page_title: Habsburg Spain
section_title: Beginnings of the empire (1504–1521)
hierarchical_section_title: Habsburg Spain / History / Beginnings of the empire (1504–1521)
context_page_description: Habsburg Spain refers to Spain over the 16th and 17th centuries, when it was ruled by kings from the House of Habsburg. The Habsburg rulers reached the zenith of their influence and power. They controlled territory that included the Americas, the East Indies, the Low Countries, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, and territories now in France and Germany in Europe, the Portuguese Empire from 1580 to 1640, and various other territories such as small enclaves like Ceuta and Oran in North Africa. This period of Spanish history has also been referred to as the "Age of Expansion".
  Under the Habsburgs, Spain was the major political and military power in Europe and the world for much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but experienced a gradual decline of influence in the second half of the seventeenth century under the later Habsburgs kings.
  The Habsburg years also ushered in the Spanish Golden Age of cultural efflorescence. Among the most outstanding figures of this period were Teresa of Ávila, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Miguel de Cervantes, El Greco, Domingo de Soto, Francisco Suárez, Diego Velázquez, and Francisco de Vitoria.
context_section_description: In 1504, Isabella I of Castile died, and although Ferdinand II of Aragon tried to maintain his position over Castile in the wake of her death, the Castilian Cortes Generales (the royal court of Spain) chose to crown Isabella's daughter Joanna of Castile as queen. Her husband Philip I of Castile was the Habsburg son of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy. Shortly thereafter Joanna began to lapse into insanity, although the extent of her mental illness was the topic of some debate. In 1506, Philip I was declared jure uxoris king, but he died later that year under mysterious circumstances, possibly poisoned by his father-in-law, Ferdinand II. Since their oldest son Charles was only six, the Cortes reluctantly allowed Joanna's father Ferdinand II to rule the country as the regent of Queen Joanna and Charles.
  Spain was now in personal union under Ferdinand II of Aragon. As undisputed ruler in most of the Peninsula, Ferdinand adopted a more aggressive policy than he had as Isabella's husband, going on to crystallize his long-running designs over Navarre into a full-blown invasion led initially by a Castilian military expedition, and supported later by Aragonese troops (1512). He also attempted to enlarge Spain's sphere of influence in Italy, strengthening it against France. As ruler of Aragon, Ferdinand had been involved in the struggle against France and the Republic of Venice for control of Italy; these conflicts became the center of Ferdinand's foreign policy as king. Ferdinand's first investment of Spanish forces came in the War of the League of Cambrai against Venice, where the Spanish soldiers distinguished themselves on the field alongside their French allies at the Battle of Agnadello (1509). Only a year later, Ferdinand joined the Holy League against France, seeing a chance at taking both Naples — to which he held a dynastic claim — and Navarre, which was claimed through his marriage to Germaine of Foix. The war was less of a success than that against Venice, and in 1516 France agreed to a truce that left Milan under French control and recognized Spanish hegemony in northern Navarre. Ferdinand would die later that year.
  Ferdinand's death led to the ascension of young Charles to the throne as Charles I of Castile and Aragon, effectively founding the monarchy of Spain. His Spanish inheritance included all the Spanish possessions in the New World and around the Mediterranean. Upon the death of his Habsburg father in 1506, Charles had inherited the Netherlands and Franche-Comté, growing up in Flanders. In 1519, with the death of his paternal grandfather Maximilian I, Charles inherited the Habsburg territories in Germany, and was duly elected as Holy Roman Emperor that year. His mother Joanna remained titular queen of Castile until her death in 1555, but due to her mental health and worries of her being proposed as an alternative monarch by opposition (as happened in the Revolt of the Comuneros), Charles kept her imprisoned.
  At that point, Emperor and King Charles was the most powerful man in Christendom. The accumulation of so much power by one man and one dynasty greatly concerned Francis I of France, who found himself surrounded by Habsburg territories. In 1521 Francis invaded the Spanish possessions in Italy and Navarre, which inaugurated a second round of Franco-Spanish conflict. The war was a disaster for France, which suffered defeats at Biccoca (1522), Pavia (1525, at which Francis was captured), and Landriano (1529) before Francis relented and abandoned Milan to Spain once more.
caption: Joanna of Castile
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