Charles V

Timeline

1. 1500–1515Ghent · NetherlandsBorn in Ghent on 24 February 1500, eldest son of Philip I (the Handsome) and Joanna (the Mad). After his father's early death, he was raised in the Netherlands by his aunt Margaret of Savoy, receiving a humanist education and becoming familiar with Dutch culture.
2. 1516–1519Madrid · SpainAfter his maternal grandfather Ferdinand II died in 1516, he inherited Spain, Naples, and the Spanish American colonies as Charles I, becoming joint monarch of Castile and Aragon. His early reliance on Dutch advisers upon arriving in Spain provoked the Comuneros revolt in Castile (1520–1521).
3. 1519–1521Frankfurt · Holy Roman EmpireHis grandfather Maximilian I died in 1519; with Fugger family funding, Charles defeated France's Francis I and bribed the electors heavily to be elected Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V. At the Diet of Worms in 1521 he condemned Martin Luther as a heretic and issued the Edict of Worms.
4. 1521–1544Madrid · SpainHe repeatedly warred with France, capturing King Francis I at the Battle of Pavia in 1525; his troops sacked Rome in 1527; meanwhile he countered the westward advance of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, personally leading a large army near Vienna in 1532 to halt the Ottoman forces. In this period Charles became the defender of the Christian world of Western Europe.
5. 1546–1555Augsburg · Holy Roman EmpireIn the Schmalkaldic War of 1546–1547 Charles defeated the league of Protestant princes at the Battle of Mühlberg and briefly controlled Germany. However, in 1552 the Protestant princes, allied with France, forced him to sign the Treaty of Passau. In 1555 he presided over the Peace of Augsburg, establishing the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, recognizing the legality of Lutheranism and ending the German religious wars.
6. 1555–1558Monastery of Yuste · SpainIn 1555 he passed the Netherlands to his son Philip II; in 1556 he ceded Spain and its colonies as well, and that same year transferred the Holy Roman imperial throne to his brother Ferdinand I. He then retired to the Monastery of Yuste in Spain, where he died of malaria on 21 September 1558.