The Problems With Charles's First Triumph

The Empire was the patchworkiest of them all. It took the principle of fragmentation to its logical conclusion. Its overarching institutions were weak. Each individual piece usually did as it liked, and the Emperor was often helpless to enforce his will - whatever that might have been. If Charles's life often seems like he whiplashed back and forth from triumph to disaster back to triumph and then back to disaster with staggering speed, well this is because it did.