Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor

Born in Flanders in 1500, Charles was heir to four grandparents who had assembled kingdoms like puzzle pieces: the Habsburgs gave him Austria and the Netherlands, the Catholic Monarchs gave him Spain and its new American colonies. His father died when he was six; by nineteen he was Holy Roman Emperor, adopting the name Charles V and styling himself a new Charlemagne. He had no capital, made forty journeys across his domains, and spent a quarter of his reign on the road. What came to him peacefully he defended violently: he declared Martin Luther an outlaw at the Diet of Worms in 1521, captured Francis I of France at Pavia in 1525, saw his mutinous soldiers sack Rome in 1527, defended Vienna from the Ottomans, and seized Milan and Tunis. The flow of silver from conquered Aztec and Inca lands paid German and Italian bankers but brought widespread inflation; the Lutheran Schmalkaldic League, the French, and Suleiman the Magnificent ground him down. In 1556, exhausted and in debt, he split his empire between his son Philip and his brother Ferdinand, abdicated, and retired to a monastery in Extremadura, where he died in 1558.