History of the Reign of Charles the Fifth, With an Account of the Emperor's Life After His Abdication. 2-vol. set (Complete)
London: George Routledge and Sons, ND (ca 1870). Later edition. Hardcover. Quarto (9 1/4 x 6 1/4"). xvi, 658pp (Vol. 1); viii, 705, [1]pp. Original 3/4 calf over marbled paper covered boards, with gold lettering and tooling to spines. Raised bands. Top edge of each volume gilt. Marbled endpapers. Tissue-guarded engraved frontispiece portrait in first volume.
Charles V (1500-1558) was a Fleming royal of the Austrian House of Habsburg and the Castillan House of Trastamara who ruled the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation from 1519 as Emperor Charles V, the Spanish Empire from 1516 as King Charles I, and the Low Countries from 1506 as Duke Charles II. The Spanish conquest of the Aztecs and Incas, and the German colonisation of Venezuela both occurred during his reign. Charles V revitalized the medieval concept of the universal monarchy of Charlemagne and travelled from city to city, with no single fixed capital: overall he spent 28 years in the Habsburg Netherlands (primarily Bruxelles), 18 years in Spain (notably Toledo and Extremadura) and 9 years in Germany.
"After four decades of incessant warfare with the Kingdom of France, the Ottoman Empire, and the Protestants, Charles V abandoned his multi-national project with a series of abdications between 1554 and 1556 in favor of his son Philip II of Spain and his own brother Ferdinand of Austria. The personal union of his European and American territories, spanning over nearly 4 million square kilometres (1.545,000 square miles), was the first collection of realms to be defined as "the empire on which the sun never sets." For more information, see: Michael Tarver's "The Spanish Empire: A Historical Encyclopaedia," ABC-Clio (2016).
Minor and sporadic rubbing along edges of bindings. Bindings in overall good+, interior in very good condition. g+ to vg. Item #45098
Price: $95.00