THE AUSTRIAN HOUSE The Emperor Charles V.—Only the smaller part of the reign of Charles was spent in Spain. He came to it from Flanders, where he had received his education, unable to speak the Spanish language and surrounded by Flemish favourites. Furthermore, and this was the chief cause of his misunderstandings with the Span iards, his mind was mainly preoccupied with the international policy of the house of Burgundy and the empire, a foreign policy which could arouse no interest and was not even understood in Spain. Charles knew nothing either of Spanish ideas or of the national tradition of the new States to which he had succeeded. To him and his favourites the new country was only a source of supply from which money was to be obtained in order to bribe the German electors.
V.—The conquest of Mexico by Hernan Cortes (q.v.) and of Peru by Francisco Pizarro (q.v.)
to this reign. These conquests and the incessant wars into which Spain was drawn by the Aragonese claims in Italy, and its connection with the empire, gave to the nation a great Euro pean position and to the Spanish soldiers of the time many op portunities to win renown. The capture of the French king (Francis I.) at Pavia and his imprisonment at Madrid gratified for a moment the pride of the Spaniards, and did much to recon cile some of them to the sacrifices which the policy of the em peror imposed on them. But the tortes begged Charles many times to make an end of the European wars, as did the nobles assembled in 1538. Except in the case of the successful attack
on Tunis in 1535, and the attempt to take Algiers in 1541, the actions of Charles were not inspired by any regard for the in terests of his Spanish kingdoms. He treated them simply as in struments to promote the grandeur of his house. His indifference to their good, or his utter inability to see where it lay, was con spicuously shown when, on his abdication in 1556, he left his hereditary Flemish possessions to his son Philip, and not to his brother Ferdinand.
In foreign policy the reign of Philip II. (1556-98) was a prolongation of the reign of his father, and in it the vices of this policy were displayed to the fullest extent. Philip's mar riage with Mary Tudor in 1554 having proved barren, and her death in 1558 having placed Elizabeth on the throne of England, he was left without the support against France which this union was meant to secure. At the same time his inheritance of the Netherlands brought him into collision with their inhabitants, who feared his absolutist tendencies, and with the Reformation (q.v.). The revolt in the Low Countries was inevitably favoured by both France and England. Philip was consequently drawn into intervention in the religious wars of France (q.v.) and into war with England, which culminated in the great Armada (q.v.) of 1588. His relations with England were further complicated by the extension of English maritime enterprise to the New World (see