Guest Article: The Intriguing Personality Of Charles V Of The Holy Roman Empire

1.1 Introduction

Voltaire once pointed out, ‘’The Holy Roman Empire, was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.’’ Well, in that case he was indeed right. Although, a very powerful man would do his best to fix these aspects in an attempt to create a universal empire. That man, Charles V, also known as Carolus Quintus, was, perhaps, the most powerful Holy Roman Emperor of them all.

Born in Ghent, Flanders in February 1500, which back then was an Imperial Habsburg territory, young Charles wouldn’t have any idea that one day he would be ruling one of the biggest empires of all times. In fact, Charles’ empire would not be surpassed in size until the advent of the Qing, Russian and British Empires.

Although the Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon were united by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1469, Charles reaffirmed and solidified the idea of a unified Spanish Kingdom by crushing any idea of separation. His devotion to keeping Spain united paid off, as the majority of his power came from this state in the Iberian Peninsula. He would later bequeath the Spanish Kingdom to his only living son, Philip II of Spain.

There Was An Incredible Amount Of Military Technological Advancement In the Decades Leading Up To World War I

(75mm pack howitzer M1920, c. 1921 [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)

By the end of the 19th century, into the early 20th century, the weapons of warfare were evolving at an alarming rate. Guns, explosives and machines were becoming increasingly more lightweight, powerful and exponentially more deadly. The tragedy of the situation was that very few people knew just how devastating many of these new weapons would be when a major war broke out. True, there were many wars in the years before World War One— such as the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), the Boer Wars (1880-1881 and 1889-1902), the Spanish-American War (1898), and the Ruso-Japanese War (1904-1905). Yet, in these wars, countries often remained doubtful about the new weaponry in their arsenals, and were still in a phase of experimentation and implementation. By the start of WWI in 1914, however, most major powers had adopted the latest guns, artillery, explosives, ships and planes, resulting in a Great War the likes of which the world had never before seen.

The Blunder At Fort Douaumont And The Hundreds Of Thousands Of Deaths That Followed In The 1916 Battle Of Verdun

The Great War

  (French soldiers moving into attack from their trench during the Verdun battle, 1916, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)

In February, 1916, the world was in utter turmoil. A Great War had erupted after Serbian-backed assassins shot to death Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife (and their unborn child) while they drove in their car around Bosnia. In response to the assassination, the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia, and the two belligerent nations pulled in their broad nets of alliances. Soon major countries from all over the world were called into what would be later named World War I.

At the onset of the war, Germany had pressed quickly through Belgium into France, but became bogged down well shy of Paris, and the war gridlocked into WWI’s iconic trench warfare. In early 1916, however, General Erich von Falkenhayn of Germany believed he knew a way to crush France and weaken Britain’s will to fight—by seizing the French defensive position at Verdun.

Monsters of Münster

An Unbelievably Bizarre Anabaptist Rebellion

  (German city painted by Sebastian Münster (1488-1552), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)

During the 1530s, a strange occurrence blandly labeled the Münster Rebellion broke out in the city of Münster, within the region of Westphalia (modern northwest Germany). For the multiple-year rebellion, Münster was basically turned into a theocracy ruled by a group of over-zealous Anabaptists—a Protestant Christian sect disliked at the time by both Catholics and other Protestants. In the case of the Münster Rebellion, however, religious debate turned into religious oppression, and a battle of theology devolved into bloodshed and war.

The Last Witch Trial Of Nördlingen, Germany

Maria Holl Survived 62 Sessions Of Torture During the Late 16^th-Century Witch Trials

In the last decade of the 16^th century, a respectable woman who owned a restaurant along with her husband in Nördlingen, Germany, was put under arrest by the authority of the town council on suspicion of witchcraft. At first, Holl was patient with the council and their questioners; she was confident that she would be released without much of a hassel. Unfortunately for Maria Holl, the council, inquisitors and the citizens of Nördlingen all believed that she was truly a witch.

(“Examination of a witch”, c. 1853, from the Collection of the Peabody Essex Museum, originally by Author Thompkins H. Matteson, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)

Reformation-Era Augsburg: The Tense Stage of Christian Conflict

Strained Coexistence, Theocracy and Religious Politics

A Time of Church and State

The Protestant Reformations occurred in a time when there was very little separation between church and state. The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and his predecessors, were seen as the defenders of Christendom. Henry VIII of England placed himself at the head of the Anglican Church. Evangelist reformers, such as Ulrich Zwingli, Martin Bucer and John Calvin, imposed a quasi-theocracy upon their cities of Zurich, Strasbourg, and Geneva. Martin Luther also supported a closely-tied church and state, suggesting that the nobles lead the pace of reformation in their domains. The German city of Augsburg, like most other places in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, followed this trend of a closely-allied church and state.

(Perlach, Augsburg marketplace in 1550,Heinrich Vogtherr II (1513-1568)[Public domain], via Creative Commons)

Magdalena Bollmann: Tortured to Death in a Trial of Witchcraft

10 Weeks of Torture and Fatal Abuse

(The Magic Circle, c. 1886, painted by John William Waterhouse [Public domain], via Creative Commons)

In the region of southern Germany now known as Baden-Württemberg, there lived a woman named Magdalena Bollmann. She lived in the 18^th century, a time when the public hysteria of witch-hunts was becoming less and less commonplace. Nevertheless, the inquisition and witchcraft trials continued to survive like cockroaches, infesting neglected villages and cities.

The Strange Era of the Protestant Reformation—The Reformer

Martin Luther

The World Luther Faced

During the 14^th-16^th centuries, the Papal States struggled with corruption and questionable activities. As a result, on Halloween day, in 1517, Martin Luther publicly questioned the actions of the church in his hometown of Wittenburg, leading to the Protestant Reformation. His Ninety-five Theses or Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences initiated a European dialogue which brought into question the legitimacy of Papal authority and the long accepted customs of the Roman Catholic Church. Luther’s theses grasped the attention of European citizens and monarchs alike. Pope Leo X and papal supporters denounced Luther, and criticized his interpretation of scriptures. Thomas More and Desiderius Erasmus were in the ranks of Luther’s critics.  (Read more information about events leading to the Protestant Reformation in the first part of this series, The Catholic Low-Point).

Desiderius Erasmus was born in 1466. He lived during the reigns of several corrupt popes (Popes Alexander VI and Julius II) and experienced the reformations of Martin Luther. Thomas More was another humanist who lived in the time of the Protestant Reformations. They both criticized aspects about the Catholic Church, but when a divide between Protestant and Catholic occurred, both Erasmus and More defended the Roman Catholic Church against Martin Luther and his followers. (Read more about Erasmus and More in the second part of the series, The Defenders of Catholicism).

Martin Luther

(Portrait of Martin Luther as an Augustinian Monk, from the Workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) [Public domain], via Creative Commons)

WWI’s Incredible Battle of Messines

This Shocking Allied Plan Made The German Defenses Just Disappear

Warning: Some of the WWI images included below may be disturbing to some viewers.

There comes a time in everybody’s life when obstacles seem too daunting to face. In moments like these, we sometimes wish these obstacles would just disappear. This is exactly what happened in the June 7^th Battle of Messines (Belgium), when the German line of defensive trenches simply disappeared from the view of allied observers. The German line did not disappear in a puff of magic—in reality, the German trenches disappeared in a eruption of fire and soil, followed by a rain of blood, gore and all sorts of mysterious debris.