to conciliate the English King; and his one aim throughout the affair was to provide for the succession of his cousin to the throne of England. That was a clear dynastic issue which appealed to Charles with a force which no other motive could rival. One simple principle pervaded the whole of Charles' actions, and one object he pursued with unswerving fidelity throughout his public career. It was neither the conversion of heretics nor the overthrow of the Turks; it was not even a national object, for Charles was too cosmopolitan and his lands too heterogeneous for him to become such an exponent of national aspirations as Francis I and Henry II were in France, or Henry VIII and Elizabeth in England. But he was deeply imbued with pride in the Habsburg race and faith in the family star. To the service of the Habsburgs he devoted his industry, his patience, his tenacity of purpose, and his great diplomatic abilities. Therein lay the reason of his ultimate failure; in the end the principle of nationality defied the Habsburg power, and not a foot of the land conquered by Charles remains to the Spaniard to-day.
The imperial throne of Germany was thus a possession which Charles sought to use in the Habsburg interest; and this idea dominated not merely his foreign policy but the course he pursued with regard to domestic affairs. He was told by his minister, Maximilian von Zeven-bergen, that the only means to prevent the Empire from becoming a democratic republic like Switzerland was the extension within its borders of the absolutist Habsburg power, and to this dynastic use the Emperor turned, so far as he could, his prerogative as national sovereign. The great enemy of imperial unity was the territorial principle, and Charles himself regarded it as such, yet he never hesitated to extend his territorial possessions at the expense of the national government. Every element in the German State tended towards separation, but the greatest separatist of all was the Emperor. Besides virtually severing the Netherlands from the Empire, he sought to exempt his hereditary possessions from the jurisdiction of the national Courts of law, from contributing to the national taxes, and from sharing the burden of national government. He was to be as absolute as he could in the Empire at large, but while he controlled the national government, the national government was to have no control over his hereditary lands. It mattered little how much the imperial authority diminished provided the Habsburg power grew; no one should henceforth be Emperor unless he came of the Habsburg race. The extent of his heritage was greater than that, of the German Reich, and he thought that his allegiance to his family transcended his obligations to any one of the realms over which he ruled. But, so far as Germany was concerned, the Emperor Charles V never rose from a narrow dynastic to a broad national conception of his duties and of his opportunities as ruler of Germany. Both the extent of the realm and the authority of the central government dwindled under his sway; he narrowed the German Reich and weakened the Reichsregiment.
