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Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we’re going to
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talk about the Holy Roman Empire.
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Which as Voltaire famously pointed out, was not holy, or Roman, or an empire.
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But the Holy Roman Empire can help us understand world history, especially during the reign
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of its most powerful emperor, the smart, and sensible, and hard-working Charles Hapsburg,
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known as Carlos I in Spain, and Charles V in the rest of Europe.
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So, lets frame it this way. In soccer, the World Cup is like a pretty big deal, especially for me.
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Mr Green? Mr Green? But I’m not even good at soccer
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You’re actually not that bad Me From the Past, but the
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only two things you put into your body are Wendy’s and cigarette smoke. And that… it’s not
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great for your athletic career. In 2014, the final pitted Germany against
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Argentina and if that game had been played in 1550, both of those teams would’ve had
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the same head of state. The 2010 final between Spain and the Netherlands,
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again the same head of state - Charles V. Unfortunately, the 1550 World Cup had to be
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postponed until after soccer was invented.
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So, Charles V ruled one of the biggest empires in history, behind only Chinggis Khan, Joseph
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Stalin and Stalin’s successors in the Soviet Union.
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In addition to claiming to rule most of Europe, during Charles’ lifetime, (1500-1558), one
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of his dominions, Spain, laid claim to nearly all of the New World outside of Brazil. And
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a few of his subjects -- the miserable survivors of the fleet of Ferdinand Magellan -- became
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the first known humans to circumnavigate the globe.
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Under Charles, the template for the colonization of the Americas and the Christianization and
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treatment of its indigenous people was laid down, and Charles gave his seal of approval
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to the Jesuit Order to convert Asia. He underwrote the first Mission settlements to California,
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and began the process of turning the islands known as the Philippines into Asia’s largest
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Spanish-speaking country. But he wasn’t just a conqueror. Charles
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also hosted the Valladolid debates, the first-known discussions of universal human rights -- and
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he actively sought to end slavery for many. Although, not for all, and he didn’t really
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succeed in ending it for anyone. Yet, for all that, Charles V isn’t known
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as a giant of world history. I mean his realm, the Holy Roman Empire, was ultimately, a failed
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state, and his reign a bitter disappointment, even to himself.
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Trying to rule an empire stocked with rebellious subjects including Martin Luther and with
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territory in two hemispheres, Charles V managed to totally bankrupt his realm and that was
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kind of impressive. Because he had access to the silver and gold
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of the new world, the Renaissance banking fortunes of Italy and the Netherlands, and
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the military power of Spain. In short, Charles V was to the Holy Roman
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Empire what Screech is to the Saved by the Bell alumni.
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By the time he died, crippled with gout and malaria at the age of 58 - wait are we still
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talking about Screech? No, apparently we’re talking about Charles V now.
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Anyway, the Holy Roman Empire was defaulting on massive debts to its creditors.
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So among historians, the debate over whether Charles could have been a successful emperor
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tends to break into two schools of thought. One argues that the Holy Roman Empire was
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doomed to fail largely because it lacked the nationalism that powered the rising nation-states
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like France and England. But Voltaire was probably right, that the
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Holy Roman Empire was doomed from birth. Over it’s 1004-year-history, the Holy Roman Empire
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never had the means of levying direct taxes, or directly raising an army from its territory,
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which nearly always included what are today Eastern France, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria,
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the Italian peninsula, and Czechoslovakia, and at times stretched to the Netherlands,
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and Belgium, Hungary, Croatia, Poland, and western Ukraine.
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Governing such a vast area is almost impossible, especially when you have to have like you
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know people on horses to deliver messages. These days, even with the internet, governing
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Europe isn’t that easy - Ask the European Parliamentg how it’s going.
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So the HRE began in 800 CE as a marriage between the Germanic warlord, Charlemagne, and the
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only sort of warlord-y Popes in Rome. After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire
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western Christendom was basically a flock of rural warriors who reveled in trials by
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combat, Christian conversion through combat, and, just generally combat.
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And Charlemagne shrewdly recognized that the Church’s mainly literate hierarchy and command
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of tradition were his best possible instruments for governing his battle loving feudal lords.
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So Charlemagne and Pope Leo III struck a deal; Leo would bestow upon Charlemagne the authority
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and tradition of the Caesars, while Charlemagne acknowledged the Church’s spiritual superiority
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over his secular power. And the name for the agreement reflected the
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terms of the deal. Holy, because the Church wanted top billing, Roman, to give Charlemagne
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maximum prestige among his feudal subjects, and Empire, because they wanted it to be an
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empire. Here’s a lesson in romance from history:
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marriages of convenience…. meh? So the relationship between the popes and
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the emperors grew a bit rocky over time. In the centuries after Charlemagne, one European
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warrior clan, the House of Hapsburg fought to claim the Emperor’s throne, and to establish
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dominance over the Papacy. And one of the tactics used by the Hapsburgs
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was to promote dynastic marriages between Hapsburg cousins, thus keeping inheritances
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within the family and out of the hands of the Church.
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This Hapsburg in-breeding worked politically, but, over centuries, it brought out recessive
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family genes for mental illness and -- most famously -- these oversized lower jaws that
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became Europe’s most-recognizable profile. In short, in-breeding - great way to keep
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money in the family, maybe not the best way to keep A++ kings in the family.
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The Papacy fought back and in 1356,the position of Holy Roman Emperor was turned into an elected
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position. Candidates for the crown henceforth needed to win support from at least four of
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seven “Electors.” Now this didn’t prevent the Hapsburgs from
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reclaiming the throne, but it did force the family to pay fortunes in bribes and favors
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to win it, because as always, money wins elections. Charles was no exception and the bribes he
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paid to secure the his position as Emperor in 1521 meant that he started off his rule
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in debt - which is never a great idea. But wait, you say, now that he is Emperor
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he can just tap into a loyal group of subjects, who will be more than happy to pay tax increases
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in order to pay off Charles’ debt. But yeah, that’s not how the Holy Roman
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Empire worked. All right, let’s get to know this Emperor in the Thought Bubble
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Charles’s parents came from two ambitious dynasties. His mother, Juana, was the daughter
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of Ferdinand and Isabella, whom you’ve probably heard of. And from Juana, Charles laid claim
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not only to Spain but to parts of Italy, including Naples and Sicily, as well as what became
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known as the Americas. Charles’s father was the Duke of Burgundy, Phillip the Fair.
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And through Philip, Charles could claim the German lands of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian
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I, Phillip’s father. So Charles’s existence was pretty much a
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genetic engineering job designed to produce a ruler of Spain and Germany. Only, Charles
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was neither Spanish nor German himself. He grew up in Belgium, in the dukedom of Burgundy,
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which technically made him a French subject. And ruling over so many disparate people was
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a recipe for trouble. Like, German peasants in Frisia had revolted against the empire
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in 1515, but they weren’t nearly as troublesome as the Germans living in towns. By the time
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Charles bought his throne in 1521, German merchants had come to think of themselves
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as being guaranteed the rights to speak in a parliament, to have a say in their taxes
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and even to form their own militias. Protestantism was also a big headache for
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Charles, especially when Luther and his followers claimed that they followed their consciences
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in matters of religion rather than the emperor’s will. Charles thought that he solved this
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problem when he faced Luther at the Diet of Worms in 1523, but that didn’t work out
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quite as planned. Thanks, Thought Bubble. So, at the Diet of
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Worms Luther was so compelling when talking about his faith that he became more popular
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- not less. And shortly thereafter he began his famous
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German translation of the Bible. So obviously, governing most of Europe was
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just a tremendous difficulty for Charles V, but he also had to be the ruler of all of
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the Americas except for Brazil. I can’t help but notice, Stan, that Brazil
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is always the exception in the Americas.
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And with the Spanish Conquistadors subjugation
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of the the American Indians by the late 1530s, Charles’s life got even worse or arguably
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better. Because he was richer and had more subjects
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which is the point of being an emperor I guess. So unlike most of the Spaniards in Spain’s
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colonies, Charles actually showed some concern for his native subjects, but he couldn’t
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really do much. Like in 1520, after receiving a steady stream
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of complaints about how the native people were being abused, Charles banned the granting
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of new encomiendas and ordered his officials to phase out the old ones.
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And this worked … not at all. Hernan Cortes and other leading conquistadors completely
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ignored Charles orders and just kept doling out encomiendas.
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And then Charles sent new orders saying that the Indians are “to live in liberty, as
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our vassals in Castile live...if you have given any Indians in encomienda to any Christians
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you will remove them.” Cortes responded, “The majority of the Spaniards
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who come here are of low quality, violent, and vicious.”
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Well, I guess he was self-aware. Anyway, his response amounted to - we could only get Spanish
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people to come here if they have the right to exploit other humans.
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And then In 1526, Charles gave in and allowed Cortes, and, later, Pizarro, to issue temporary
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encomiendas to their men. Now so far, Charles isn’t looking so good
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in this story, so it might be useful to compare his record to those of his contemporaries,
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who, in theory, ruled more coherent and governable states.
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And it just so happens that Charles reigned at the same time as two of Europe’s most
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notable proto-nationalistic leaders, England’s Henry VIII and France’s Francis I of France.
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The bitterest rivalry was between Francis and Charles, because Francis believed that
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Charles, as the Duke of Burgundy, which is in France, was his subject.
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Charles, meanwhile, knew that Francis had attempted to win the title of Holy Roman Emperor
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himself, and had warned the electors that Charles was an unfit and despotic man.
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If we could just stop for a moment. Why on earth would anyone fight to become the Holy
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Roman Emperor. The two monarchs fought four separate wars
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against each other. And according to proponents of nationalism, Francis should have had the
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advantage, right. Because he had unchallenged power of taxation in France, and a religious
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class that was loyal to him, and a population, or at least an elite, that all spoke French.
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But Charles’s troops won every war. Not only that, in the course of the wars Charles’
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troops managed to take Francis himself hostage at the siege of Pavia, and sack Rome in 1527,
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ending the pope’s hope of becoming a real player in secular politics, and, according
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to some scholars, ending the Italian Renaissance. Charles also fought a war against Suleiman
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and the Ottomans, defeating them at Vienna, although he wasn’t able to stop Suleiman
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from consolidating his control over the formerly Habsburg territory of Hungary.
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But despite ruling this fractious, polyglot empire rather than a compact national state,
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Charles did okay for himself. Well at least by some measures - by other
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measure he was a total failure. Oh, it’s time for the open letter.
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But first, let’s see what’s in the globe today. Oh, it’s all of my past romantic
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relationships. An open letter to failure. Dear failure, you’re so often in the eyes
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of the beholder, like what looks like failure at one point in your life can later look like
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a wonderful success. I mean Charles V had a lot of successes but ultimately
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he viewed his reign as a terrible failure. That’s why he eventually abdicated and retired
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to a life of full time beer-drinking. And then he split up his empire with his brother
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getting the Holy Roman Empire and his son getting Spain.
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And that was probably marginally at least a good thing for both the Holy Roman Empire
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and Spain. In short, failure almost no person is merely
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a failure or even merely a success. So enough with all these falsely constructed
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dichotomies failure, they are complete failure. Best wishes, John Green.
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So, the story of Charles V reminds us of something we learn again and again when studying World
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History: that there are multiple sides to every piece of history.
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Yes, the Holy Roman Empire under Charles V ceased to be Holy in the sense that it was
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no longer 100% Catholic, it was never Roman since Latin wasn’t among the many languages
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spoken there… And it wasn’t much of an empire because
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it was too diverse and spread out for Charles really to have the power of an emperor.
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But as with most history, and many facebook relationship statuses, and one Meryl Streep
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movie - it’s complicated. But perhaps the one concrete lesson we can
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take away from the history of Charles V is the benefits of acknowledging the limits of
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one’s power. Charles never did. His imperial motto was plus ultra. And that
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means “further beyond,” but it could also mean limitless. Charles sought to fuse Atlantic
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and Central Europe into seamless whole on a scale the size of today’s European Union.
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He tried to stamp out the Protestant Reformation and make his response, the
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Catholic Counter-Reformation global. He tried to create new policies in the New
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World, while still defending old policies in the Old World.
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And by trying to be the most powerful Emperor in the most powerful empire in the history
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of the world he failed spectacularly. There’s a lesson in that for all empires,
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and all nation-states, and even all people. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next week.
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Crash Course is filmed here in the Chad and Stacey Emigholz studio in Indianapolis and
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