The Empire of Charles V, also known by the umbrella term Habsburg Empire, included the Holy Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Burgundian Low Countries, the Austrian lands, and all the territories and dominions ruled in personal union by Charles V from 1519 to 1556. It was the first to be labelled as "the empire on which the sun never sets", a term used to describe several global empires throughout history. The lands of the empire had in common only the monarch, Charles V, while their boundaries, institutions, and laws remained distinct. Charles's nomenclature as Holy Roman Emperor was Charles V (also Karl V and Carolus V), though earlier in his life he was known by the names of Charles of Ghent (after his birthplace in Flanders), Charles II as Duke of Burgundy, and Charles I as King of Spain (Carlos I) and Archduke of Austria (Karl I). The imperial name prevailed due to the politico-religious primacy held by the Holy Roman Empire among European monarchies since the Middle Ages, which Charles V intended to preserve as part of his (ultimately failed) project to unite Christendom under his leadership.
Charles V inherited the states comprising his empire as a result of the ambitious Habsburg matrimonial policy, engaged in extensive warfare during his reign, especially against Francis I of France and Francis I's Muslim ally, Ottoman ruler Suleiman the Magnificent, and had to face the Protestant Reformation of Martin Luther. His empire expanded in the Americas with the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire and the Inca Empire. He had access to vast resources consisting of flows of silver from the Americas to Spain, loans received from German and Italian bankers, and financial revenues of his states, especially the rich Low Countries; he used this wealth to wage war in Europe, but failed to contain religious divisions and French and Ottoman hostility, while his regime became more and more indebted and suffered from inflation. Ruling a vast empire as an itinerant monarch, he was assisted by many collaborators and entrusted oversight of his realms to his close relatives; ultimately he abdicated and divided the component states of his empire, with his brother Ferdinand succeeding him as Holy Roman Emperor and his son Philip inheriting the Spanish territories and the Low Countries.
Inheritances of Charles V
{ { blockquote|You, noble prince Charles, are more blessed than Alexander the Great. He for his part had seized an immense empire, but not without bloodshed...you were born to a splendid empire...you owe it to heaven that your empire came to you without the shedding of blood, and no one suffered for it.|Erasmus of Rotterdam in Education of a Christian Prince}}
Birth and heritage
Charles of Habsburg was born on 24 February 1500 in the Prinsenhof of Ghent, a Flemish city of the Burgundian Low Countries, to Philip of Habsburg and Joanna of Trastámara. His father Philip, nicknamed Philip the Handsome, was the firstborn son of Maximilian I of Habsburg, Archduke of Austria as well as Holy Roman Emperor, and Mary the Rich, Burgundian duchess of the Low Countries. His mother Joanna, known as Joanna the Mad for the mental disorders afflicting her, was a daughter of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain from the House of Trastámara. The political marriage of Philip and Joanna was first conceived in a letter sent by Maximilian to Ferdinand in order to seal an Austro-Spanish alliance, established as part of the League of Venice directed against the Kingdom of France during the Italian Wars.
The organization of ambitious political marriages reflected Maximilian's practice to expand the House of Habsburg with dynastic links rather than conquest, as exemplified by his saying "Let others wage war, you, happy Austria, marry". The marriage contract between Philip and Joanna was signed in 1495, and celebrations were held in 1496. Philip was already Duke of Burgundy, given Mary's death in 1482, and also heir apparent of Austria as honorific Archduke. Joanna, on the other hand, was only third in the Spanish line of succession, preceded by her older brother John of Castile and older sister Isabella of Aragon. Although both John and Isabella died in 1498, the Catholic Monarchs desired to keep the Spanish kingdoms in Iberian hands and designated their Portuguese nephew Miguel da Paz as heir presumptive of Spain by naming him Prince of the Asturias. Only a series of dynastic accidents eventually favored Maximilian's project.