Election of Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor (1519)

The election of Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor took place in Frankfurt on 28 June 1519, when the seven prince-electors unanimously chose the nineteen-year-old Charles of Habsburg, already King of Spain, over his rival Francis I of France. The contest was won largely with borrowed money, above all from the Augsburg banker Jakob Fugger. It made Charles ruler of the largest collection of European lands since Charlemagne and set the stage for decades of conflict with France.

Background: a vacancy and a rich inheritance

The Holy Roman Empire was a loose union of German and central European states whose emperor was chosen by seven electors. Three were archbishops, of Mainz, Cologne and Trier; four were lay princes: the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony and the Margrave of Brandenburg. Since 1438 they had always chosen a Habsburg.

Emperor Maximilian I tried to have his grandson Charles elected as his successor in 1518 but died at Wels on 12 January 1519 before this was settled. Charles, born in Ghent in 1500, had inherited the Burgundian Netherlands in 1506 and, on the death of his grandfather Ferdinand of Aragon, the crowns of Castile and Aragon in 1516, nominally shared with his mother Joanna, together with Naples, Sicily and the new Spanish lands in the Americas.

The contest

Francis I, fresh from his victory at Marignano, declared himself a candidate, arguing that a strong king was needed against the Ottoman Turks. Henry VIII of England also expressed interest, though his bid was never serious. Pope Leo X did not want one ruler to hold both the Empire and Naples, close to the Papal States, and at first supported Francis or a compromise candidate.

Both sides spent heavily on gifts and promised pensions to the electors and their advisers, a normal practice that was conducted on an unusual scale. French agents carried cash, but the electors were wary of French promises. Charles’s agents relied on bills of exchange guaranteed by German bankers. Jakob Fugger, who had financed Maximilian for years, refused to back the French and lent the Habsburg side about 543,000 florins. The Welser firm added some 143,000, and Italian bankers the rest, for a total cost of about 852,000 florins.

Public opinion in Germany favoured Charles as a Habsburg and Maximilian’s grandson rather than a French king. An army raised by the Swabian League was also present near Frankfurt, a reminder of Habsburg strength. When the elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony, the most respected of the princes, declined to stand himself and backed Charles, the matter was settled.

The election and its conditions

On 28 June 1519 the electors chose Charles unanimously. Before taking power he had to accept an electoral capitulation, a written agreement signed on his behalf on 3 July. He promised to appoint Germans to imperial offices, to use German or Latin in imperial business, not to bring foreign troops into the Empire without consent, and not to outlaw any subject without a hearing. That last promise would matter at the Diet of Worms in 1521, when Luther was summoned to appear in person.

Charles was in Spain when he was elected and received the news in Barcelona. He travelled north in 1520 and was crowned King of the Romans in Aachen Cathedral on 23 October 1520. Pope Clement VII crowned him emperor at Bologna on 24 February 1530, the last imperial coronation by a pope.

Consequences

The election made Charles the most powerful ruler in Europe and surrounded France with Habsburg territory. The rivalry between Charles and Francis drove the Italian Wars for the next generation, including Francis’s defeat and capture at the Battle of Pavia in 1525. Charles’s long absences from Spain helped provoke the Revolt of the Comuneros in Castile in 1520.

The debts also bound the Habsburgs to the Fugger bank. In a well-known letter of 1523 Fugger reminded Charles, without much subtlety, that he could not have won the crown without Fugger money, and asked to be repaid. Charles ruled until his abdication in 1555–1556, when his lands were divided between his brother Ferdinand and his son Philip II.

Timeline

• 1500, 24 February: Charles is born in Ghent.
• 1516, March: Charles is proclaimed King of Castile and Aragon.
• 1519, 12 January: Emperor Maximilian I dies at Wels.
• 1519, 28 June: The electors choose Charles in Frankfurt.
• 1519, 3 July: The electoral capitulation is agreed.
• 1520, 23 October: Charles is crowned King of the Romans at Aachen.
• 1530, 24 February: Pope Clement VII crowns Charles emperor in Bologna.

Why it matters

The 1519 election created a dynastic empire that stretched from the Danube to Peru. It made the Habsburg–Valois rivalry the central conflict of European politics and placed a devout Catholic ruler at the head of the Empire just as the Reformation began. It is also a classic example of how early modern banking money could shape the fate of states.