IOTL, Charles V abdicated in 1556 due to old age, dividing his realms between his sons Philip and Ferdinand. ITTL, let's say he leaves everything to his eldest son, Philip. Could Philip (and his successors) have kept the empire together for a reasonable amount of time -- say, a hundred years or more? Or was it so spread-out that it would inevitably have fallen apart before that?
Could Charles V's empire have lasted for any length of time?
- Thread starter Fabius Maximus
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Art Vandelay
Banned
Didn't Charles give Austria to his brother in the 1520s? So the actual power base of Hapsburg Germany was already run independently from Spain, I'm not sure it'd actually change a whole lot besides making the Spanish a bit more overextended. IMO a smarter move would've been to give the Burgundian lands to the German branch instead of the Spanish one
mickeymouse
Donor
Under a single person? Absolutely not. Philip II caused the country to go bankrupt at least four times; and that’s just Spain. It wasn’t very sustainable in the long run; too many outside threats (especially from France, the Ottomans, and England if it still goes Protestant) in addition to economic issues that would make it hard to sustain, inflation being chief among them. Charles himself found the empire difficult to run, but he did his best with the systems he had in place. Add that with how incompetent Philip’s successors were (and Philip himself in some areas) and the empire would certainly crumble before the century is out.
@Art Vandelay is right that a better move would be to give Burgundy to Ferdinand and his descendants. Or, have one of Charles’s other legitimate sons survive and give the Burgundian inheritance to him. Aside from Philip he had two short-lived sons, Fernando (born 1529, died aged eight months) and Juan (born 1537, died aged five months) as well as two stillborn sons (one in 1534 and one in 1539). All of them would be of age by the time Charles abdicates in 1555/1556 and could begin ruling in the Netherlands immediately.
@Art Vandelay is right that a better move would be to give Burgundy to Ferdinand and his descendants. Or, have one of Charles’s other legitimate sons survive and give the Burgundian inheritance to him. Aside from Philip he had two short-lived sons, Fernando (born 1529, died aged eight months) and Juan (born 1537, died aged five months) as well as two stillborn sons (one in 1534 and one in 1539). All of them would be of age by the time Charles abdicates in 1555/1556 and could begin ruling in the Netherlands immediately.
Undoubtedly, but I had an idea for a TL knocking around in my head where instead of Catholics vs. Protestants early modern Europe sees a big conflict between proponents of a universal Christian monarchy, headed by the Hapsburgs, and their opponents, and I was wondering if the empire could last for long enough to have a few decent wars.
I guess one way of ameliorating the problem of overextension would be to keep the situation of the 1520s, with the empire being de jure united but with significant parts being ruled as quasi-autonomies regencies. Of course, the regents might be tempted to make themselves independent in name as well as fact, but a bit of good old-fashioned Hapsburg inbreeding could deal with that for a few generations at least.
As other people have said here, the answer is no, Charles already had immense difficulty in running the Empire and going from place to place to coordinate it against the threats both external(France and Ottomans) and internal(Comuneros revolts in Spain and Protestants), the gold and silver from the Americas helped but also caused huge amounts of inflation to the empire, he couldn't properly centralize or do good administrative changes due to how jealously certain parts guarded their privileges and it would've taken him a long time to crush a revolt in Aragon if he was in Austria and then the French and/or the Ottomans would've invaded, that's just impossible for a ruler of the time where even travelling to a center of power in a neighbor country could take weeks or even a month, no wonder he eventually stepped down and divided his empire.
If it somehow was kept the way it was with no changes, the empire would've been chipped away even harder by the French and the Ottomans, especially given Henri II was much better than his father and given butterflies would've not died from a jousting incident and while the heirs of Suleiman where never his level they still had a powerful empire with them, not to mention increased tension in the HRE as well as countries like England and Scandinavia going protestant, it was simply too much scattered land with too much enemies to one person to hold it together.
If it somehow was kept the way it was with no changes, the empire would've been chipped away even harder by the French and the Ottomans, especially given Henri II was much better than his father and given butterflies would've not died from a jousting incident and while the heirs of Suleiman where never his level they still had a powerful empire with them, not to mention increased tension in the HRE as well as countries like England and Scandinavia going protestant, it was simply too much scattered land with too much enemies to one person to hold it together.
Could it work if, instead of splitting his Spanish and Imperial territories into independent realms, Charles made one of them a semi-autonomous vassal of the other? I could envision it working similarly to OTL but with closer co-operation between Spain and the Empire, but maybe the vassal half would just try and declare independence anyway.
That is mostly a myth. In 1556 Charles left EVERYTHING he still had to pass to his son Philip.
Ferdinand had received Austria in 1521, Hungary and Bohemia were the inheritance of his wife’s family (meaning who Charles and Philip had ZERO claim over it) and was already designated to be the next Emperor since his election as King of the Romans in 1531 meaning who Charles had NO way to impose ANYTHING of that kind over his brother…
Still would have the problem of delegating the power of the realm towards nobles and other greats who would try and keep their privileges and power above else in detriment to the empire, several times the Habsburgs butted heads with people who were supposed to answer to them, giving away such autonomy while would ease the burden on the individual emperor would've still made the vassal provinces act basically independent given the lack of the emperor to order things around
If any TTL other son for Charles V wouldn’t survive, another, already discussed plausible option here in some threads would be to give the Burgundian Inheritance to the daughter of Charles V, Mary of Spain, after she marries, Maximilian II, son of Ferdinand of Austria.
This would also leave the duchy of Milan, Austria might want it, but IMHO a plausible way to give Mary ‘Burgundy’ might be that Philip II is invested with the duchy of Milan as a compensation. Making Italy the concern of the Spanish branch, while the Austrian or TTL Austro-Burgundian branch has its’ focus North of the Alps.
Edit: while Austria would certainly have benefited from the wealth of the duchy of Milan. I feel it to be uncharacteristic and thus unlikely both would be given away. There ATL more sons of Charles V could have worked better.
Moreover it would have increased the burden of Austria-Burgundy in the Habsburg defence against France, which is problematic since they already have the brunt of the burden against the Ottomans. Now an Austria in control of the whole of Hungary & Croatia would already be stronger, but Ferdinand wasn’t in control of the whole kingdom.
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