loyal to the Catholic Church). Luther’s daughter moved to the Prussian capital of Königsberg and married a local minister. Luther’s grandchildren grew up in a Protestant East Prussia. He had succeeded in his aim of creating a new champion for Protestantism. Consequently, Charles left a throne that was permanently weakened, along with a fundamentally divided Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. The conflict he began inflamed both religious and nationalist passions. Unfortunately it was not a conflict that had burnt itself out.

  THE BREAK-UP OF THE EMPIRE AND THE RISE OF NATIONS

  The first region to force its independence from the Holy Roman Empire was Schwyz (Switzerland). In a succession of battles with the Habsburgs, they established nominal independence in 1388. The Habsburgs lost further battles and territory to the Swiss in 1460, when they were forced to cede Aargau and Thurgau to the hardy Schwyzers. The Holy Roman Empire, however, only finally formally acknowledged Swiss independence following the Schwabenkrieg (Swabian War) of 1499, when Emperor Maximillian I granted them full and formal independence. Thereafter, the Swiss continued to nibble away at other territories and achieve more gains, the last of which was Geneva.

  Next in line were the Dutch. From 1477, whilst under the control of the central kingdom of Burgundy, the
Netherlands had gained privileges of rights and trade. Problems arose when Charles V’s son, Philip II, chose to ignore these by attempting to rule the Netherlands directly and absolutely from far off Madrid. His ultimate provocation was to ignore the lessons of history and the failures of his father. He tried to reintroduce Catholicism through means of the Inquisition in the Netherlands, a country that was staunchly Protestant, which had been the first, after Germany, to embrace the Reformation. The consequences were inevitable. Rather than seeking compromise, Philip sent in troops to try and impose his will. The Dutch waged a bitter struggle for independence from the Habsburgs from 1564–1648 and in 1564 the Dutch nobility, merchants and people demanded the restoration of their rights and privileges and the withdrawal of imperial troops. When their demands were not met, uprisings began in Flanders and Brabant with Catholic churches being plundered and burned to the ground. Philip upped the ante again, increasing the terror by executing nobles and imposing military rule. Prince William of Orange had to flee the province to save his own skin.(8)

  Not until 1572 was it possible for the Dutch-speaking provinces to establish a union of their own in contravention and opposition to their occupation. In the same year, the Dutch adopted their own colours, establishing the first tricolour flag in the world. In 1579, however, the largely Catholic south of the Netherlands (Flanders in modern day Belgium) ceded from the union to reunite this part of the former Spanish Netherlands with Habsburg Spain.xxix The seven northern Calvinist provinces then went on to declare their formal independence from Spanish Habsburg dominion in 1581 and from 1629–37 they fought further campaigns to enlarge their kingdom, occupying parts of Flanders, Brabant and Limburg. Not until the special Freedom of Münster in 1648, coming at the end of the Thirty Years War, was the Netherlands formally released from the Holy Roman Empire and its independence and sovereignty recognised by neighbouring states.