Revival of the WestRevival of the West c.1000-1500 C.E.
High & Later Middle AgesUnit 10: The High and Later Middle Ages in Europe
FC62Urban revival in Italy (c.800-1200)
The first stirrings of revival from anarchy in Western Europe took place in Italy. There were three reasons for this. First of all, the Roman cities were older and more deeply rooted than cities in Northern Europe. Second, their position in the middle of the Mediterranean attracted trade from the richer Byzantine and Muslim civilizations in the East. Finally, the Byzantine Empire, which ruled parts of Italy, protected its towns there from at least some of the chaos of the times. Italian towns were much reduced in size from the days of the Roman Empire, but they still functioned as religious centers ruled by bishops as well as centers of defense.
In the eighth century, the popes had summoned the Frankish rulers, Pepin the Short and Charlemagne to Italy to defend them against the Lombards. Especially as a result of Charlemagne's campaigns, the northern half of Italy came under Frankish rule. After Charlemagne's death in 814, law and order collapsed with the central government, but the Frankish nobles left behind by Charlemagne remained as the power in the countryside while the bishops ruled the cities.
The turmoil following Charlemagne's death attracted waves of Muslim raids These raids reached their peak in the ninth and tenth centuries, and, at one point, the Muslims even controlled part of Rome. Eventually, they were driven out, leaving the Frankish nobles in the countryside to fight one another for control of Northern Italy. Holding the balance of power in these struggles were the bishops in the towns. In order to enlist the bishops' aid the Frankish nobles promised various rights to them. Typically, the first of these rights was to build their own fortifications. Since such projects were expensive, the Franks gave the bishops the right to collect taxes. And along with that would come certain judicial rights that also brought in court fees. Over time, the bishops' power and their desire to break free from the nobles steadily grew.
Luckily for the bishops, a strong German state with interests in Italy was emerging under Otto I. At the pope's request, Otto came down and crushed the power of the nobles and left the bishops in the cities as his agents of control in Northern Italy. This resulted in two things. For one thing, the pope rewarded Otto in 961 with the Roman imperial title that Charlemagne had been given 160 years before. For the next 850 years, the aura of the imperial title would influence German rulers' policy and be the cause of ruin for Germany. However, at this time, a strong Germany, or Holy Roman Empire as it came to be called, was useful for protecting the peace in Italy. Second, the Italian cities, now freed from the nobles, started to take the offensive against the Muslim raiders. By 1200, Italian navies and merchants would be powerful enough to dominate the Mediterranean, help the Crusaders conquer and maintain their states in Syria and Palestine, and even conquer Constantinople in 1204.
Together, these factors brought peace and security from the Muslims and Frankish nobles, which led to the revival of towns and trade. At first, this benefited the bishops ruling the cities, since it brought in more taxes from trade. But it also meant the rise of a middle class of artisans and merchants in each city who were increasingly dissatisfied with living under the rule of the bishops. Eventually, they rose up against the bishops and overthrew them, establishing independent town governments known as communes. As nobles moved into the towns where many of them took up trade and merchants seized more and more political power, the distinction between nobles and middle class became somewhat blurred. What emerged in Italy was a new nobility known as magnates (literally "great ones") that was a fusion of these two groups.
It is important to note that while we talk about Italy as a country, it still existed as a patchwork of different and competing states. Northern Italy, in particular, was made up of a large number of independent city-states, the most important being Venice (a former Byzantine city), Genoa, Pisa, and, later on, Milan and Florence. It was these cities that led the way for Western Europe to emerge from the Early Middle Ages. Their example and wealth would help spark a similar revival of towns north of the Alps. However, as we shall see, the political development of Northern Europe would be quite different from that of Italy, giving rise to the emergence of what would be our modern nation states.
FC63The agricultural revolution in medieval Europe
Until this century, the vast majority of people spent their lives involved in one basic occupation: getting food, either through hunting and gathering, herding, or agriculture. When these people could produce a surplus, they were freed to do other things, which provided the basis for towns, cities, and civilization. Without the ability to produce surplus food, no civilization would be able to survive. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the first step in building a new civilization in Western Europe was developing ways for producing a surplus of food.
Europe (c.1000 C.E.)
Before discussing these new agricultural techniques, it is useful to look at the state of Medieval life and agriculture in the Early Middle Ages. The vast majority of peasants were serfs, bound to the soil and service of a lord who owed them protection in return for work in his fields. These serfs lived in villages, isolated pockets of farmland in the midst of a vast wilderness of forests, thickets, and marshes. Typically, a village would have several acres of cultivated fields, a wooden castle or manor house for the lord, a peasant village, a parish church, and a mill. A village might be equivalent to a manor, the economic unit given to support a noble. However, it could just as well be divided into several manors to support several nobles or be only one of several villages making up a large manor.
The village had to be self-sufficient because it was virtually cut off from the outside world. Roads were poor and brigands or local lords constantly threatened travel. Raids from neighboring nobles and such invaders as the Vikings, Magyars, and Moslems also kept most people huddled under the safety of their lord's castle walls. As a result, the flow of trade and commerce was reduced to a fraction of what it had been during the Pax Romana. Compared to the thriving Byzantine and Islamic cultures to the south and east, Western Europe was a fragile outpost on the western fringe of civilization.
Europe’s agriculture reflected this low level of culture. The plow used then was still the scratch plow that worked fine in the thin dry soils of the Mediterranean, but was not very suitable for the wetter, deeper soils of Northern Europe. Such a plow might be reinforced with iron, or it might be nothing more than a curved digging stick. The main source of power for pulling the plow was the ox hooked up by a yoke harness that pulled at the neck. Although slow, the ox was more than some peasants could afford. As a result, they had to pull their own plows or dig with spades (known as delving). Finally, the peasants used the two-field system, where one field lay fallow to reclaim the soil's nutrients while the other field was being cultivated. This left only fifty percent of the farmland for use in any given year. As a result, crop yields were very low. In the Roman Empire, for every bushel of seed grain planted, four bushels would be harvested. In the Early Middle Ages with the poor techniques being used, this ratio dropped to one and a half or two to one. In other words, a full half or more of a peasant's harvest had to be saved as seed grain for next year's planting. In years of famine, this led to serious difficulties. Given these limits, it should come as no surprise that population remained low and grew at a very slow rate, if at all.
One has to be very careful when generalizing about what techniques were used where. This is because we have little evidence to go on, especially concerning the peasants, whose lives were of little concern to the monks writing religious histories. Also, the poor communications between manors meant that widely different techniques and tools might be used in a fairly local area. However, it does seem likely that the light scratch plow, oxen, yoke harness, and two-field system were in general use in Western Europe in the Early Middle Ages. Then came some changes that would lay the foundations for more advanced civilization.
First stirrings of revival
It is impossible to say when population first started expanding in Western Europe, although we can make some educated guesses. For one thing, the climate seems to have turned warmer in the 800's. We base this on tree ring evidence and the fact that the Vikings could sail in northern latitudes unobstructed by ice. The warmer climate meant longer growing seasons, better harvests, and thus a healthier and growing population. Major plagues that had hit intermittently since the later Roman Empire also ceased after 743 C.E. This might be partly a result of the better-fed population having more resistance to disease. Finally, a certain amount of political stability had returned to Western Europe by 1000 C.E. The feudal system, whatever its faults, was providing at least a minimal amount of security to Europe. Along with this, the invasions of Vikings, Magyars, and Muslims were letting up by this date. The increased stability created by all these factors helped provide the conditions needed for population growth and economic revival. This brings us to new farming techniques that would greatly expand food supplies and lead to the rise of towns.
An agricultural revolution
The first of these techniques was the three-field system. Originally, the spread of civilization to Northern Europe brought with it the two-field system. This was well suited to the climate of the Mediterranean with its hot dry summers and one growing season in the cooler, wetter winters. The more temperate climate of Northern Europe allowed growing seasons in both summer and winter. However, planting two crops a year would exhaust the soil if peasants used the old two-field system. As a result, peasants divided their farmland into three fields, one for winter crops, one for summer crops, and one to remain fallow. The use of the fields was rotated each year. A second part of the system, in order to prevent soil exhaustion, was to use different crops that took different nutrients from the soil. The winter crop typically would consist of winter wheat or rye, and the spring crop would be either spring wheat or legumes (beans or peas). The greater variety of crops provided people with a more balanced diet. Also an advantage of legumes is that they take nitrogen out of the air rather than the soil, and when buried, actually replenish the soil with nitrogen. (The Romans referred to this as "green manuring".) The following charts show how the two systems work.
| TWO-FIELD SYSTEM | ||
|---|---|---|
| Field 1 | Field 2 | |
| Year I | Winter crop | Fallow |
| Year II | Fallow | Winter crop |
| Year III | Winter crop | Fallow |
| THREE-FIELD SYSTEM | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Field 1 | Field 2 | Field 3 | |
| Year I | Winter crop | Summer crop | Fallow |
| Year II | Fallow | Winter crop | Summer |
| Year III | Summer crop | Fallow | Winter crop |
| Year IV | Winter crop | Summer crop | Fallow |
Consider what the changeover from the two-field system would have meant to a peasant village farming 60 acres. In the old system only 30 acres would be planted each year. In the new three-field system 40 acres would be planted, an increase of 33%. Also, peasants would plow the fallow land twice to keep weeds down. In the two field system this mean plowing all 60 acres once plus the 30 fallow acres again, 90 acres of plowing in all. The three-field system, involved plowing all 60 acres plus only 20 acres of fallow again, a total of only 80 acres of plowing. Thus while producing 33% more food, the peasants were plowing considerably less, especially considering what hard work plowing was back then. The extra time saved could be used for clearing new farmland from the surrounding wilderness, which, of course, meant even more food. Likewise, the extra food meant more people from population growth, who would also clear new lands to produce more food, and so on. Eventually, enough new land would be cleared and surplus food produced to support population in towns.
Another major development in farming was the heavy plow that could cut through the deep, wet, and heavy soils of Northern Europe much better than the light scratch plow. It had three basic parts: the coulter or heavy knife that cut through the soil vertically, the plowshare that cut through the soil horizontally, and the mouldboard, which turned the soil to one side. Some models had two wheels that acted as a fulcrum to keep the plow from getting stuck. There were two advantages to this kind of plow. First, it cut the soil so violently that there was no need for cross plowing as there was with the scratch plow. This saved time, which could be used for, among other things, clearing more land and producing more food. Second, the heavy plow created furrows, little ridges and valleys in each plowed row. In times of drought, water would drain into the valleys and ensure some crops would survive. In times of heavy rains, the crops on top of the ridges would not get flooded out. As a result, peasants could usually look forward to at least some crops to harvest even in bad years. The furrows the heavy plow created also meant that the rich alluvial bottomlands by rivers could be farmed without their frequent floods doing too much damage. As with the three-field system and crop rotation, the heavy plow also fed into the feedback cycle of more food, population growth, etc.
The heavy plow had an impact on peasant society and land holding patterns. Being heavy, it required as many as eight oxen to pull it compared to two oxen on the scratch plow. Since few peasants could afford their own teams, they would combine their ox teams and hook them to one plow. Occasionally, disputes might arise as to whose land would be plowed first, especially if the weather had been bad and it was doubtful that all the fields could get plowed in time for a good crop. As a result, peasants split their lands into long strips and interspersed them among other peasants' and the lord's strips. Some peasants might have 50 or 60 strips spread out over the manor. The advantage of this was twofold. First of all, it ensured that everyone got at least some land plowed. Second, the long strips of land meant that the plow team did not have to turn as much, one of the most difficult aspects of plowing, especially with four rows of oxen to increase the turning radius. The heavy plow also created a more cooperative peasant society and caused small hamlets to combine into larger villages in order to share ox teams.
The last major development in farming was a new source of power, the plow horse. Several factors allowed the use of the horse in Western Europe. The invention of the horseshoe (c.900 C.E.) prevented the hooves of the horse from cracking in the cold wet soil. The horse collar let the horse pull from the chest rather than the neck. This increased the horse's pulling power from about 1000 lbs. (with the yoke harness) to as much as 5000 lbs with the horse collar. Finally, cross breeding to make larger warhorses also provided the peasants with larger plow horses. Although it could not pull any more than an ox, the horse did have two advantages. It could pull up to fifty percent faster than the ox, and it could work one to two hours longer per day. The one drawback was that the horse ate a lot. Overall, despite eating more, the plow horse could increase farm production as much as 30 percent for those peasants who could afford horses. As with the three field system and heavy plow, this led into the feedback cycle of producing more food, population growth, and developing new lands for even more food production, etc.
There were some interesting side effects of the use of the horse. Being fifty percent faster than oxen, horses could bring food into a town from outlying villages fifty percent farther away without taking any more time than before with an ox team. Increasing the radius of the surrounding farmland supplying a town by fifty percent more than doubled the area of farmland and amount of agricultural produce available to support that town, and, subsequently, the potential size of the town itself. In addition, the replacement of the two-wheeled cart with the four-wheeled wagon with a hinged post for greater maneuverability increased the amount of grain a peasant could bring into town.
We should keep in mind the limits to medieval agriculture. While a yield to seed ratio of four to one was good back then, farmers today expect at least ten times that. What this means is that for centuries it took ten farmers to create enough surplus to support one townsman. Still, along with the greater stability brought by feudalism, the increased food production brought on by the agricultural revolution of the Middle Ages was essential for the revival of towns, without which our own civilization would not have evolved.
FC64The rise of towns in Western Europe (c.1000-1300)
From trade fairs to towns
In the twelfth century, towns and trade in Western Europe, which had long been in decay since the end of the Roman Empire, saw a renewed outburst of energy. A combination of four factors would lead to this. First, there were the old Roman cities in Italy that had evolved from centers of defense into thriving towns with a strong middle class primarily concerned with trade and manufacture.
Second, another area, Flanders (roughly equivalent to modern Belgium), soon saw the development of towns and trade also. Crucial to this was the wool industry started by a new monastic order, the Cistercians. These monks were part of the ongoing cycle of Church corruption and reform that usually started with the monasteries. To protect their spiritual purity from the corruption of the outside world, they would found their houses "far from the haunts of men." Oftentimes, this was on hilly rocky ground that was often unsuitable for farming. Other uses were found for it, in particular raising sheep. The Cistercians were well organized and very good at raising sheep and wool, which they traded to Flemish merchants, who started a wool industry and towns.
However, the Flemish had a problem that limited the scope of their operations: slow weaving on the old hand loom. Luckily, an improved mechanical loom came up from Muslim Spain sometime in the eleventh century. This device, possibly originating in China, eliminated hand weaving the weft thread in and out between each individual warp thread. Instead, foot pedals attached to every other warp thread would raise those threads and speed up the process of weaving in one direction. Another foot pedal would raise the other warp threads for the weft coming back. This increased wool production, but the traditional method of spinning thread with the drop could not keep up with the pace of weaving. Not until the thirteenth century, thanks largely to the crusades and increased contact with the East, was the spinning wheel introduced, which quickly pulled and spun wool through a spindle and wound it on a bobbin. Woolen production jumped by a factor of ten times and Flemish woolens became the basis of a thriving urban culture in northern Europe.
Indeed, Flemish wool was a highly valued commodity, reputedly being as smooth as silk. The tendrils of Flemish trade stretched far and wide, but especially across the Channel to buy rough English wool for weaving into fine Flemish product. The close economic ties this bred between England and Flanders, then a French vassal, would help lead to the Hundred Years War. The influence of Flemish woolens also reached southward to Italy and beyond, touching off trade at intervening points in France where towns next revived.
The emerging feudal order helped make possible two other factors vital to the rise of towns and trade. One was the agricultural revolution that could support town populations. The other was the end of Viking and Arab raids that made the roads safer for trade. These four factors helped create more political stability, which encouraged merchants to take to the roads once again. In the middle of the old Roman trade routes linking Italy and Flanders was the French county of Champagne, whose counts were shrewd enough to take advantage of this trade by sponsoring six annual trade fairs held in four rotating locations. Rather than robbing these merchants, the counts charged them for the use of booths, local justice, lodging, food, and protection. Among those attending these fairs and providing the counts with revenues were wealthy merchants from Italy and Flanders.
The excitement these fairs generated was infectious. So were the profits. Some jealous nobles attacked and robbed merchants traveling to the fairs. Others, being more far-sighted, worked to ensure safer travel so they could start their own fairs and make their own profits. With each new fair came greater incentive to stifle troublesome local nobles and increase political order. This in turn stimulated more trade fairs, more profits, more law and order, and so on.
Eventually fairs and trade became so common that merchants started settling down in permanent towns. Generally, such settlements were on well-traveled routes that could attract the trade of passing merchants. They also were under the protective walls of a lord's castle, an abbot's monastery, or a bishop's settlement. Many towns were brand new settlements, but others were outgrowths of already established communities. Even today, many European towns have a castle in or near them, evidence of their medieval beginning.
The impact of towns
More stable conditions had helped produce the rise of towns. The towns in turn helped create even more peaceful conditions with far reaching effects. For one thing, towns generated taxes in the form of money, a new more fluid kind of wealth vastly superior to land as the primary form of wealth. Previously, almost any noble with a castle and a stockpile of food could defy his lord by going under siege, since feudal armies were notoriously unstable and prone to breaking up after their terms of service (usually forty days) were up. However, the more powerful lords that could attract settlers for towns now had money from taxes. With that money, they could buy mercenaries, usually landless knights, who would fight as long as the lord could pay them. Such armies were more stable and allowed their owners to crush the power of their rebellious vassals and establish more law and order. The increased order would encourage more towns which would generate more taxes for the king and upper nobles, who could impose even more law and order, and so on. This would also feed back into the ongoing cycle encouraging trade fairs. All this led to two things: a rising class of townsmen and a money based economy, both of which would help lead to the rise of kings.
Money created another problem especially hurting the nobles and Church: inflation. At first, when towns were just getting started and there was little money in circulation, the fixed rent set by the original town charter seemed like a good deal. However, as more money came into circulation, prices rose, and the buying power of the fixed rents declined. This especially hurt the nobles and the Church. The nobles often took the short term expedient of selling freedom to their towns and serfs for one lump sum. This gave them some immediate cash, but wrecked much of their power, leading to the decline and eventual end of the feudal order.
The Church, with its wealth mostly in land and fixed rents, also suffered. It did have other options for raising money, namely selling church offices and indulgences (reprieves from punishment in Purgatory before being admitted into Heaven). Such practices were subject to abuse and led to popular discontent that cut into the Church's power and prestige. Eventually, that would lead to the Protestant Reformation, which would destroy the Catholic Church's religious dominance in Western Europe.
As far as townsmen were concerned, nobles and churchmen first saw them as an asset providing them with taxes and militia. However, as the class of townsmen grew, so did tensions with their overlords. For one thing, townsmen (or burghers, from burg, the German word meaning town) felt increasingly stifled under a lord's rule. The two classes had very different values, the burghers being concerned with trade and commerce and their overlords being concerned with power and fighting. Therefore, one by one, towns started trying to gain their freedom. Some towns bought it with one big payment to the lord or fought for it, sometimes in long protracted struggles. For example, the town of Tours in France fought twelve wars before it finally won its independence.
Another tactic was to appeal to the king for support, since kings and townsmen saw each other as valuable allies against the nobles and Church in between. Eventually, the towns managed to break free and form communes (urban republics) like their counterparts in Italy. Oftentimes confirming the town’s independent status would be a charter that would detail the specific duties and liberties the town and lord owed each other. Also, as serfs and towns bought their freedom, they came more closely under the king's authority, supplying him with taxes and loans.
Two other factors unique to the king gave him an edge over other nobles. One was his religious position as God's appointed ruler, which was symbolized by a churchman anointing him with oil in the same manner as Biblical rulers. The second factor was his position as the supreme judge of the land. When the kings were weak in the Early Middle Ages, this did them little good. However, as they rose in power, they could exercise their judicial powers more effectively, which in turn would give them more political power and so on.
All these factors, the rise of a money economy, the growing class of townsmen, and the kings' judicial and religious status gradually led to the decline of the medieval Church and nobles and the corresponding rise of kings with money that could buy them two things. One was stable full time mercenary armies that would fight for as long as they were paid. The other was a bureaucracy drawn increasingly from the middle class. These new royal bureaucrats had several advantages over feudal vassals. For one thing, they were more loyal, being the king's natural allies against the nobles. Also, they were more efficient since they were generally literate and could keep records. Finally, they were easier to control because they were totally dependant on the king for their status. Also, they were paid with money, so the king could just cut their pay if they got out of line. This contrasted greatly with the land based economy of the Early Middle Ages when the king had to physically drive rebellious vassals from their lands. Although the rise of kings and national monarchies would be a centuries long process, it was the rise of towns starting in the twelfth century that set that process in motion and laid the foundations of the modern world.
FC65Leagues & Guilds in Western Europe
The years when towns and trade were first reviving in Western Europe were precarious ones for the emerging middle class of merchants and artisans. Costly tolls levied by local nobles hampered trade when times were peaceful, while more turbulent times could see each of those nobles cutting off trade and marauding merchants on the road. Different weights, measures, and standards of coinage complicated transactions between merchants of neighboring towns. Famine could drive prices up dramatically, thus cutting down the flow of trade and causing turmoil among the workers who wanted higher wages to keep up with rising prices. Given such a dangerous world for the medieval merchants and artisans, it should come as no surprise that they formed associations, leagues and guilds, to protect and promote trade. These were not examples of free enterprise, however. Their purpose was to exclude outside competition from their markets since the evolving market economy was seen as too fragile to sustain much competition.
Leagues
In northern Europe, various towns would band together in leagues to establish collective security. The most important of these leagues was the Hanseatic League*, which was centered on the city of Lubeck in the southwest corner of the Baltic Sea. At the height of its power (c.1350 C.E.) the League contained over seventy German cities throughout the Baltic and North Seas. It kept an effective monopoly on the trade in this area by keeping out Russian, Scandinavian, and English competition. When pirates, local lords, or even kings threatened their trade or freedom, the League's forces could successfully defend their interests. The king of Denmark found this out to his dismay in 1370 when he tried to encroach on the League's territory and was driven back. The Hanseatic League dominated the trade of the Baltic and North Seas in the north much as the Italian cities dominated the Mediterranean trade in the south.
Besides common military action, the Hanseatic League carried out other measures to protect and promote trade. For one thing, it established common weights, measures and coinage throughout its member cities. This cut down on the time-consuming hassles of having to convert from one weight and measurement system to another each time a new business transaction took place. Today we are in the final stages of this standardization process, as the metric system is being pushed for worldwide use.
The Hanseatic League's success was also based on more advanced business techniques, in particular the use of credit. With a cash economy, a merchant could only buy as many goods as he had the cash on hand to pay with, which severely limited the scope of his activities. With credit that merchant could borrow more money than he actually had and use it to buy goods that he could sell for a larger profit than with a cash economy. This was because he was borrowing, buying, and reselling on a much larger scale (even after repaying the loan) than he ever could if he were dealing strictly with cash. As the merchant’s credit rating improved, he could borrow ever-larger sums of money, oftentimes in several places at a time through the use of his agents, which vastly expanded the scope of his activities, his profits, and his credit rating. Buying in larger volume also allowed him to sell each unit of goods more cheaply and thus undersell other merchants not dealing in credit. In such a way, the Hanseatic League established a virtual monopoly on trade in the Baltic and North Seas.
The political expansion of the German people also helped the German cities of the Hanseatic League. At this time, German peasants and the crusading order of the Teutonic Knights were expanding into the interior of Eastern Europe against the Slavic peoples there. Meanwhile, the German cities founded colonies in their wake, thus increasing their economic power over the Baltic Sea and further restricting competition there.
Although the Hanseatic League was the most important of the medieval town leagues, it was by no means the only one. There were several leagues of towns along the Rhine whose main concerns were to stop the raids of local nobles on trade and to curb the tolls those nobles imposed on goods passing through their territory. The most famous of these leagues, the Swabian League, had over eighty member cities at its height (late 1300's) and was strong enough to challenge the dukes of Austria and Bavaria. In Flanders, there was a league of twenty-two towns whose purpose was to buy raw wool from England. Another league of seventeen towns in Champagne County, France regulated marketing practices at trade fairs. Whatever their functions, the cumulative effect of leagues was to improve the trade and economy of Western Europe. And that in turn contributed to the rise of kings and more stability.
Guilds
served much the same function on a local level as leagues did on a wider geographic level: protecting their members from the dangers of outside world, whether they were marauding nobles and bandits, economic ruin, or outside competition. Originally each town would have one guild encompassing all crafts. However, as the towns grew, the guilds evolved into various specialized guilds: merchant, goldsmith, armorer, tailor, bargemen, etc. By 1200 C.E., Venice had fifty-eight guilds, Genoa thirty-three, Florence twenty-one, Cologne twenty-six, and Paris one hundred. The purpose of each guild was to exclude outsiders from practicing that guild's craft or trade within the city walls. Although this virtually eliminated free enterprise, it did provide a stable atmosphere in which the newly evolving crafts and trades could develop and survive.Guilds went much farther than excluding outside competition from within their walls. In fact they controlled just about every aspect of the town's economy, in particular wages, prices, quality of goods, and guild membership. For example, an armorer would buy the materials he needed through the guild at a set price, not on his own for whatever price was cheapest. His workers worked for the number of hours and wages set by the guild. His armor had to be of certain quality meeting the guild's specifications. He could not advertise beyond setting one example of his work in his window. The guild also determined the price he could charge so he would not get an advantage over other members of the guild. Set prices also reflected the Church's displeasure with profits.
Training for and admission into the guild were also strictly regulated. Apprenticeship was almost always restricted to sons or nephews of guild masters, something that caused anger among the common laborers. Typically, a master craftsman would send his son to another craftsman for apprenticeship at the age of ten to twelve years. The boy would live in the master's home, work in his shop, and learn the craft in an apprenticeship lasting from three to fifteen years. At the end of his training, the apprentice would usually get a gift of money from the master to help him start his own business. He then became a journeyman who worked as a day laborer for different masters until he could save enough money to start his own shop. When he was ready, the journeyman would be examined by the guild masters for his technical ability, oftentimes having to produce a masterpiece to show his proficiency at the craft. If he passed the exam, and there was room in the guild, he became a master who shared in the limited, but fairly stable market established by the guild for its members.
The guild was more than a business association. It was also a social and political organization that looked after the welfare of its members. It provided justice by settling disputes between its members. It supervised the morals of its members in such matters as public fighting, drunkenness, and a dress code. It provided insurance against fire, flood, theft, prison, and old age (for those few who survived that long). It paid for members' funerals and for masses and prayers to free their souls from Purgatory. The guilds would also build hospitals, almshouses, schools and orphanages for the many orphans in society back then.
The guild was also a source of pride for its members. Each guild had its own guildhall where meetings and social functions were held. On the day celebrating its patron saint, a guild would put on parades and religious plays. Guilds would also dedicate to the town cathedral stained glass windows depicting biblical scenes that were also concerned with that guild's particular craft.
Guilds, like leagues, caused Europe's economy and trade to improve, which made possible the rise of kings and more stable conditions. However, those very kings who profited from guilds and leagues were largely the cause of their decline in the 1400's. For one thing, the stable conditions protected by the kings made the guilds’ protective restrictions unnecessary. In spite of this, the guild masters who ran the towns restricted membership even more than before while maintaining strict price and quality controls on their goods. Earlier, such practices had been good since they had protected a fragile trade vulnerable to the harsh conditions of the time. By the late 1400's, those same practices that had once protected the guilds now worked to destroy them. Restrictive membership and low wages, even in time of inflation, led to worker revolts in many cities. Even more devastating was the competition from outside of town. Rich merchants started cottage industries where they moved production outside the city walls (and the guilds' jurisdiction). Here they could pay individual peasants lower wages to produce wool and undersell the guilds which were still locked into their controlled wage and price structure. As a result, guilds went into decline.
The rise of strongly centralized states in the Later Middle Ages also hurt leagues, because the kings now protected trade and also saw the leagues as rivals for political power. At the same time, stability and trade fostered by the rise of kings sent explorers looking for new markets. The discovery of new trade routes to America and around Africa shifted trade away from the Baltic and North Seas, thus hurting the German leagues.
FC66Rise of the medieval Papacy (c.900-1300)
Introduction: the plight of the Church in the Early Middle Ages
Few stories better illustrate the problems of the medieval Catholic Church than the story of Pope Formosus. When this pope died in 856, his troubles were far from over. A personal enemy became the new pope and had Formosus' body dug up and put on trial. To no one's surprise, the late Formosus was convicted of illegally seizing the papal throne. His body was stripped of its priestly vestments, the fingers on his right hand (used for giving the benediction) were cut off, and his body was thrown into the Tiber River. Not surprisingly, the rest of the Church, ranging from bishops, archbishops, and abbots down to the lowliest monks and parish priests, was also seething with corruption.
The Church's wealth, some 20-30% of the land in Western Europe, was a big part of the problem. With little money in circulation at this time, land was the main source of wealth and power, making the Church the object of the political ambitions of nobles throughout Europe. Naturally, such nobles, who were warriors by trade, usually ignored and even trampled over the religious interests of the Church.
The zeal for reform (910-1073)
Even in such troubled times, the Church's ongoing cycle of corruption and reform meant there were always men of religious conviction determined to set the Church back on its spiritual path. As so often happened, reform started in the monasteries, in this case in the monastic house founded at Cluny, France in 910 C.E. The monks of Cluny placed themselves directly under the pope's power and out of the reach of any local lords. That meant virtual independence from any outside authority, since the popes were too weak to exert any authority from so far away. Technically, they were Benedictines and there was no separate order of Cluniac monks, but their agenda of reforms became so widely adopted that they have been referred to as Cluniacs ever since. Over the next 150 years, Cluniac reforms spread to hundreds of monasteries across Western Europe.
The zeal for reform was also strong in Germany, especially among the upper clergy and the emperors. The emperors saw church reform as a way to weaken the power of the nobles trying to control church lands and elections. By the same token, devout bishops and abbots looked to the German emperors for protections from ambitious nobles. As a result, both German emperors and German clergy supported the growing reform movement. Emperors put reformers into church offices throughout Germany. Such men were generally loyal to the emperor since they owed their positions to him and saw him as the main defender of reform.
The emperor, Henry III, even appointed four reform popes. One of them, Leo IX, carried out numerous reforms against simony (selling church offices), clerical marriage, violence, and overall moral laxity among the clergy. He even felt strong enough to tangle with the patriarch in Constantinople, thus causing a schism (break) within the Church in 1054 that was never healed. Since that time, the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches have functioned as two separate Churches. Consequently, by the mid eleventh century, the popes were taken seriously as a real moral force in Western Europe. However, a storm was about to break that would destroy relations between Church and Empire.
The Investiture Struggle (1073-1122)
In 1056, the reform Church's main ally and guardian, Henry III, died leaving a child, Henry IV, as his successor. This deprived the Church of any effective imperial protection until the young emperor came of age. As a result, the popes had to seek new allies, and settled on the Normans in Southern Italy and the dukes of Tuscany in Northern Italy. Both of these were enemies of the German emperors, thus creating a tense situation between the popes and Henry IV when he came of age. One reform adding to the tension was the creation of the College of Cardinals whose job it was to meet in private to elect a new pope. Designed largely to keep the turbulent Roman mob out of papal elections, it also kept the German emperors out of direct participation, although they still could veto any choice the College of Cardinals made.
Another problem was the pope, Gregory VII, an ardent and stubborn reformer who agitated to replace imperial with papal control of Church elections. Growing suspicion and tension between pope and emperor finally erupted in the Investiture Struggle over who controls Church elections and invests (bestows) the bishops and abbots with the symbols of their power.
The stakes in this fight were high on both sides. Henry needed control of the bishops and abbots to maintain effective control of his empire. Pope Gregory felt the Church had to free itself from outside secular control if it were to fulfill its spiritual mission. There was also the larger question of who was the real head of the Christian world: the Universal Empire or the Universal Church. Although the Byzantine emperor in the east usually held sway over the patriarch in Constantinople, this question of supremacy, extending back through Charlemagne to the later Roman Empire, had never been resolved in Western Europe.
The Investiture struggle was a bitterly fought conflict on both sides. Pope and emperor stirred each other’s subordinates into revolt. The reform bishops, appointed up to this time by the emperor, generally supported him against the pope. Meanwhile, the pope stirred the German nobles into rebellion against Henry. When Henry and his bishops declared Gregory a false pope, Gregory excommunicated Henry. Excommunication could be a decisive weapon since it released a ruler's vassals from loyalty to him until he did penance to get accepted back into the Church. As a result, Henry did such penance by standing barefoot in the snow outside the pope's palace at Canossa.
However, the struggle was hardly over. Gregory was driven from Rome and died in exile in the Norman kingdom to the south, while Henry's reign ended with Germany torn by civil war and revolts. Finally, a compromise was reached where only clergy elected new bishops and abbots, but in the presence of an imperial representative who invested the new bishop or abbot with the symbols of his secular (worldly) power. Although the struggle between popes and emperors continued for centuries, the popes had won a major victory, signifying the Church's rising power and a corresponding period of decline for Germany.
The Papal monarchy at its height (1122-c.1300)
The papal victory in the Investiture Struggle and the higher status it brought the popes led to many more people turning to the Church to solve their problems, in particular legal ones. Canon (church) law and courts were generally seen as being more fair, lenient and efficient than their secular counterparts.
However, the more the Church's prestige grew, the more its courts were used, and the more its bureaucracy grew. As a result, the popes found themselves increasingly tied down with legal and bureaucratic matters, leaving less time for spiritual affairs. The popes of the 1200's generally had more background in (church) law than theology. By and large they were good popes, but also ones with an exalted view of the Church's position. The most powerful of these popes, Innocent III (1199-1215), even claimed that the clergy were the only true full members of the Church.
Unfortunately, growing power and wealth again diverted the Church from its spiritual mission, and led to growing corruption. Two other factors aggravated this problem. One was the rising power of kings, which triggered bitter struggles with the popes over power and jurisdiction. Popes often used questionable means in these fights, such as overuse of excommunication, declaring crusades against Christian enemies, and extracting forced loans from bankers by threatening to declare all debts to the bankers erased if the loans were not granted. A second problem was inflation, which arose from the rise of towns and a money economy. The Church, with its wealth based in land, constantly needed money and therefore engaged in several corrupt practices: simony, selling indulgences (to buy time out of Purgatory for one's sins), fees for any and all kinds of Church services, and multiple offices for the same men (who were always absent from at least one office).
All these factors combined to ruin the Church's reputation among the faithful and undermine its power and authority. Eventually, they would lead to the Protestant Reformation, shatter Christian unity in Western Europe for good, and help pave the way for the emergence of the modern world.
FC67The Crusades & their impact (1095-1291)
...But these were small matters compared to what happened at the temple of Solomon, a place where religious services are ordinarily chanted. What happened there? If I tell the truth, it will exceed your powers of belief. So let it suffice to say this much at least, that in the temple and portico of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed, it was a just and splendid judgment of God, that this place should be filled with the blood of the unbelievers, when it had suffered so long from their blasphemies.— Foucher de Chartres
The First Crusade (1095-99)
The modern reader (both Christian and non-Christian) is justifiably shocked at how medieval Christians such as Foucher de Chartres exulted in the wholesale butchery that took place in Jerusalem, the holiest city of Christianity, to end the religious war known as the First Crusade. However, that description expresses quite well not just the rough edge of medieval Christian faith, but also the power and energy that, for nearly two centuries, drove Europeans to launch the Crusades in order to conquer and hold Palestine. There were several reasons for the Crusades happening when they did.
First of all, there was the expanding power of Western Europe in the eleventh century. More settled conditions plus better agricultural techniques helped trigger population expansion that created large numbers of landless younger sons of nobles. Adding to these pressures was a series of bad harvests providing an even greater incentive to find land elsewhere. While the Crusades were the most dramatic and publicized example of Europe's expanding frontiers, there was similar expansion by Spanish Christians in Spain, by the Normans in Southern Italy and Sicily, and by the Germans in Eastern Europe.
The most immediate reason centered on events in the Middle East. In the eleventh century, a new people, the Seljuk Turks, replaced the Arabs as the dominant power in the Islamic world, overrunning most of Asia Minor after crushing the Byzantine army at Manzikert (1071) and seizing Palestine from the Shiite Fatimids of Egypt. These conquests led to pleas to the West for help, both from Christian pilgrims to Palestine who suffered from mistreatment at the hands of the Turks and from the Byzantine emperor, Alexius I, who just wanted mercenaries with which he could reconquer Asia Minor. As an added enticement, Alexius held out the possibility of reuniting the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, which had been split since the schism of 1054.
The rising power of the Church at this time was another factor leading to the Crusades. This created a rising tide of piety in Western Europe that expressed itself in pilgrimages to Palestine before the Turks seized it, and adapted itself to a holy war (crusade) after the Turkish conquest. This rising tide of piety was part of a broader movement for Church reform led by the popes that had caused the Investiture Struggle with the German emperors over control of the election of Church officials. Both the reunification of the Catholic Church with Byzantium and the recovery of Jerusalem fit into the larger ambitions of Pope Urban II. If the pope could lead all of Christendom in a crusade to recover the Holy Land (Palestine), then his moral authority would far surpass that of the German Emperor. Therefore, in 1095, at the French town of Clermont, Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade (from the Latin word, crux, for cross) to liberate the Holy Land from the Turks. Apparently his speech struck a nerve, because thousands enthusiastically "took the cross" (i.e., vowed to go on crusade).
This raises the question of what spurred the rank and file of Europe to undertake such a long and dangerous journey. Two main factors present themselves: piety and poverty. Piety should never be downplayed in the Middle Ages, although the nature of medieval piety may have been somewhat different from our own concept of it. Crusaders went to the Holy Land believing that such a journey and the killing of non-Christians in defense of the faith would earn them forgiveness for their sins. Poverty and greed also played their role. As we have seen, Europe's expanding population created a large number of landless younger sons of nobles. Going on crusade offered them both the opportunity to win such lands and forgiveness for their sins as well. No wonder so many of them decided to undertake such a long and dangerous enterprise.
Most of those who went were nobles who needed time to get supplies for their journey and set their personal affairs in order before leaving. Therefore the departure of the First Crusade was set for August 1096 from Constantinople. This would also give the Byzantines time to prepare supplies along the line of march.
However, there were also many desperately poor peasants who had no substantial affairs to set in order. Therefore, they just set off for the Holy Land without making any plans or provisions for the march. These undisciplined mobs, known collectively as the Peasants' Crusade, gained followers and momentum in each village through which they passed. Their growing numbers also created ever mounting supply problems that often erupted into violence as they turned to pillaging for food. Such violence was often turned against local Jews, since they were non-Christian and this was a "holy war" to begin with. As a result, thousands of Jews were either killed or forced to flee their homes. However, the Jews were not the only ones upset by these peasant groups, and local populations and rulers would often turn against these unwelcome intruders. For example, three waves of peasants who went through Hungary were each destroyed by the Hungarians who were tired of their plundering.
Those who made it to the Byzantine Empire fared no better. Many were picked off on their foraging raids by Byzantine cavalry. The rest were quickly ferried across to Asia Minor to prevent further trouble in Constantinople. Not trusting the Byzantines, this undisciplined mob ignored Alexius’ advice to stay by the coast and Byzantine support. As a result, the Turks annihilated all but a few of them.
The more organized and disciplined crusading knights and nobles made their way to Constantinople in isolated groups. This allowed the emperor to deal with them singly, impressing them with his collection of relics and mechanical wonders and then extracting an oath from them to turn over any lands formerly held by the Byzantines. He would then shuttle them across to Asia Minor in time to meet the next group of crusaders arriving in Constantinople and repeat the process. These measures did help Alexius recover part of Asia Minor, notably the city of Nicaea, but they also added to growing tensions with the Crusaders who felt they were the victims of Byzantine trickery.
The crusaders saw their first serious fighting in Asia Minor. Helped by both the turmoil caused by the Assassins' murder of Malik Shah and the Turks' expectation that these European knights would be as easy a prey as the Peasants' Crusade had been, the crusaders' heavily armored shock cavalry defeated the Turks in their first major encounter. The crusaders themselves were frustrated by the Turks' mobile hit and run tactics that made it hard to win a decisive victory over them. Despite this and the intense heat, the crusaders fought their way across Asia Minor.
While the rest of the crusaders pressed into Syria, one of their leaders, Baldwin, carved out his own state around the city of Edessa using only 80 knights and some skillful diplomacy and intrigue. Naturally, this spurred the ambitions of other crusaders, in particular a Norman knight named Bohemond who had his eyes set on Antioch, one of Syria's premier cities. Antioch fell after a long grueling siege, thanks largely to the intrigues of Bohemond who then claimed the city as his own. This was the second of the crusader states to be founded as well as the source of a good deal of jealousy and quarrelling among the various crusader leaders.
The eight-month siege and stay at Antioch had decimated the Christian army through disease, hunger, and battles against various Muslim armies sent to relieve Antioch. Add to this the constant bickering between its leaders and the polyglot mixture of French, English, Germans, and Italians making up the army, and the chances of continued success did not look good. However, the rank and file in the army insisted on putting aside their quarrels and marching on Jerusalem. Finally, in June 1099, with an army of only 15,000 men, they reached their long sought goal, Jerusalem.
The crusaders endured desert heat and shortages of food and water while besieging Jerusalem. They also faced the threat of a large Egyptian army coming to relieve the city. Luckily, an Italian fleet arrived at the harbor of Jaffa, bringing the crusaders supplies and timber for siege engines. After doing penance by marching barefoot in the desert heat around Jerusalem, the crusaders launched an assault that broke into the city on July 15. What ensued was one of the worst massacres in history, spurred on by religious frenzy combined with frustration from the hardships of the last three years. Foucher de Chartres' graphic description at the top of this reading shows how the crusaders used religion to justify this ghastly event. The success of the First Crusade was a remarkable feat, but it was stained with the blood of thousands of innocent Muslims and Jews.
The Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099-1187)
Despite their incredible victory, the crusaders had much going against them. First of all, they were surrounded and outnumbered by hostile Muslim states that eventually learned to unite against the Christian invaders. Secondly, since they were so far from their home base in Europe and many of the original number went back home after the conquest of Jerusalem, the remaining crusaders suffered a chronic manpower shortage, leaving them spread thinly across Syria and Palestine.
Third there was a growing cultural gap between the crusaders who stayed behind in the Holy Land and any newcomers who did arrive from Europe. They were shocked to find that after a number of years in the Near East, the original crusaders had adapted to local ways. Their clothes and houses resembled those of the Muslims. Some even kept harems with veiled women wearing makeup. More surprising yet, they set aside chapels in their churches where their Muslim neighbors could worship. Even their wars were fought in the more sophisticated local method of small local raids interrupted by truces with the Muslims. Nothing daunted, these newcomers, who had come all this way with the purpose of killing Muslims, would often break the truces, attack the Muslims, and then go home, leaving the crusaders in Palestine to bear the brunt of Muslim reprisals.
A fourth problem stemmed from the feudal system that the crusaders transplanted from Europe. Instead of one unified kingdom, they founded four separate states: the kingdom of Jerusalem and the counties of Edessa, Antioch, and Tripoli. This prevented the cooperation and unity of purpose needed against the surrounding Muslim enemies. Compounding this into a virtually hopeless situation was the further fragmentation of these states into individual baronies and fiefs.
Finally, the presence of the Italian city-states proved to be a mixed blessing. While they did provide a vital lifeline to Europe along with valuable naval support in taking the coastal cities of Palestine, this was all done for a price: the establishment of independent quarters in the coastal cities that they had helped take. This could be somewhat disruptive, since at times they might not cooperate with the crusaders in wars that could hurt their trade and business. At other times, two Italian cities might go to war with each other and the fighting would spread to those cities quarters in various crusader cities. In addition, Italian merchants also controlled much of the trade of Palestine and Syria, depriving the crusaders of much needed revenues.
Despite all these hardships, the crusader states did remarkably well, even expanding their territory in the early decades of the 1100's. Europe was still enthusiastic about the crusaders' success and kept a constant (if barely adequate) stream of reinforcements going to the Holy Land. However, as the surrounding Muslim states unified against the common enemy, the tide started to turn.
The first crusader state to fall was Edessa in 1144, which promptly triggered the Second Crusade to recover it. This crusade, led by Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany, tried to follow the route taken by the First Crusade. However, the heat of Asia Minor and severe supply problems decimated the crusaders' army, which was then beaten near Damascus, leaving Edessa in Muslim hands for good.
The next forty years saw Egypt and Syria become unified in a strong Muslim state under the skillful leadership of Salah-a-din. Gradually, he tightened the noose around the beleaguered crusader states and finally destroyed the crusader forces at the Battle of Hattin in 1187. Jerusalem and most of the coastal cities of Palestine and Syria soon fell into Saladin's hands.
This brought on a series of crusades that failed to take Jerusalem or hold it for any substantial time. The third Crusade (1187-92), led by the famous warrior king of England, Richard "the Lionhearted", managed to take the coastal city of Acre after a prolonged siege. However, despite a march down the coast and various exploits, including a hard fought victory against Salah-a-din at Arsuf, Richard failed to take Jerusalem. Salah-a-din did grant Christian pilgrims free access to the holy city in order to worship, something he would have been willing to do anyway.
Later crusades tended to stray further and further from their goal of Jeruslam. For example, the Fourth Crusade (1202-4) was diverted by the Venetians to Constantinople, partly to cover the cost of transporting the crusaders, and partly because of growing tensions with the Byzantines over the growing Italian stranglehold on Byzantine trade. In 1204 the Venetians and crusaders stormed and mercilessly sacked Constantinople.
Besides never reaching Palestine, the Fourth Crusade set in motion the final decline of the Byzantine Empire and deprived the crusaders of a potentially valuable ally. Relations between the Byzantines and Western Europe, which had been deteriorating for some time, grew that much worse as a result of the Fourth Crusade.
The Fifth Crusade (1228-9), led by Frederick II of Germany, did manage to negotiate the surrender of Jerusalem, but without fortifications. As a result it fell back into Muslim hands soon after Frederick returned home. The Sixth Crusade (1248-50) under Louis IX of France (Saint Louis) was directed against Egypt in the hope of being able to trade it for Palestine. The strategy would have worked except that Louis refused to negotiate with the Muslims when they were ready to give in. Then the Nile flooded, disease set in, and the entire French army was captured and forced to ransom itself from captivity. The Seventh Crusade (1270), also led by Louis IX, was directed even further afield against Tunis in North Africa. The idea was to cut off Muslim trade in the Mediterranean between Tunis and Sicily (which was held by Louis' shrewder and more practical brother, Charles of Anjou). Once again, disease did its work, this time claiming Louis, who died with the words "Jerusalem, Jerusalem" on his lips.
After this, interest in the crusades fizzled out for a couple of reasons. For one thing, Europe had changed dramatically in the 200 years since Urban II had preached the First Crusade. The rise of towns and a money economy had raised Europe's standard of living tremendously and given its people something to get interested in besides holy wars in distant lands. Also, the popes had gotten into the habit of declaring crusades against heretics in Europe (e.g., the Albigensians in France) and their mortal enemies, the German emperors. This cheapened and tarnished the image of the crusade and cost it a good deal of support.
Meanwhile, the crusader states huddled along the coast of Palestine were gradually being worn down by Muslim pressure. A brief hope of delivery seemed to present itself with the Mongols, who shattered one Muslim army after another in their rampage across Asia. However, in the Battle of Ayn Jalut (1260), the Mameluke sultan of Egypt, Baibars, crushed the Mongols and stopped their advance once and for all. This also sealed the fate of the crusaders who had encouraged the Mongols. In 1291, the last of their strongholds, Acre, fell after a desperate siege. For all intents and purposes, the age of Crusades was over.
Despite their failure, the crusades had important results. For one thing, they opened Europeans' eyes to a broader world beyond Europe, stirring interest in and a bit more tolerance of other cultures. In particular, an influx of Arab texts and translations of classical Greek and Roman literature created a more secular outlook that helped lead to the Italian Renaissance in the 1400's. The Arabs passed on knowledge in a wide array of topics ranging from math, astronomy, and geography to such techniques as papermaking and the refining of alcohol and sugar (both of which are Arabic words). On a more basic level, the Crusades stimulated an increased desire for luxury goods from the East. When they lost control of these trade routes to the Turks, they embarked upon a series of voyages of exploration in search of shorter and cheaper routes to get those luxuries. In the process, Africa was circumnavigated, Asia was more thoroughly mapped, and the Pacific Ocean, the Americas, and Australia were discovered. Thus, the Crusades, by helping lead to the Renaissance and Age of Exploration, were instrumental in opening the way to the modern world.
For the Arab world, the Crusades had less positive results. True, the Muslims ultimately won, but at a heavy price. Besides the human and material cost, there was also the psychological factor. Since c.1000 C.E., the Arab world had been assaulted by Turks, Crusaders, and Mongols. These successive invasions generated the feeling that Arabs must harden their attitude toward other cultures in order to preserve their own. In succeeding centuries, as Western Europe created its own high civilization, which has largely dominated the globe since the 1800’s, many Arabs have resisted the pressure to adapt aspects of that culture to benefit their own, an attitude that has often put them at a disadvantage in the modern world. The struggle of whether or not to modernize and make compromises with Western culture still divides the Arab world today.
FC68Rise of the French monarchy (c.1000-1300)
In addition to the rise of towns and a money economy, the High Middle Ages also saw the development of strong feudal monarchies in Western Europe, especially in France and England. These feudal monarchies were a transition between the personal and decentralized feudal system of the Early Middle Ages and the more highly centralized nation states of the modern era. At the beginning of this era, most people may have believed in the concept of Universal Empire or Universal Church (as embodied in the Holy Roman Empire in Germany and Roman Catholic Church respectively). However, by the end of this era, it was becoming increasingly apparent that the future belonged to neither Church nor Empire, but to these newly emerging nation-states. Prominent among these was France. There were four main factors leading to the rise of the French feudal monarchy.
First of all, there was the ability of the Capetian dynasty to keep its hold on the throne, and that hinged on three things. First of all, the Capetians were lucky to consistently produce male heirs, which eliminated the need to look outside the Capetian family for a new king to succeed the old one. Second, the Capetians practiced primogeniture, ensuring that what little they controlled stayed together under one ruler, unlike the disastrous policy of earlier kings of dividing the kingdom. Finally, they ended elective monarchy by having their sons rule jointly with them, ensuring a smooth transition of power when the older king died. Over time, the Capetians gradually replaced the elective monarchy with the dynastic principle of son succeeding father to the throne.
The second factor, the medieval agricultural revolution, helped both the French kings and the great dukes and counts since they owned most of the land being cleared and could support the surplus population needed for towns. In contrast, lower nobles had neither the land to support towns nor the power to defend them.
However, the rise of towns ultimately helped kings against even the dukes and counts, because townsmen and kings were natural allies against the nobles. While the towns could supply kings with militia, their primary means of help was money with which to buy mercenaries who were much more reliable than feudal armies. Bit by bit, this alliance of towns and kings helped break the power of the nobles.
The kings' legal position as supreme judge in the land was the third factor helping them. No matter how weak a king might be, his crown distinguished him as the supreme judge whom townsmen and lower nobles could appeal to over the heads of their own lords. When kings were weak, this was done on a very local level. However, it helped kings gradually establish their power over the local nobles and assert their authority on a wider level.
Finally, there was the kings' religious position, symbolized by the Church anointing them with oil to mark them as God's chosen agents on earth. Although this raised the question of who had more authority, kings or the churchmen who anointed them, it did give the king a certain amount of religious sanctity that medieval people took very seriously. In addition, the king's sanctity also symbolized his alliance with the Church, whose powers, in particular the power of excommunication, could be very useful in bringing rebellious nobles under control. It is significant that Louis VI's right hand man was a churchman, Suger, abbot of St. Denis.
Together these factors (the Capetians' firm grip on the throne, their sacrosanct nature, their position as supreme judge, and their alliances with the towns who could also supply money with which to buy mercenaries) allowed kings to gradually expand and exert their power and authority across France. That, in turn, enhanced their judicial and religious authority, bringing them into contact with more towns that could ally with the kings and provide more taxes for mercenaries, and so on.
For over a century (987-1108) the Capetians could barely hang onto their throne, but they did manage to survive. By 1100, in addition to the king's realm around Pairs, known as the Ile de France, France's numerous independent feudal states were largely gathered into five greater feudal states: Flanders, Normandy, Toulouse, Aquitaine, and Burgundy. Even in his own small realm, the king's vassals defied him. At one point, the king was taken prisoner by a particularly unruly vassal and only rescued by the loyal militia of Paris. However, the succession of Louis VI in to the throne in 1108 marked the beginning of over two centuries of expansion for the French monarchy and the Capetian dynasty. During this time, seven kings reigned, three of who were especially capable. These three kings, Louis VI, Philip II, and Louis IX, would especially exploit the cycle mentioned above to lay the foundations for the modern French nation.
Louis VI (1108-1137), known as "the Fat" started the process of building up royal power. The first step, which he accomplished, was to establish the king's authority in his home territory around Paris. Confronting Louis were several rough and obstinate barons renown for their lawless ways. Louis had one valuable ally, Suger, abbot of St. Denis, who brought the power of the Church down against these nobles. In general we find the Church allied to the kings during this period, since both were concerned with ending the chronic violence and feudal warfare plaguing the land. Suger was a staunch and valuable ally throughout Louis' reign.
Louis' usual method was to call a noble to his court to account for the crimes his vassals and subjects accused him of. Often, the noble refused to come, giving Louis the legal excuse to claim the noble's lands now belonged to the king. Of course he had to enforce such a declaration and drive the noble off of the land. One potent weapon at the king's disposal was excommunication of the noble by the abbot Suger. This released the noble's vassals from any legal obligations to him and deprived him of some, if not all his support.
Louis still had to ride constantly with his troops from one end of his realm to the other, burning nobles' castles and wasting their lands in order to bring them to heel. It took him seven years to break the power of a certain Hugh de Puiset and sixteen years to subdue another noble, Thomas de Marley. This was because Louis had little money and had to rely on feudal armies to break his vassals. Therefore, he could accomplish little in the 40 days of campaigning he got each year. Once he was gone, the noble could rebuild any burnt castles and restore much of his power.
Still, the effects of excommunication and yearly raids gradually broke the nobles' power. By the end of Louis' reign, the Ile de France was firmly in royal control, giving the king the troops and resources to expand even further. Louis' prestige was enhanced to the point that he was able to restore the infant lord of Bourbon and bishop of Clermont to their rightful places. He was even able to arrange a marriage alliance between his son and Eleanor, daughter and heiress of William X, the powerful duke of Aquitaine. Much of the subsequent history of France and England would revolve round this woman.
When Eleanor of Aquitaine married Louis VII (1137-80), she claimed she married a king only to find him a monk. Eleanor's fun loving ways certainly clashed with the pious king's personality and eventually led to getting the marriage annulled. Not only did this cost Louis the valuable lands of Aquitaine, it let Eleanor marry Henry II of England. The result of this union was what is known as the Angevin Empire, whereby the king of England controlled Aquitaine in addition to his hereditary lands of Normandy and Anjou (hence the name Angevin). This gave Henry II control of one-third of France, much more than the king of France, his nominal overlord, ruled. However, the size of Henry's empire alarmed other French nobles and drove them to support Louis. At the time the English holdings seemed like a threat to the very existence of the French monarchy. The next French king, Philip II, would destroy this threat.
Philip II (1180-1223), called "Augustus", was certainly one of the greatest of French monarchs, being responsible for establishing the French monarchy as the recognized power throughout most of France. He was an astute and unscrupulous diplomat, though not a great general. In the early years of his reign he was lucky to maintain his own against Henry II, his main tactic being to stir Henry's rebellious sons against their father. Philip had little luck against the warrior king Richard I "the Lion-hearted" (1189-99). His luck was better against Richard's brother and successor John I (1199-1216) of Robin Hood fame.
Philip skillfully used his position as John's overlord in France to bring charges against John and summon him to court. Of course, John refused and Philip declared John's lands forfeit and now belonging to the French crown. War resulted in which a powerful coalition of England, Flanders and Germany was formed against Philip. Luckily for Philip, John moved too slowly and the French king was able to crush the Flemish and German forces at Bouvines in 1214.
This battle had far reaching consequences for France, England and Germany. In France it tripled the size of the king's realm at one stroke while driving the English out of France except for Bordeaux and Bayonne. The blow to king John's prestige was such that the next year the English barons rebelled and forced John to sign the Magna Charta, one of the cornerstones of British and American democracy. Bouvines also helped some with the disintegration of the German monarchy, as we shall see.
However, our main concern here is Philip's victory and what he did with it. Not since Charlemagne had any ruler so effectively controlled France. However, times had changed, and Philip found he had different and more effective means for ruling France than Charlemagne had. Whereas Charlemagne had been forced to rely on giving land to uneducated nobles in return for service, Philip had money and an educated middle class at his disposal to help him rule. As a result he started putting middle class baillis (bailiffs) paid with money, not land, to administer his far-flung state for him. Such baillis were loyal to him and were kept in line by the threat of the king cutting off their salaries. Also their lower social status made them less likely to try to gain power for themselves. Philip rotated them from place to place so they would not get established in one area. Since soldiers would not follow middle class baillis in battle, any offices requiring military duties were filled by lower nobles called seneschals. Being lower nobles, they were less likely to rebel, although their power and prestige could increase after years of service with the king.
The size of the king's realm and its efficient administration provided him with money that allowed him to hire mercenaries who helped him further increase his power within his realm and in areas of France still outside it. This of course gave him more revenues that allowed him to further increase his power, and so on. Philip II made the French monarchy the most powerful and respected in Western Europe. The work of his successors mainly embellished upon what he had accomplished. Keep in mind, however, that Philip was building on the foundations laid by Louis VI. Still, it is safe to say that Philip II's reign was a major turning point in French history.
Louis VIII (1223-26) made one significant innovation: the appanage system whereby younger sons of the king were given lands (appanages) to rule in the king's name. These princes were not independent rulers in their own right, such as happened with earlier Frankish kings. But the system did have its dangers, as seen by the appanage of Burgundy, which almost established itself as an independent power in the 1400's. The appanage system shows the limits of medieval government. Since royal power and prestige still depended largely on dealing with affairs in person and the king could not be everywhere at once, members of the royal family were the next best choice for enforcing royal control. Despite its dangers, the appanage system worked fairly well.
Louis IX (1226-70), known as Saint Louis, extended royal power even further. He asserted that lower nobles could appeal directly to the king's courts over the heads of their immediate lords. Nobles were excluded from interfering with Church elections. He also hemmed in the nobles by outlawing trial by combat and making restrictive rules that took the "fun" out of feudal warfare. Nobles could not slaughter peasants or burn their crops. They had to give enemies notice of impending attacks and had to grant truces when asked to do so. Royal officials scoured the land to enforce these rules. Louis also launched two disastrous crusades that deprived France of many of its troublesome nobles, although that was not his intention. Bit by bit, peace and order were replacing feudal anarchy in France, which by 1300 was the most powerful and respected state in Western Europe.
FC69Anglo-Norman England (1066-1300)
As we have seen, the Anglo-Saxons, largely because of pressure from the Vikings, had built one of the strongest states in Western Europe by 1000 C.E. However, the Anglo Saxons could never quite escape the Vikings. A Danish king, Canute, took over and ruled England in the early part of the eleventh century. And in 1066, William of Normandy, a descendant of Hrolf the Walker, the Viking chief who became the first duke of Normandy in 911 C.E., landed in England to claim the English crown.
The Normans, as the Viking descendants who ruled Normandy were called, had assumed at least a veneer of Frankish culture and Christianity while their dukes had built one of the strongest and best run feudal principalities in Europe. However, their most long-lasting accomplishments took place in England.
In December 1065, the Saxon king, Edward the Confessor, whose excessive piety is said to have prevented him from producing any heirs to the throne, died. William, Duke of Normandy, had a legitimate claim to the throne as Edward's cousin, but the Saxon nobles chose Harold of Wessex instead. For William, there was only one response: take the crown by force. He gathered an army of some 5000 knights and infantry, promising his followers land in England. He also was armed with a papal blessing and banner, partly because of the Norman dukes' policy of liberally endowing the Church with lands and partly because the Pope wanted to bring the somewhat independent Saxon clergy more into line with current Catholic practices.
Ironically, luck was with the Normans, since adverse winds held them up long enough for still another Viking claimant to the throne, Harold Hardraade of Norway, to land in the north. The Saxon king, Harold of Wessex, rushed north to drive out his namesake, which he did at the bloody battle of Stamford Bridge. Then he had to rush his tired Saxons southward to meet the Normans who had now landed in England.
The Battle of Hastings (10/14/1066) pitted mounted medieval knights against the Saxon infantry drawn up in a shield wall on the crest of a ridge. Frontal assaults by Norman knights, infantry, and archers could not make a dent in the shield wall. Norman trickery could. Feigning retreat, the Norman knights drew groups of Saxons out of formation, surrounded them, and wiped them out. Being weakened several times by this tactic, the Saxon army then came under a barrage of arrows and one final charge of Norman cavalry that won the day. This gave William the crown and the title "the Conqueror", which was much more appealing than his previous nickname "the Bastard". Never since has England fallen to foreign conquest.
Much more remarkable than William's victory was how he consolidated it through a combination of feudal practices from the continent and old Saxon customs. While he owed his followers land, William also wanted to keep them from getting too powerful as had happened to the French monarchy. The solution was to give the nobles lands, but scatter them over England so that they could not gather power in one area as a threat to the king. There were exceptions to this, notably on the frontiers bordering Scotland and Wales where power needed to be concentrated for defense. William also took about 20% of England's land for himself, showing that it was still a primary source of power. He demanded a large feudal army totaling 5000 knights from the 180 barons to whom he had given land, which forced them to subinfeudate their lands to meet this quota. Thus England quickly came to resemble the feudal monarchy of France. The Normans also built some 500 castles in England between 1066 and 1100 AD, to guard against native uprisings as well as foreign invasions.
William also used several Saxon institutions to great advantage. He demanded from each freeman in England a personal oath of loyalty that took precedence over any feudal oaths vassals paid their lords, thus strengthening ties of loyalty to the king. He continued to collect the only non-feudal tax in Western Europe, based on the Danegeld, which the Saxons had originally paid to buy off the Vikings and later to pay for defense against them. Although he allowed the Church to set up its own independent court system in England as it had on the continent, William kept tight control of the elections of bishops, archbishops, and abbots. He saw these men as his ministers and entrusted them with much local power and responsibility. Finally, William used the Anglo Saxon officials, earls and sheriffs to look after the king's interests. Under William I and his son William II these were usually strong nobles who had the independent means to enforce their king's will, but could also be a threat. Later kings used lower nobles who, being dependent on the king for their positions, were both more loyal and less dangerous to the king.
The two centuries after William I’s reign (1066-1087) saw the growth in the power and sophistication of royal government. At the same time, various Saxon democratic practices reasserted themselves and became an inherent part of the Anglo-American tradition of democracy. There was a constant struggle during this period between kings and their barons over their respective rights and obligations. In times of weak kings, the nobles won the upper hand. However, most of England's kings were strong and able to extend royal power.
Henry I (1100-35) started a more efficient treasury system, thanks to the introduction of Arabic numerals and the exchequer, named after the checkered table cloth they used to organize the king's money in rows. The court system also saw advances, with the king adopting the Anglo Saxon belief that such personal crimes as murder, rape, and arson were also crimes against the king and state. Henry used this principle to send his justices throughout the land to try such cases. Henry also married a Saxon princess and, in the process, signed a charter where he promised to rule less harshly in the Norman manner and more in accordance with Saxon rights and customs. This charter would heavily influence the Magna Charta signed a century later.
After the feudal anarchy and civil wars during the reign of the weak Stephen I (1135-55), Henry II (1155-89), one of England's greatest monarchs came to the throne. As a feudal ruler, Henry still had to deal with the privileges and obligations of his noble vassals. However, as king, he claimed certain special rights and privileges to increase his power. Some of Henry's greatest accomplishments were in his legal reforms. Previously, private citizens had to bring charges against criminals, who often prevented such proceedings by intimidating their victims. Even without intimidation, few people wanted to risk bringing cases to court, because they had to pay a severe penalty ( talion) if they lost. Henry changed that by having the state, not private individuals, bring suspects to trial. He also established grand juries whose duty was to gather evidence and submit the names of any likely suspects of crimes. Failure to do this resulted in heavy fines. As a result, more cases were brought to trial, a greater degree of law and order was established, and the king made money from the increased court revenues. The concept of state prosecution of criminals and fact-finding grand juries is still a major part of our legal system going back to Henry II. Ironically, suspects brought to trial demonstrated their guilt or innocence through ordeals, such as by water. However, even if a suspect passed the ordeal but he was still suspected of the crime, the king might exile him from England.
Henry II is also remembered for his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose lands gave him control over one-third of France. However, the Angevin empire, as it is called, was more trouble than it was worth, since Philip II of France, technically Henry’s overlord for his French lands though he was much weaker than the English king, was always trying to stir up trouble and revolts. However, Henry and his older son Richard I, known as “the Lionhearted” (1189-99) for his exploits in the Crusades, held their own against Philip.
Unfortunately, Henry’s younger son, John I (1199-1216), was not. John got into trouble on a number of accounts: losing a quarrel with the Pope, overtaxing England for his war against Philip, and then losing that war. All these problems led to a revolt of the English barons who forced John to sign the Magna Charta in 1215. Based largely on Henry I’s charter a century earlier, this was basically a feudal document, but it put forth the principles that not even the king was above the law and that no free man could be arrested without due process of law and a trial by his peers. This idea of due process of law is still a vital part of our legal system today.
The long reign of John's son Henry III (1216-1272) saw the barons under the leadership of Simon de Montfort controlling the government and usurping many privileges. However, Henry’s son, Edward I (1272-1304), was a strong king who reestablished royal authority over the nobles, conquered Scotland and Wales, developed the Welsh long-bow into the weapon that would rule the battlefields of the Hundred Years War.
Edward I is also remembered for his governmental reforms, and especially the evolution of Parliament. Originally, this was any meeting of the king and his vassals or subjects to talk ( parley), usually over taxes. Since negotiating taxes with each town and shire was cumbersome, Edward called the Model Parliament in 1295. This body consisted of representatives from all three estates. Although later parliaments did not necessarily contain all these elements, in time it came to be the rule that all three estates should be represented.
Parliament became especially important in England for a couple reasons. First of all, England being an island enhanced its trade and the status of the middle class. As a result, the middle class merchants and lower nobility (gentry) were thrown together in the House of Commons. In time, their common interests led to a powerful combination capable of challenging royal power. Secondly, since England was an island, it faced few invasions, giving little need for heavy taxes to pay for expensive armies. This, in turn, left English kings relatively weak, so that, by the 1600's, Parliament would have both the power and the constitutional right (or so it thought) to usurp much of the king's authority and lay the foundations of modern democracy.
FC70The Holy Roman Empire of Germany (911-c.1500)
Introduction
The history of the Holy Roman Empire, as Germany was then known, differed quite markedly from France and England. Whereas those two countries were well on their way to developing national monarchies by 1300, Germany was disintegrating into feudal anarchy. This was largely the result of Germany being tied to the ancient and somewhat outdated concept of a universal Roman Empire that claimed dominion over all of Europe. This put it into conflict with the Catholic Church, which had its own claims to universal dominion. The ensuing centuries long struggle between popes and emperors would exhaust the empire, destroy most of the emperors' authority in Germany, and leave it in the power of independent princes and church prelates. Also, the quickly emerging nation states had little room for the idea of a universal empire interfering in their affairs. The concept of such an empire may have had some appeal in the time of Charlemagne. Five hundred years later the luster of such claims was tarnished and starting to rust.
The Saxon Dynasty
The breakup of the Frankish Empire in the ninth century created two main states: West Frankland, which would become France, and East Frankland, which would become Germany. The death of Louis the Child in 911 put an end to the German branch of the Carolingian dynasty, forcing the German nobles to choose a new ruler. Largely because they recognized the need for a strong monarchy to protect them against the nomadic Magyars to the East, the nobles chose the rulers of Saxony as their king. In the following century, the Saxon dynasty (919-1024) established one of the strongest of the early medieval monarchies. The Saxons based their power, as most monarchs then did, on the twin pillars of holding land and an alliance with the Church.
In addition, the Saxon rulers did two other things to strengthen their alliance with the Church. For one thing, they supported the spread of the Cluniac reforms into Germany, largely as a means to weakening the power of local nobles. Secondly, in 961 the pope and Italian bishops called in the Saxon ruler, Otto I, to defend them against their enemies. In return for this favor, the pope crowned Otto Roman Emperor. From this time until 1806, the imperial dignity would belong to the rulers of Germany, known afterwards as the Holy Roman Empire.
The Salian Dynasty (1024-1106), which succeeded the Saxons, also depended on controlling Church officials and large amounts of land to maintain and build its authority. In addition, the rising power of the nobles made it even more mandatory that they form a more efficient administration. In the absence of towns at this early date, the Salians used a peculiar institution known as ministeriales. These were originally non-free peasants whom the Church would use for knight service to the emperor. The bishops and abbots would give the ministeriales use, but not possession of land to pay for these services. The Salian emperors used ministeriales for various military and civil services, since their low social status kept them dependent on the emperor. They also drew silver from the mines in the Hartz Mountains, which gave them still more power.
Their power and policies made the Salians unpopular in Germany, especially with the nobles. However, by 1075, the emperor Henry IV seemed well on his way to building the strongest monarchy in Western Europe. He had extensive lands, a permanent capital at Goslar, money revenues, and a body of servants loyal to the king. Unfortunately, as we have seen, the emperors' support of the Church reforms had also raised the power and status of the popes who then challenged the emperors' control of Church elections in Investiture Struggle (1075-1122). When pope Gregory VII excommunicated Henry, the German nobles seized the opportunity to rebel against their emperor and elect a new ruler. Rebellions, civil war, and anarchy tore through Germany and Italy. Pope Gregory VII died in exile, but his successors continued the struggle. When Henry IV died, his successor, Henry V, finally managed to reach a compromise settlement, but the damage was already done.
The anarchy and wars of the past half a century had allowed the German nobles to assert their independence. Great nobles became virtually independent princes, while the lower nobles became their vassals. Bishops and abbots also granted fiefs in return for military service. The free peasants virtually disappeared. Even the ministeriales were forced to break their bonds of service to the empire and become other nobles' vassals as the empire started to fragment.
What ensued was a vicious cycle whereby German emperors, seeing Germany as increasingly hopeless and themselves as Roman emperors, would neglect Germany and concentrate on building their power in Italy. As a result, Germany would disintegrate into worse anarchy. This would encourage the emperors to concentrate further on Italy while ignoring Germany, and so on.
This process especially accelerated under the Hohenstauffen dynasty, starting with its first emperor, Frederick I Barbarossa (1152-1190). Frederick I first tried to reassert imperial power in the rich cities of Lombardy in north Italy. After some initial successes, he was defeated by the combined forces of the Lombard League in 1176. Although they acknowledged him as their emperor and paid some money, they remained virtually independent. Frederick did manage to seal a marriage alliance of his son to a Norman princess of Southern Italy and Sicily. Frederick also had some success in controlling the cities in Central Italy. This had the effect of alarming the popes who became the avowed enemies of the Hohenstauffen emperors surrounding them.
Frederick Barbarossa died while on Crusade in 1190. His son and successor Henry VI, being married to Constance of Sicily was even more involved in Italian politics. For one thing he had to spend several years putting down a rebellion of Norman nobles who did not want a German ruler. Although Sicily brought the empire a very well organized and wealthy state, it also kept the emperors out of Germany even more, allowing it to disintegrate further. The acquisition of Sicily also further alienated the popes who were now surrounded with an even tighter noose.
The last great "German" emperor, Frederick II (1196-1250) came to the throne as a baby. After a stormy childhood, during which pope Innocent III was his guardian against more threatening German nobles, he came to the throne in high own right. Frederick was one of the most fascinating medieval characters, keeping Muslim advisors, a harem, and a menagerie of exotic animals. His irreligious ways shocked contemporaries. Even his crusade where he gained Jerusalem through negotiation rather than fighting with the Muslims did not seem quite Christian.
Frederick grew up in Sicily and considered Germany too cold and bleak for a home, spending only two years of his reign there. His policy there was to keep it quiet so he could concentrate on building his power in Italy and fighting the popes. As a result, he was willing to grant further privileges to the German nobles in order to pacify them. The last vestiges of imperial control fell into the hands of nobles who were now granted full powers of government in their individual lands. The popes added to the confusion as they stirred up rebellions against Frederick in both Italy and Germany. Although Frederick maintained his power in Italy, he never succeeded in breaking the popes' power. Even after his death in 1250, the emperors' fight with the popes continued.
The popes finally emerged victorious in their struggle with the German emperors. They broke the ring of enemies surrounding them by inciting rebellions in the cities to the north and bringing in the French royal prince, Charles of Anjou, to overthrow Frederick's son in Sicily and Southern Italy. The pope even forced loans out of the Italian bankers by threatening to ruin them with a decree absolving all debtors from their obligations to the bakers. The means that the popes used to defeat the emperors also served to tarnish their own reputations and that of the Church.
In 1350, the German monarchy became purely elective, further weakening the power of the emperors. By 1500 Germany would be a patchwork of some 300 independent states nominally united under the empire. For centuries, Germany, too weak and divided to defend itself, would be a constant battleground for other powers' wars. Even after its unification in 1871, the memory of these humiliations would largely determine Germany's foreign policy and be an underlying cause of the two world wars in this century.
FC71The Black Death and its Impact (c.1300-1450)
And prayers have no power the Plague to stay."— Piers Plowman
Introduction
In the 1300s, Europe entered a
period of turmoil that shook of medieval civilization to its
foundations and paved the way for such aspects of the modern world as
nation states, capitalism, and the Protestant Reformation. Such
periods of transition are rarely easy to endure, and this was no
exception. It was a period which saw recurring famines, outbreaks
of plague, peasant and worker revolts, the rise of religious heresies,
challenges to the Church's authority, and long drawn out wars, in
particular the Hundred Years War between France and England.
Ironically, the problems were largely the result of better farming
methods.
Signs of Growing Stress
The High Middle Ages had been a time of growth and prosperity. New agricultural techniques had caused a dramatic rise in population, which in turn led to rising demands for food and fuel. This generated inflation and a strain on the environment , which led people to clear more new lands for cultivation. That, in turn, triggered more population growth, and so onAggravating these problems was a change of climate. Apparently, the climate in the High Middle Ages was good, thus making possible that period's prosperity. However, in the 1300's the climate turned colder and wetter than usual, resulting in floods and early frosts. Sources spoke of great famines in 1316 and 1317 and of reports that the Baltic Sea froze over in 1303 and 1316. The resulting malnutrition of the early 1300s made people born during that time especially susceptible to disease, since our immunological systems develop during childhood. This in turn set up the worst of the Middle Ages: the Black Death.
The Coming of the Plague
The Black Death, also known as Bubonic plague, appears to
have arisen in Central Asia in the early 1300's. The most likely
scenario for its spread points to Mongol rulers in Asia who had settled
down from their rampages to establish stable caravan routes from China
to the Black Sea where Italian merchants would trade for the silks and
spices so highly valued in Europe. Ironically, these trade routes
were also the invasion routes of a very different sort.
Apparently, the Asian black rats, which carry the fleas that carry the
plague, burrowed into the caravan's grain sacks and hitched a free ride
across Asia. Rumors had already filtered westward of a terrible
plague that depopulated whole regions of China and India. Rumor
became reality for Europe in 1347 when a Genoese ship pulled into the
Sicilian port of Messina with half its crew dead or dying from
plague. The Black Death had arrived.
The Plague quickly spread death and terror across Europe, sweeping
through Italy in 1347, France in 1348, and the Low Countries, England,
and Scandinavia in 1349. Its pattern was to flare up in the summer and
taper off in the winter, only to flare up again and sweep onwards the
next summer. By 1350, it had pretty well passed on, leaving in
its wake a population decimated by its effects.
Cities, with their crowded unsanitary conditions, generally suffered
worse than the countryside. Although contemporary accounts
generally exaggerated the toll, it was certainly was staggering.
Supposedly 800 people died in Paris each day, 500 a day in Pisa, and up
to 600 a day in Vienna. Some cities lost anywhere from 50-70% of
their populations. Monasteries, also being crowded, suffered
similar death rates. In the countryside where people were more
spread out, maybe 20-30% of the population perished.
All across Europe black flags flew over towns to warn travelers that
the plague was there. Church bells rang constantly to announce
the deaths of citizens until town councils voted to silence their
demoralizing clangor. The Hundred Years War was interrupted by
the plague, and construction on the cathedral in Siena, Italy stopped
and never resumed, a grim memorial to the plague's power.
People, having no idea then of the existence of microbes, were
completely ignorant of the plague's cause. Some, seeing a
correlation between fleas and plague, killed dogs and cats, just giving
the black rats more freedom to spread the disease. Most
explanations of the Black Death concerned divine retribution.
This gave rise to the flagellants, people who would march from town to
town whipping themselves to atone for society's sins. However, as
they spread penitence, they also spread the plague. Therefore,
the authorities outlawed them, as much for the social unrest they
seemed to stir up as for the disease they were spreading. The
most effective way of avoiding the plague was to avoid people who might
carry it, causing those rich enough to flee the towns during the
plague's height in the summer months. In fact, a virtual panic
seized people as husbands abandoned wives, parents abandoned their
children, and even priests and doctors refused to see their
patients. It seemed as if the whole fabric of society was coming
unraveled.
In the absence of any effective remedies, people looked for
scapegoats. Many blamed the Jews whose religion dictated a bit
cleaner lifestyle, which in turn meant less incidence of rats, fleas,
and plague. In some peoples' minds, however, the Jews had
poisoned the wells or made a pact with the devil to cause the Black
Death. The resulting disturbances resembled those accompanying
the First Crusade, with Jews being massacred or burned in their
synagogues. Germany and the Low Countries saw especially bad
outbreaks of such violence, and, by 1350, few Jews remained in those
areas.
The plague hit Europe six more times by 1450, each time with less
severity than before, since more survivors were immune to it. And
those without resistance were weeded out by natural selection.
Still, some 30-40% of Europe's population was lost. Census
figures in England fell from 3.7 million in 1348 to 2.1 million by
1430. Even then, Europe was not free from the Black Death's
ravages, suffering recurrent outbreaks until the early 1700's.
Why it receded is also a matter of controversy, with such theories as
the European brown rat driving out the Asian black rat, tile roofs
replacing thatched ones where rats often lived, and the more deadly
plague microbe, which more readily killed off its host and left itself
no place to go, being replaced by a less deadly version.
The results of the Black Death
Along with an obsession with death that worked its way into European culture for generations to come, one can see the long term effects of the Black Death following three lines of development: a higher standard of living for those who survived, problems for nobles and clergy who were land owners, and revolts by peasants and urban workers. First of all, the Black Death had raised the standard of living of many survivors who inherited estates from the plague's victims. One sign of this was that peasant families, who, before the plague, were so poor that they sat at the dinner table on a common bench and ate from a common plate, now had individual stools and plates. This higher standard of living would lead to a more even wealth distribution and the recovery of the economy after 1450.Popular uprisings
Typically, war, plague, high taxes, or a combination of these would spark a sudden uprising. At first it would take the authorities by surprise, and they would either be killed or flee to the safety of the local towns or castles. In the case of peasant revolts, the unexpected success of an uprising would encourage other peasants to join and vent their frustrations on their own lords with incredible ferocity and cruelty. The rebellion would sweep through the countryside like wildfire, destroying any opposition in its path. However, the sudden nature of such outbursts also carried the seeds of their destruction, because they had very little, if any, organization or planning. Eventually, the authorities would gather their forces and crush the rebellion, since the rebels were poorly armed and trained compared to the professional warriors facing them. The aftermath would often see massacres and executions as retribution against the rebels and to discourage any further uprisings.
In the cities, workers tried to form their own protective organizations to win higher wages and better working conditions. This alarmed the guilds, which outlawed such organizations. That in turn enraged the workers who resorted to violence. The first such revolts occurred even before the Black Death hit Europe. The plague and its results merely intensified an already existing crisis.
The most serious of these, that of poor laborers known as the Ciompi, took place in Florence (1378) and followed a course similar to other popular revolts of the time: initial success (which in this case lasted four years), eventual victory for the authorities, and severe reprisals which only added to existing bitterness. The savagery of such revolts and the atmosphere of fear and hatred they created led the ruling classes in the cities to support princes and tyrants who could establish law and order. In Flanders, the dukes of Burgundy also established law and order under their strong autocratic rule. The greater security plus the collection of power and wealth in the hands of these rulers would be important factors supporting the cultural flowering of the Renaissance
Two revolts typified peasant uprisings, one in France and one in England. The Jacquerie, named after the popular name for French peasants, broke out in 1358, ten years after the Black and in the midst of the Hundred Years War with its destruction, high taxes, and forced labor to repair fortifications. On May 28, about 100 peasants in the village of St. Leu assaulted the nearest manor house and massacred the lord and his family. From there, the revolt spread quickly across the countryside with the usual atrocities and a reported 160 castles burned. Many towns, either out of sympathy or fear of the peasants, opened their gates to them.
The turning point came when some nobles returning from crusade in Eastern Europe came across and defeated some peasants at the town of Meaux. This encouraged them to organize and gather their forces against the main peasant force. The nobles then lured the peasant leader, Guillaume Cale, into a parley and murdered him. Deprived of their leader, the peasants were easy prey in the battle that followed. Hundreds were burned in a local monastery, and thousands more were hanged in their doorways as a warning against future revolts. Less than a month after the start of the revolt, it was over, although the fear and bitterness it bred lived on.
The Wat Tyler rebellion broke out in England in 1381. The immediate causes were much the same as those of the Jacquerie: high war taxes, a recent outbreak of plague, and a resulting agricultural crisis. The course of events was also similar. The rebels advanced all the way to London, looting and pillaging as they came. They even managed to seize and murder several of the king's officials. However, a daring ride in front of the rebels by the boy king, Richard II, who offered them concessions and supposedly his leadership in the revolt, settled them down. A parley was then arranged with the peasants' leader, Wat Tyler, which ended in his murder. This demoralized the peasants and allowed the nobles to defeat them and restore order in England much as the French nobles had in France. However, despite their ultimate defeats, the popular revolts of the day had two important results. First, they damaged the nobles' military reputations and power and paved the way for the emergence of kings and the modern nation state. Secondly, workers' and peasants' wages did rise, also leading to a more even distribution of wealth.
Decline of the Church and nobles
The Black Death also created problems for the nobles and clergy in
two main ways. First, the huge population loss in the cities'
caused a virtual collapse of the urban grain markets, a major source of
income for noble and church landlords with surplus grain to sell.
This especially hurt the nobles and clergy, whose incomes were still
based on land and who relied on selling surplus grain in the towns for
badly needed cash. There were two main strategies for making up
for this lost income.
Both nobles and clergy resorted to selling freedom to their
serfs. This raised some quick cash, but it also deprived them of
future revenues, which contributed to their decline and the
corresponding rise of kings and nation states. At the same time,
the serfs were now transformed into a free peasantry with more
incentive to work harder since they were working more for
themselves. This also helped lead to a more even distribution of
wealth which contributed to a revival of agriculture, towns, and trade,
especially after 1450 when the climate seems to have improved.
But with the guilds and nobles weakened by the turmoil of the last 150
years, a new broader consumer market evolved, but one where the average
person had less money to spend than the average noble beforehand would
have had. Since these people could not afford the guilds'
expensive goods and the guilds refused to adapt to this market, rich
merchants established cottage industries and sold their goods outside
of the guilds' jurisdiction. The profits they made and the
absence of the guilds' restrictive regulations helped these merchants
establish a new economic system, capitalism, which would replace the
guild system and lead the way into the modern world.
The Church had several other fund raising options in addition to
selling serfs their freedom: selling church offices (simony), letting
one man buy several offices at the same time, charging fees for all
sorts of church services, and selling indulgences to buy time out of
Purgatory after one died. These practices plus the Church's
inability to cope with the crisis of the Black Death led to growing
public discontent. As a result, the Church would experience
serious challenges to its authority in the Later Middle Ages.
FC71AThe Changing Status of Women in the Late Middle Ages
"Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands as unto the Lord"--St. Paul
"…every reasonable man must prize, cherish, love woman...She is his mother, his sister, his friend; he must not treat her as an enemy."-- Christine de Pisan
Introduction
One of the major trends in Western societies over the last 150 years has been women’s progress towards equal status with men. The roots of this lie in medieval Europe, although it is best to look separately at the three main social classes of middle class, peasants, and nobles, since they each told a different story.
Middle class women
Middle class women saw little or no gain, and maybe even a decline, in their status as town revived during the high and late Middle Ages. This was typical of pre-industrial towns, since most townspeople originally came from peasant backgrounds where the labor was more equitably shared, since every person’s labor was critical for bringing in and processing the crops. When families moved to towns, the men typically became craftsmen who ran their own shops with little or no help from the women. This loss of economic status led to a corresponding loss of social status, and can be seen in practices across a number of pre-industrial urban cultures such as the wearing of veils, not just in Muslim, but also the ancient Greek society and foot binding in China. Women in urban societies were also married off at earlier ages and as pawns in family alliances, although this could happen among peasants as well. That being said, practices could vary a bit from country to country. For example, a woman in England could take over her husband’s business after he died if he hand no adult sons to succeed him. In general, however, urban living was no bargain as far as women’s status was concerned.
Peasant women
Peasant women actually laid the firmest foundations for later gains in status. Part of this comes from the fact that they shared in the farm work and thus had status closer to that of their husbands than did their counterparts in town. This is typically overlooked because we have few written sources by or about women overall, and even fewer for peasant women who were almost always illiterate (as were their husbands). However, in the 1300s, a colder climate and bubonic plague would improve their status in an unforeseen way.
People realized that overpopulation had made the disasters of the fourteenth century especially bad. Therefore, they made efforts to limit population growth so they didn’t have to keep splitting up family lands until the plots were too small to support anyone. The primary method for this was to delay the age of marriage for both men and women. Men would typically wait until they could independently support themselves, which usually meant when their parents died or were too old to manage the family lands. Thus the multi-generational extended family of several generations living together under one roof gave way to the nuclear family of just parents and children in the household. However, most relatives still stayed in the same village or close by, thus providing the same basic safety net of support that extended families had provided for centuries. The real fragmentation into isolated nuclear families would not take place until the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century and the invention of the suburbs a century later.
Women also married later, which was especially critical to population control by restricting the number of active childbearing years. Thus women who previously might have married in their teens, now married in their twenties. However, women in their twenties were a bit harder to force into an arranged marriage than girls in their teens (despite what the behavior of the fourteen year old Juliet in Shakespeare’s play might suggest).
Two bits of peasant culture support this. One is a common betrothal ceremony. When a couple had mutually agreed to get married, the man would approach the woman in the presence of neighbors and ask her if she were married, which everyone of course knew was not the case. He would then say he thought they should get married, and the crowd would agree. But then someone would say the prospective bride should have a say, to which everyone agreed. She would then assent to the marriage and they were betrothed.
Another bit of evidence comes from children’s games, which typically mimic adult behavior. In one game, a circle of girls protects one girl from the boys who are trying to break in and “marry” her. After the boys have tried to win the girl over with all sorts of promises, she chooses whom she will marry. The point in each of these examples is that peasant women in Western Europe had a say in whom they would marry, giving them more say in their lives than found in other cultures. Women would build on this status during the suffrage movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Noble women, the courts of love, and the birth of “romance”
. Women of the noble class underwent a very different sort of change in status. Their position in the warrior class gave them status over men for lower classes, but they were still subordinate to their husbands who almost exclusively did the fighting. However, the need for and value of warriors gradually started to drop as more settled conditions took over in the high Middle Ages. Meanwhile, there was a rising tide of piety, especially toward the Virgin Mary who symbolized a more gentle and merciful side of Christianity, and this was reflected on the esteem given to women overall.
One can see this reflected in the account of an Arab observer in the 12th century: "The Franj (Franks, Western Europeans) have no
sense of honor. If one of them is walking in the street with his wife and encounters another man, that man will take his wife's hand & draw her aside and speak to her, while the husband stands waiting for them to finish their conversation. If it lasts too long, he will leave her with her interlocutor & go off.”
The scene shifts to Duke William IX of Aquitaine, father of one of the more assertive women of the age, Eleanor of Aquitaine. When Arab love poetry coming up from Spain was introduced to William’s court, it caught on, first with the duke and then with his subordinates. Following is a selection from one such poem:
“A gazelle's are her eyes, sun-like is her splendor,
Like a sandhill her hips, like a bough her stature:
With tears I told her plaintively of my love for her,
And told her how much my pain made me suffer.
My heart met hers, knowing that love is contagious,
And that one deeply in love can transmit his desire…”
Traveling troubadours, who depended on the generosity of their hosts to make a living and previously had subsisted on stirring tales of battle, added these poems to their repertoire with great success, especially with the ladies of the household. In Southern France, where they started, they had to be careful not to make the songs too explicitly romantic with the man of the house right there. Therefore, at first, this was all very idealistic and non-physical in nature, but that changed when it spread to northern France and generated a new movement: the courts of love.
The courts of love were set up as a mirror image of regular courts. Whereas, in the king and nobles’ courts, men ruled by right of strength and power, and prowess in battle or tournaments was celebrated, in the courts of love, women presided and romantic virtues, poetic ability and good manners determined one’s place.
According to Andreas Coppolamus, an early writer on courtly love: "Love is a certain inborn suffering derived from the sight of or excessive meditation upon the beauty of the opposite sex which causes each one to wish above all things the embraces of the other & by common desire to carry out all of love's precepts in the other's embraces.”
Supposedly, a true lover never slept soundly, but always tossed & turned in bed. True love improved a man in every way. Fools became wise; klutzes became graceful & polished; cowards became heroes. It was even doubted whether a man who didn't truly love a woman could be a true knight. In fact, it was ideas like that last point that probably worked the courtly love ideals into the mainstream of society ruled by men.
The courts of love established strict rules on what true love is.
It was always between people of nearly equal social standing. Ironically it was supposedly acceptable for a noble to rape a peasant without losing his lady’s favor since peasants were considered incapable of feeling love.
It was always adulterous. The Church idea that sex was only for reproduction led to the belief that people so bound to each other couldn't love each other. Therefore, courtly love must be outside marriage and one was not in fashion if one didn't have boyfriend or girlfriend outside of marriage.
It was always idealized & pure. This was a fairly new notion, considering love before was often spelled l-u-s-t (e.g., Ovid). With courtly love, the true test of love was for a couple to sleep together without doing anything but sleep.
It was religious in tone. This fit well with being idealized and pure, but hardly with the Church's stance on sex & love.
It was always secretive and expressed through sly glimpses, shadows of a smile and other signs of affection. Although it was best to keep one's extramarital affairs secret, women naturally wanted to advertise the attentions of other men to themselves. This led to a highly stylized ritual behavior where every word or action had significance.
It was always long lasting, faithful, & arduous, as seen in this story by Boccaccio:
"A knight who had offended his mistress was told, after two years of refusal, that if he would have one of his fingernails torn off & if 50 loving & faithful knights presented it to her, she might forgive him. He hastened to obey her. The nail was brought to her by 50 knights- all certified to be in the good grace of their ladies- resting on a velvet cushion. She was so touched by his obedience & commitment that she forgave him."
Of course this raises the question of how the ladies got the men to buy into this new code of behavior. For one thing, women did have higher status than before, and therefore more say in who received their favors.
One possible scenario may be that if one nobleman at court brushed his teeth and bathed regularly, talked about nice things rather than the latest foe he decapitated in battle, and used a handkerchief instead of his hand as the receptacle for blowing his nose, he must have gotten all the ladies’ attention. Therefore, other guys would have to do the same if they wanted a date for Saturday night.
Since nobles set the tone for the rest of society, these new ideas about romance, everlasting love, and chivalrous behavior toward women spread to the lower classes and became firmly embedded in our culture. Not until the later twentieth century would these values come under attack as being demeaning to women. However, if one considers the position women had been in before, this was a giant step forward.
FC72Schism & heresies in late medieval Europe (1347-c.1450)
The Avignon Papacy or "Babylonian Captivity" (1309-77)
The Later Middle Ages were a time of turmoil for the Catholic Church, as the growing power of kings and popes in the High Middle Ages led to rising tensions over various forms of authority and jurisdiction. Although they had largely won their struggle with the emperors in Germany, the popes were less successful in dealing with the rising power of the French and English monarchies. Problems centered on control of two things: the local clergy and Church taxes. The popes had a habit of rewarding their Italian supporters with church offices all across Europe. Both common people and local native clergy resented this and looked to the king for help against these Italian clergy. As a result, the popes found much of their own local clergy aligned against them and with the kings.
Meanwhile, during their struggle with the Holy Roman Empire, the popes had granted kings the right to collect church taxes in return for aid against the German rulers, justifying their actions by declaring these wars crusades. But when war broke out in 1294 between France and England, both countries' kings used the precedent of collecting church taxes for the popes' wars to justify collecting church taxes for their own wars. When Pope Boniface VIII refused to let Philip IV of France do this, Philip and his agent, Nogaret, planned to subject the pope to the inquisition for crimes he allegedly had committed. When this plan failed, Nogaret and the pope's enemies in Rome kidnapped Boniface. Although he was soon rescued by loyal followers, he died a few days later.
The College of Cardinals, probably feeling pressure from the highhanded acts of the French king and his agents, elected a Frenchman, Clement V, as the new pope. Clement set out for Rome, but never made it there, stopping at Avignon, a papal city close to French territory. For the next 70 years (1309-77), the popes, all of who were French born, stayed in Avignon. During this period (known as the Babylonian Captivity after the 70 years of captivity the Old Testament Jews had spent in Babylon), the popes came under increasing criticism for being corrupt and under the thumb of the French kings. Whatever the truth of these charges, the Avignon papacy symbolized the decline of the medieval papacy. The kings' increasing ability to claim the loyalty of the local clergy and to collect church taxes helped create several quasi-national churches that officially were part of the Roman Catholic Church but were increasingly under royal control. The Babylonian Captivity, along with the Hundred Years War then going on, also triggered challenges to papal authority from two other directions: church councils and popular heresies.
The Great Schism and Conciliar movement
The resentment that the Babylonian Captivity aroused against the Church grew worse when the popes tried to move back to Rome. By the 1370's, the turmoil of the Hundred Years War was making life at Avignon increasingly dangerous. The capture and ransoming of Pope Innocent VI by a company of English mercenaries (who had little use for a French pope, anyway) convinced Pope Gregory XI to move to Rome. However, at this time, Rome was a more dangerous place to live in during times of "peace" than France was during war. It took Gregory three attempts to get into Rome, and once he got in, he quickly decided he wanted to leave and return to Avignon. Unfortunately, Gregory died before he could get out.
For the first time in 70 years, Rome was the scene of a papal election, and the Roman mob clamored outside for an Italian pope. Under such pressure, the College of Cardinals elected an Italian, Urban VI, as the next pope. Unfortunately, Urban was something of a violent and bigoted man whose actions drove all but three cardinals back to Avignon where they elected a second pope. Thus began the Great Schism, a period of turmoil when the Church was divided in its loyalty between two lines of popes, one French and one Italian. To no one's surprise, each pope refused to recognize the other and even excommunicated him and his followers. This led to enormous anxiety among devout Christians, who found themselves supposedly excommunicated by one pope or the other. With neither pope willing to resign, something had to be done.
The most popular suggestion was a general church council such as the ones summoned to solve major disputes in the past. There were several problems with this solution. First of all, popes traditionally called such councils, and neither pope was willing to call such a council. This made the legality of such a council questionable if not called by at least one pope. Second, different rulers in Europe supported particular popes, largely for political reasons. Such political divisions made it almost impossible to get people to agree on the site of a council, not to mention the deeper issues involved. Finally, the whole issue of a Church council raised the question: if a council could depose the pope, who was the real head of the Church? This was a question that lingered on long after the Great Schism had faded away.
At last, a council was called at Pisa, Italy in 1409. It deposed the two rival popes and elected a third. Unfortunately, neither original pope recognized the council's power to depose a pope, so now the Church had three popes. However, by this time, people were committed to the idea of a church council, and another one was called at Constance, Switzerland. All three popes were deposed, and a fourth, Martin V, was elected. Although one of the deposed popes held on in Avignon until 1429, the Great Schism ended here. Its effects did not, because it caused people all over Western Europe to question the authority of the pope in the Church. Although a single pope once again ruled the Church, his reputation and authority were permanently undermined.
The challenge from below: the Lollard and Hussite heresies
Besides discontent within the ranks of the clergy, the Babylonian Captivity also caused popular discontent in the form of heresies. During the Hundred Years War, the French popes at Avignon were especially unpopular in England, and it was here that the first of these heresies emerged. Its leader was an Oxford scholar, John Wycliffe (called Wicked Life by his enemies). His main point was that the Bible is the sole source of religious truth, and therefore anything not in the Bible did not belong in the Christian faith or practice. In Wycliffe's view this meant that such mainstays of Catholic practice as confession, penance, pilgrimages, veneration of saintly relics, excommunication, Church ownership of property, and the gap in status between the clergy and laity (non-clergy) should all be abolished since there was no mention of them in the Bible.
Possibly Wycliffe's most revolutionary act was translating the Latin Vulgate Bible into English so the common people could read it for themselves. Such an act made it much more difficult for the Church to keep its monopoly on religious truth. It also led to a variety of interpretations of the Bible by some of Wycliffe's followers known as Lollards (meaning mumblers or babblers). The more radical Lollards did such things as chopping up images of saints for firewood, holding mock masses, and eating communion bread with onions to show it was no different from regular bread.
Because of England's hostility to the French and the popes at Avignon, initial reaction to the Lollards was mild until the Wat Tyler Rebellion broke out in 1381. After that, the authorities were much sterner with the heresy, burning some fifty Lollards at the stake over the next 40 years. Wycliffe himself was mildly reprimanded. He died peacefully in 1384. However, his heresy did not.
Among the Lollards were a number of influential people, including Queen Anne, who came from Bohemia (modern Czech Republic). She sent several copies of Wycliffe's writings home where the heresy caught on. In addition to this heresy, there was also a growing national consciousness among the Bohemians aimed mainly against the German ruling class. This combination of heresy and a growing national consciousness would prove to be a devastating force in the events about to unfold.
Public sermons in the streets of Prague criticized Church corruption while translators produced 33 handwritten copies of the Bible in the Czech language. At the center of all this turmoil was Jan Hus, a popular preacher and professor who was heavily influenced by Wycliffe. Hus' writing and preaching stirred up more and more anti-church and anti-German feeling. This led to a condemnation of Hus' works, which in turn provoked a wave of riots and protests across Bohemia. Faced with the possibility of a full-scale rebellion against the Church, the pope and the Council of Constance summoned Hus, under promise of a safe conduct, to defend his views. The council unwisely went back on its word, had Hus declared a heretic, and burned him at the stake. Rather than depriving the Bohemians of a leader, this act provided them with a martyr around whom they could rally. The resulting Hussite Wars (1420-36) showed how powerful a combination nationalist feeling and popular piety could be.
The Church launched five crusades against the Hussites, all of them dismal failures. The Hussites combined new firearms technology with the ancient Bohemian tactic of making circular walls of wagons ( wagenburgs) to create a seemingly invincible army. Hussite armies even invaded Germany, plundering at will all the way to the Baltic Sea. By 1433, the Church had had enough and opened negotiations with the Hussites to keep them from spreading their heresy across Europe. The Hussites, not ready for a complete break with the Catholic Church that had led the faith for centuries, were also willing to compromise. The Church allowed certain religious liberties in return for the Hussites' allegiance to the Church.
Although the Hussites had returned to the Church, their importance lived on. For, just across the border in Saxony some 85 years later, another reformer by the name of Martin Luther would lead another revolt against the Church, raising many of the same points Wycliffe and the Hussites had raised. Only this time, the break, known as the Protestant Reformation, would be permanent and alter the course of European and world history.
FC73The Hundred Years War (1337-1453)
Introduction
Nothing better epitomizes the turmoil of the Later Middle Ages than the prolonged and desperate struggle between France and England known as the Hundred Years War. Technically, this was a series of wars intermittently separated by periods of uneasy peace, but the fact that it took over a century to resolve this struggle justifies treating it as one war. Although, on the surface, the issues involved just concerned who held certain territories and the French throne, there were deeper processes going on that gave this struggle an importance far beyond its battles. The main process taking place was the painful separation of the two nations from a feudal and dynastic concept of the state that had kept French and English histories intertwined with one another since the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The growing use of the English language throughout the war especially illustrated this process. Whereas French was the primary language of the English court at the start of the war, by the end it was English. Also, Geoffrey Chaucer had written Canterbury Tales, one of the first great works of English literature, and John Wycliffe had translated the Bible into English, all this showing a growing sense of an English nation and culture.
Causes
Three main factors set France and England on a collision course in the 1300's. Over the last two centuries, the French monarchy had gradually brought nearly all of France under its effective rule. In the early 1200's, John I had lost most of England's lands in France. However, two rich wine producing areas in the southwest of France, Gascony and Guienne, remained in English hands, a fact which greatly irked the French kings. Another source of concern to the French kings was England's flourishing wool trade in the north with Flanders, which was part of France. When the Flemish workers revolted in 1302, they looked to England for support. Although the French put down the revolt, they were still suspicious of English intentions in Flanders.
But the issue taking center stage was Edward III of England's claim to the French throne when the childless Charles IV died. Edward was Charles' nephew, while the next closest male claimant to the throne was a cousin, named Philip. However, the French did not want an Englishman on the French throne, and thereby chose Philip VI as their king. Edward, feeling slighted by this decision and being concerned about his hold on Gascony and Guienne, decided to fight for the throne. The Hundred Years War was on.
The new face of war
One of the most dramatic signs of the transition from the medieval to modern world was the changing nature of warfare. The English were especially innovative in this regard, probably because they faced a much larger and more powerful enemy and thus felt more of a need to experiment with new ways of fighting. The armies of the Hundred Years War would differ from the armies of the Dark Ages in three major ways. One change was that, for the most part, these were not feudal armies of noble vassals fighting to fulfill their personal obligations to their lords. Rather, they were largely collections of mercenary companies containing many members of the lower classes and even criminal element. Their captains would contract their services to a king in return for the promise of pay, plunder, and ransoms for any captured enemies. Such armies may have been more stable and reliable than the old feudal armies, but they also created serious problems. Since they were rarely paid in full or on time and their ranks were often filled with the more disreputable types in society, they were prone to desertion, plundering, and violence against the civilian populace.
Two other big changes had to do with weaponry. One was the longbow, adopted from the Welsh by Edward I in the late 1200's. This was a specialized weapon that took a full year to make and years to master. As a result, only richer free peasants (yeomen) and professional mercenaries had the leisure time for practice. The longbow was both powerful and had a rapid rate of fire. Formations of English long-bowmen, protected by rows of sharpened stakes and intervening formations of English knights, could unleash ten to twelve volleys of arrows per minute, a devastating rate of fire as the French would find out. Another weapon that would assume greater importance as the war continued was gunpowder. Both the English and, later on, the French would use cannons effectively to demolish castle walls and the medieval order they stood for.
While the history of the war was long an involved, it followed a basic pattern. At first, the English, with strong leaders and new weapons and tactics, would win striking victories against much larger French armies. This would continue until weak leaders would take power in England and more decisive one would take over in France. Then the French would adapt to the English weapons and tactics and gradually recover their lands. However, England would once again see strong leaders while France would suffer weak ones again and the pattern would start all over. This pattern cycled around two times, dividing the war into four basic phases.
Phase I: England ascendant 1337-1369)
The first major battle of the war, Sluys (1340), was a naval battle and determined who would control the English Channel. Naval battles in the Atlantic were rare, since the seas were too rough for oar driven galleys, and the square sail then in use could not tack well into the wind. Therefore, one navy or the other was usually confined to port, depending on the wind. Without the use of oars, ramming and clipping enemy ships was impractical, so naval battles were mainly land battles fought at sea, with each side trying to grapple and board the other side's ships. In such a battle, the English had a definite advantage, since their longbows provided the firepower to clear enemy decks and let English soldiers storm their ships. As a result, the Battle of Sluys was a decisive victory for the English and gave them the freedom to raid France while securing their own coasts from seaborne raids.
For several years, small English armies would raid and plunder French territory while being careful to avoid any large French forces, since the English themselves were not sure of how effective their longbows would be against French knights. However, in 1346 a large French army succeeded in cornering a much smaller English army and forcing it to fight at Crecy. Lined up behind protective wooden stakes, the English long-bowmen launched volley after volley of arrows as "thick as snow", first mowing down enemy crossbowmen and then bringing succeeding waves of charging French knights crashing to the ground. By sundown, the English had won a stunning victory against what seemed like insurmountable odds, considering enemy numbers and the high regard in which French knights were held all over Europe. Crecy opened the French countryside to the English, allowing them to seize the port of Calais, which they held until the 1550's.
However, the French refused to recognize that the outcome at Crecy using these new tactics of long-bowmen in coordination with knights was anything besides a fluke. Therefore, after an interlude in the fighting brought on by the Black Death, they went after the English army again. This time they tracked down Edward the Black Prince and an army of some 8000 men at Poitiers (1356). Once again the French knights charged the English lines, and once again the hissing volleys of English arrows littered the field with French dead and wounded. Among the numerous prisoners held for ransom was the French king. Poitiers confirmed Crecy's verdict that the balance of power on the battlefields of Europe was clearly shifting away from the heavily armored knight.
The aftermath of Poitiers saw the English conquer large areas of France in the western coastal areas. Meanwhile, peasant revolts, such as the Jacquerie, were challenging new taxes and the nobles' power in society. Given all this turmoil and their inability to beat English armies, the French concluded the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, recognizing Edward's new conquests in return for his relinquishing any claim to the French crown.
However, peace did not return to France, because the English did not want to disband their so-called free companies of mercenaries in England where they could raise all sorts of havoc. Instead, they turned them loose in France where they continued to loot and pillage as if peace had never been signed. One free company made a living from capturing castles and then selling them back to their original owners. Another company, under Sir Robert Knollys (knighted by Edward for his exploits and atrocities in France), controlled forty castles and plundered at will from Orleans to Vezelay. In response to these ravages, French peasants fortified their churches, slept on islands in local rivers, and dug tunnels to escape the English. Seeing no apparent difference between peace and war, the French resumed the war in 1369.
Phase II: The French resurgence (1369-1413)
By now, the French had learned to avoid open battle against the English long-bowmen, choosing instead to bolster town and castle fortification, cut off any isolated raiding parties, and deny the English the plunder that made the war worthwhile to them. Thanks to this strategy, the French recovered most of their lands from the English. This, the return of the Black Death, and then the Wat Tyler rebellion in 1381 all combined to make the war very unpopular in England. Therefore, in 1396, it was the English turn to ask for peace, giving up most of their French possessions in the process.
However, the tide soon turned back to favor the English for a couple reasons. First of all, the rule of the mentally unstable French king, Charles VI (1380-1422), unleashed factional strife between the noble houses of Orleans and Burgundy over who would control the king and French policies. Therefore, France was in a state of turmoil and open to attack. Also, about this time, a warlike English king, Henry V, took the throne and decided to launch a new campaign in France.
The English resurgence (1413-1428)
Henry entered France with a small army of 1000 knights and 6000 long-bowmen. Like Edward III and the Black Prince before him, Henry was trapped by a much larger French army that forced his tired and hungry army to fight at Agincourt (1415). By this time, knights were wearing suits of plate armor weighing up to 65 pounds, a much harder shell for the longbow arrows to penetrate. Despite this, the longbow still played a vital role in winning Agincourt. For whatever reasons, the French chose to avoid the formations of long-bowmen and instead attacked the groups of English knights in between. This had the effect of cramming the French into ever-narrower spaces that gave them no room to raise their weapons. Meanwhile, their comrades in back, unaware of this, kept pushing forward, creating even more of a crush up front that the English knights exploited mercilessly. At the same time, the English long-bowmen were hitting the French from the sides. This combination of being unable to maneuver and being attacked from three sides made Agincourt as much of a disaster for the French as Crecy and Poitiers had been.
Agincourt unleashed an avalanche of misfortunes upon France. The Duke of Burgundy, bitter over the murder of his father by the Duke of Orleans, defected to the English side. Paris fell to the enemy, while famine and turmoil stalked the land. Equally decisive and portentous for the future was another new weapon that was changing the face of warfare: gunpowder. Cannons had been used as early as Crecy in 1346, but mainly as glorified noisemakers. However, by the early 1400's, the English had a large and effective siege train of cannons that pulverized the old medieval fortifications of towns and castles. By 1420, the English and their Burgundian allies had control of the northern half of France, forcing the French to agree to the Treaty of Troyes, by which Henry would take the French throne after Charles VI died. However, Henry died shortly before Charles and was succeeded by the infant, Henry VI. The French refused to give the throne to this child, and war resumed.
Joan of Arc and the final French triumph (1428-53)
At first, the Duke of Bedford, regent for the young Henry VI, ably continued the English advance against the pale and feeble Charles VII. It was then that a remarkable peasant girl, known to history as Joan of Arc, came to the French court, claiming divine voices had told her to lead France to victory. Despite the snickering at this simple peasant girl by the court, her persistence and genuine faith in her mission persuaded Charles to let her accompany the French army trying to relieve the city of Orleans. For whatever reasons, the French succeeded in saving Orleans, thus opening the road to Reims where Charles could officially be crowned.
To the soldiers, Joan was a symbol of French defiance, and her example restored the army's spirit. However, her luck soon ran out. In 1430, the Burgundians captured Joan and sold her to the English who tried her as a witch for hearing demonic voices. After a long and exhausting trial, she was convicted by a French church court and burned at the stake in the market place of Rouen in 1431. Years later the Church would reverse its decision and declare Joan a saint. She was only 19 years old when she died.
Joan's death backfired against the English in much the same way as the execution of the Hussite leader, Jan Hus, had backfired against the Church a few years before. Charles VII took heart and led a vigorous offensive against the English, while the French people agreed to a war tax to pay for soldiers and artillery to free their land of the now hated English. Now it was the French turn to use cannons to demolish English fortifications and sweep through France. Meanwhile, high war taxes and the lack of plunder to pay for the war made it increasingly unpopular in England. As a result, Parliament cut most funds for fighting in France. In 1451, at the Battle of Castillon, the French, using another experimental weapon, primitive firearms, defeated the last English army in France. Two years later in 1453, the same year the Ottoman Turks used artillery to help them storm the walls of Constantinople, the English were out of France except for the port of Calais. The Hundred Years War was over.
Conclusion
What had all this accomplished? The main significance of the Hundred Years War was that France and England, bound together for centuries by outmoded feudal ties and concepts, were now wrenched apart, leaving in their wake two distinct nations free to follow their own destinies. The Hundred Years War also symbolized far reaching military and social changes. Although nobles would be around for centuries to come, the longbow and gunpowder showed that their days were numbered. Gunpowder in particular meant that nobles were no longer safe, either on the battlefield or behind their own castle walls. And with their military dominance went the nobles' unchallenged social preeminence. Gunpowder technology was also expensive. As a result, only kings and princes were able to afford armies with cannons and firearms, thus stripping nobles of even more of their power and prestige, leaving the way open for the rise of the modern nation state.
The RenaissanceUnit 11: The Renaissance
FC74The invention of the printing press and its effects
Introduction
At the height of the Hussite crisis in the early 1400's, when the authorities ordered 200 manuscripts of heretical writings burned, people on both sides realized quite well the significance of that act. Two hundred handwritten manuscripts would be hard to replace. Not only would it be a time consuming job, but also trained scribes would be hard to find. After all, most of them worked for the Church, and it seemed unlikely that the Church would loan out its scribes to copy the works of heretics. Although the Hussites more than held their own against the Church, their movement remained confined mainly to the borders of their homeland of Bohemia. One main reason for this was that there was no mass media, such as the printing press to spread the word. A century later, all that had changed.
Like any other invention, the printing press came along and had an impact when the right conditions existed at the right time and place. In this case, that was Europe in the mid 1400's. Like many or most inventions, the printing press was not the result of just one man's ingenious insight into all the problems involved in creating the printing press. Rather, printing was a combination of several different inventions and innovations: block printing, rag paper, oil based ink, interchangeable metal type, and the squeeze press.
If one process started the chain reaction of events that led to the invention of the printing press, it was the rise of towns in Western Europe that sparked trade with the outside world all the way to China. That trade exposed Europeans to three things important for the invention of the printing press: rag paper, block printing, and, oddly enough, the Black Death.
For centuries the Chinese had been making rag paper, which was made from a pulp of water and discarded rags that was then pressed into sheets of paper. When the Arabs met the Chinese at the battle of the Talas River in 751 A.D., they carried off several prisoners skilled in making such paper. The technology spread gradually across the Muslim world, up through Spain and into Western Europe by the late 1200's. The squeeze press used in pressing the pulp into sheets of paper would also lend itself to pressing print evenly onto paper.
The Black Death, which itself spread to Western Europe thanks to expanded trade routes, also greatly catalyzed the invention of the printing press in three ways, two of which combined with the invention of rag paper to provide Europe with plentiful paper. First of all, the survivors of the Black Death inherited the property of those who did not survive, so that even peasants found themselves a good deal richer. Since the textile industry was the most developed industry in Western Europe at that time, it should come as no surprise that people spent their money largely on new clothes. However, clothes wear out, leaving rags. As a result, fourteenth century Europe had plenty of rags to make into rag paper, which was much cheaper than the parchment (sheepskin) and vellum (calfskin) used to make books until then. Even by 1300, paper was only one-sixth the cost of parchment, and its relative cost continued to fall. Considering it took 170 calfskins or 300 sheepskins to make one copy of the Bible, we can see what a bargain paper was.
But the Black Death had also killed off many of the monks who copied the books, since the crowded conditions in the monasteries had contributed to an unusually high mortality rate. One result of this was that the cost of copying books rose drastically while the cost of paper was dropping. Many people considered this unacceptable and looked for a better way to copy books. Thus the Black Death rag paper combined to create both lots of cheap paper plus an incentive for the invention of the printing press.
The Black Death also helped lead to the decline of the Church, the rise of a money economy, and subsequently the Italian Renaissance with its secular ideas and emphasis on painting. It was the Renaissance artists who, in their search for a more durable paint, came up with oil-based paints. Adapting these to an oil-based ink that would adhere to metal type was fairly simple.
Block printing, carved on porcelain, had existed for centuries before making its way to Europe. Some experiments with interchangeable copper type had been carried on in Korea. However, Chinese printing did not advance beyond that, possibly because the Chinese writing system used thousands of characters and was too unmanageable. For centuries after its introduction into Europe, block printing still found little use, since wooden printing blocks wore out quickly when compared to the time it took to carve them. As a result of the time and expense involved in making block prints, a few playing cards and pages of books were printed this way, but little else.
What people needed was a movable type made of metal. And here again, the revival of towns and trade played a major role, since it stimulated a mining boom, especially in Germany, along with better techniques for working metals, including soft metals such as gold and copper. It was a goldsmith from Mainz, Germany, Johannes Gutenberg, who created a durable and interchangeable metal type that allowed him to print many different pages, using the same letters over and over again in different combinations. It was also Gutenberg who combined all these disparate elements of movable type, rag paper, the squeeze press, and oil based inks to invent the first printing press in 1451.
The first printed books were religious in nature, as were most medieval books. They also imitated (handwritten) manuscript form so that people would accept this new revolutionary way of copying books. The printing press soon changed the forms and uses of books quite radically. Books stopped imitating manuscript forms such as lined paper to help the copiers and abbreviations to save time in copying. They also covered an increasingly wider variety of non-religious topics (such as grammars, etiquette, and geology books) that appealed especially to the professional members of the middle class.
By 1482, there were about 100 printing presses in Western Europe: 50 in Italy, 30 in Germany, 9 in France, 8 each in Spain and Holland, and 4 in England. A Venetian printer, Aldus Manutius, realized that the real market was not for big heavy volumes of the Bible, but for smaller, cheaper, and easier to handle "pocket books". Manutius further revolutionized book copying by his focusing on these smaller editions that more people could afford. He printed translations of the Greek classics and thus helped spread knowledge in general, and the Renaissance in particular, across Europe. By 1500, there were some 40,000 different editions with over 6,000,000 copies in print.
The impact of the printing press
The printing press had dramatic effects on European civilization. Its immediate effect was that it spread information quickly and accurately. This helped create a wider literate reading public. However, its importance lay not just in how it spread information and opinions, but also in what sorts of information and opinions it was spreading. There were two main directions printing took, both of which were probably totally unforeseen by its creators.
First of all, more and more books of a secular nature were printed, with especially profound results in science. Scientists working on the same problem in different parts of Europe especially benefited, since they could print the results of their work and share it accurately with a large number of other scientists. They in turn could take that accurate, not miscopied, information, work with it and advance knowledge and understanding further. Of course, they could accurately share their information with many others and the process would continue. By the 1600's, this process would lead to the Scientific Revolution of the Enlightenment, which would radically alter how Europeans viewed the world and universe.
The printing press also created its share of trouble as far as some people were concerned. It took book copying out of the hands of the Church and made it much harder for the Church to control or censor what was being written. It was hard enough to control what Wycliffe and Hus wrote with just a few hundred copies of their works in circulation. Imagine the problems the Church had when literally thousands of such works could be produced at a fraction of the cost. Each new printing press was just another hole in the dyke to be plugged up, and the Church had only so many fingers with which to do the job. It is no accident that the breakup of Europe's religious unity during the Protestant Reformation corresponded with the spread of printing. The difference between Martin Luther's successful Reformation and the Hussites' much more limited success was that Luther was armed with the printing press and knew how to use it with devastating effect.
Some people go as far as to say that the printing press is the most important invention between the invention of writing itself and the computer. Although it is impossible to justify that statement to everyone's satisfaction, one can safely say that the printing press has been one of the most powerful inventions of the modern era. It has advanced and spread knowledge and molded public opinion in a way that nothing before the advent of television and radio in the twentieth century could rival. If it were not able to, then freedom of the press would not be such a jealously guarded liberty as it is today.
FC75The Economic recovery of Europe (c.1450-1600)
The turmoil of the Later Middle Ages (c.1300-1450) continued and accelerated the changes that started with the rise of towns and kings in the High Middle Ages (c.1100-1300). Although these were certainly difficult times to live through, they also paved the way for the modern institutions, movements, and values that would emerge after 1450: capitalism with its new attitudes toward money and profit, the Renaissance with its new attitudes toward the secular world and Man's place in it, the nation state with its relatively centralized bureaucracy and army, and the age of exploration with the new perspective it gave on Europe's place in the world. New technological innovations such as the printing press, gunpowder, and better ships and navigation would also generate significant changes.
Social changes
The turmoil of the Later Middle Ages did not affect everyone equally. Nobles, in particular, saw a decline in their position as a class. The longbow, gunpowder, and massed formations of infantry pikemen effectively challenged the armored knight's supremacy on the battlefield. Even his place in the castle grew ever more dangerous as new and more destructive cannons were constantly being developed. Economically, the Later Middle Ages had seen labor shortages that led to higher prices. Inflation cut increasingly into the noble's wealth since it was based on land with a more static value. By 1450, almost all the peasants in Western Europe had been able to buy freedom from their lords, paying them fixed rents instead of labor. Even those rents failed to help the nobles much since inflation reduced their value and nobles often had little skill or desire to spend within their means.
The nobles' decline meant other social classes could rise in power and status. Peasants benefited because they had bought their freedom and many even owned their land. The greater incentive provided by working for themselves rather than their lords led to greater agricultural production and the revival of Europe's population. The middle class benefited by making money from the nobles, either through loans with interest or selling them goods for a profit. However wealthy nobles may have been, it seemed that a lot of their money was ending up in the hands of middle class merchants. The middle class was also assuming a larger role in the governments of the emerging national monarchies in Western Europe. Kings also benefited since the nobles had been the main obstacles to building strong nation-states. The alliance of kings and middle class meant that the kings were the only ones with the power and wealth to afford the new gunpowder technology that was becoming a necessary part of any respectable army.
In spite of this, some powerful and influential nobles remained. Others were forced to seek employment in the king's army or at his court as courtiers, basically idle hangers on whose job was to make the king's court look impressive. Many others lost their noble status by having to support themselves through such ignoble pursuits as agriculture and commerce. Still, the nobles were considered the class to belong to. As a result, we see wealthy members of the middle class buying titles of nobility from the king (who always needed cash), giving up their businesses, and settling down on their landed estates just like other nobles. In this way, the noble class was constantly replenished by new blood, although the importance of the nobles kept on its path of gradual decline. The changes sweeping through European society were making it harder and harder to find a place for the nobles.
By 1500, we see the peasants in Western Europe free and often in possession of their own land. The middle class' status was getting steadily higher, both through their money and positions in the king's bureaucracy. And the kings were tightening their grip on their realms through their bureaucracies and armies.
Economic revival
, as usual, was based firmly on agriculture revival. That largely depended on the climate, which improved during this period, but other factors also helped. For one thing, the turmoil of the Later Middle Ages, which had weakened the Church and Nobles, was largely subsiding by 1450. This led to the emergence of strong monarchies in Western Europe that could safeguard the peace and promote trade and commerce. Secondly, the nobles, ruined by inflation and the collapsed urban grain market triggered by the Black Death, had sold most of their serfs their freedom by 1450. Finally, the peasants who had survived the Black Death and inherited the property of those who died had attained a higher standard of living. The fact that most peasants were now free and that many owned their land provided incentive to work harder that led to better agricultural production. One good indication that this was taking place was the fact that Europe's population rose from an estimated 50 million in 1450 to 70 million by 1500. This revival had three effects that would combine to create a dynamic new economic system: capitalism.First of all, the dramatic population growth of the late 1400's meant that towns and trade could also rapidly recover and surpass their previous prosperity. In 1450, the wealthiest banking family in Europe was that of the Medici of Florence, whose fortune consisted of 90,000 florins. By the 1500's, another banking family, the Fuggers of Augsburg in Germany, had taken over first place with nearly one million florins to their credit, over ten times that of the Medici half a century before. What this suggests is that the amount of trade and money in circulation had increased a great deal.
The second effect was that there were new consumer markets, but with a very different distribution of wealth from before. In the High Middle Ages, nobles had provided merchants with much of their market since they controlled so much of Europe's wealth at that time. By 1450, this had changed. Most nobles had lost money and status and could not afford the fine woolens and other goods made by the guilds. Instead there were common laborers and peasants, each with a modest amount of money to spend. A lot of money was there. It was just spread out more widely.
This change in the consumer market from a few rich nobles to a large number of people each with modest amounts of cash led to a change in production techniques as well. Up to this point, guilds had controlled the production and selling of manufactured goods, while nobles could afford the high quality and prices that the guilds maintained. The new type of consumer emerging by 1500 could not afford them. In response to this, some wealthy businessmen went outside the town walls and the jurisdiction of the guilds to the various peasant cottages in the countryside. Here the peasants would produce lower quality woolens than the guilds produced. The businessmen would pay them lower prices for those woolens and turn around and undersell their guild competitors. In this way, older medieval cities and guilds, such as in Flanders, went into decline, while other centers of production took their places. This also led to the growing concentration of wealth in the hands of a few rich businessmen instead of being spread out among the guilds. Thus by 1500, the consumer market was more spread out than before, while the means of production and investment were concentrated in fewer hands.
The third effect of Europe's reviving economy was that its expanding internal markets prompted Spanish and Portuguese explorers to search for new trade routes to the sources of spices in the Far East. Besides opening up whole new continents for discovery and exploration, this also vastly expanded the volume of Europe's trade.
New business techniques
In order to handle this higher volume of trade, new techniques of handling money became prevalent about this time. The Italian city-states especially pioneered these new methods. The prosperity that these new business techniques brought Italy largely explains why Italy would lead the rest of Europe in the Renaissance. Very briefly, these techniques were:
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Joint stock companies. These allowed people with small amounts of cash to take part in business enterprises such as merchant expeditions. Their importance was that, instead of hoarding their money, people put it into circulation in Europe's economy, allowing it to grow even more.
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Insurance companies. These reduced the risk of losing all of one's investment in a business venture. The result was much like that of joint stock companies, in that it encouraged people to invest, rather than hoard, their money, which stimulated further growth in Europe's economy.
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Deposit banks and credit. These gave bankers more money to invest in business ventures since they attracted investors with their promise of guaranteed interest from the deposits. Banking houses also opened branches and extended a system of credit across Western Europe. Credit allowed a businessman to use more money than he actually had to embark on some venture, paying his creditor back with interest when he made his profit. Europe's economy grew much more quickly this way than if it had been limited by the amount of cash on hand at any particular time. Banking and credit also made the transfer of funds across Europe much safer. For example, with a strictly cash economy, someone transferring funds from Florence to London ran the risk of being ambushed by brigands and losing his money. With credit, the same merchant could send an agent to London with a note saying he was worth so much money guaranteed by the bank back in Florence. The agent might get that money in the form of church taxes bound for Italy. He could use that cash in England, and then send a credit note back to Florence worth the amount he borrowed in Church taxes. If brigands ambushed an agent either way, all they got was a credit note that they could not spend. Meanwhile, the Florentine banker got hold of all the funds he needed in England, and the Church in Italy safely collected its taxes from England.
There were dangers to this system, especially debtors not repaying their creditors. Kings were especially bad risks in this respect. For example, in the 1340's, Edward III of England failed to repay the Bardi and Peruzzi firms of Florence. This caused their bankruptcies, which sent ripples throughout Western Europe's economy since so much of it was tied up with these two banking houses.
These new business techniques combined to create a feedback cycle that accelerated the growth of Europe's economy. More money was invested in new business ventures. This increased trade, which stimulated more production of goods. That, in turn, created more jobs for people, who had more money to spend, which was safer because of the new business techniques, and so on.
Overall, the system worked quite well, providing money for the expansion of Europe's economy and the growth of its monarchies. Two other important factors should be mentioned. One is the dramatic improvement in mining techniques in Europe at this time. Germany in particular saw a fivefold increase in mining production between 1400 and the early 1500's, which put much more silver into circulation. Secondly, the adoption of Arabic numerals improved accounting techniques so trade and business could run more efficiently. All this increased economic activity and prosperity transformed European values and attitudes toward money and helped create a new economic system called capitalism.
Capitalism
is an economic activity that involves using large sums of money or capital in large-scale commercial, manufacturing, or agricultural activities. It had some medieval roots, but also some non-medieval elements that did not develop until around 1500. We can isolate four main characteristics of capitalism:-
Private ownership of the means of production. This was largely a break from the Middle Ages when guilds controlled the means of production. We have seen how wealthy businessmen started to break the guilds' monopoly by having peasants produce textiles in the countryside. This process continued and accelerated after 1500. Modern communism theoretically has the means of production owned by the workers, represented by the government, which in some ways seems closer to medieval guilds than its main rival, capitalism.
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The law of supply and demand determines prices. Once again, this is a break from the guilds which kept prices artificially fixed no matter how plentiful or scarce its goods were. Communist governments also control prices in a similar way.
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There is a sharp distinction and often little contact between the workers and the capitalist who owns the means of production. Such a distinction existed to a much smaller degree between guild masters and their laborers, and this became a serious problem in the later Middle Ages. Such a gap between capitalists and their workers would widen considerably and become especially bad in the early Industrial Revolution of the 1800's.
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The profit motive. Although medieval guilds and merchants made profits, those profits were largely restricted by the Church's ban against charging more than a "fair price" for goods and services. The emergence of the profit motive by 1500 especially shows the changing attitudes and values in European civilization.
Capitalism helped lay the foundations for the rise of national monarchies in Europe by providing them with the capital to build up strong professional armies and bureaucracies. The states that best adapted to capitalism, in particular the Dutch Republic in the 1600's and England in the 1700's, would emerge as the economic and political powerhouses of Europe and eventually establish dominance of the world in later centuries. European prosperity in the later 1400's also made patronage of the arts possible and helped create one of the greatest cultural movements in history: the Renaissance.
FC75AThe Birth of Banking
One of history’s most important financial innovations was banking, which was closely bound up with credit. The main problem spurring on this development was the need to safely transport large amounts of cash over long distances in order to carry on trade across Europe. Such journeys were particularly beset by two dangers: natural disasters, especially storms, and attacks by pirates or brigands. Luckily, there were two parties with complementary needs that led to a solution. One was the Church, which needed to send its taxes to Italy from all over Europe. The other consisted of Italian merchants who wanted to take money from Italy to destinations across Europe in order to carry on trade.
At some point, a merchant started sending agents to other countries to trade. However, instead of carrying cash, they had letters of credit that they would present to local Church officials in return for cash that they could use there for trading. When they or church officials returned to Italy, they would bring letters of credit worth the amount borrowed from the Church and present them to the Italian merchant who would then give the church the money he owed them. In that way, both parties could transfer large amounts of money across Europe without carrying any cash.
As this practice caught on, there were other people who wanted to transfer funds across Europe without the risks that came from traveling with cash. Therefore, they would deposit cash with a merchant who had branch offices all over Europe, take a letter of credit to their destination, and reclaim their cash from the merchant’s branch office there. Naturally, the merchant would charge a fee for this service. He would also use the money deposited with him for his own business deals, hopefully making a profit on the depositor’s cash before he reclaimed his money. Thus was born our modern institution of banking, an essential ingredient in the capitalist system.
FC76The Italian Renaissance (c.1400-1550)
...everything that surrounds us is our own work, the work of man: all dwellings, all castles, all cities, all the edifices throughout the whole world, which are so numerous and of such quality that they resemble the works of angels rather than men. Ours are the paintings, the sculptures; ours are the trades sciences and philosophical systems.— Gianozzo Manetti, 1452
Introduction: why Italy?
On rare occasion one comes across a period of such dynamic cultural change that it is seen as a major turning point in history. Ancient Greece, and especially Athens, in the fifth century B.C. was such a turning point in the birth of Western Civilization. The Italian Renaissance was another. Both were drawing upon a rich cultural heritage. For the Greeks, it was the ancient Near East and Egypt. For the Italian Renaissance, it was ancient Rome and Greece. Both ages broke the bonds of earlier cultural restraints and unleashed a flurry of innovations that have seldom, if ever, been equaled elsewhere. Both ages produced radically new forms and ideas in a wide range of areas: art, architecture, literature, history, and science. Both ages shined brilliantly and somewhat briefly before falling victim to violent ends, largely of their own making. Yet, despite their relative briefness, both ages passed on a cultural heritage that is an essential part of our own civilization. There were three important factors making Italy the birthplace of the Renaissance.
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Italy's geographic location. Renaissance Italy was drawing upon the civilizations of ancient Greece and especially Rome, upon whose ruins it was literally sitting. During the Middle Ages, Italians had neglected and abused their Roman heritage, even stripping marble and stone from Roman buildings for their own constructions. However, by the late Middle Ages, they were becoming more aware of the Roman civilization surrounding them. Italy was also geographically well placed for contact with the Byzantines and Arabs who had preserved classical culture. Both of these factors combined to make Italy well suited to absorb the Greek and Roman heritage.
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The recent invention of the printing press spread new ideas quickly and accurately. This was especially important now since many Renaissance ideas were not acceptable to the Church. However, with the printing press, these ideas were very hard to suppress.
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Renaissance Italy, like the ancient Greeks, thrived in the urban culture and vibrant economy of the city-state. This helped in two ways. First, the smaller and more intimate environment of the city-state, combined with the freedom of expression found there, allowed a number of geniuses to flourish and feed off one another's creative energies. Unfortunately, the city-state could also be turbulent and violent, as seen in the riot scene that opens Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Secondly, the Italian city-states, especially trading and banking centers such as Venice and Florence, provided the money to patronize the arts. Therefore, the wealth and freedom of expression thriving in the urban culture of Italy both helped give birth to the Renaissance.
Renaissance
literally means rebirth, in this case the rebirth of classical Greek and Roman culture. The traditional view of the Renaissance was that it suddenly emerged as a result of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, which drove Greek scholars to seek refuge in Italy and pass classical culture to Italy. Historians now take this as too simplistic an explanation. For one thing, knowledge of Greek and Roman culture had never completely died out in medieval Europe, being kept alive during the Dark Ages in the monasteries, and during the High Middle Ages in the growing universities. Secondly, a revived interest in classical culture can be traced back to the Italian authors, Dante and Petrarch, in the early 1300's. Thus the Italian Renaissance was more the product of a long evolution rather than a sudden outburst.Still, the term "renaissance" has some validity, since its conscious focus was classical culture. The art and architecture drew heavily upon Greek and Roman forms. Historical and political writers used Greek and Roman examples to make their points. And renaissance science, in particular, relied almost slavishly upon Greek and Roman authorities, which was important, since it set up rival authorities to the Church and allowed Western Civilization to break free from the constraints of medieval thought and give birth to the Scientific Revolution during the Enlightenment.
New patterns of thought
Whether one sees the Renaissance as a period of originality or just drawing upon older cultures, it did generate four ideas that have been and still are central to Western Civilization: secularism, humanism, individualism, and skepticism.
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Secularism comes from the word secular, meaning of this world. Medieval civilization had been largely concerned with religion and the next world. The new economic and political horizons and opportunities that were opening up for Western Europe in the High and Late Middle Ages got people more interested in this world. During the Renaissance people saw this life as worth living for its own sake, not just as preparation for the next world. The art in particular exhibited this secular spirit, showing detailed and accurate scenery, anatomy, and nature, whereas medieval artists generally ignored such things since their paintings were for the glory of God. This is not to say that Renaissance people had lost faith in God. Religion was still the most popular theme for paintings. But during the Renaissance people found other things worth living for besides the afterlife.
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Humanism goes along with secularism in that it makes human beings, not God, the center of attention. The quotation at the top of this reading certainly emphasizes this point. So did Renaissance art, which portrayed the human body as a thing of beauty in its own right, not like some medieval "comic strip" character whose only reason to exist was for the glory of God. Along those lines, Renaissance philosophers saw humans as intelligent creatures capable of reason (and questioning authority) rather than being mindless pawns helplessly manipulated by God. Even the term for Renaissance philosophers, "humanists", shows how the focus of peoples' attention had shifted from Heaven and God to this world and human beings. It also described the group of scholars who drew upon the more secular Greek and Roman civilizations for inspiration.
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Individualism takes humanism a step further by saying that individual humans were capable of great accomplishments. The more communal, group oriented society and mentality of the Middle Ages was giving way to a belief in the individual and his achievements. The importance of this was that it freed remarkable individuals and geniuses, such as Leonardo da Vinci to live up to their potential without being held back by a medieval society that discouraged innovation.
Besides the outstanding achievements of Leonardo, one sees individualism expressed in a wide variety of ways during the Renaissance. Artists started signing their paintings, thus showing individualistic pride in their work. Also, the more communal guild system was being replaced by the more individualistic system of capitalism, which encouraged private enterprise.
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Skepticism, which promoted curiosity and the questioning of authority, was largely an outgrowth of the other three Renaissance ideas. The secular spirit of the age naturally put Renaissance humanists at odds with the Church and its purely religious values and explanations of the universe. Humanism and individualism, with their belief in the ability of human reason, raised challenges to the Church's authority and theories, which in turn led to such things as the Protestant Reformation, the Age of Exploration and the Scientific Revolution, all of which would radically alter how Western Europe views the world and universe. These four new ideas of secularism, humanism, individualism, and skepticism led to innovations in a variety of fields during the Renaissance, the most prominent being literature and learning, art, science, the Age of Exploration, and the Protestant Reformation.
Literature and learning
throughout the Middle Ages were centered on the Church. Consequently, most books were of a religious nature. There were Greek and Roman texts stashed away in the monasteries, but few people paid much attention to them. All that changed during the Renaissance. For one thing, increased wealth and the invention of the printing press created a broader public that could afford an education and printed books. Most of these newly educated people were from the noble and middle classes. Therefore, they wanted a more practical and secular education and books to prepare them for the real world of business and politics.In response to this, new schools were set up to give the sons of nobles and wealthy merchants an education with a broader and more secular curriculum than the Church provided: philosophy, literature, mathematics, history, and politics. Naturally much of the basis for this new curriculum was Greek and Roman culture. Classical authors such as Demosthenes and Cicero were used to teach students how to think, write, and speak clearly. Greek and Roman history were used to teach object lessons in politics. This curriculum provided the skills and knowledge seen as essential for an educated man back then, and served as the basis for school curriculums well into the twentieth century. Only in recent decades has a more technical education largely replaced the curriculum established for us in the Renaissance.
Along the same lines, a more secular literature largely replaced the predominantly religious literature of the Middle Ages. History, as a study of the past (Greek and Roman past in particular) in order to learn lessons for the future, was emerging. So was another emerging new discipline deeply rooted in history: political science. The father of this discipline was Nicolo Machiavelli (1469-1527). His treatise on governing techniques, The Prince, urges the prince to carry on with whatever ruthless means were at his disposal. This serves as a stark contrast to St. Augustine's concept of the "just war."
Another book of a secular nature was Castiglione's The Courtier, which spelled out the ideal education and qualities of a nobleman attending a prince's court. Unlike the usually illiterate and rough mannered medieval noble, Castiglione's courtier should be versed in manners (such as not cleaning one's teeth in public with one's finger). This ideal of the well-rounded "Renaissance Man" hearkens back to the Greek ideal of a well-rounded man and has continued to this day.
Art
is the one field most people associate with the Renaissance since it saw the most radical innovations and breaks with the Middle Ages. Medieval art was religious in tone and for the glory of God. As a result, artists neglected mundane details, thus making the art flat and lifeless. Faces and bodies were cartoon like, having no individual features or anything approaching anatomical detail. Other details such as background, perspective, proportion, and individuality were all virtually unknown.Renaissance art contrasted sharply with medieval art in all these respects. More paintings were on secular themes, especially portraits. And even the religious paintings paid a great deal of attention to glorifying the human form and accomplishments. Starting with Giotto in the early 1300's, Renaissance artists increasingly perfected and used such things as background, perspective, proportion, and individuality. In fact, Leonardo's detail was so good that botanists today can identify the kinds of plants he put into his paintings.
Although painting was especially prominent during the Renaissance, other art forms also flourished. For example, architecture broke somewhat with the medieval Gothic style during the Renaissance. However, it was less innovative and relied more heavily on classical forms, in particular columns, arches, and domes as well as building on a massive scale. Possibly the supreme example of this is the dome of St. Peter's in Rome which was designed by Michelangelo and towers 435 feet from the floor. Music in the Renaissance saw developments that would later blossom into classical music. Instruments were improved and the whole family of violins was developed. Counterpoint (the blending of two melodies) and polyphony (interweaving several melodic lines) also emerged during this period.
Science
saw little advancement, but it was also important for future developments. In particular, classical authorities were discovered who contradicted Aristotle, whose works were accepted by the Church almost as gospel. Finding conflicting authorities forced Renaissance humanists to ask questions that would lead to developing new theories, which in turn would lead to the birth of modern science in the 1600's and 1700's.The Age of Exploration
also showed Renaissance ideas at work. It was secular in its interest in the world. It certainly displayed skepticism by challenging accepted ideas about the world. And the fact that it pitted individual captains against the forces of nature shows it was both humanistic and individualistic.The Protestant Reformation
was one other result of the Italian Renaissance. The spirit of skepticism challenged the authority of the Church, thus opening the way for much more serious challenge later posed by the Protestants. The Protestant Reformation, in turn, would pave the way for new patterns of thought in social, political, economic, and scientific matters.The Italian Renaissance is generally seen as lasting until about 1500, when Italy's political disunity attracted a devastating round of wars and invasions that ended its most innovative cultural period. However, in the process, the invaders took the ideas of the Italian Renaissance back to Northern Europe and sparked what is known as the Northern Renaissance.
FC77An overview of Western Art (c.1400-1950)
Introduction.
The Renaissance (c.1400-1600)
The Baroque
The Rococo (1700s)
However, by latter half of the 1700s, many people were reacting against the cold rationality of the Enlightenment and the frivolous values of the nobles. A new spirit crept into the art, stressing romance over base sensuality and sentimentality over cold reason. Typical of the latter were the paintings by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, showing dreamy looking young women holding fluffy lambs or weeping over their dead pet birds. In reaction to the corrupt values of the old regime there was also more stress given to civic virtue and patriotism, setting the stage for the French Revolution.
Romanticism, Neo-classicism, and Realism (early 1800s)
By contrast, the other school of art, Neo-classicism, created precisely painted images from Greek and Roman myth and history to portray the selfless sacrifices of past heroes in order to inspire present day patriots. Jacques Louis David was especially prominent, doing paintings of such events as the Oath of the Horatii from Roman legend and Leonidas at Thermopylae Pass from Greek history. However, as an apologist for the French Revolution and then for Napoleon, he adapted his style to contemporary events such as the Tennis Court Oath and the death of Marat during the Revolution.
As the century progressed, the two styles each contributed to a third school of art: Realism. Painters such as Gustave Courbet combined the realistic techniques of Neo-classicism with the contemporary themes portrayed by the Romantics. Thus Courbet did paintings of such mundane things as a peasant funeral and a dead trout, topics that critics considered beneath the dignity of portraying on canvas. However, this helped set up the next big movement in painting.
The second great art revolution: Impressionism and Post Impressionism (c.1863-1900)
The Impressionists, such as Monet and Renoir, tried to free themselves from intellectualizing a subject as solid objects such as trees or tables, and then paint each of those objects separately. To this end, they tried to rapidly capture the individual impressions of light in a scene, which together would add up to a picture of that scene, but in a different way from a photograph. Now the emphasis was on the fleeting impressions of light and the emotional impressions they left with the viewer. This technique was especially effective in portraying such things as smoke, rippling water, flags blowing in the breeze, and the splash of colors seen in a bouquet of flowers. Not since the Renaissance had such a revolutionary new approach to art been taken, and the critics and public didn’t like it or accept it for some two decades. But the Impressionists had opened the door to any number of new approaches to painting.
Thus the last decades of the nineteenth century saw a number of new schools of art, sometimes lumped together as the Post Impressionists. On the one hand there was the scientific or geometric approach, epitomized by Paul Cezanne’s attempts to reduce a scene to a collection of basic geometric shapes. Georges Pierre Seurat created whole paintings of tiny colored dots mixed together that would add up to a picture. Paul Gauguin experimented with using solid fields of color rather than shading to create an effect. Another school of art originating in the late 1800s in Germany, Expressionism, focused on portraying emotional experience instead of physical reality. Probably the best known Expressionist painting is Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” (1893).
The early twentieth century (c.1900-1945)
Post Modern art
In recent decades a new term has come into use, postmodern, describing art considered largely contradictory to modern art in its use of such things as collages, objects of consumer or popular culture (e.g., Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup can), words as a central artistic element and various multimedia. . By the late 1970s some critics were even speaking about the “end of painting”, although some artists since the 1980s have returned to representational art, known in its modern incarnation as Figurativism.
FC77AThe Revolution in Renaissance painting
Introduction
Perhaps the most dramatic, or at least widely acclaimed, breakthrough in the Renaissance was in the realm of art, in particular painting. Not only did Renaissance art reflect growing concern with secular subjects, it involved new artistic tools and techniques that more accurately portrayed those subjects. Pre-eminent among those tools was the shift from tempera (egg based) paints painted on wood or as frescoes on walls to oil based paints applied to canvas.
Materials used
Frescoes were wall paintings applied to wet plaster that set into the wall when dry. While this did help preserve the painting, it had several drawbacks. First of all, frescoes dried quickly so an artist had to plan his work thoroughly in advance, since to change any mistakes involved redoing the whole painting. This made frescoes stiff and less spontaneous. Also, the rough surface of a plaster wall made it hard to render details, forcing the artist to use a pointed brush and even at times to stipple the surface dot by dot. To deal with these limitations, an artist would divide the wall into sections, one for each day’s work. He would also do extensive preliminary drawings of the planned painting on the wall.
Tempera was the type of paint used in frescoes, consisting of egg mixed with pigment. This created a light, but somewhat limited range of colors. It dried quickly, which prevented the layering of paints and the subtle shading (known as chiaroscuro) of a painting.
Oil based paints were developed as early as the 1100s and were first widely used in the Low Countries in the early 1400s. Since it dried slowly, oil had three major advantages over tempera. First, it could be layered, which made possible the use of chiaroscuro & sfumato (a technique giving a painting a misty, foggy, or smoky effect). Second, artists could mix colors with oils, giving them a broader and richer palette to work with than ever before. Finally, as evidenced by X-rays of paintings, artists could, and did, change mistakes, thus letting them be more spontaneous in their work.
While oil paints were widely used in the North, they did not reach Italy until about1475. Artists in Venice were the first Italians to use oil enthusiastically, their paintings being distinguished by the rich reds they often used. From Venice, the use of oil based paints spread rapidly across Italy.
Canvas replaced walls as a medium for painting had as dramatic an impact on art as oil replacing tempera. Not having to rely on walls, especially Church walls, for a painting surface, artists could paint smaller portraits and paintings with other themes, opening up wider markets for their talents. Canvas was also more portable, so artists could work in the privacy of their own studios where they could better attract models (especially for nude paintings). These two factors, plus growing middle class patronage, led to a commercial revolution in art and the end of the dominance of the Church, kings, and nobles who previously had the money and walls artists needed. Consequently, they could now pursue a much broader range of topics for paintings than ever before.
New techniques
New techniques in painting also helped transform Renaissance art. The most important of these was linear perspective, which allowed artists to attain three-dimensional effects on a two dimensional surface. Without it, paintings were crowded and limited in the number of people and details that could be represented. Greek and Roman paintings had achieved a high degree of perspective, but their techniques were lost during the Middle Ages. True linear perspective was first attained around 1420 in a remarkable experiment done by Filippo Brunelleschi, the same man who had designed the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence.
Brunelleschi painted Florence’s Baptistery from the perspective of the facing cathedral doorway. He then drilled a hole through the vanishing point of the painting (which faced the Baptistery) and set a mirror in front of it. As someone in the cathedral doorway looked toward the Baptistery through the peephole, Brunelleschi could raise or lower the mirror so the viewer was alternately seeing the Baptistery or the reflection of the painting. Supposedly, his painting and mastery of perspective were so good, viewers could not tell the difference between the real Baptistery and the reflected painting. This dramatic demonstration, plus more secular themes, proper proportion, and attention to details, triggered a virtual revolution, not just in art, but in a whole new way of viewing the world that has become a vital part of our civilization. In the 1600s, this new perspective on the world would help lead to the Scientific Revolution.
FC78The Northern Renaissance (c.1500-1600)
Introduction
There are several reasons why the Renaissance came later to Northern Europe. First, it was further removed from the centers of trade and culture in the Mediterranean. As a result, towns, trade, and the more progressive ideas that tend to come with wealth developed more slowly in the north. Along these lines, the greater influence of feudalism and the Church kept the political, social, and intellectual institutions much more medieval and backward. This in turn provided more resistance to the humanistic ideas developing in Italy.
However, the revival of towns and trade in the North combined with other factors in three ways to bring the Renaissance to Northern Europe. First of all, the urban revival in the North along with the Portuguese and Spanish overseas colonies created the financial resources needed to patronize the arts. Secondly, growing trade in the North, combined with the French invasion of Italy in 1494 and the ability of the printing press to spread ideas quickly and accurately, led to growing contact with the ideas of the Italian Renaissance. Finally, the rise of towns together with the rising national monarchies in France, England, Spain, and Portugal led to the decline of the feudal nobility and medieval Church. This created less resistance to the new ideas from the Renaissance. All these factors came together to produce the Northern Renaissance (c.1500-1600).
The Northern Renaissance should not be seen as a mere copycat of the Italian Renaissance. There were two major differences between the two cultural movements in Italy and the North. First of all, the Church's influence, despite being shaken by recent corruption and scandals, still was strong enough to make the Northern Renaissance more religious in nature. Second, the rising power of the national monarchies made the Northern Renaissance more nationalistic in character.
Reconciling religion and the Renaissance
The more intense religious feelings prevailing in Northern Europe posed a difficult question: could a humanist education based on classical culture be reconciled with Christianity? The answer humanists came up with was yes. This was largely thanks to the greatest humanist of the age: Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536). Called the "Prince of Humanists" and the "scholar of Europe", Erasmus dominated Northern Europe's culture in a way few, if any, other scholars have before or since his time. So great was his reputation that kings and princes from all over Europe competed for his services at their courts. Erasmus popularized classical civilization with his Adages, a collection of ancient proverbs with his own commentaries. His Praise of Folly satirized the follies and vices of the day, in particular those of the Church, while further popularizing humanism. Erasmus was still a pious Christian who pushed the idea that it was one's inner spirit, not outward shows of piety through empty rituals, that really mattered. However, he saw no contradictions between Christianity and ancient cultures. He underscored this attitude by referring to the ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates, as "Saint Socrates".
Other northern humanists picked up this banner. In England, Thomas More brilliantly defended studying classical Greek and Roman culture by saying their knowledge and the study of the natural world could serve as a ladder to the study of the supernatural. Besides, he pointed out, even if theology were the sole aim of one's education, how could one truly know the scriptures without knowing Greek and Hebrew, their original languages? It was in this spirit that the French humanist, Lefebvre d'Etaples, laid five different Hebrew versions of the Book of Psalms side by side in order to get a better translation than the one in the Latin Vulgate Bible. Even in Spain, the most staunchly Christian country in Europe, Cardinal Ximenes, who served as virtual prime minister for Ferdinand and Isabella, set up a university at Alcala with a very humanist curriculum. Its purpose was to use humanism to provide better understanding of Christianity. The major accomplishment of Erasmus and the Northern humanists was that they successfully defended the study of the classics and a more secular education as a ladder to better understanding of Christianity. This in turn paved the way for using a secular education for more secular purposes and that would revolutionize Western Civilization.
Art also reflected the more religious nature of the Northern Renaissance. Secular and even mythological themes would appear, but with less frequency then in Italy. This intense religious passion is especially reflected in the work of the Spanish artist, El Greco. Technically, art in the North lagged behind Italy throughout the 1400's, especially in its use of perspective and proportion. The key turning point came when the German artist, Albrecht Durer, traveled to Italy in 1494 to study its art. Durer was heavily influenced by the Italians and the ancient writer, Vitruvius, in their efforts to find the mathematical proportions for portraying the perfect figure. Among other things, this shows a growing fusion of art and science that anticipated the scientific revolution that would sweep Europe two centuries later. Other northern artists followed Durer, and from this time one sees a more realistic art in the North, which approached the standards of the Italian artists.
The emerging national cultures in the Northern Renaissance
The other major feature of the Northern Renaissance was the national character of the cultures that were evolving along with their respective nation-states in Europe. The literature of the age especially showed this. For one thing, it tended to be written in the vernacular and reflected its respective national cultures. In Spain the great literary genius was Cervantes, whose Don Quixote showed the changing values of the age by satirizing the medieval values of the nobility. Probably the greatest literary genius of the age was William Shakespeare, whose work reflects heavy influence from the Italian Renaissance. Many of his plays have Greek and Roman themes, sometimes copying the plot lines from classical plays (e.g.-- Comedy of Errors) or take place in Italy (e.g.-- Romeo and Juliet). However, many of Shakespeare's other plays take place in England and reflect the fact that the various nations in Northern Europe were defining their own unique cultures apart from Italian and classical influence.
Results of the Northern Renaissance
Ironically, one could say the most important result of the Northern Renaissance was a religious revolution. This was the result of a several factors: anger at the church's corruption, the rising power of kings at the expense of the popes, and the fusion of Renaissance ideas from Italy with the still intense religious fervor and emerging national cultures of the North. The dynamic combination of these factors would lead to the Protestant Reformation that, in turn, would branch off in three lines of development.
First, the Protestant Reformation would open the way for new ideas about money and the middle class, and that would lead to the triumph of capitalism in Northern Europe. Secondly, the Protestant Reformation would play a vital role by shattering the Church's monopoly on religious truth, breaking its iron grip on scientific thinking, and paving the way for the Scientific Revolution of the late 1600's and 1700's.
Third, the growing power of kings in Northern Europe, combined with Renaissance learning and local anger at Church abuses, helped pave the way for more secular theories about the state. The Reformation, by challenging the power of the Church, would also help kings in their claims to greater sovereignty through the theory of Divine Right of Kings. Ironically, the Reformation would also provide the theoretical backing for the democratic revolutions that would eventually overthrow the very monarchies that tried to use it against the Church in the first place.
FC79The rise of the nation state during the Renaissance
Just as the turmoil of the Later Middle Ages had cleared the way for sweeping economic, cultural, and technological changes in Western Europe, it likewise produced significant political changes that led to the emergence of a new type of state in Western Europe: the nation state. It did this along five lines of development, four of them corresponding to various nation-states in Europe and the other having to do with the overall decline of the Church and nobles which helped lead to the revival of towns and middle class allied to the kings.
The later 1400's saw kings in Western Europe picking up the pieces left by the turmoil of the last century in order to build stronger states. However, this process of unification, or in some cases reunification, involved more violence and warfare. In England, the aftermath of the Hundred Years War saw a period of civil strife known as the Wars of the Roses (1455-85) over control of the throne. In the end, Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII, triumphed and restored order with such new government institutions as the Star Chamber.
France, badly hurt by the Hundred Years War, gradually reunified as the Valois kings regained control of Picardy (1477), Anjou (1481), and Brittany (1491). The greatest challenge to the French kings came from the powerful and aggressive Charles the Bold of Burgundy. Charles controlled both Burgundy and the Low Countries (Flanders and the Netherlands) and threatened to become a major power in his own right until he met disaster at the hands of the Swiss pikemen at the Battle of Nancy (1477). With this potent threat removed and Burgundy also back under French control, a strong unified French state was emerging by 1500 after some 150 years of conflict.
A unified Spain also was born by 1500. The key event here was the marriage in 1469 of Isabella of Castile to Ferdinand of Aragon, which united most of Spain under their joint rule. (However, the two states continued to function largely as separate administrative entities for generations to come.) The final piece of the puzzle was put into place when the last of the Spanish Muslim states, Granada, was conquered in 1492. Among other things, this freed the new Spanish state to fund the voyage of a Genoese captain named Christopher Columbus who was looking for new routes to the spices of the East.
Even Germany, fragmented after centuries of feudal strife and the emperors' struggle with the Papacy, saw its fortunes seem to revive with the rise of the Hapsburg Dynasty that controlled the imperial throne at this time. This family, through a number of astute marriage alliances, would come to control Austria, the Low Countries, Hungary, and Spain along with its Italian possessions and American colonies. In fact, as impressive as this empire looked, it worked to Germany's disadvantage since it would trigger a number of wars to crush the Hapsburg "superpower"-- wars that would use Germany as a battleground and ruin it. Therefore, by 1500, nation states were evolving, having their own strengths and problems.
Strengths of the new nation-states consisted of four main pillars of support: money, which in turn enabled kings to pay for professional bureaucracies and mercenary armies, and control of the Church. This mixture of medieval and modern elements underscores the transition of Europe from the medieval to modern era.
Finances
The old medieval sources of revenue, such as feudal dues and income from royal lands and monopolies, were totally inadequate for the greater burdens, which the new types of government and army placed on Renaissance kings. Borrowing money against future tax revenues was a dead end that just got kings into deeper trouble, although that was commonly the practice. However, more regular taxes had to be collected. In France, the "extraordinary" taxes the townsmen had granted the crown to drive out the English in the Hundred Years War were collected annually and became a permanent tax, the taille. In Spain, the crown increased sales taxes to boost revenues. In England, the king was unable to get a high permanent tax granted to him by Parliament. He did increase his control over revenues for such things as customs on wool and cloth. Luckily, England was an island and in less need of a large expensive army and bureaucracy than states on the continent. Overall, Renaissance kings by 1500 were still faced with serious financial shortcomings. However, no one else in their realms possessed the resources to effectively challenge them. Along with their bureaucracies and armies, their finances presented a picture of the European state in transition from the medieval to the modern era.
Bureaucracies
consisted mainly of members of the middle class with the education and experience needed to run the government. Since kings were usually desperate for money, they resorted to selling government offices, a practice known as venality of office. This system had its good and bad points. The main good points were that it provided the king with some much needed cash and officials who showed more efficiency and loyalty to their king than the old feudal nobility had.The main drawback was that such a system bred corruption, since money, not ability, was often the key to gaining office. Bureaucrats tended to assume their own consciousness as a class, maintaining a common silence to thwart any attempts to weed out corruption. They could often successfully resist or slow down reforms or other policies they did not like. But, for all the problems the new bureaucracy created, it was still more efficient than the old feudal system and gave kings a far greater degree of control over their states.
The new warfare
Renaissance armies told a similar story, being somewhat unruly but still better than their feudal predecessors. The ranks were now filled with mercenaries who fought until the king's money ran out. This gave the king much longer campaigning seasons than the forty days that feudal vassals typically owed. But it could still present some serious, and, at times, embarrassing problems. As soon as the king ran out of money, such armies would often desert or refuse to fight any longer. Also, since they were not usually natives of the state they were fighting for, they often had no qualms about plundering the people they were supposedly defending. Despite these drawbacks, Renaissance armies gave kings in Western Europe much tighter control over their states, largely because they were so expensive that no one but kings could afford to maintain them.
Part of that expense lay in the new type of warfare emerging by 1500. Although heavily armored knights were still prominent, their role was being reduced by two new ways of fighting, one medieval and one modern. One was massed formations of pikemen, reminiscent of the old Greek and Macedonian phalanxes, who formed the core of the Renaissance army. Until the early 1500's, the Swiss were reputedly Europe's best pikemen, and every prince wanted Swiss mercenaries in his army, no matter what the cost. In the 1500's, German pikemen, known as landsknechte, and Spanish pikemen would rival the Swiss in their reputations for ferocity on the battlefield.
The other new and expensive element emerging in the new warfare was gunpowder. Hanging on the flanks of each pike square were men wielding primitive muskets. Such guns were heavy, hard to load, and even harder to aim accurately. They also presented the danger of blowing up in their users' faces. Still, they could be very deadly when fired in massed volleys, having a range of up to 100 meters. Gradual but constant improvements, such as the matchlock that freed both hands for aiming, made them increasingly effective throughout the 1400's and 1500's. As a result, the number of musketeers, and their cost, gradually climbed throughout this period. The combination of guns' firepower with the solid pike formations proved to be the most potent military innovation of the Renaissance. It ruled Europe's battlefields until the later 1600's when better muskets and the bayonet phased out the pikeman for good.
Artillery was another important, but expensive, element in the Renaissance prince's army. Smaller and more mobile cannons were made for use in pitched battles as well as sieges. There was no standardization in the Renaissance artillery corps, each cannon being made by an independent contractor. The French, with Europe's best artillery, had 17 separate gauges of artillery requiring 17 different sizes of shot. The Hapsburg emperor, Charles V, had 50 different gauges. Obviously, this could create untold confusion in the heat of battle.
The advent of artillery made the tall thin walls of medieval castles obsolete, since they were so easily breached by cannons' firepower. However, this did not make fortifications obsolete. By the early 1500's, a new style of fortifications, the trace Italienne, was coming into use and slowing down, if not stopping artillery. These new fortifications were much thicker and more elaborate than their medieval predecessors, having multiple sets of walls, moats, and bastions set at different angles to one another to provide flanking fire from various directions against any enemy assaults. As with muskets and artillery, these new forts were so expensive that only kings could afford them or, more properly, afford to go into debt to bankers to buy them. And, by the same token, this increased the kings' power and put any rebellious nobles more at the kings' mercy.
This new type of warfare and army showed the beginnings of some aspects we associate with modern warfare. For one thing, it was expensive because of the size of its armies and the new technology. It was also very destructive to the inhabitants who were unlucky enough to be in the path of these plundering mercenaries and their hordes of camp followers. The seventeenth century general, Albrecht von Wallenstein, once said he could better support an army of 50,00 than one of 20,000 since it could more effectively plunder the countryside. This says a lot about supplying such armies and its effect on military strategy: fight in the enemy's territory and make him pay for the war. Finally, the new warfare was much bloodier than the medieval warfare that preceded it. We find nobles complaining because any low born peasant with a small amount of training and a gun could blow them out of the saddle. Even more significantly, the humanists condemned warfare for its bloodiness, no matter to what class. Throughout the modern era, that outcry has slowly gained force with the growing destructiveness of warfare.
The Church
was still the largest single landholder in Western Europe, making it mandatory for kings to control this vital source of revenue and propaganda. Luckily for the kings, the Church's power and prestige were seriously weakened by the popular discontent and corruption that climaxed with the Great Schism. In France, kings had gained the loyalty of the local clergy against the Italian higher clergy appointed by the popes and won their struggle to rule the French clergy in the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges in 1438. This recognized the king's claim to the Gallican Liberties, transferring the direct loyalty of the French clergy from the pope to their king.Elsewhere, the story was similar. In England, during the Avignon Papacy of the 1300's, kings had limited the right of foreign clergy to visit England and also restricted English clergy in their right to appeal to foreign (i.e., papal) courts. In Spain, the crown came to dominate the Church and, with it, the Inquisition. In all these countries, levying Church taxes was subject to the approval of the kings, who often made a deal to get a percentage of the taxes for themselves.
In addition to the structure of the emerging nation-state, peoples' attitudes toward that state were also in transition from a very personal feudal outlook to a broader concept of a nation. There was a growing awareness among various peoples that there were factors, such as language and culture, making them unique as nations. But the form of nationalism we are familiar with was still several centuries away. During this transitional period, the loyalties of people focused largely on the person of a king rather than on the nation's people as a whole.
Limits to the Renaissance state's power
We should keep in mind that, while the Renaissance state was a vast improvement over the feudal anarchy of the Middle Ages, it was still rudimentary and highly inefficient when compared to the modern state. There were three main limitations to state building at this time.
First of all, the decentralized chaos of the Dark Ages had given rise to a multitude of local institutions and customs, rights, and inherited titles and offices. France alone had some 300 local legal systems dating back to a time when there was essentially no central government, while there were 700 in the Netherlands. The force of tradition with centuries of history to back it up made it well nigh impossible for kings to do away with these offices, customs, and privileges. A good example of this were the parlements, local French courts which could modify the king's laws, delay enforcing them, or even refuse to enforce them if they thought those laws interfered with long established local customs and traditions. As a result, kings were forced either to work around the old offices by creating new parallel offices that would very gradually take over their functions, or incorporate the old offices into the new state apparatus. What this meant was that any regularization of government institutions and practices on a national scale was still centuries away.
A second problem was the continued existence and aspirations of the nobles. While we have seen them suffering from a prolonged decline since the High Middle Ages, they remained somewhat resilient as a class. One big reason for this was that they were still seen as the class to belong to, and many middle class merchants and bankers were eager to buy noble titles and lands so they could carry on like the nobles of old. A prime example of this was the Fuggers of Augsburg, Germany, the richest banking family in Europe, who bought noble titles and lands and passed into idle noble obscurity. Aiding this process were the kings who were always in need of cash and willing to sell noble titles and offices to anyone with the money. As a result, fresh blood kept infusing the nobility with new life. Unfortunately, these nobles, of whatever origin, could still be quite troublesome and lead revolts against their rulers, as happened in the Netherlands (1566), England (1569), and France (1582).
A third problem was the kings' inability or unwillingness to stay out of debt and pay their armies and bureaucrats. This encouraged corruption in the government and plundering and desertion by the mercenaries, which further reduced the kings' revenues and ability to pay their bills, leading to more loans at high rates of interest, and so on. Finally, although kings could control their national churches, they could not control the medieval mentality still linking politics and religion and causing disastrous wars over religious issues. This especially became a problem after 1560 in the repeated religious wars between Protestants and Catholics.
The "New Diplomacy"
Despite these problems, a new and more dynamic type of nation state was emerging by 1500. And once kings had affairs within their own borders reasonably under control, they started extending their involvement in diplomacy outside of their states. By 1500, we see Western Europe starting to function as an integrated political system, whereby one state's acts affected all the other states and triggered appropriate reactions. This new interdependence and sensitivity to other states' plans and actions sparked the beginnings of modern diplomacy. Two factors aided this process of outward expansion, and, once again, they were a mixture of medieval and modern forces.
Among the older methods still used to consolidate and improve a prince's position, the most notable was the marriage alliance. Rulers still thought of their states as their property. That property could be passed on to their sons, and it could be added to by marrying into another ruling family and assuming all or part of that family's property (i.e., state) as part of the deal. A number of such marriages took place in this period. Henry VII of England married Elizabeth of York, the heiress of his chief rival to the throne, a union that gave him undisputed claim to the crown. Charles VIII of France married Anne of Brittany and tied that region much more closely to the French king's interests.
Certainly the most spectacular example of dynastic empire building through marriage was the Hapsburg Empire, which controlled most of Western Europe in the first half of the 1500's. In 1469, Ferdinand of Aragon married Isabella of Castile, thus uniting Spain under one house, although the two governments functioned separately for some time. Meanwhile, the Hapsburg emperor, Maximillian, had wed Mary, duchess of Burgundy, and added Burgundy and the Low Countries (Flanders and Holland) to his family lands in Austria and the Holy Roman Empire. Finally, their son, Philip, married Ferdinand and Isabella's daughter, Joanna, to seal an alliance in reaction against the French invasion of Italy in 1494. The product of that union, Charles V (Charles I of Spain), inherited most of Western Europe: Germany, Austria, the Low Countries, most of Italy, and Spain with its American holdings. As the contemporary saying put it: "Others make war, but you, happy Austria, make marriages."
Marriage alliances alone were not enough to keep one diplomatically safe. For one thing, they created nearly as many problems as they solved. Since the network of marriage alliances was so extensive and interlocking there were almost always numerous claimants for vacant thrones whenever a ruler died childless. Such a situation often triggered wars, despite the original intention of the marriage alliance to stop such wars. Second, the Renaissance, with its increased political interdependence between states, created shifting alliances to maintain or improve their positions. This required a ruler to keep a much closer eye on what other states were doing so that they could not surprise him by switching alliances or suddenly declaring war. This led to permanent resident ambassadors, forerunners or our own modern diplomats.
Like so many other innovations, the idea of keeping permanent ambassadors at other rulers' courts originated in Italy. Previously, negotiations between states involved sending special ambassadors only for special occasions, such as a treaty of alliance or celebrating a dynastic marriage. By 1450, a delicate balance of power had evolved in Italy between its five main states: Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papal States, and Naples. The weakest of these states, Florence, felt nervous about its more powerful neighbors and wanted to maintain the balance of power to keep any one of them from threatening its own security. Therefore, it started maintaining permanent resident ambassadors at the other states' courts.
During the Renaissance, these officials were mainly of lower noble and middle class origin. They were expected to maintain themselves in the high style of their home court while being engaged in information gathering, which amounted to little more than spying. They had to send weekly letters home, often in code, repeating all pertinent facts, rumors, conversations, and character descriptions they could come up with. All this was done at their own expense, which many of them could not afford. We have letters from such men, pleading with their home governments not to force them to serve. Usually such pleas were to no avail.
There was no diplomatic immunity then, and the resident ambassadors suffered accordingly. Foreign courts saw them as spies and treated them as such, subjecting them to hostile treatment, insults, surveillance, imprisonment, and even torture. To add insult to injury, the home government often did not believe the letters these men sent home and kept spies at the court to watch their own diplomats. When important negotiations were to take place, the home government still appointed special ambassadors of high noble status to do the job.
In 1494, the French king Charles VIII invaded Italy. This prompted the intervention and fateful marriage alliance of Spain and the Holy Roman emperor, Maximillian, mentioned above. It also touched off a series of wars that devastated Italy and ended its leadership in European affairs. All these wars and shifting alliances caused the great rulers of Europe to start maintaining permanent ambassadors at each other’s courts. Over the years, as resident ambassadors became a permanent fixture of diplomacy in Europe and the world, their status and treatment would improve. Florence's policy of maintaining a stable balance of power would also spread northward and become a cornerstone of European diplomacy in the centuries to come.
The Age of ExplorationUnit 12: The Age of Exploration (c.1400-1900)
FC80Geopolitical factors in the rise of Europe
Introduction
The four centuries following 1500 would see the meteoric rise of Western Europe from a cultural backwater to the first culture to dominate the planet. Given Western Europe's tiny size, the question arises: what singled it out as the civilization to rise to global dominance? A century ago, Europeans would attribute their dominance to the moral and religious superiority of European and Christian culture. However, life and history are not quite so simple. Rather, there was a unique combination of forces that converged at the right time and place to make European civilization the culture that would largely define the modern world, especially in terms of its technology and political ideologies.
On the surface, other civilizations seemed more likely to predominate, having larger populations, strongly centralized governments, wealth, and technologies comparable to, if not greater than, Western Europe's. For example, Ming China had a population two to three times that of Western Europe. Traditionally, Chinese technology had been among the most innovative in the world, heavily influencing Europe itself with such inventions as gunpowder, the clock, paper, and the compass. China's government was strongly centralized and autocratic, being run by what was probably the best civil service in the world at that time.
The other major civilizations in the world, such as the Ottoman Turks, Mughal India, Tokugawa Japan, Muscovite Russia, and the Incan and Aztec Empires in the Western Hemisphere, told a similar story of being populous, wealthy (except for Russia), and highly centralized under strong autocratic rulers. In fact, it was Western Europe's lack of autocratic rulers, such as these other cultures had, which would be the key to its leaping ahead of the pack. For, while the absolute rulers outside of Europe tended to exploit and suppress their middle class and, in the process, stifle inventiveness and initiative, the spirit of free enterprise and inventiveness had much more free rein in Western Europe. That freedom created a powerful dynamic that allowed Europeans to forge ahead with new ideas, business techniques, and technologies that would shape the modern world. And if freedom was the key to Europe's success, geography was much of its underlying basis.
Europe's geography and its effects
There were two main geographic factors that would help lead to Western Europe's later dominance. First of all, Western Europe was broken up by mountains, forests, and bodies of water: the Alps and Pyrenees cutting Italy, Spain, and Portugal off from northern Europe; the English Channel cutting England off from the continent; and the Baltic Sea separating Scandinavia from the rest of Europe in the south. This broke Western Europe into a large number of independent states that no one ruler had the power and resources to conquer and hold. Second, Western Europe had a wide diversity of climates, resources, and waterways which promoted a large number of separate economies, but which were linked together for trade by the extensive coastlines and river systems covering the region. Therefore, just as no one power could control all of Europe politically, no one power could monopolize one vital aspect of its economy. Thus Europe was characterized by what we call political and economic pluralism, which also reinforced each other.
Political and economic pluralism also combined to promote the rise of a prosperous and innovative middle class that could create and spread new ideas, business techniques, and technology if the local rulers would allow it. If they did not allow it, there was always the option of moving to another state that did give them the freedom to pursue their interests. The results of such moves, such as when the French Protestant Huguenots left France en masse to avoid Louis XIV's religious persecution in 1685, were to deprive the economies of the persecuting nations of some of their wealthiest and most innovative people while boosting the economies of the countries that took these immigrants in. As a result, the balance of power would constantly shift away from powerful and repressive states and in favor of the more progressive and free thinking ones, thus reinforcing political pluralism in Western Europe.
The rise of a free middle class had two other important effects. First of all, in conjunction with Western Europe's political pluralism, it could spread new technology (e.g., the printing press) and ideas (e.g., the Reformation). Second, in conjunction with Western Europe's economic pluralism, the middle class was able to create a freer capitalist economy and promote a competitive spirit that encouraged new technologies and generated profits for those with the drive and imagination to invent and sell them.
These two factors combined to generate even more rapid technological development, especially in the realm of military inventions. There were three main areas of military technology developed. First of all there was the new gunpowder technology which, when combined with the Roman drill and march recently rediscovered and revived during the Renaissance, created the most powerful and efficient armies in the world by the late 1600's. The defensive response to gunpowder gave Europe the second military factor: stronger and more sophisticated fortresses to resist artillery. These fortresses tied invading armies down to prolonged and tedious sieges that stopped, or at least drastically slowed, the progress of invading armies. One side effect of this was that it fed back into and further reinforced Western Europe's political pluralism. The third military innovation (or more properly, application of peaceful technology to military purposes) was the development of large bulky ships to withstand long voyages over the rough waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Such ships also served as excellent gun platforms, thus making European navies the most deadly on the planet.
These three factors converged to help Western Europe establish large overseas colonial empires which were conquered by Europe's small but well armed and disciplined armies and navies and held under control by powerful European fortresses. As time and Western Europe's technology progressed, European armies would show an amazing ability to defeat non-European armies many times their size with astounding regularity, each time increasing and strengthening their hold on their overseas colonies.
Europe's large colonial empires brought an influx of money and resources into Europe. This fed back into Europe's economic and political pluralism, especially after 1600 when smaller states such as England and the Dutch Republic were taking their share of overseas trade and colonies, thus starting the cycle all over again. These colonial empires also made Western Europe the center of a world economy, providing it with the money and resources needed for the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700's. It is no accident that the Industrial Revolution started in Great Britain, which also happened to be the foremost colonial power of its day.
Thanks to this cycle, Europe and European derived cultures (e.g., the United States, Canada, and Australia) were able to control 85% of the globe by 1900. Since then, Europe has lost its colonial empire, thanks primarily to two highly destructive world wars, but not before it could spread its ideas and technology across the globe where they have taken firm root.
FC81Early voyages of Exploration (c.1400-1550)
Introduction
In 1400 A.D. Europeans probably knew less of the globe than they had during the Pax Romana. Outside of Europe and Mediterranean, little was known, with rumor and imagination filling the gaps. Pictures of bizarre looking people with umbrella feet, faces in their stomachs, and dogs' heads illustrated books about lands to the East. There was the legendary Christian king, Prester John with an army of a million men and a mirror that would show him any place in his realm whom Christians hoped to ally with against the Muslims.
Europeans also had many misconceptions about the planet outside their home waters. They had no real concept of the size or shape of Africa or Asia. Because of a passage in the Bible, they thought the world was seven-eighths land and that there was a great southern continent that connected to Africa, making any voyages around Africa to India impossible since the Indian Ocean was an inland. They had no idea at all of the existence of the Americas, Australia, or Antarctica. They also vastly underestimated the size of the earth by some 5-10,000 miles. However, such a miscalculation gave explorers like Columbus and Magellan the confidence to undertake voyages to the Far East since they should be much shorter and easier than they turned out to be.
Factors favoring Europe
However, about this time, European explorers started to lead the way in global exploration, timidly hugging the coasts at first, but gradually getting bolder and striking out across the open seas. There were three main factors that led to Europeans opening up a whole new world at this time.
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The rise of towns and trade along with the Crusades in the centuries preceding the age of exploration caused important changes in Europeans' mental outlook that would give them the incentive and confidence to launch voyages of exploration in three ways. First, they stimulated a desire for Far Eastern luxuries. Second, they exposed Europeans to new cultures, peoples and lands. Their interest in the outside world was further stimulated by the travels of Marco Polo in the late 1200's.
Finally, towns and the money they generated helped lead to the Renaissance that changed Europeans' view of themselves and the world. There was an increasing emphasis on secular topics, including geography. Skepticism encouraged people to challenge older geographic notions. Humanism and individualism, gave captains the confidence in their own individual abilities to dare to cross the oceans with the tiny ships and primitive navigational instruments at their disposal.
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Medieval religious fervor also played its part. While captains such as Columbus, da Gama, and Magellan had to rely on their own skills as leaders and navigators, they also had an implicit faith in God's will and guidance in their missions. In addition, they felt it was their duty to convert to Christianity any new peoples they met. Once again we see Renaissance Europe caught in the transition between the older medieval values and the new secular ones. Together they created a dynamic attitude that sent Europeans out on a quest to claim the planet as their own.
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Europe’s geographic position also drove it to find new routes to Asia in three ways. First of all, Europe's geographic position at the extreme western end of the trade routes with the East allowed numerous middlemen each to take his cut and raise the cost of the precious silks and spices before passing them on to still another middleman. Those trade routes were long, dangerous, and quite fragile. It would take just one strong hostile power to establish itself along these routes in order to disrupt the flow of trade or raise the prices exorbitantly. For Europeans, that power was the Ottoman Empire. The fall of the Byzantine Empire and the earlier fall of the crusader states had given the Muslims a larger share of the trade headed for Europe. Thus Europe's disadvantageous geographic position provided an incentive to find another way to the Far East.
However, Europe was also in a good position for discovering new routes to Asia. It was certainly in as good a position as the Muslim emirates on the coast of North Africa for exploring the Atlantic coast of Africa. And when Spain gained control of both sides of the straits of Gibraltar, it was in a commanding position to restrict any traffic passing in and out of the Western Mediterranean. Europe was also well placed for exploration across the Atlantic Ocean.
Finally, ships and navigation technology had seen some dramatic leaps forward. The most striking of these was the compass, which had originated in China around 200 B.C. This allowed sailors to sail with much greater certainty that they were sailing in the right direction. Instruments such as the quadrant, crosstaff, and astrolabe allowed them to calculate latitude by measuring the elevation of the sun and North Star, although the rocking of ships at sea often made measurements taken with these instruments highly inaccurate. Columbus, one of the best navigators of his day, took readings in the Caribbean that corresponded to those of Wilmington, North Carolina, 1100 miles to the north! As a result of such imperfect measurements, sailing directions might be so vague as to read: "Sail south until your butter melts. Then turn west." Compounding this was the lack of a way to measure longitude (distance from east to west) until the 1700's with the invention of the chronometer.
Maps also left a lot to be desired. A medieval map of the world, showing Jerusalem in the center and Paradise to the Far East, gives an insight into the medieval worldview, but little useful geographic information. By 1400, there were fairly decent coastal maps of Europe and the Mediterranean, known as portolan charts. However, these were of no use beyond Europe, and larger scale global projections would not come along until the 1500's. As a result, explorers relied heavily on sailors' lore: reading the color of the water and skies or the type of vegetation and sea birds typical of an area. However, since each state jealously guarded geographic information so it could keep a monopoly on the luxury trade, even this information had limited circulation.
Advances in ship design involved a choice between northern Atlantic and southern Mediterranean styles. For hulls, shipwrights had a choice between the Mediterranean carvel built design , where the planks were cut with saws and fit end to end, or northern clinker built designs, where the planks were cut with an axe or adze and overlapped. Clinker-built hulls were sturdy and watertight, but limited in size to the length of one plank, about 100 feet. As a result, the southern carvel built hulls were favored, although they were built in the bulkier and sturdier style of the northern ships to withstand the rough Atlantic seas. One other advance was the stern rudder, which sat behind the ship, not to the side. Unlike the older side steering oars which had a tendency to come out of the water as the ship rocked, making it hard to steer the ship, he stern rudder stayed in the water.
There were two basic sail designs: the southern triangular, or lateen, (i.e., Latin) sail and the northern square sail. The lateen sail allowed closer tacking into an adverse wind, but needed a larger crew to handle it. By contrast, the northern square sail was better for tailwinds and used a smaller crew. The limited cargo space and the long voyages involved required as few mouths as possible to feed, and this favored the square design for the main sail, but usually with a smaller lateen sail astern (in the rear) to fine tune a ship's direction.
The resulting ship, the carrack, was fusion of northern and southern styles. It was carvel built for greater size but with a bulkier northern hull design to withstand rough seas. Its main sail was a northern square sail, but it also used smaller lateen sails for tacking into the wind.
Living conditions aboard such ships, especially on long voyages, was appalling. Ships constantly leaked and were crawling with rats, lice, and other creatures. They were also filthy, with little or no sanitation facilities. Without refrigeration, food and water spoiled quickly and horribly. Disease was rampant, especially scurvy, caused by a vitamin C deficiency. A good voyage between Portugal and India would claim the lives of twenty per cent of the crewmen from scurvy alone. It should come as no surprise then that ships' crews were often drawn from the dregs of society and required a strong and often brutal, hand to keep them in line.
Portugal and Spain led the way in early exploration for two main reasons. First, they were the earliest European recipients of Arab math, astronomy, and geographic knowledge based on the works of the second century A.D. geographer, Ptolemy. Second, their position on the southwest corner of Europe was excellent for exploring southward around Africa and westward toward South America.
Portugal and the East (c.1400-1498)
Portugal started serious exploration in the early 1400's, hoping to find both the legendary Prester John as an ally against the Muslims and the source of gold that the Arabs were getting from overland routes through the Sahara. At first, they did not plan to sail around Africa, believing it connected with a great southern continent. The guiding spirit for these voyages was Prince Henry the Navigator whose headquarters at Sagres on the north coast of Africa attracted some of the best geographers, cartographers and pilots of the day. Henry never went on any of his expeditions, but he was their heart and soul.
The exploration of Africa offered several physical and psychological obstacles. For one thing, there were various superstitions, such as boiling seas as one approached the equator, monsters, and Cape Bojador, which many thought was the Gates of Hell. Also, since the North Star, the sailors' main navigational guide, would disappear south of the Equator, sailors were reluctant to cross that line.
Therefore, early expeditions would explore a few miles of coast and then scurry back to Sagres. This slowed progress, especially around Cape Bojador, where some fifteen voyages turned back before one expedition in 1434 finally braved its passage without being swallowed up. In the 1440's, the Portuguese found some, but not enough, gold and started engaging in the slave trade, which would disrupt African cultures for centuries. In 1445, they reached the part of the African coast that turns eastward for a while. This raised hopes they could circumnavigate Africa to reach India, a hope that remained even when they found the coast turning south again.
In 1460, Prince Henry died, and the expeditions slowed down for the next 20 years. However, French and English interest in a route around Africa spurred renewed activity on Portugal's part. By now, Portuguese captains were taking larger and bolder strides down the coast. One captain, Diego Cao, explored some 1500 miles of coastline. With each such stride, Portuguese confidence grew that Africa could be circumnavigated. Portugal even sent a spy, Pero de Covilha, on the overland route through Arab lands to the Indies in order to scout the best places for trade when Portuguese ships finally arrived.
The big breakthrough came in 1487, when Bartholomew Dias was blown by a storm around the southern tip of Africa (which he called the Cape of Storms, but the Portuguese king renamed the Cape of Good Hope). When Dias relocated the coast, it was to his west, meaning he had rounded the tip of Africa. However, his men, frightened by rumors of monsters in the waters ahead, forced him to turn back. Soon after this, the Spanish, afraid the Portuguese would claim the riches of the East for themselves, backed Columbus' voyage that discovered and claimed the Americas for Spain. This in turn spurred Portuguese efforts to find a route to Asia before Spain did. However, Portugal's king died, and the transition to a new king meant it was ten years before the Portuguese could send Vasco da Gama with four ships to sail to India. Swinging west to pick up westerly winds, da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope in three months, losing one ship in the process. Heading up the coast, the Portuguese encountered Arab surprise and hostility against European ships in their waters. Da Gama found an Indian pilot who led the Portuguese flotilla across the Indian Ocean to India in 1498.
The hostility of the Arab traders who dominated trade with India and the unwillingness of the Indians to trade for European goods which they saw as inferior made getting spices quite difficult. However, through some shrewd trading, da Gama managed to get one shipload of spices and then headed home in August 1498. It took over a year, until September 1499, to get back to Portugal, but he had proven that Africa could be circumnavigated and India could be reached by sea. Despite its heavy cost (two of four ships and 126 out of 170 men) Da Gama's voyage opened up new vistas of trade and knowledge to Europeans.
Subsequent Portuguese voyages to the East reached the fabled Spice Islands (Moluccas) in 1513. In that same year, the Portuguese explorer, Serrao, reached the Pacific at its western end while the Spanish explorer, Balboa, was discovering it from its eastern end. Also in 1513, the Portuguese reached China, the first Europeans to do so in 150 years. They won exclusive trade with China, which had little interest in European goods. However, China was interested in Spanish American silver, which made the long treacherous voyage across the Pacific to the Spanish Philippines. There, the Portuguese would trade Chinese silks for the silver, and then use it for more trade with China, while the Spanish would take their silks on the even longer voyage back to Europe by way of America. In 1542, the Portuguese even reached Japan and established relations there. As a result of these voyages and new opportunities, Portugal would build an empire in Asia to control the spice trade.
Spain and the exploration of the West (1492-c.1550)
Spain led the other great outward thrust of exploration westward across the Atlantic Ocean. Like, Portugal, the Spanish were also partially driven in their explorations by certain misconceptions. While they did realize the earth is round, they also vastly underestimated its size and thought it was seven-eighths land, making Asia much bigger and extending much further west. Therefore, they vastly underestimated the distance of a westward voyage to Asia.
This was especially true of a Genoese captain, Christopher Columbus, an experienced sailor who had seen most of the limits of European exploration up to that point in time, having sailed the waters from Iceland to the African coast. Drawing upon the idea of a smaller planet mostly made up of land, Columbus had the idea that the shortest route to the Spice Islands was by sailing west, being only some 3500 miles. In fact, the real distance is closer to 12,000 miles, although South America is only about 3500 miles west of Spain, explaining why Columbus thought he had hit Asia. The problem was that most people believed such an open sea voyage was still too long for the ships of the day.
Getting support for this scheme was not easy. The Portuguese were already committed to finding a route to India around Africa, and Spain was preoccupied with driving the Moors from their last stronghold of Granada in southern Spain. However, when the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope and stood on the verge of reaching India, Spain had added incentive to find another route to Asia. Therefore, when Granada finally fell in 1492, Spain was able to commit itself to Columbus' plan.
Columbus set sail August 3, 1492 with two caravels, the Nina and Pinta, and a carrack, the Santa Maria . They experienced perfect sailing weather and winds. In fact, the weather was too good for Columbus' sailors who worried that the perfect winds blowing out would be against them going home while the clear weather brought no rain to replenish water supplies. Columbus even lied to his men about how far they were from home (although the figure he gave them was fairly accurate since his own calculations overestimated how far they had gone). By October 10, nerves were on edge, and Columbus promised to turn back if land were not sighted in two or three days. Fortunately, on October 12, scouts spotted the island of San Salvador, which Columbus mistook for Japan.
After failing to find the Japanese court, Columbus concluded he had overshot Japan. Further exploration brought in a little gold and a few captives. But when the Santa Maria ran aground, Columbus decided to return home. A lucky miscalculation of his coordinates caused him to sail north where he picked up the prevailing westerlies. The homeward voyage was a rough one, but Columbus reached Portugal in March 1493, where he taunted the Portuguese with the claim that he had found a new route to the Spice Islands. This created more incentive for the Portuguese to circumnavigate Africa, which they did in 1498. It also caused a dispute over who controlled what outside of Europe, which led to the pope drawing the Line of Demarcation in 1494.
Ferdinand and Isabella, although disappointed by the immediate returns of the voyage, were excited by the prospects of controlling the Asian trade. They gave Columbus the title "Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Viceroy and Governor of the Islands that he hath discovered in the Indies." Over the next decade, they sent him on three more voyages to find the Spice Islands. Each successive voyage put even more of the Caribbean and surrounding coastline on the map, but the Spice Islands were never found. Columbus never admitted that his discovery was a new continent. He died in 1504, still convinced that he had reached Asia.
However, by 1500, many people were convinced that this was a new continent, although its size and position in relation to and distance from Asia were by no means clear. The Portuguese discovery of a route to India around Africa in 1498 provided more incentive for Spanish exploration. In 1513, the Spanish explorer, Balboa discovered the Pacific Ocean, having no idea of its immensity or that the Portuguese explorer, Serrao, was discovering it from the Asian side. Given the prevailing view of a small planet, many people though that the Pacific Sea, as they called it, must be fairly small and that Asia must be close to America. Some even thought South America was a peninsula attached to the southern end of Asia. Either way, finding a southwest passage around the southern tip of South America would put one in the Pacific Sea and a short distance from Asia. If this were so, it would give Spain a crucial edge over Portugal, whose route around Africa to India was especially long and hard.
In 1519, Charles V of Spain gave five ships and the job of finding a southwest passage around South America to Ferdinand Magellan, a former Portuguese explorer who had been to the Spice Islands while serving Portugal. Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe was one of the great epic, and unplanned, events in history. After sailing down the South American coast, he faced a mutiny, which he ruthlessly suppressed, and then entered a bewildering tangle of islands at the southern tip of the continent known even today as the Straits of Magellan. Finding his way through these islands took him 38 days, while the same journey today takes only two.
Once they emerged from the Straits of Magellan into the Pacific "Sea", Magellan and his men figured they were a short distance from Asia, and set out across the open water and into one of the worst ordeals ever endured in nautical history. One of those on the journey, Pigafetta, left an account of the Pacific crossing:
“On Wednesday the twenty-eighth of November, one thousand five hundred and twenty, we issued forth from the said strait and entered the Pacific Sea, where we remained three months and twenty days without taking on board provisions or any other refreshments, and we ate only old biscuit turned to powder, all full of worms and stinking of the urine which the rats had made on it, having eaten the good. And we drank water impure and yellow. We ate also ox hides, which were very hard because of the sun, rain, and wind. And we left them...days in the sea, then laid them for a short time on embers, and so we ate them. And of the rats, which were sold for half an ecu apiece, some of us could not get enough.
“Besides the aforesaid troubles, this malady (scurvy) was the worst, namely that the gums of most part of our men swelled above and below so that they could not eat. And in this way they died, inasmuch as twenty-nine of us died...But besides those who died, twenty-five or thirty fell sick of divers maladies, whether of the arms or of the legs and other parts of the body (also effects of scurvy), so that there remained very few healthy men. Yet by the grace of our Lord I had no illness.
“During these three months and twenty days, we sailed in a gulf where we made a good 4000 leagues across the Pacific Sea, which was rightly so named. For during this time we had no storm, and we saw no land except two small uninhabited islands, where we found only birds and trees. Wherefore we called them the Isles of Misfortune. And if our Lord and the Virgin Mother had not aided us by giving good weather to refresh ourselves with provisions and other things we would have died in this very great sea. And I believe that nevermore will any man undertake to make such a voyage.”
By this point, the survivors were so weakened that it took up to eight men to do the job normally done by one. Finally, they reached the Philippines, which they claimed for Spain, calculating it was on the Spanish side of the Line of Demarcation. Unfortunately, Magellan became involved in a tribal dispute and was killed in battle. Taking into account his previous service to Portugal in the East, Magellan and the Malay slave who accompanied him were the first two people to circumnavigate the earth.
By now, the fleet had lost three of its five ships: one having mutinied and returned to Spain, one being lost in a storm off the coast of South America, and the other being so damaged and the crews so decimated that it was abandoned. The other two ships, the Trinidad and Victoria, finally reached the Spice Islands in November 1521 and loaded up with cloves. Now they faced the unpleasant choice of returning across the Pacific or continuing westward and risking capture in Portuguese waters. The crew of the Trinidad tried going back across the Pacific, but gave up and were captured by the Portuguese. Del Cano, the captain of the Victoria, took his ship far south to avoid Portuguese patrols in the Indian Ocean and around Africa, but also away from any chances to replenish its food and water. Therefore, the Spanish suffered horribly from the cold and hunger in the voyage around Africa.
When the Victoria finally made it home in 1522 after a three year journey, only 18 of the original 280 crewmen were with it, and they were so worn and aged from the voyage that their own families could hardly recognize them. Although the original theory about a short South-west Passage to Asia was wrong, they had proven that the earth could be circumnavigated and that it was much bigger than previously supposed. It would be half a century before anyone else would repeat this feat. And even then, it was an act of desperation by the English captain Sir Francis Drake fleeing the Spanish fleet.
Interior and coastal explorations (1519-c.1550)
Meanwhile, the Spanish were busy exploring the Americas in search of new conquests, riches, and even the Fountain of Youth. There were two particularly spectacular conquests. The first was by Hernando Cortez, who led a small army of several hundred men against the Aztec Empire in Mexico. Despite their small number, the Spanish could exploit several advantages: their superior weapons and discipline, the myth of Quetzecoatl which foretold the return of a fair haired and bearded god in 1519 (the year Cortez did appear), and an outbreak of smallpox which native Americans had no prior contact with or resistance to. Because of this and other Eurasian diseases, native American populations would be devastated over the following centuries to possibly less than ten per cent their numbers in 1500.
The Spanish conquistador, Pizarro, leading an army of less then 150 men, carried out an even more amazing conquest of the Inca Empire in Peru in the 1530's. Taking advantage of a dispute over the throne, Pizarro captured the Inca Emperor, whose authority was so great that his capture virtually paralyzed the Incas into inaction. As a result, a highly developed empire ruling millions of people fell to a handful of Spaniards.
The conquests of Mexico and Peru more than compensated Spain for its failure to establish a trade route to the Spice Islands. The wealth of South America's gold and silver mines would provide Spain with the means to make it the great power of Europe in the 1500's. Unfortunately, Spain would squander these riches in a series of fruitless religious wars that would wreck its power by 1650.
Other Spanish expeditions were exploring South America's coasts and rivers, in particular the Amazon, Orinoco, and Rio de la Plata, along with ventures into what is now the south-west United States (to find the Seven Cities of Gold), the Mississippi River, and Florida (to find the Fountain of Youth). While these found little gold, they did provide a reasonable outline of South America and parts of North America by 1550. However, no one had yet found an easy route to Asia. Therefore, the following centuries would see further explorations which, while failing to find an easier passageway, would in the process piece together most of the global map.
FC82The Portuguese Empire in the East (c.1500-1600)
Even before da Gama had set out for India, a Genoese explorer sailing under the Spanish flag, Christopher Columbus, had returned from what he believed was a direct route to Asia. This provoked a dispute between Spain and Portugal over who could claim what territories outside of Europe. In 1494, the pope arbitrated the dispute and drew a Line of Demarcation down the middle of the Atlantic. Everything outside of Christian Europe and west of the line belonged to Spain; everything east of it was Portugal's to claim. The line extended all around the globe, but since the size of the earth was not known, just where that line came out was anybody's guess. Despite these uncertainties, the Pope's Line of Demarcation determined the direction of both Spanish and Portuguese explorations. For the Portuguese, this meant they must control the trade routes to the East.
In 1500, only a year after da Gama's return, Pero Alvares Cabral followed da Gama's route to India with a fleet of ten Portuguese ships. Using da Gama' tactic of swinging westward to pick up westerly winds to take him around the Cape of Good Hope, he accidentally hit Brazil which juts eastward into the Atlantic. Since that part of Brazil lay east of the Line of Demarcation, Cabral claimed it for Portugal. He continued to India, but found the same problems da Gama had encountered: Arab hostility and an unwillingness to trade for European goods.
Therefore, the Portuguese decided to change their approach. The third expedition to India, led by da Gama in 1502, took 14 well-armed ships that would take the spice trade by force. The bulky European ships, built to stand the rough Atlantic seas, also provided excellent gun platforms for artillery, and that was the decisive factor in the battle that followed as the Portuguese beat the Arab fleet opposing them. A second decisive victory by the Portuguese fleet in 1509 established the Portuguese reputation for naval invincibility in Eastern waters and started Portugal on the road to establishing a maritime empire in the East.
The architect of the Portuguese Empire in the East was a capable and daring leader, Alphonse de Albuquerque. He realized that such a tiny state as Portugal could not conquer a land empire in Asia and run it all the way from Europe. Therefore, he concentrated on seizing key strategically placed ports that could control the flow of the spice trade. First he captured the strongly fortified island of Goa off the coast of India. From there he could strike out in several directions. Although he failed to cut off Muslim trade coming out of the Red Sea, he did cut off much of the Arab trade by seizing Ormuz at the tip of the Persian Gulf through some masterful bluffing and sailing with only six ships.
The Portuguese maintained their dominance of the East through a combination of astute and ruthless policies. Albuquerque was especially talented in establishing the proper ratio of escort ships to cargo ships. The Portuguese also blackmailed other merchants into paying for certificates of free passage in the Far East. For a few years they managed to have nearly all spices headed for Europe traveling on Portuguese ships.
However, there were serious limits to Portugal's power in the East, which led to the eventual decline of its Empire in Asia. For one thing, the Portuguese, in a fit of religious fervor, had expelled their Jewish bankers and merchants from Portugal, thus eliminating most of Portugal's business community. As a result, the Flemish port of Antwerp handled most of Portugal's spice trade and took much of its profit. Second, Portugal's empire put a tremendous strain on its very limited manpower. Along these same lines, it was very expensive to maintain forts, garrisons, and fleets, especially over such long distances. Finally, the hostility of local rulers, in particular the Mughal Dynasty ruling India, put extra strains on Portugal's ability to hold its empire.
All these factors cut deeply into Portugal's profits and prompted several cost cutting moves. The Portuguese cut corners by not maintaining their ships in the best condition. They would replace lost European crewmen with half-trained natives unfamiliar with European ships and rigging. Finally, because of the limited number of ships and the desire for as large a profit as possible, they would over pack their ships with spices. All these measures led to costly shipwrecks, which cut further into Portuguese profits and caused even more of these cost cutting measures. By 1600, the Portuguese Empire in Asia was in serious decline and increasingly losing ground, first to the Dutch and later to the English.
FC83The later voyages of exploration (c.1550-1900)
The progress of the past 150 years still left many questions to answer and myths to dispel concerning the world map. Subsequent explorations concerned four main issues and followed four lines of development:
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Finding a practical northwest passage around North America to Asia;
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Finding a practical northeast passage around Scandinavia to Asia;
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Determining if North America and Asia were connected or separate, which would determine if any north-west or north-east passages, if they existed, could get through to Asia; and
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Looking for a great southern continent to counterbalance the weight of the Northern Hemisphere.
The English largely led the search for a northwest passage. In 1576, Martin Frobisher, while exploring arctic regions, found an inlet, making him believe he had found the way to Asia and that the Eskimos were Mongols. Further explorations followed. Hopes especially soared in the early 1600's when Henry Hudson found a deep inlet, known ever since as Hudson's Bay. Because of this bay's size and the fact that no one had any idea of North America's size, people believed they had found the way to Asia. However, the North-west Passage was never found, unless one counts voyages by modern nuclear submarines under the Arctic Ocean's icecap.
At the same time, Europeans were trying to find a northeast passage north of Scandinavia to Asia. The English explorer, Richard Chancellor, reached the Russian port of Archangel, but got no further. He did claim to have "discovered" Russia and established relations between it and England. However, it would not be until the early 1700's that the czar Peter I would make Russia an integral part of European affairs. Subsequent attempts by Dutch explorers met with similar failures in finding the North-east Passage. Finally, in 1878, the Swedish explorer, A.E. Nordenskjold, found the Northeast Passage along the rim of the Arctic Ocean and then down the Bering Straits to Asia. Even today, Russian icebreakers ply the route to keep it open for trade and shipping.
The usefulness of the North-east Passage depended on whether North America and Asia are connected. If they were, any northwest or northeast passages would be cut off from entering the Pacific. The answer to this hinged on determining the size of North America, which most people then vastly underestimated. Therefore, a number of expeditions explored the northwest coast of North America to find a passage between it and Asia. The key expedition was led by a Russian, Vitus Bering, who found the passage (the Bering Strait) in 1725. He also claimed Alaska, which Russia held until its sale to the United States in 1867.
For whatever reasons, many people did not believe Bering had found this passage; so more expeditions were launched to this region. Spain and England both explored North America's northwest coast in order to claim lands for the growing fur trade as well as search for the strait of water separating Asia from the New World. Conflicting claims between the two countries were resolved in 1790, with Britain getting everything from Oregon to Alaska. In the meantime, England's most famous explorer, Captain James Cook, confirmed Bering's discovery. By 1800, the coastal map of North America was pretty much in place.
Expeditions in the South Pacific centered on finding the great southern continent. At first, the Dutch led the way in the 1600's in discovering Australia (literally "Southland"), New Zealand (named after a province of the Netherlands), and Tasmania (named after the Dutch captain, Abel Tasman). Since the Dutch had not circumnavigated Australia, many believed it was the great southern continent. In 1768, the English Captain Cook disproved this by circumnavigating it and New Zealand. On his next voyage, he sailed further south to find out if there was a great southern continent, but rough icy waters forced him to turn back. (On his third voyage, which confirmed the existence of the Bering Strait, Cook met his death in Hawaii when trying to recover hostages taken by the natives.) It was not until 1820 that the explorer, Nathaniel Palmer, finally discovered the long sought great southern continent, which we call Antarctica.
Conclusion
By 1800, most continental coastlines had been mapped. The following century was mainly one of exploring and settling continental interiors. Two things helped this process, both of them products of the ongoing Industrial Revolution. First of all, the railroad made possible the movement and supplying of large numbers of settlers in continental interiors. This was especially decisive in the development of the interior of North America. Second, germ theory and the development of vaccines for various tropical diseases meant that Europeans could now explore and conquer tropical regions. This particularly affected Africa, known until then to Europeans as the "Dark Continent" since its interior had been so impenetrable.
Reformation & religious warsUnit 13: The Age of Reformation and religious wars (1517-1648)
FC84The roots and birth of the Protestant Reformation
The roots of the Reformation lie far back in the High Middle Ages with the rise of towns and a money economy. This led to four lines of development that all converged in the Reformation. First of all, a money economy led to the rise of kings who clashed with the popes over control of Church taxes. One of these clashes, that between pope Boniface VIII and Philip IV of France, triggered the Babylonian Captivity and the Great Schism. Second, the replacement of a land based with a money economy led to growing numbers of abuses by the Church in its desperation for cash. Both of these factors seriously damaged the Church’s reputation and helped lead to the Lollard and Hussite heresies which would heavily influence Luther’s Protestant Reformation.
Another effect of the rise of towns was a more plentiful supply of money with which humanists could patronize Renaissance culture. When the Renaissance reached Northern Europe, the idea of studying the Bible in the original Greek and Hebrew fused with the North’s greater emphasis on religion, thus paving the way for a Biblical scholar such as Martin Luther to challenge the Church.
Finally, towns and trade spread new ideas and technology. Several of these bits of technology, some from as far away as China, helped lead to the invention of the printing press which helped the Reformation in two ways. First of all, it made books cheaper, which let Luther have his own copy of the Bible and the chance to find what he saw as flaws in the Church’s thinking. Second, the printing press would spread Luther’s ideas much more quickly and further a field than the Lollards and Hussites ever could have without the printing press.
All of these factors, growing dissatisfaction with corruption and scandal in the Church, the religious emphasis of the Northern Renaissance, and the printing press, combined to create a growing interest in Biblical scholarship. Nowhere was this interest more volatile or dangerous than in Germany. The main reason for this was the fragmentation of Germany into over 300 states, which helped the Reformation in two ways.
For one thing, there was no one power to stop the large number of Church abuses afflicting Germany, thus breeding a great deal of anger in Germany against the Church. For another thing, the lack of central control also made it very difficult to stop the spread of any new ideas. This was especially true in Germany, with over 30 printing presses, few, if any, being under tight centralized control, and each of which was capable of quickly churning out literally thousands of copies of Protestant books and pamphlets. If Germany could be seen as a tinder box just waiting for a spark to set it aflame, Martin Luther was that spark.
Luther, like all great men who shape history, was also a product of his own age. He had a strict religious upbringing, especially from his father who frequently beat his son for the slightest mistakes. School was little better. Young Martin was supposedly beaten fifteen times in one day for misdeclining a noun. All this created a tremendous sense of guilt and sinfulness in him and influenced his view of God as a harsh and terrifying being. Therefore, Luther’s reaction to the above mentioned thunderstorm in 1506 should come as no surprise. He carried out his vow and joined a monastic order.
As a monk, Luther carried his religious sense of guilt to self-destructive extremes, describing how he almost tortured himself to death through praying, reading, and vigils. Indeed, one morning, his fellow monks came into his cell to find him lying senseless on the ground. Given this situation, something had to give: either Luther’s body or his concept of Christianity. His body survived.
Out of concern for Martin, his fellow monks, thanks to the printing press, gave him a copy of the Bible where Luther found two passages that would change his life and history: “ For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9) “ Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” (Romans 3:28) As Luther put it, “ Thereupon I felt as if I had been born again and had entered paradise through wide open gates. Immediately the whole of Scripture took on a new meaning for me. I raced through the Scriptures, so far as my memory went, and found analogies in other expressions.” From this Luther concluded that faith is a “free gift of God” and that no amount of praying, good deeds or self-abuse could affect one’s salvation. Only faith could do that.
The storm breaks
In the following years, Luther’s ideas quietly matured as he pursued a career as a professor, back then a Church position. Then, in 1517, trouble erupted. Pope Leo X, desperate for money to complete the magnificent St. Peter’s cathedral in Rome, authorized the sale of indulgences. These were documents issued by the Church that supposedly relieved their owners of time in purgatory, a place where Catholics believe they must purge themselves of their sins before going to heaven. Originally, indulgences had been granted to crusaders for their efforts for the faith. In time they were sold to any of the faithful who wanted them. The idea was that the money paid was the result of one’s hard work and was sanctified by being donated to the Church. However, it was easily subject to abuse as a convenient way to raise money.
Indulgence sales were especially profitable in Germany where there was no strong central government to stop the Church from taking money out of the country. This greatly angered many Germans and made them more ready to listen to criticism of the Church when it came. The Church’s agent for selling indulgences in Brandenburg in Northern Germany, John Tetzel, used some highly questionable methods. He reportedly told local peasants that these indulgences would relive them of the guilt for sins they wished to commit in the future and that, after buying them, the surrounding hills would turn to silver. He even had a little jingle, much like a commercial: “ As soon as coin in coffer rings a soul from Purgatory springs.”
Luther was then a professor in nearby Wittenburg, Saxony, not far from the home of the Hussite heresy in Bohemia. When some local people showed him the indulgences they had bought, he denied they were valid. Tetzel denounced Luther for this, and Luther took up the challenge. On October 31, 1517, Luther nailed a placard to the church door in Wittenburg. On it were the Ninety-five Theses, or statements criticizing various Church practices, some of which are given here.
26. “They preach mad, who say that the soul flies out of purgatory as soon as the money thrown into the chest rattles.
27. “It is certain that, when the money rattles in the chest, avarice and gain may be
increased, but the suffrage of the Church depends on the will of God alone…32. “Those who believe that, through letters of pardon, they are made sure of their own salvation, will be eternally damned along with their teachers.
43.“Christians should be taught that he who gives to a poor man, or lends to a needy man,
does better than if he bought pardons…56. “The treasures of the Church, whence the Pope grants indulgences, are neither sufficiently named nor known among the people of Christ.
65 & 66. “Hence the treasures of the Gospel are nets, wherewith they now fish for the men of riches...The treasures of indulgences are nets, wherewith they now fish for the riches of men…
86. “Again; why does not the Pope, whose riches are at this day more ample than those of the wealthiest of the wealthy, build the one Basilica of St. Peter when his own money, rather than with that of poor believers…?
Luther’s purpose was not to break away from the Church, but merely to stimulate debate, a time honored academic tradition. The result, however, was a full-scale religious reformation that would destroy Europe’s religious unity forever.
Soon copies of Luther’s Ninety-five Theses were printed and spread all over Germany where they found a receptive audience. Indulgence sales plummeted and the authorities in Rome were soon concerned about this obscure professor from Wittenburg. Papal legates were sent to talk sense into Luther. At first, he was open to reconciliation with the Church, but, more and more, he found himself defying the Church. Luther’s own rhetoric against the Church was becoming much more radical:
“If Rome thus believes and teaches with the knowledge of popes and cardinals (which I hope is not the case), then in these writings I freely declare that the true Antichrist is sitting in the temple of God and is reigning in Rome—that empurpled Babylon—and that the Roman Church is the Synagogue of Satan…If we strike thieves with the gallows, robbers with the sword, heretics with fire, why do we not much more attack in arms these masters of perdition, these cardinals, these popes, and all this sink of the Roman Sodom which has without end corrupted the Church of God, and wash our hands in their blood?”
“…Oh that God from heaven would soon destroy thy throne and sink it in the abyss of Hell!….Oh Christ my Lord, look down, let the day of they judgment break, and destroy the devil’s nest at Rome.”
Luther also realized how to exploit the issue of the Italian church draining money from Germany:
“Some have estimated that every year more than 300,000 gulden find their way from Germany to Italy…We here come to the heart of the matter…How comes it that we Germans must put up with such robbery and such extortion of our property at the hands of the pope?….If we justly hand thieves and behead robbers, why should we let Roman avarice go free? For he is the greatest thief and robber that has come or can come into the world, and all in the holy name of Christ and St. Peter. Who can longer endure it or keep silence?”
The papal envoy, Aleander, described the anti-Catholic climate in Germany:
“…All German is up in arms against Rome. All the world is clamoring for a council that shall meet on German soil. Papal bulls of excommunication are laughed at. Numbers of people have ceased to receive the sacrament of penance… Martin (Luther) is pictured with a halo above his head. The people kiss these pictures. Such a quantity has been sold that I am unable to obtain one… I cannot go out in the streets but the Germans put their hands to their swords and gnash their teeth at me…”
What had started as a simple debate over Church practices was quickly becoming an open challenge to papal authority. The Hapsburg emperor, Charles V, needing Church support to rule his empire, feared this religious turmoil would spill over into political turmoil. Therefore, although religiously tolerant by the day’s standards, Charles felt he had to deal with this upstart monk. A council of German princes, the Diet of Worms, was called in 1521. At this council, the German princes, opposed to the growth of imperial power at their expense, applauded Luther and his efforts. As a result, Charles had to summon Luther to the diet so he could defend himself.
Luther’s friends, remembering Jan Hus’ fate, feared treachery and urged him not to go. But Luther was determined to go “ though there were as many devils in Wurms as there are tiles on the roofs.” His trip to Worms was like a triumphal parade, as crowds of people came out to see him. Then came the climactic meeting between the emperor and the obscure monk. Luther walked into an assembly packed to the rafters with people sensing history in the making. A papal envoy stood next to a table loaded with Luther’s writings. Asked if he would take back what he had said and written, Luther replied:
“Unless I am convinced by the evidence of Scripture or by plain reason—for I do not accept the authority of the Pope, or the councils alone, since it is established that they have often erred and contradicted themselves—I am bound by the scriptures I have cited and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, for it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. God help me. Amen.”
Having defied Church and empire, Luther was hurried out of town where he was “ambushed” by his protector, Frederick of Saxony, and hidden in Wartburg castle to keep him out of harm’s way. However, although Luther dropped out of sight for a year, the Reformation did not go away.
Luther’s religion
Because of his criticism of papal authority and Church practices, Luther had been excommunicated from the Church. This along with the dramatic meeting at Worms led him to make a final break with the Catholic Church and form Lutheranism, the first of the Protestant faiths. This was not a new religion. It had basically the same beliefs about God as the Catholic faith. However, there were four main beliefs in the Lutheran faith that differed substantially from Catholicism.
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Faith alone can gain salvation. No amount of good works can make any difference because man is so lowly compared to God. In the Catholic faith, penance and good works are important to salvation.
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Religious truth and authority lie only in the word of God revealed in the Bible, not in any visible institutions of the Church. This largely reflects what Wycliffe had said about the many institutions and rituals the Church valued. As a result, Lutheranism tended to be simpler in practice than Catholicism.
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The church is the community of all believers, and there is no real difference between priest and layman in the eyes of God. The Catholic Church gave greater status to the clergy who devoted their lives to God.
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The essence of Christian living lies in serving God in one’s own calling. In other words, all useful occupations, not just the priesthood, are valuable in God’s eyes. This especially appealed to the rising middle class whose concern for money was seen as somewhat unethical by the Medieval Church.
The spread of Lutheranism
When the Church burned 300 copies of Hus’ and Wycliffe’s writings in the early 1400’s, this dealt a heavy blow to the Hussite movement. However, from the start of the Reformation, printed copies of Luther’s writings were spread far and wide in such numbers that the movement could not be contained. By 1524, there were 990 different books in print in Germany. Eighty percent of those were by Luther and his followers, with some 100,000 copies of his German translation of the Bible in circulation by his death. Comparing that number to the 300 copies of Hussite writings underscores the decisive role of the printing press in the Protestant Reformation.
When discussing whom in society went Lutheran or stayed Catholic and why, various economic and political factors were important, but the single most important factor in one’s decision was religious conviction. This was still an age of faith, and we today must be careful not to downplay that factor. However, other factors did influence various groups in the faith they adopted.
Many German princes saw adopting Lutheranism as an opportunity to increase their own power by confiscating Church lands and wealth. Many middle class businessmen, as stated above, felt the Lutheran faith justified their activities as more worthwhile in the eyes of God. The lower classes at times adopted one faith as a form of protest against the ruling classes. As a result, nobles tended to be suspicious of the spread of a Protestant faith as a form of social and political rebellion. Many Germans also saw Lutheranism as a reaction against the Italian controlled Church that drained so much money from Germany. However, many German people remained Catholic despite any material advantages Lutheranism might bestow. For both Catholics and Protestants, faith was still the primary consideration in the religion they adopted.
Lutheranism did not win over all of Germany, let alone all of Europe. Within Germany, Lutherans were strongest in the north, while the south largely remained Catholic. However, Germany’s central location helped Protestants spread their doctrine from Northern Germany to Scandinavia, England, and the Netherlands.
Luther’s achievement
Although Luther had not originally intended to break with Rome, once it was done he tried to keep religious movement from straying from its true path of righteousness. Therefore he came out of hiding to denounce new more radical preachers. He also made the controversial stand of supporting the German princes against a major peasant revolt in Germany in 1525, since he saw the German princes’ support as vital to the Reformation’s survival. This opened Luther to attacks by more radical Protestants who saw him as too conservative, labeling him the “Witternburg Pope”. However, as the Protestant movement grew and spread, it became increasingly harder for Luther to control.
Martin Luther died February 18, 1546 at the age of 63. By this time events had gotten largely out of his control and were taking violent and radical turns that Luther never would have liked. Ironically, Luther, who had started his career with such a tortured soul and unleashed such disruptive forces on Europe, died quite at peace with God and himself. Like so many great men, he was both a part of his times and ahead of those times, thus serving as a bridge to the future. He went to the grave with many old Medieval Christian beliefs. However, his ideas shattered Christian unity in Western Europe, opening the way for new visions and ideas in such areas as capitalism, democracy, and science that shape our civilization today.
FC85AThe Reformation fragments I: Zwinglianism & Anabaptism
Introduction
While the Catholic Church kept Western Europe religiously united for 1000 years, Protestant unity broke up almost immediately. There were three major reasons for this. First, Luther's successful challenge to the Catholic Church set an example for other reformers to follow. Second, the printing press and translations of the Bible from Latin to the vernacular let more people read and interpret scripture on their own. Previously, the Church's monopoly on Bibles, all written in Latin, severely limited individual interpretations. Finally, the Bible itself is often vague, which also encouraged widely differing interpretations. Consequently, a number of different sects (religious groups) sprang up on the heels of Luther's Reformation.
Huldreich Zwingli and the Swiss Reformation
The first break in Protestant unity came from the Swiss reformer, Huldreich Zwingli. Although only a year younger than Luther, Zwingli seemed to come from a different world. While Luther's outlook and background were very medieval, Zwingli received a liberal humanist education and did not have the great sense of guilt and fear of the terrors of hell his German counterpart had. Zwingli's humanist education influenced him to call for a religion based entirely on the Bible. In 1518 he became a common preacher in Zurich, Switzerland and echoed Luther by speaking out against Bernhardin Samson, a local seller of indulgences. He also denounced other church abuses and thus launched the Swiss Reformation.
Zwingli's religion was both similar to and different from Luther's. Like Luther, he stressed a more personal relationship between man and God, claimed faith alone could save one's soul, and denied the validity of many Catholic beliefs and customs such as purgatory, monasteries, and a celibate (unmarried) clergy. However, Zwingli's goal from the first was to break completely from the Catholic Church. His plan for doing this was to establish a theocracy (church run state) in Zurich.
By 1525, he had accomplished this, having banished the Catholic mass and introduced services in the vernacular. He vastly simplified the service to sermon and scripture readings. Despite his love of music, Zwingli banned it from the service and even smashed the church organ. He either destroyed or whitewashed religious images, which he saw as idolatrous, served communion in a wooden bowl rather than a silver chalice, and closed down monasteries or turned them into hospitals and schools. Although not persecuted, Catholics had to pay fines for attending mass and eating fish on Fridays (a Catholic practice then to symbolize personal sacrifice by not eating meat) and were excluded from public office. Zwingli also closely supervised the morals of his congregation. All these measures anticipated the later reforms of John Calvin.
By 1528, Zwingli's reforms had spread across northern Switzerland with the South remaining Catholic. Because of fear of being caught between Catholics in southern Switzerland and Germany to the north Zwingli followed a more aggressive foreign policy and attempts to unite with the Lutherans in common cause against the Catholics. The proposed alliance never occurred because the two camps could not agree on one piece of theology: whether the bread and wine of communion were actually transubstantiated (transformed) into the body and blood of Christ. The Catholic Church had claimed for centuries that transubstantiation did take place, and Luther agreed with them in a modified form. Zwingli said it was only symbolic of Christ's body and blood. A personal meeting between Luther and Zwingli in 1529 accomplished nothing except hard feelings, and the proposed alliance between the Zwinglians and Lutherans fell through.
Aggressive Zwinglian missionaries in the Catholic districts of Switzerland led to war in 1531, and an army of 8000 Catholics destroyed Zwingli and his force of 1500 men. An uneasy co-existence between Protestants and Catholics followed, and Protestantism survived in Switzerland. Zwinglianism, however, did not survive, being replaced by Calvinism in the Swiss Reformed Church. Still, Zwingli was important for establishing Protestantism in Switzerland and serving as an example for the more successful Calvinists who followed.
Grassroots Protestantism: the Anabaptists
After breaking the Catholic Church's centuries long monopoly on religion, the issue arose of how far beyond the old set of rules the new beliefs could go. Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, despite significant religious differences, drew up new sets of rules fairly close to the Catholic Church's. Among other things, they all believed in obedience to civil authority. However, some men preferred to go much further in rewriting the rules. As a result, some 40 different religious sects sprang up in Western Europe. Although their beliefs varied somewhat from one another, they have been lumped together under the name of Anabaptists from their common practice of baptizing members as adults when they could make the free choice to be Christians. In addition to the Bible as a source of religious truth, they also believed in inner revelation coming directly from God.
The Anabaptist movement was more involved with social discontent than the other Protestant sects were. The 1500's saw economic difficulties resulting from rising population and inflation. Peasants, town craftsmen, and miners were especially hard hit, and it was they who especially joined the Anabaptist ranks in hope for a better world to come. Most Anabaptists denied the right of civil governments to rule their lives. They refused to hold office, bear arms, or swear oaths, which naturally made the authorities suspicious of them.
Actually, most of the Anabaptists were just trying to live good, peaceful; Christian lives in imitation of Christ himself. They did not openly resist the authorities, but they still aroused suspicion because of their different ways. Some groups held property in common. Others went to extremes in interpreting the Bible literally, preaching from rooftops and even babbling like children as the Bible supposedly told them to. They tended to separate themselves from the rest of society, which they saw as sinful. Despite their peacefulness, the Anabaptists were heavily persecuted. This forced them to migrate, which spread their beliefs from Switzerland down the Rhine to the Netherlands. It was here that the movement turned more violent as it combined frustration from economic hard times with an older tradition of socially revolutionary ideas that were popular among the peasants. The climax of this process took place in the German city of Munster in the early 1530's.
It was in Munster that radical Anabaptists seized power and combined religious fanaticism with a reign of terror that tarnished the reputation of other Anabaptists for years. All books except the Bible were burned. Communal property and polygamy were enforced. Their leader, John Bockleson, ruled with a lavish court while ensuring his followers that they too would eat from gold plates and silver tables in the near future. So alarming was this spectacle that Lutherans and Catholics combined forces to snuff it out. The determined and disciplined resistance of the Anabaptists led to a drawn out siege (1534-35). The city was finally betrayed and the Anabaptist leaders exterminated. An intense persecution of the Anabaptists followed, killing thousands and driving many more from place to place. Some of them, such as the Mennonites and Amish, found a home in North America and have had a profound influence on our attitude of separating church and state. Others made their way to the Spanish Netherlands where they helped stir up a major revolt against Catholic Spain.
The English Reformation
As discussed above, the strong medieval monarchies of France, England, and Spain assumed more and more control over the Church within their own lands. As a result, these kings had few grievances against the Church and were generally hostile to the Reformation, since it threatened their own control of religious policies. They were also strong enough to repress the spread of Protestantism among the lower classes. However, the Reformation found a home in one of these monarchies, England, thanks to some very peculiar circumstances.
Henry VIII of England had been given the title of "Defender of the Faith" by Pope Clement VII for a work he had written attacking the Lutherans, mainly on political grounds. However, just as at one point he defended the Church for largely political reasons, at a later date, Henry broke with the Church, also for political reasons.
Henry had a problem: he needed a son to succeed him to the throne. Without such a son, England might plunge back into civil war like the Wars of the Roses that Henry's father had ended in 1485. Henry's wife, Catherine of Aragon, had borne him a daughter, Mary, but no sons. Since Catherine was getting older, Henry wanted his marriage annulled so he could find a new wife to bear him a son. Unfortunately, Catherine was the aunt of the Hapsburg emperor, Charles V. Naturally he wanted Catherine to remain as Queen of England in order to influence its policies and possibly get control of the throne herself. Since Charles also controlled the pope, the annulment was refused. Meanwhile, Henry had fallen in love with a young woman of the court, Anne Boleyn, giving him more reason to dispose of Catherine.
Only twenty years earlier, Henry would have had to accept this verdict or resort to violent means to solve his problem. Ironically, the Lutherans that Henry despised provided him with an answer to his problem: break with Rome. However, he had to move quickly, because Anne was with child and Henry wanted the baby, hopefully a boy, to be born after the break with Rome in order to be legitimate.
In 1533, Henry started to break England's ties with the Catholic Church. He was clever in how he accomplished this, doing it in stages, first by cutting off money to Rome, then curtailing the power of the Church courts and assuming more authority over the English clergy. Also, he did this through Parliament so it would seem to be the will of the English people rather than the mere whim of the king. In 1534, he severed the last ties with Rome, and the Church of England replaced the Catholic Church. All this took place in time for the birth of the baby, which turned out to be a girl, Elizabeth.
The average churchgoer in England would have noticed little difference in the dogma and service as a result of this break, since the Church of England was basically the Catholic Church without a pope. Therefore, most people accepted it since there were no drastic changes, they resented Church abuses, and feared a civil war if Henry died without a male heir.
After Henry's death, his nine-year-old son, Edward VI, the son of Jane Seymour, one of Henry's later wives, took the throne. During his brief reign, the nobles ruling in his name followed Protestant policies. However, when Edward died in 1553, his older half sister, Mary, came to the throne. She was an ardent Catholic like her mother, Catherine. She even married Philip II of Spain to enforce her Catholic policies. The main effects of Mary's persecutions were to alienate the English People, make them more firmly Protestant, and earn her the title of Bloody Mary.
When Mary died childless in 1558, her half sister, Elizabeth I, succeeded her. This remarkable woman, one of England's ablest and most popular monarchs steered an interesting course between Protestantism and Catholicism. The English, or Anglican, Church under Elizabeth grafted moderate Protestant theology on top of Catholic organization and ritual. This compromise satisfied most people, but the more radical English Calvinists wanted more sweeping reforms, such as doing away with bishops and archbishops altogether. These people were known as Puritans, since they wanted to purify the Anglican Church of all Catholic elements. Their numbers and power would continue to grow throughout Elizabeth's reign, although she was able to control them.
In addition to England's navy saving European Protestantism from extinction at the hands of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the English Reformation was important for opening the way for the more radical Puritans Calvinists to filter in. Eventually, they would become influential enough to overthrow the pro-Catholic king, Charles I, and establish a parliamentary democracy. This in turn would inspire the spread of democratic ideals to America, Europe, and the rest of the world.
FC85BThe Reformation Fragments II: Calvinism
Introduction
As important as the Zwinglian, Anabaptist, and English reformers may have been, it was Calvinism that would have the most profound and revolutionary impact on Western Civilization. Although the Calvinists' primary concerns were religious, their reforms would radically alter the political and economic institutions of Europe, helping lay the foundations for the eventual triumph of capitalism and democracy.
Luther's break with the Church was especially difficult since he had grown up without any religious alternatives to Catholicism or examples to follow in his reforms. The next generation of reformers, led by John Calvin, grew up in a world that offered alternatives to Catholicism, thus making it easier to break with the Church and carry religious reforms much further than Luther ever had.
Calvin himself grew up in France as the first shock waves of the Reformation rocked Europe. Although not officially allowed in France, Protestant ideas still filtered across the border and won converts. Unlike Luther, whose tormented soul provides fascinating reading, Calvin was a much calmer individual. He seems to have been plagued by none of Luther's self doubts and his personal character was described as nearly flawless. After receiving a good education in theology, law, and also humanist studies, which prompted him to read the Bible more carefully, he seems to have arrived at some sort of conversion in 1533.
Calvin's religion
The cornerstone of Calvin's theology was God's all encompassing power and knowledge. There was nothing God did not know or have control of: past, present, or future. As a result, God knew and controlled from the beginning of time whose souls would be saved or condemned for eternity. This doctrine, known as predestination, had scriptural support and was a logical outgrowth of what Luther had said about faith and salvation being a free gift of God. Predestination raised several disturbing questions. First of all, if God were all-powerful, could we have any free will in choosing between God and Satan? Quite bluntly, Calvin said no. Second, if God were good, how could he let evil exist in the world? Calvin answered that these were mysteries of God that we cannot know the answers to and probably have no business asking.
Finally, can we know we are saved and how? According to Calvin, there is no way for us to know for sure. However, if we meet the requirements of living an upright life, profession of faith, and participation in the sacraments, we could become pleasing to God and be saved despite our sinful nature, if predestined to do so. Such a puritan lifestyle might not ensure salvation, but it could be a sign that one might be one of the few elected by God to go to heaven. However, Calvin said our primary concern should not be going to Heaven, but rather carrying out God's plan for us in this life. As fatalistic as Calvinism with its denial of the existence of free will may sound, its adherents felt empowered by this idea that they were the special instruments for carrying out God's plan. This gave them an unshakable faith in the utter rightness of their cause and made Calvinism the most dynamic movement of its day.
Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, published in 1559, became one of the most popular and influential books of its day. However, Calvin went beyond words in trying to make a point about his religion. To ensure that as many people as possible had a chance to be saved, he established a model Church and community in Geneva, Switzerland to enforce the proper lifestyle needed for salvation. Naturally, Calvin's reforms met resistance and it took him nearly twenty years to get control of Geneva and reform it.
Although the city government still functioned, the Consistory, a church council of twelve elders, wielded the real power over people's lives in Geneva. All citizens were members of the church and had to attend services three or four times a week. This was because there was no telling who was predestined to be saved, and so all must be given a chance. Such acts as fighting, swearing, drunkenness, gambling, card playing, and dancing were outlawed. Even loud noises and laughing in church were fined. Theaters and taverns were closed and replaced by inns allowing moderate drinking accompanied by sermons and church propaganda. Members of the Consistory would make annual inspections of homes to ensure they were morally run. People were even expected to report their neighbors for any behavior that was less than saintly.
The Consistory also ruled the more trivial aspects of peoples' lives. Jewelry and lace were frowned upon, the color of clothing was regulated by law, and women were fined for arranging their hair to immodest heights. Children were to be named after Old Testament figures, and one man was jailed for four days for naming his son Claude instead of Abraham. Punishments were equally harsh, with fifty-eight executions between 1542 and 1564, mostly for heresy (especially Catholicism) and witchcraft. Fourteen witches were burned in one year and one boy was beheaded for striking his parents. Not surprisingly Geneva was called "City of the Saints".
Geneva served as a model to other reformers in Europe, helping make Calvinism the most popular form of Protestantism in the Netherlands, Scotland, and England. This was in spite of its lack of support from rulers who feared both Calvinism's emphasis on God's absolute power, which might undercut the doctrine of Divine Right of Kings, and its lack of being associated with any particular nation. In Germany and Scandinavia, Lutheranism was quickly identified with strong nationalist sentiments that rulers could exploit for their own political purposes. However, Calvinism had no particular national ties, thus depriving it of the strong state support that Lutheranism enjoyed.
However, this lack of state support forced Calvinists to form independent local congregations without any real central organization, making it virtually impossible to uproot and destroy their movement by concentrating on a few leaders. These congregations were somewhat democratic, thus inspiring greater loyalty in all their members, even when facing intense persecution for their beliefs.
Long range effects of Calvinism
Two of Calvin's ideas would have far reaching effects going far beyond religion. First, the idea of predestination meant not only that Calvinist merchants were allowed to do business and make money, they were predestined to do so and should do so fervently as God's will. Of course, as devout Calvinists, they were to make money for the good of the church and community, and at first that was what they did. However, later generations, lacking the intense fervor of the first generation of reformers (a normal pattern with any revolutionary movement), came to feel justified in pursuing profits for their own personal good. The result of this was the triumph of capitalism, especially in England and the Dutch Republic where Calvinists predominated, as the dominant economic system in Western Europe. This in turn would make Western Europe the economic center of the world and home of the Industrial Revolution.
The second Calvinist far-reaching effect of Calvinism was the concept of God's absolute power that, along with the idea that God sees all useful occupations as equal, discredited the doctrine of Divine Right of Kings. Calvin himself preached obedience to authority unless religious conviction forced civil disobedience. But it should never involve open resistance, since God alone would punish any evil rulers. However, some Calvinists, such as John Knox, the fiery leader of the Scottish Calvinists, preached people could overthrow a corrupt prince to defend their religious beliefs and God's law. The revolt of the Spanish Netherlands (1566-1648) and the English Civil War (1642-45) were two prime examples of such Calvinist religious revolts.
Later, these two ideas, capitalism and religious revolution, combined into an even more powerful idea discussed in John Locke's Two Treatises on Government (1694). Much as middle class contracts define obligations in a business deal, Locke saw government as an implied contract especially defining obligations for the king who acted as caretaker of the state for the good of the people, protecting their lives, liberties, and property. If the king failed in these duties, the contract was null and void and the people had the right to overthrow him. This combination of middle class contracts and the belief in religious revolution would become the cornerstone of democracy. And within that idea lay the seeds for the democratic revolutions that would sweep through France, Europe, and eventually the entire globe in the 1800s and 1900s.
FC85CThe Reformation's impact on political ideas
Few things in history take more devious twists and turns from their origins than ideas, and few ideas have taken more devious twists and turns than how those of the Protestant Reformation helped lead to such things as the triumph of capitalism, democracy, and women’s rights. In fact, to fully understand this progression of ideas, we need to go back to the Italian Renaissance and the four major ideas that came from it:
Secularism: the belief this world and life are worth studying and living for now, not just as a preparation for the afterlife;
Humanism: the belief that humans are not helpless pawns in the divine plan, but capable of their own great accomplishments;
Individualism: the belief that individuals alone, not just groups of people, can accomplish great things on their own; and
Skepticism: the belief we should challenge accepted authorities views, rather then blindly accept them.
When these ideas made their way out of Italy and combined with the more religious attitudes of the Northern Renaissance, they helped lead to the Protestant Reformation. Two of Luther’s ideas would have dramatic and unforeseen effects: the beliefs that God sees all useful jobs as equal and all believers as equal.
While Luther also believed in pre-destination, it was Calvin who especially emphasized it. That combined with the idea that all useful jobs are equal led to the conclusion that if one is a merchant, it is because he was predestined to be a merchant. Therefore, it was God’s will that he work hard to earn profits for the good of the church and community. However, as religious fervor cooled over succeeding generations, Calvinist merchants started keeping more and more of their profits for themselves. Eventually, some merchants would lose all their religious fervor, leaving only a fervor for profits, which we still refer to as the Protestant work ethic, and the triumph of capitalism in Northwestern Europe.
The idea that God sees all believers as spiritually equal also had surprising repercussions through the succeeding centuries. For one thing, the idea of spiritual equality was seen as applying to women as well as men, but not in the political or social sense…. at first. A major, though little noted, turning point came in the 1600s with a Protestant sect known as the Quakers. They figured that, if women were spiritually equal, they should have the right to preach. However, the church was the center of their social life as well, and women assumed a more prominent place in Quaker society overall. Fast forward two centuries to 1848 and the Seneca Falls Conference, which was the start of the women’s suffrage movement in America. Of the five women at that conference, three were Quakers who would take the lead in gaining women the vote.
The spiritual equality of all believers also had profound political effects in another way. The reasoning was that, if all believers and the jobs they do are equal, which would discredit the quasi-religious status of rulers and the doctrine known as the Divine Right of Kings. Calvin said that if people were religiously repressed and kept from worshiping God in the proper manner, they had the right to resist, but only non-violently through civil disobedience. It didn’t take long for a Calvinist leader in Scotland, John Knox, to extend this to justifying revolution on religious grounds. The problem was that religion and politics were so intertwined that a religious revolution had major political implications as well. This mixture of religious and political issues played out in nearly a century of religious wars that raged across the Netherlands, France, Germany, and England.
The English Revolution (1603-88) also saw economics mixed in with religious and political issues. In 1694, the rise of a capitalist middle class and triumph of democratic principles (in a very limited form) led a remarkable book by John Locke, Two Treatises on Government, which summarized what that revolution had been about. Locke saw government, in typically capitalist fashion, as an implied contract between the ruler and subjects where each had mutual rights and obligations, as opposed to everything existing for the benefit of the ruler. The people owed their ruler obedience, but he was obligated to protect three things: their lives, liberties, and property. If the ruler failed to live up to these terms, the contract was null and void, justifying revolution on purely political grounds. Thus, less than two centuries after the start of Luther’s reformation, his purely religious ideas about the equality of believers and their jobs had transformed into ideas justifying political revolution on purely secular grounds.
In 1776 the American Declaration of Independence would merely restate Locke’s ideas, substituting “pursuit of happiness” for property. The “Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen” in 1789 during the French Revolution wouldn’t even diverge that far and would inspire revolutions across Europe and the globe over the next two hundred years.
FC86The Catholic Reformation
One must remember that the Protestant reformation had only limited success. The two most powerful monarchies in Europe, Spain and France, remained Catholic, as did Austria, Italy, Portugal, Hungary, Poland and parts of Germany. Still, Protestant success had been rapid and posed a serious threat to the Catholic Church. As a result, the Church went through its own Catholic Reformation, also known as the Counter Reformation, in which it reformed itself, defined its theology, reestablished the pope’s authority in the now reduced Church, and prepared for a counter-offensive against the Protestants.
Early reactions by the Church to Protestantism
The Church had often been challenged with criticism in the past, but each time had patched things up with internal reforms. Therefore, at first it saw Protestantism as just another protest that a few reforms could mend and failed to recognize the deep philosophical and religious issues involved. Since many Church abuses were the result of the financial problems deeply rooted in the later Middle Ages, maybe it was too much to expect reforms of abuses at this time. However, those problems only got worse in the 1500s. Inflation, loss of lands and revenue to the Protestants, and invasions of Papal lands left Pope Paul III with only 40% of the revenues his predecessor had jus ten years earlier. As difficult as it would be, the threat of further losses to the Protestants made reforms all the more necessary. In 1536, Pope Paul III established a fact-finding commission to find out why there was so much protest and what could be done about it. The resulting report, Advice on the Reform of the Church, blamed the Church for many of its problems and called for reforms that would convince the Protestants to rejoin the Church. Two things resulted from this report. First, the Church failed to accept responsibility for its problems, making what few reforms that result only half-hearted. Consequently, Protestantism kept expanding.
The second result was that the Church, rather than trying to reform itself, decided to attack its enemies. In 1542, the pope brought the Inquisition into Italy, giving the Inquisitor general authority over all Italians. This effectively uprooted any elements of Protestantism in Italy and restored the pope’s authority over the whole peninsula. To a large extent, the Inquisition helped put an end to the Italian Renaissance, since it suppressed Italy’s vigorous intellectual life for the sake of conformity to the Church. Remarkable individuals, such as Galileo, might still come along, but they would face the Inquisition’s repression for any new ideas they might propose. The Church was also waking up to the dangers that a free press presented to the established order. In 1543, the Inquisition published the first Index of Prohibited Books, the first full-scale effort to limit or destroy the free expression of ideas through the press. It would not be the last. Among its victims was the report Advice on the Reform of the Church, since it was seen as giving solace to the Protestants and their ideas.
However, by the mid-1540s, it was becoming increasingly apparent that the Catholic Church would have to institute serious reforms if it were to halt the rising tide of Protestantism. These reforms came from two directions: the Papacy at the top and the grassroots (popular) level below.
Reform from the top: the Council of Trent (1543-63)
One problem facing the Church was the wide variety of interpretations people had of the Bible and other Church writings. This was not a new problem, but it became an urgent one when faced with competing Protestant interpretations. Consequently, Pope Paul III called a general Church council that met at Trent, Italy to define decisively what the official doctrines of the Church were. People remembered the threat to the pope’s power that councils had posed during the Great Schism a century earlier. Naturally, the pope was nervous about this and tried to restrict the council to working on Church doctrine instead of reforms that might threaten his position.
The Council of Trent met in three sessions from 1543 to 1563. Popular hopes focused on the desire to restore Christian unity, since Protestant representatives were supposed to attend (but never did). Even if it did not achieve such unity the Council did revitalize the Catholic Church and restore the pope’s power within the Church. It strictly defined religious doctrine. It emphasized the role of both faith and good works in achieving salvation. It declared the Latin Vulgate Bible the only acceptable form of scripture, thus excluding any vernacular translations. It also reaffirmed the validity of all seven Catholic sacraments and the writings of such Church Fathers as St. Augustine as sources of religious truth. It kept the elaborate ritual and decoration of the Church, since they were inspirational for the mass of illiterate Catholics with little or no understanding of Church dogma. It also enacted various reforms, ensuring clergy were better educated and their morals better supervised. The pope was even able to restore his authority over local church and clergy at the kings’ expense.
Although the Council of Trent did not peacefully restore Christian unity, it did reestablish the authority of the popes within the Catholic Church, giving it the power to launch an offensive against the Protestants to reclaim formerly Catholic lands. Also restoring the Church’s spirit was a new religious order: the Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits.
Reform from below: Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits
The Jesuits’ founder, Ignatius Loyola, (1491-1556) was quite similar to Luther in how he achieved inner religious peace, although the two men arrived at some very different conclusions about their respective faiths. Loyola was born a Spanish noble and, like Luther, had no initial plans for a religious career, being a soldier by profession. Also, like Luther, a somewhat dramatic event turned his life to religion. Instead of lightning, it was a leg broken by a cannonball while defending a fort that forced him into a long period of convalescence and ultimate conversion. Instead of the tales of war and chivalry that Loyola liked, the only reading material available was religious in nature. Eventually, this literature had its effect. Loyola experienced an intense conversion and decided to devote his life to Christ.
Like Luther, Loyola almost killed himself trying to purge his guilt. He finally obtained some inner peace by deciding the Devil was responsible for any self-doubts and despair one had for sins he had already confessed to the Church and done penance for. Loyola developed a four-week long set of spiritual exercises help others achieve similar inner peace. These exercises first had people contemplate their sins and their eternal consequences in Hell for two weeks, then contemplate Christ’s life, sacrifice on the Cross, and resurrection for a week, and finally contemplate the final ascension into Heaven.
After a pilgrimage to Palestine, Ignatius decided to get an education in order to preach more effectively. In school he gathered a loyal core of followers, the most famous being Francis Xavier. In 1536, they went to Rome determined to win souls, not by the Inquisition or the sword, but by educating people, especially the young who are most impressionable.
In 1540, they founded the Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits. The order was organized along military lines with four ranks or classes. Members were expected to show absolute obedience to their superiors, the pope and God. Instead of ascetic activities such as endless praying and whipping themselves, the Jesuits performed Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises and menial labor. Discipline was rigorous, but flexible, helping the Jesuits produce some remarkable leaders. The Jesuits also carefully selected their target audience from two main groups in society: nobles and children. As the confessors for royalty and nobles, they exercised considerable influence on religious policies within catholic states. They also ran numerous schools, believing that if they could influence children at an early age, they would remain loyal Catholics for the rest of their lives.
The order grew rapidly and became the virtual “shock troops” of the Catholic Church. They had missionary activities to South America (still mostly Catholic) and Asia. Within Europe, they spearheaded the Catholic reformation by strengthening the Church’s power in areas it still held while restoring allegiance in such areas such as Bohemia and parts of Germany.
With their Church on much firmer ground than before, many Catholics felt ready to go on the offensive against Protestantism. What resulted was a series of religious wars that would engulf Western and Central Europe for the next century.
FC87The Age of religious wars (c.1560-98)
Kill them all; God will know his own.— Catholic general, ordering a massacre of a town containing both Protestants and Catholics
By the mid 1500's, three main factors were converging to push Western Europe into a century of brutal religious wars. Two of these were the Protestant and Catholic Reformations that were firmly opposed to each other. Added to this was a prevailing medieval mentality linking religion with political issues, making it impossible for either side to tolerate the other side's presence or rule. The first round started in Germany.
Germany (1521-55)
The emperor Charles V's dramatic confrontation with Luther at Worms in 152l had resulted in outlawing the Lutheran heresy. However, this was easier said than done for several reasons. First, Charles had little control over the Holy Roman Empire (Germany), a patchwork of over 300 principalities, Church states, and free cities, all jealously guarding their liberties against any attempts by the emperor to increase his authority over them. Charles could not even get effective support from the Catholic states to help suppress the Lutherans, since his success might give him more power over Catholic princes as well.
Second, the size of Charles' empire made him many enemies, in particular France and the Ottoman Turks, who posed a constant threat from west and east. As a result, Charles felt forced to let the Protestants alone and turn to more pressing matters on his borders. Finally, Charles was plagued with money problems. Several times in his career he found himself short of funds while on the verge of a major victory. In an age of mercenary armies prone to run out on their employers as soon as funds for paying them ran out, this was fatal and forced him to let his enemies, especially France, off the hook. All these factors kept Charles from effectively dealing with the Lutherans for over twenty years.
Therefore, it was 1546 before Charles could attack a defensive alliance of Lutheran princes known as the Schmalkaldic League. Charles won a decisive military victory. But the complex forces discussed above kept him from imposing either firm imperial control or his Catholic faith on Germany. Both Lutheranism and the privileges of the German princes were too deeply entrenched for that. Consequently, Charles agreed to the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, a compromise giving each German prince the right to choose his realm's religion, as long as it was either Catholic or Lutheran. Calvinists, Anabaptists, and other non-Lutheran Protestants were outlawed.
Instead of settling Germany's religious problems, the Peace of Augsburg actually made them worse in three ways. For one thing, Calvinism kept spreading across Germany, even among German princes, thus raising religious tensions even more. Also, Charles V, worn out by over 30 years of trying to maintain his empire and religious unity, gave up his throne. The family lands in Austria and the Imperial title went to his brother Ferdinand, while Charles' son, the staunchly Catholic Philip II, inherited Spain, the Netherlands, most of Italy, and Spain's American colonies. Philip's passionate hatred of the Protestants would also aggravate the growing religious conflict brewing. Finally, the Peace of Ausgburg led to thousands of refugees, especially Calvinists and Anabaptists, fleeing Germany and spreading their religious beliefs to the Spanish Netherlands (modern Belgium and Holland), France, and eventually England.
As a result, religious conflict spread to these three countries after 1560. In the Spanish Netherlands the influx of Protestants created growing religious unrest that led to a pattern of Spanish repression, riots and protests in response, more repression, and so on. Despite its disunity, the ensuing revolt would hang on due to its control of seaports in the North, good leadership, and anger against Spanish atrocities. In France, rising tensions between Calvinists and Catholics triggered its own vicious cycle of weakening the government, which allowed more anarchy, further weakening the government, etc. Coming from this was a series of bitter civil wars aggravated by the weak government, feudal separatism, nobles’ rivalries, and foreign intervention, especially by Spain. Finally, tensions between Protestant England and Catholic Spain led the English to raid Spanish shipping and support the revolt in the Spanish Netherlands while Philip II conspired to dethrone Elizabeth I.
The critical turning event in all three of these conflicts was the defeat of Philip II's Spanish Armada (1588) that was aimed against the Dutch and French Calvinists as well as England. While this did not destroy Spain as a power, it did save Protestantism in Western Europe, thus setting the stage for the Thirty Years War. It also helped the Dutch win their freedom (1648) and become the premier naval and trading power in the 1600's. Finally, it allowed the Calvinist leader, Henry of Navarre, to take the throne of France after placating his Catholic subjects by converting to Catholicism while ensuring religious freedom to the French Calvinists. This ended the French Wars of Religion so Henry IV could lay the foundations for the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV.
Revolt of the Spanish Netherlands (1566-1648)
The Spanish Netherlands was a collection of seventeen semi-independent provinces lumped together under Spanish rule. With the possible exception of Italy, they were the wealthiest trading and manufacturing area in Europe in the 1500's. Their main port, Antwerp, handled a full 50% of Europe's trade with the outside world. Charles V had been born there and was somewhat popular with the inhabitants. That was not the case with Philip II. It was said that Charles neglected the Spanish Netherlands, but his son, Philip, abused them. This was largely true, although Charles also heavily taxed the Netherlands for his wars and tried to impose his religious policies on them. The major difference was that Philip did it with a heavier hand and with little or no concern for the feelings of his subjects there.
Philip was Spanish born and never left his homeland after his coronation in 1556. His view of the world was very Spanish and very Catholic. He taxed the Netherlands to pay for Spanish wars and he claimed he would rather die a hundred deaths than rule over heretics. As it was, Anabaptist and Calvinist "heretics" were making their way into the Netherlands, especially after the Peace of Augsburg outlawed them in Germany. Philip, determined to get them out, brought in the Inquisition and increased the number of bishops the Netherlands had to support from four to sixteen. This repression started a cycle that led to protests and riots, more Spanish repression and so on until rebellion broke out. This rebellion would drag on until 1648, become part of the wider European struggle known as the Thirty Years War, and itself become known as the Eighty Years War.
In 1566, the Duke of Alva with an army of 10,000 Spanish troops established the so-called "Council of Blood" which burned Calvinist churches, executed their leaders, and raised taxes to levels ruinous for trade, and nearly extinguished the revolt. However, despite the disunity of the revolt itself, it managed to survive for several reasons. First, Calvinist raiders, known as "Sea Beggars", managed to gain control of some ports in the North. When word of these Calvinist havens spread, more Calvinists flocked in. As a result of this migration, Holland in the north became and remains primarily Protestant today. The second reason was the rebels' leader, William, Prince of Orange, called "the Silent" for his ability to mask his intentions. Although a mediocre general, William was a brave and patriotic leader whose selfless determination gave the revolt what little cohesion it had. His accomplishment, much like that of George Washington in the American Revolution, would be as much to keep the rebels together as keeping the enemy at bay.
Finally, Spanish attempts to crush the revolt of the Sea Beggars often alienated more people and made them go over to the rebels' side. This was especially the case in 1576 when Spanish troops in the loyal provinces to the south rioted and went on a rampage of looting and slaughter in Antwerp after going unpaid for 22 months. (However, they were pious enough to fall to their knees and pray to the Virgin Mary to bless this atrocity.)
Fighting in the war itself was desperate and destructive. The siege of Maastricht in 1579 involved vicious battles in the miles of underground mines and countermines dug around the city. When Spanish troops finally poured in through a breach in the wall, a slaughter ensued which killed all but 400 people out of a population of 30,000. At times the rebels had to stop Spanish invasions by opening up their dikes and literally flooding the enemy (and their own crops) out. At the siege of Leyden, this was done also to provide water on which the Dutch rebels could float relief ships full of grain right up to the walls of the city. The city held out, but only half of its inhabitants survived the rigors of the siege, having subsisted on boiled leaves and roots, wheat chaff, dog meat, and dried fish skins. Interestingly enough, it was not until 158l that the Dutch rebels formally deposed Philip II as their king and declared the Dutch Republic in the Oath of Abjuration, a document that would strongly influence the American Declaration of Independence and later democratic movements.
Philip's efforts to establish Catholic rule in England and France got the Netherlands involved in the wider scope of European religious wars. Troops from England helped the rebels, as did the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, which was aimed against the Dutch and French Calvinists as well as England. After Dutch advances in the 1590's and early 1600's, the two sides signed a twelve years truce in 1609. However, the Dutch continued to blockade the Scheldt River and cut off Antwerp's trade. Gradually, this trade shifted to the Dutch city of Amsterdam, thus making it the new commercial capital of Europe. Hostilities resumed in 1621 as part of the wider conflict known as the Thirty Years War. Gradually, growing Dutch economic power and Spanish exhaustion from constant warfare turned the tables in favor of the Dutch. In 1628, the Dutch captured the entire Spanish treasure fleet. In 1639, they crushed another Spanish Armada at the Battle of the Downs and ended Spanish naval power once and for all.
After eighty years of struggle, Spain finally recognized Dutch independence in 1648 in the Treaty of Munster. At this point, the Dutch were at the height of their commercial and naval power, although England would challenge them for that position in the later 1600's. The southern provinces would remain under Spanish, then Austrian, and finally Dutch rule until they won their freedom in 183l and established the modern nation of Catholic Belgium in the south.
The French Wars of Religion (1562-98)
France was another country that saw the devastating effects of religious wars in the last half of the 1500's. In this case, the antagonists were the Catholic majority of France and a strong minority of French Calvinists known as Huguenots. Although only comprising about 10% of France's population, the Huguenots had several factors that helped them maintain their struggle for over thirty years. Their number included many nobles who provided excellent leadership. They were concentrated largely in fortified cities in the south. Finally, they were enthusiastic and well organized into local congregations.
For thirty years Catholic and Huguenot armies marched across France destroying its fields and homes. All this bred a cycle of chaos and destruction where growing anarchy would steadily weaken the French government's power, thus allowing even more anarchy and so on. There were actually seven French religious wars with intermittent periods of peace, which made these wars & this period of French history confused, chaotic, and bloody.
Once the wars started, they tended to drag on and were aggravated by several factors that made them especially destructive. First of all, besides the religious struggles, fighting between noble factions and revolts by old feudal provinces exposed and added to the weaknesses of the French state. Second, foreign intervention, especially by Spain, but also by other states such as England, compounded the turmoil and destruction. Finally, France was ruled by weak monarchs who let these forces tear the country apart.
The fighting was confused and often involved the massacres of women and children. From 1562-157l there were eighteen massacres of Protestants, five massacres of Catholics, and over thirty assassinations. The most famous such event was the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre (8/24/1572), when the Paris Catholics suddenly burst upon local and visiting Calvinists and killed some 3000 of them. A letter from a Spanish ambassador shows the degree of fanaticism and viciousness that infected peoples' minds and values then: "As I write they are killing them all, they are stripping them naked...sparing not even the children. Blessed be God."
Philip II added to the disorder by actively supporting the Catholics. The turning point came with the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, which led to a series of assassinations. First, the king, Henry III, assassinated the Catholic leader, Henry of Guise. Then, a fanatical monk assassinated the king for what he saw as his betrayal of the Catholic cause. The man in line to succeed Henry was still another Henry, duke of Navarre, who also happened to be the Huguenot leader. The prospect of a Calvinist king did not set too well with the predominantly Catholic population of France and led to even more fighting. Despite brilliant victories against heavy odds, Henry still faced the desperate resistance of the Parisians, whose priests told them it was better for them to eat their own children than let them live under a Calvinist king. When confronted also with Spanish intervention to put a Catholic back on the throne, Henry somewhat cynically converted to Catholicism to give his Catholic opponents no more reason to attack him.
Despite Henry's obvious political motives and the fact that he guaranteed Huguenot religious freedom by the Edict of Nantes (1598), Frenchmen were ready to accept him as king, since they were tired of constant warfare and wished only for peace. In order to ensure this, Frenchmen were willing to submit to the stronger rule of a king. This attitude helped set the stage for the rise of France as the dominant power in Europe in the later 1600's and the rule of one of its most glorious and absolute monarchs, Louis XIV, the Sun King.
Elizabethan England and the Spanish Armada
Certainly one of the most fascinating and capable monarchs of the age was Elizabeth I of England (1558-1603). We have already seen how she skillfully defused religious tensions in England by grafting Catholic ritual and organization onto mild Protestant theology, thus keeping most people reasonably content. Good Queen Bess, as she was known, was quite popular with her people, since she kept taxes low and knew how to get what she wanted from Parliament without being too demanding about it. She also kept the people's good will by acting as one of their own, patiently sitting through any pageants or speeches given in her honor. Elizabeth and her subjects understood and loved each other quite well. Her tolerant reign was a virtual golden age for England, nurturing among other things, the genius of William Shakespeare, possibly the greatest literary figure in its history.
Being a woman, Elizabeth had to be crafty to keep her throne, avoiding at all costs a marriage that would put a husband in her place as the real power in England. As a result, she never married, although she cleverly held out the prospect of marriage to neutralize potential enemies and keep them on their best behavior.
The great test of Elizabeth's reign was the war against Spain culminating in the Spanish Armada in 1588. The causes of the war revolved mainly around religious differences between Spain and England that caused various acts of aggression by each side against the other. Philip II still hoped fervently to re-establish Catholicism in England. Throughout the 1570's he plotted toward this end, trying to put Mary Queen of Scots, a Catholic, in Elizabeth's place. Elizabeth countered these intrigues by finally executing Mary after a long imprisonment. She also sent troops to help the Dutch rebels, while encouraging freebooting English captains, such as Sir Francis Drake, to raid Spanish shipping. Finally, Philip decided to crush the Protestants in England, Holland, and France by sending a huge armada (navy) and army northward in 1588.
Philip's plan was to send the Armada to pick up the Spanish Army of Flanders which was then fighting the Dutch, transport it to England to crush the English, and then transport it back to crush the Dutch rebels and French Huguenots. Thus the Armada presented a serious threat, not just to England, but also to the very existence of Protestantism in Europe.
On the surface, the struggle looked like an uneven one, heavily stacked in Spain's favor. However, the English had developed radical new tactics and ship designs that would revolutionize naval warfare. They built sleeker ships powered totally by sails. Instead of boarding and grappling, they relied on cannons fired from the broadside to destroy the enemy fleet. Recent research shows that the English enjoyed a decisive edge in firepower thanks to their use of shorter four wheeled carriages that made it easier to reload and fire the cannons. This contrasted with the Spanish who still used longer gun carriages adapted for land use. These had long trailers, which made it very difficult, if not impossible, to pull them inside the cramped quarters of the ship's gun deck for reloading during the heat of battle. These innovations successfully frustrated the Armada's attempts to come to grips with the English. However, the English, in turn, were unable to stop the Spanish advance up the coast for its rendezvous with the Army of Flanders.
When the Spanish pulled into the French harbor of Calais to rest, get supplies, and try to establish contact with the Army of Flanders (which through poor communications had no idea of its approach), the English struck. Launching eight fireships into the midst of the Spanish fleet, they forced the Spanish ships out into the open and out of formation where the English could use their superior firepower and speed to destroy the Spanish ship by ship. An ensuing storm added to the damage and forced the Spanish to give up on their rendezvous with the Army of Flanders and return home by sailing all the way around the British Isles. When the Armada finally came limping back home, a full half of it had been destroyed.
The defeat of the Spanish Armada did not destroy Spain as a great power. However, it did signal the beginning of the end of Spanish dominance of Europe. In the first half of the 1600's this process would accelerate as Spain wrecked itself by trying to maintain its power in an exhaustive and devastating series of conflicts, most notably the Thirty Years War (1618-48). As a result, a new balance of power would emerge in Europe. France would replace Spain as the main superpower, while the Dutch Republic and then England, despite their small size, would become the most dynamic naval and economic powers in Europe.
Europe's mentality would also change in the 1600's. Exhausted and disgusted by the seemingly endless religious wars and disputes, many people would take a more secular (worldly) view of things, seeing religion more as a source of trouble than comfort. By the late 1600's, these views would flower in the great scientific and cultural movement known as the Enlightenment.
FC88An overview of the Thirty Years War (1618-48)
Introduction
The last half of the 1500's saw Europe embroiled in a number of religious conflicts. For the most part, these wars were either between two countries (e.g., England vs. Spain, the Dutch vs. Spain) or internal affairs with some outside interference (e.g., France and Germany). However, as the seventeenth century dawned, religious and political tensions grew to encompass all of Europe in an interlocking network of states extending from Russia to England and from Sweden to Spain. These tensions exploded into what can be seen as the first European wide conflict in history: the Thirty Years War (1618-48).
Causes and outbreak of war
The roots of the Thirty Years War extended back to two main developments in the 1500's: the religious wars emanating from the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, and fear of Hapsburg Spain and Austria, who between them controlled nearly half of Western Europe. Religious tensions (complicated by political rivalries) led to conflicts between Lutheran Sweden and Catholic Poland, German Protestants and Catholics, and the Protestant Dutch and English against Catholic Spain. Fear of the Hapsburgs also contributed to the English and Dutch conflicts with Spain. In addition, France, once it had recovered from its own religious wars, increasingly took the lead against the Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs who ringed its borders to the north, south, and east. Venice also had problems with Austria over pirates in the Adriatic.
All these tangled religious and political tensions of the early 1600's polarized Europe into two camps defined largely, but not exclusively, by religion. The Protestant camp consisted of German Protestants, Denmark, the Dutch Republic, England, Sweden, Catholic Venice, and Catholic France. The Catholic camp had German Catholics, Spain, Austria, the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, Milan, the Papacy, and Poland.
Two such hostile camps staring menacingly at one another led to the common fear and expectation of a general war embroiling all of Europe. As a result, kings and princes built up armies and fortifications in preparation for the coming war, which merely reinforced the other side's fears of war, triggering more military spending and so on. Travelers of the time noted how states all over Europe seemed to be armed to the teeth and ready for a fight. This was especially true in Germany where the Protestant princes formed a defensive league known as the Protestant Union in 1609 while the Catholic princes quickly answered with the Catholic League.
Added to this were two other factors making Europe's economy less vibrant than it had been in the 1500's. For one thing, the flow of silver from the Americas had passed its peak. For another, the climate turned colder, reducing crop yields and straining Europe's ability to feed its population (which had doubled since 1450). This, in turn, led to lower resistance to disease (including Bubonic Plague which made a comeback in the 1600's). The combination of soaring military budgets, declining silver production, and the effects of a colder climate led to rising tensions in Europe, both between different states and between social classes within individual societies.
These problems combined with the fact that Europe was split between two hostile political/religious camps meant that any conflict or crisis between individual members of each camp could drag in all the other members of their respective camps and trigger a European wide war. In this respect, the situation largely resembled the one that would drag Europe into World War I in 1914.
In 1618, Protestants in Bohemia, then part of the Holy Roman Empire, rebelled against the Austrian Hapsburgs. Unfortunately, Germany's fragmented political situation generated a vicious cycle that would turn a local struggle into a European wide conflict using Germany as its battleground. As the crisis grew, more states would get involved and commit increasing amounts of resources. As more allies joined each side, the war grew into an exhausting stalemate that neither side could either win or afford to quit since it had already spent so much on it and felt it had to recover its expenses from its enemies. Concern over a Protestant or Hapsburg Catholic victory and belief that the balance could be tipped to their advantage would draw in more powers, eat up more resources, perpetuate the stalemate, and so on.
Thus Spain, Poland, the German Catholics, and the Pope came to Austria's aid to crush the Bohemian rebels. This caused Denmark, England and the Dutch Republic to join the conflict against the Hapsburgs and were defeated. Then Sweden attacked Austria, supposedly in defense of the German Protestants, but was eventually defeated. Finally, Catholic France threw itself into the fray, helping the Protestants against the Hapsburgs. Each new power that would get involved merely fed more fuel into the veritable firestorm of continuing stalemate until there was hardly anything left to burn.
More and more, this has become the pattern of modern warfare, as its expense makes it too expensive to fight, but also too costly to back out once a country has committed itself to it. And as the cost and destructiveness of war goes up, the spoils of war to make it pay for itself dwindle correspondingly. This dilemma has increasingly plagued modern warfare to the present day as the technology of war has gotten progressively more destructive and expensive, both to build and use.
FC88AThe early stages of the Thirty Years War (1618-31)
Opening phases of the war (1618-35)
Many people figured war would start in 1621 when a truce between the Dutch Republic and Spain was due to expire. In fact, it started in Bohemia (the modern Czech Republic) and Germany over the succession to the crown of the Holy Roman Empire that the Hapsburgs had held for generations. However, there was no guarantee the electors would choose another Hapsburg when the old emperor Matthias died. Since six of the seven imperial electoral votes might easily be split between three Catholic and three Protestant electors, the Bohemian king's electoral vote could be the decisive one.
Here was where the trouble began, because Ferdinand of Styria, the king of Bohemia and heir apparent to Matthias, was an ardent Catholic, whereas Bohemia had been a hotbed of religious turmoil ever since the Hussite revolt in the early 1400's. When Ferdinand tried to end the Protestant Bohemians' religious freedom, they retaliated by defenestrating (throwing out a window) two imperial ministers in the famous Defenestration of Prague (1618) and deposing Ferdinand as their king. Although the ministers miraculously survived the sixty-foot fall, the peace did not survive with them as the turmoil quickly spread across Germany.
Unfortunately for the Bohemians, when they rebelled against Austria, they elected a mediocre king, Frederick of the Palatinate, who only brought moral support from other Protestant powers. Cossack raids stirred up by Poland diverted the one bit of substantial help they might have gotten, troops from Transylvania. Meanwhile, Spain, Bavaria (as head of the German Catholic League), and the Pope were helping Austria with men and money. Consequently, the Bohemian War (1618-22) was not much of a struggle as Ferdinand (who had since become emperor) easily swept away Bohemian opposition. Ferdinand and his followers confiscated large tracts of land, exiled Protestants, and reclaimed Bohemia for the Catholic Church.
However, growing fear of a resurgent Hapsburg dominance stirred up activity across Europe in two main theaters of war, one aimed against Spain and the other against Austria. First of all, hostilities between Spain and the Dutch Republic resumed as expected in 1621 when their truce ran out. England also declared war on Spain in 1625 and joined the Dutch in a raid on Cadiz that ended in an embarrassing defeat for the Dutch and English. After this, England became more involved in its own religious and political squabbles that culminated in civil war in the 1640's. This kept them from playing any major role in the wider conflict unfolding on the continent.
Meanwhile, France was also active, fighting Spain over strategic towns and passes in Italy. If the French could control this area, they could block the flow of Spanish troops to the Netherlands along the so-called Spanish Road. However, France's effort was somewhat ineffective at this point, largely because of turmoil at court. Cardinal Richelieu, who wanted to commit France wholeheartedly to fight the Hapsburgs, had to fight for his own political life against the Queen mother, Marie de Medici. Richelieu and his policy would eventually triumph, throwing the full weight of France against the Hapsburgs with momentous results for European history. But for now, France's effort was of little account, and Spain held on in Italy.
Despite these victories, ten years of warfare were taking their toll on Spain's wealth, manpower, and ability to protect its treasure fleet, which the Dutch captured for the first time in 1629. This and Spain's already seriously damaged finances forced it to declare bankruptcy, leaving outstanding loans unpaid.
Meanwhile, the Austrian Hapsburgs' overwhelming victory in Bohemia had led Denmark to invade Germany in 1625 supposedly in defense of Protestant liberties. The Hapsburg general, Albrecht von Wallenstein, and the Catholic League's general, Tilly, made short work of the Danes, thus winning what is known as the Danish phase of the war (1625-29). The emperor Ferdinand felt so strong after his victory that he issued the Edict of Restitution in 1630. This declared that all land taken from the Catholic Church since 1555 must be returned to the Church. The Edict of Restitution drove thousands of Protestants from their homes and aggravated an already turbulent situation. It also alarmed and angered German princes, Catholic and Protestant alike, who felt the emperor was overstepping his constitutional powers.
FC88BThe later stages of the 30 Years War (1631-48)
The Swedish Phase
At this point Sweden, prodded by fear of Austria's growing power, Spain's apparent weakness, and France's willingness to back it with money, threw in its lot against the Hapsburgs and invaded Germany. This transformed what was already a European wide affair into a prolonged and bloody war of attrition where neither side was able to win a quick decisive victory or willing to concede defeat. To the German people caught in the middle, the war seemed to have assumed a life of its own that would carry on until there was nothing left in Germany to sustain it.
Sweden was a relative newcomer to European diplomacy. However, thanks to a line of brilliant and ambitious kings, the "Swedish meteor" would shine brightly over the Baltic before burning out in the 1700's. Two other Baltic states, Poland and Russia, were also assuming a greater role in European affairs. As a result, events in Eastern Europe and the Baltic had a growing impact on events in Western Europe. At this point, it was peace between Sweden and Poland that freed Sweden to invade Germany.
Sweden's king, Gustavus Adolphus, was a brilliant and daring general with a highly trained and disciplined army at his back. He used Swedish draftees rather than unreliable mercenaries and put them in smaller units that could more effectively use their numbers and firepower. He further increased this firepower by experimenting with mobile field artillery that could wreak havoc on the massed formations of the day. These reforms proved their worth at the battle of Breitenfeld (1631) where Swedish discipline and firepower overcame the desertion of their Saxon allies to crush an imperial army under Tilly. The next year Swedish tactics won a bloody but costly victory at Lutzen. In the smoke and confusion of battle, Gustavus was killed, taking a good part of the heart out of the Swedish effort.
Nevertheless, the Swedes pressed on, devastating Catholic lands on the way. Austria enticed its ally and Sweden's enemy, Poland, into the war, but a war further east against Russia neutralized the Poles. This prompted Spain to send an army north to retrieve the situation in Germany and the Netherlands. In 1634, the Spanish army crushed the Swedes at Nordlingen. The Swedes launched some fifteen heroic, but basically suicidal charges against the Spanish positions, all with disastrous results.
The war of attrition (1635-48)
Once again, the Protestant cause seemed on the verge of collapse. The war had raged now for some sixteen years. Hundreds of German towns and villages were devastated, and whole regions were virtually depopulated. The war's destruction and upheaval brought famine, and with that came disease. Germany was ready for peace. Unfortunately, the other powers in Europe were not. Instead, the war was about to enter a much more destructive phase of attrition where each side, instead of expecting a quick and decisive victory, fought to wear down the other side no matter what the cost might be to themselves.
In 1635, France wholeheartedly entered the war, ending any hopes for a quick peace. Its strategy was still largely to fund two of Spain's enemies, the Dutch and Swedes, and let them do as much of the fighting as possible. At first its own armies were somewhat ineffective against Spain's veteran troops. However, the Swedes, bolstered by French funds, beat the imperialists at Wittstock (1636) and forced an invading Spanish army to withdraw from France. This in turn allowed the French to invade Spain to support a revolt in Catalonia.
Meanwhile, the Dutch had dealt a crippling blow to the Spanish war effort by destroying a Spanish armada of 77 ships at the Battle of the Downs (1639). The next year, the Dutch crushed another Spanish and Portuguese fleet off the coast of Brazil. These two naval battles had the double effect of permanently wrecking Spanish naval power in the Atlantic and triggering a Portuguese revolt.
Even for the victors, this war was exhausting and ruinous, and by 1640 most powers were ready for peace. However, several things prevented peace at this time. First of all, the tangled alliances kept any one power on one side from negotiating its own separate peace. Second, rulers had a limited resource base with which to pay for the war, and that was shrinking steadily as the war's destruction ate up those resources. This helped generate the vicious cycle of stalemate discussed above.
However, with each year, the tide of war was shifting more and more against the Hapsburgs. In Germany, the Swedes beat an Imperialist army at the Second Battle of Breitenfeld (1642), which caused most of Austria's German allies to desert it. In 1643, the French crushed a Spanish army at Rocroi, opening the way to invade the Spanish Netherlands and establish France as the premier power in Europe for decades.
With Spain on the verge of bankruptcy and collapse, Sweden's manpower depleted, and even France facing tax revolts, everyone agreed to start negotiations at Westphalia in 1645. Even then, heavy French and Swedish demands for land and money, Austrian reluctance to give up, and the fact that neutral Germany was the battleground caused the negotiations to drag out as the war dragged on.
End of the war and its results
In 1648, the Dutch finally made a separate peace with Spain, gaining recognition of their independence after an 80-year struggle (1567-1648). This and the growing threat of revolt in its own lands prompted France at last to come to terms that same year. The resulting treaty became known as the Peace of Westphalia.
The Peace of Westphalia symbolized and confirmed the great changes taking place in Europe's balance of power over the first half of the 1600's. Spain, bankrupt and exhausted, was now reduced to the level of a second-class power. Austria's influence was virtually destroyed in the Holy Roman Empire. However, it would find new life by expanding eastward against an even more corrupt and decaying power, the Ottoman Turks. Germany, whose population and property had suffered damages only surpassed by that of World War II, remained hopelessly broken into some 300 states. Yet out of the ashes of this destruction Brandenburg-Prussia would gradually emerge to unify Germany in 1871.
There were winners. Sweden emerged as the dominant power in the Baltic for another half century. However, by the early 1700's, its aggressive policies would wear it out and knock it out of the mainstream of European politics. The Dutch came out of the war in the best shape of any country in Europe. Dutch trade and economy actually flourished during the war, making enormous profits from raiding Spanish shipping, taking over Spain's colonial trade, and selling munitions to the various combatants, including Spain.
Politically, France was the big winner, severely weakening the ring of Hapsburg powers surrounding it as well as gaining territories along the Rhine. All this also had its cost. For one thing, France's war with Spain dragged on until 1659. Secondly, the terrible tax burden of the war triggered a revolt known as the Fronde (1648-53) that nearly toppled the monarchy of the young Louis XIV. As it was, Louis' monarchy emerged triumphant (unlike its counterpart in England also facing revolution), and France emerged as the dominant power in Europe. The age of Spain was giving way to the age of France.
Absolute Monarchies in EuropeUnit 14: The rise of absolute monarchies in Eastern and Western Europe (c.1600-1700)
FC96CThe English Revolution From the Restoration Monarchy to the Glorious Revolution (1660-1688)
Charles II and the Restoration Monarchy (1660-85)
The above quoted poem says a great deal about the reign of Charles II. The English people were ready to throw off Cromwell's strict Puritan rule and enjoy life again. Theaters, taverns, and racetracks opened up again. Flamboyant fashions and hairstyles became the rage. And Britain once again became "Merry Old England". Charles, the "Merry Monarch" seemed to be just what the English people needed. However, despite all this, there still remained an undercurrent of tensions in the areas of politics, money, and religion
In politics, things seemed much calmer than they had been for decades-- at least at first. King and a largely cavalier Parliament seemed reconciled. Charles was voted a sizable income. The army was paid off, and most of the crown's enemies from the civil war were granted pardons. However, many of the old tensions between king and Parliament still existed. For one thing, the Restoration not only restored the king. It also restored Parliament, which Cromwell had suppressed. In fact, it was the restored Parliament that formally summoned Charles back to England, not the king who summoned Parliament. Parliament itself was divided into two parties: the Tories who favored a strong king and a Church of England largely resembling the Catholic Church, and the Whigs who favored a strong Parliament and more Protestant Church and ritual.
As far as money was concerned, England's wealth was rapidly growing. Cromwell's aggressive foreign policy had intensified England's commercial and naval rivalry with the Dutch, largely due to the Navigation Act, which excluded foreign, and particularly Dutch, ships from carrying English goods. This led to three short but bitterly fought naval wars with the Dutch (one under Cromwell and two under Charles II). Although the Dutch held their own, the expense and stress of their wars against England and France allowed the English to replace them as the premier naval and commercial power in Europe by 1700. Between 1670 and 1700, England's foreign trade grew by 50 per cent, and the king's customs revenues tripled. Despite this new prosperity, Charles' allowance from Parliament still could not satisfy his extravagant personal tastes and style of living. Instead of letting this lead to a clash with Parliament, as had led to Civil War in 1642, Charles neatly sidestepped Parliament by signing the Secret Treaty of Dover with Louis XIV. This gave Charles a handsome pension in return for the promise to turn England Catholic when the time was ripe.
Concerning religion Charles II was sly enough to keep to himself his beliefs in the Divine Right of Kings and the Catholic faith. Although he did not openly profess his Catholic faith until he was on his deathbed, he did restore lands confiscated since the civil war to the Church, crown, and nobles. He also restored the power of the Church of England, re-establishing the church courts and persecuting anyone, especially Puritans, not conforming to the Church's doctrines.
Much more unsettling was the fact that Charles had many children, but none of them were legitimate. That left James, Charles' brother and an avowed Catholic, next in line for the throne. This alarmed the Puritans, who put pressure on Charles to disinherit his brother. Puritan pressure intensified with Titus Oates' "Popish plot," a preposterous rumor that the Jesuits were plotting to kill Charles and massacre all the Protestants in England. This led to two years of anti-Catholic persecutions and hysteria, which put Charles in an awkward position, since he did not want to be exposed as a "papist" himself. Rumors of his funds from France made his position that much more delicate. In the end, the slippery Charles managed to avoid disinheriting his brother. He even ruled without Parliament the last few years of his reign, getting by on his subsidies from Louis XIV. By Charles' death in 1685, it seemed the king was as strong as ever.
James II and the Glorious Revolution (1685-88)
As strong as the new king, James II, may have appeared, there was no way he could undo the changes of the last 80 years. Charles II was a capable monarch quite adept at handling the Whigs. Unfortunately, James had nearly all the qualities to ensure getting himself dethroned, being bigoted, stubborn, and quite inept. His worst mistake was his open preference for Catholicism. He suspended laws keeping Catholics out of public office and even recruited Irish Catholics for his army. When his own bishops tried to advise him to reconsider his openly favoring Catholicism, he jailed seven of them in the Tower of London.
Even the Tories came to fear the king's religious views more than they did the Whigs' political views. Finally, they joined with the Whigs in inviting James' Protestant daughter, Mary, and her husband, William the Prince of Orange, to come from Holland and dethrone James. What followed has been known ever since as the Glorious Revolution, partly for being virtually bloodless (except for James' nosebleed), but mainly for what it accomplished. William and Mary's Dutch army landed unopposed and marched to London. James' army deserted him, and he fled to France.
Royalty and Parliament then came to an agreement whereby William could use England's resources to help stop Louis XIV's drive to dominate Europe. In return, William and Mary guaranteed Parliament's rightful place in the government and signed the Bill of Rights, precursor to our own Bill of Rights. This assured Englishmen such liberties as free speech, free elections, no imprisonment without due process of law, and no levying of taxes without Parliament's consent. In addition, the king agreed to call for new elections every three years. The king could still formulate policy and name his officials. However, the balance of power had definitely shifted in favor of Parliament, especially since it controlled the purse strings. Money was only granted one year at a time, which meant that the king would have to call Parliament each year just to have the cash needed for his policies. This new government where even the king where was subject to the law and certain legal procedures in ruling is called constitutional monarchy,
In the years to come, Parliament gradually gained more power at the expense of the kings. This process gained momentum when the German prince, George of Hanover, became king in 1714. His main interests remained on the continent, and he was generally content to let his allies, the Whigs, run the government for him.
Results of the English Revolution
The struggle between kings and Parliament throughout the 1600's ended in a clear-cut victory for Parliament. While a more democratic government emerged as a result of the English Revolution, keep in mind that rather high property qualifications still kept the vast majority of Englishmen from voting.
However, the English Revolution would benefit all England in two areas: civil rights and the economy. For one thing all Englishmen did gain certain civil rights, such as free speech and the right to a fair trial by a jury of peers. Also, all Christians except gained religious freedom, except Catholics and Unitarians, who eventually, would also be tolerated. The English Revolution also opened the way for more democratic reforms over the next two centuries, until England would became a truly democratic society. The power and success of these principles would spread to the American and French Revolutions, and from France to the rest of Europe and the world.
Economically, the English revolution saw the triumph of capitalism in England. One important aspect of this was Parliament's founding of the Bank of England (1694) through which the government did much of its business. The important thing here was that the government guaranteed repayment with interest on any loans it took out. This contrasted sharply with the old medieval method whereby kings took out personal loans, often did not bother to pay them back, and let the liability for the loans go to the grave with them. Now that government was identified more with Parliament, liability for the loans did not die with the king. Therefore, people were more willing to loan the government money, since they knew they would get it back with interest.
Since the government was largely run by hard-nosed middle class businessmen rather than extravagant nobles with no sense of the value of money, it would use these loans wisely by investing them in business and new industries. That, in turn would improve the economy, which not only could pay more taxes, but also invest further in the Bank of England, which could invest even more money in economic development, and so on. Therefore, England, along with the Dutch Republic, was one of the first modern states to operate at a profit rather than in chronic debt. And, as a result, England would be the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in the 1700's, a factor that would make Europe the dominant culture on the globe by 1900.
FC96DA Comparison of English & French Histories in the 1600S
Another factor affecting England has been a longer democratic, or more properly quasi-democratic, tradition compared to that of France, going back at least to the Magna Charta in 1215, although that was drawing upon an earlier charter signed by Henry I around 1100, which itself drew upon older traditions of Saxon liberties. Together, England’s protected position, but still very close to the continent, and its quasi-democratic roots blessed it with few invasions and more trade. Therefore it had less need for a strong army, giving it a stronger and richer middle class and a less powerful and distinct nobility than in France. For example, lower nobles and the upper middle class sat together in the House of Commons as a group known collectively as the gentry. While titles of nobility could not be bought in England, neither could they be lost, as in France, for the stigma of working to support oneself like the a commoner.
By 1700, England had worked out a constitutional monarchy that was more democratic, giving all freemen certain civil rights, although withholding the vote from all but about 5% of the men. Two major pillars supported this new order. One was Protestantism, which sees all believers as (at least spiritually) equal in God’s eyes. In the early 1600s when one could not separate religion and politics, spiritual equality led the way to political and social equality. The other pillar was free trade capitalism, versus the quasi-socialistic system of medieval guilds, royal monopolies, and mercantilism. Running this was the same Protestant middle class gentry that ran Parliament and claimed that God values all jobs equally. In the 1700s the combined dynamics of middle class capitalism and democracy would vault England into global leadership in terms of finance, naval and colonial power, and eventually industrialization.
France’s geography and history took it down a somewhat different path, at least until the 1800s. Its position on the continent presented more threats of invasion, as well as opportunities for conquest. Either way, it had a greater need for an army, which is expensive and disruptive to trade when it is actually used in wars. Therefore, the middle class had less clout and status in France than its counterpart in England, as witnessed by the more prominent role played by Parliament in English history than that played by its French counterpart, the Estates General. Also, there was no blending of the upper middle class and lower nobles corresponding to the gentry in England.
As a result, France experienced an absolute monarchy that was supported by its religious and economic systems. One was state enforced Catholicism with the doctrine of Divine Right of Kings, which supported the principle of absolute monarchy. The economic counterpart to absolute monarchy was mercantilism, which did recognize the importance of nourishing a strong national economy, but did it in an overbearing absolutist manner that stifled initiative and may have done as much harm as good.
However, instead of continuing on diverging paths, France would follow with its own democratic revolution and the triumph of free trade capitalism for two major reasons. One was political and economic competition from Britain that France had to adapt to in order to survive. The other was a common cultural and historical heritage going back to ancient Rome, which made France and England much more alike than either of them might want to admit.
FC89The Comparative Geographies and Histories of Eastern and Western Europe
Between East and West
Throughout the modern era, there have been striking contrasts between the histories, economies, and politics of Eastern and Western Europe. After World War II, those differences became especially obvious with the Soviet led Warsaw Pact forces poised on one side of the Elbe River and the Western NATO alliance on the other. As so often in history, the underlying basis for these differences has been geography.
First of all, Europe's latitude lies quite far north. For example, Rome, Italy is about as far north as Chicago, Illinois. However, it has a much warmer climate, especially in the winter. This is because Western Europe gets the moderating effects of a warm current known as the South Atlantic Drift and warm sea breezes coming across the Mediterranean from North Africa. Eastern Europe is too far inland to benefit much from either of these effects, and thus has more extremes in climate, especially in the winter.
However, the critical difference between Eastern and Western Europe has to do with waterways. Western Europe has an abundance of navigable rivers, coastlines, and harbors along the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean, North, and Baltic Seas. In the High Middle Ages, these fostered the revival of trade and the rise of towns, a money economy, and a middle class opposed to the feudal structure dominated by the nobles and Church.
Kings also opposed the nobles and the Church, so the middle class townsmen provided them with valuable allies and money. With this money, kings could buy two things. First of all, they could raise mercenary armies armed with guns to limit the power of the nobles. Secondly, they could form professional bureaucracies staffed largely by their middle class allies who were both more efficient since they were literate and more loyal since they were the king's natural allies and dependant on him for their positions. As a result, kings in Western Europe were able to build strong centralized nation-states by the 1600's.
Eastern Europe, in stark contrast to Western Europe, provided practically a mirror image of its historical development before 1600. Being further inland compared to Western Europe hurt Eastern Europe's trade, since the sea and river waterways vital to trade did not exist there in such abundance as they did in Western Europe.
Factors limiting trade also limited the growth of a strong middle class in Eastern Europe. This meant that kings had little in the way of money or allies to help them against the nobles. That in turn meant that peasants had few towns where they could escape the oppression of the nobles. Therefore, strong nobilities plus weak, and oftentimes elective, monarchies were the rule in Eastern Europe before 1600. At the same time, the nobles ruled over peasants whose status actually was sliding deeper into serfdom rather than emerging from it.
However, there was one geographic factor that favored Eastern Europe's rulers after 1600. That was the fact that Eastern Europe is next to Western Europe. As a result, some influence from the West was able to filter in to the East. In particular, Eastern European rulers would emulate their Western counterparts by adopting firearms, mercenary armies, and professional bureaucracies. As a result, they were able to build strongly centralized states in the 1600's and 1700's. This was especially true in three states: Austria-Hungary (the Hapsburg Empire), Brandenburg-Prussia in Germany, and Russia.
However, the lower incidence of towns and a strong middle class has continued to hamper the development of Eastern European states in the modern era, since rulers there have had to build their states with less of the strong foundation of a money based economy, basing their states on less developed agricultural economies. While the strong middle class in Western Europe would provide the impetus for further developments in the West, notably the emergence of democracy and the Industrial Revolution, these two things have had a harder time taking root in Eastern Europe, making its overall political and economic development more difficult.
FC90Hapsburg Austria Resurgent (c.1650-1700)
We came, we saw, God conquered.— Jan Sobieski, announcing the relief of the siege of Vienna from the Ottoman Turks in 1683
When the Thirty Years War and Peace of Westphalia stifled Austrian ambitions in Germany, the Hapsburgs expanded eastward against the Ottoman Empire. Ever since the death of Suleiman the Magnificent in 1565, the Ottoman Empire had been in serious decline, with a corrupt government, rebellious army, obsolete military technology, and decaying economy. Such a faltering empire was a tempting target for its neighbors. However, the Hapsburgs were never able to concentrate solely on the Turks. This was because France under Louis XIV posed a constant threat of invasion to the various German states, which forced the Hapsburgs to divide their attention between east and west.
The Hapsburg ruler at this time was Leopold I (1657-1705), a mediocre ruler, but lucky enough to have capable generals to lead his armies. Leopold's main goal was control of Hungary, which had been divided between Turkish and Austrian rule for over a century. When Leopold supported rebels in Transylvania against the Turks, war and an Ottoman invasion resulted. At this time, the Turks were ruled by an able family of viziers, the Koprulus, who started reforming the state in order to make the Ottomans a power to contend with once again. As a result, when the Turkish army started to advance westward, the alarm went up all over Europe, with even Louis XIV sending 4000 troops to help the Hapsburgs (and make himself look like a good Christian). In 1664, a much smaller, but better equipped and trained allied army caught and destroyed a Turkish army while it was crossing the Raba River. This was the first major victory of a Christian army over the Ottomans. However, it encouraged Leopold's allies to feel secure enough to take their troops home, leaving him to face the Turks alone. Instead of continuing the fight, he signed a humiliating peace that damaged his reputation considerably. As a result, the Hungarian nobles under his rule rebelled and called in the Turks to help them.
This triggered the Turks' last major invasion of Europe, climaxing at the siege of Vienna in 1683. A huge Turkish army of possibly 150,000 men, but with no large siege artillery, was faced by only the stout walls of Vienna and a garrison of ll,000 men. The siege lasted two months as the Turks gradually used the old medieval technique of undermining the walls. Just as the hour of their victory approached, a relief army from various European states arrived and crushed the Turkish army. From 1683 to 1700, Hapsburg forces and their allies advanced steadily against the Turks, only being interrupted by having to meet French aggression in the West. In 1697, the allied forces demolished another Turkish army at Zenta and watched as the once proud Janissaries murdered their own officers in the rout. The resulting treaty of Karlowitz (1699) gave Austria all of Hungary, Transylvania, and Slavonia. Karlowitz re-established Austria, now also known as Austria-Hungary, as a major European power. From 1700 until the end of World War I in 19l8, the Hapsburg Empire would dominate southeastern Europe, while the Ottoman Empire staggered on as the "Sick Man of Europe."
Although the Hapsburg Empire had regained its status as a military and diplomatic power, it still had serious internal problems, namely a powerful nobility ruling over enserfed peasants, a hodge-podge of peoples with nothing in common except that they all called Leopold their emperor, and a variety of states that each had their own rights, privileges and governmental institutions. The Hapsburgs dealt with these problems in three ways. First of all, they neutralized the nobles politically by making a deal that let them continue to oppress the peasants as long as they did not interfere in the government. This left the nobles fairly happy while giving the Hapsburgs a free hand to run the state, largely with soldiers and bureaucrats recruited from other parts of Europe. Unfortunately, this also left the empire socially and economically backward. Second, they tried to unite their empire religiously and culturally by imposing the Catholic faith and promoting the German language throughout their empire. Trying to submerge native cultures, such as that of Bohemia, under Catholicism and German culture mostly caused resentment against Hapsburg rule. Finally, they ruled each principality (Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, etc.) separately with its own customs and institutions. This kept nobles of different provinces from being able to combine in revolts against the Hapsburgs, but it also left the empire fragmented into a number of separate provinces. A large standing army and bureaucracy also held the empire together.
For the next two centuries the Hapsburg Empire would be a major power in Europe. However, it had a number of serious problems that it never adequately solved, being socially and economically backward and fragmented into a large number of provinces and increasingly restless ethnic groups. Together, these problems gradually ate away like a cancer at the Hapsburg Empire, rotting it out from within until there was hardly anything left to hold it together by the twentieth century.
FC91Brandenburg-Prussia & the Roots of Modern Germany (1640-88)
Brandenburg had lived under the rule of the Hohenzollern dynasty since l4ll when Frederick of Hohenzollern had purchased the territory and one of the seven electoral votes of the empire along with it. In l6l8, the elector, as the ruler of Brandenburg was known, also got control of Prussia some l00 miles to the east, holding it as a vassal of the king of Poland. Brandenburg especially suffered during the Thirty Years War, since it was caught between the Catholic imperialists to the south and Swedes to the north, not to mention its own rapacious mercenaries. This was the situation when Frederick William, known as the Great Elector, took power in 1640.
Frederick William found an imposing array of problems that fell into three basic categories: geographic, military/diplomatic, and economic. Frederick William's main geographic problem was that the territories of Brandenburg and Prussia were separated by l00 miles of Polish territory, making it very difficult to control and administer. Economically, Brandenburg was a poor country with few resources and a sandy soil that earned it the nickname "the sandbox of Germany". There were several factors aggravating the military and diplomatic situation. Worst of all was the devastation suffered at the hands of the Imperialists, Swedes, and Brandenburg's own troops. An estimated 60% of population was lost from the war, falling from l.5 million to 0.6 million. Not only that, but Swedish troops were still on Brandenburg's soil in l640, with other powerful threatening neighbors, such as Poland to the east and France to the west. To meet these threats, Frederick William's army consisted mainly of unruly mercenaries as likely to plunder his lands as defend them. And he also faced a powerful class of nobles known as junkers who were a constant obstruction to the government.
Frederick William figured that, above all else, he needed to tackle his military and diplomatic problems by building a good army to protect himself and his realm. The first step was to use what few reliable troops he had in order to destroy his old army of worthless mercenaries. One by one, he eliminated his old regiments until he had only an army of 2500 men, but it was a loyal core upon which to build. Through diligence and hard work, Frederick William built an excellent army of some 8000 men by l648. This was enough to give him a voice in the treaty talks at Westphalia. His main goal was to get Pomerania which, although legally Brandenburg's, was occupied by Swedish troops. He had to settle for half of Pomerania, but that was more than he could have expected eight years earlier, and it did give him a coastline on the Baltic Sea.
Inspired by his success, Frederick William kept building up his army and bureaucracy. For an officer corps and civil officials, he turned to the junkers. Like his contemporary, Leopold I of Austria, he let the nobles maintain their dominance over the serfs. But unlike Leopold, who did this to keep the nobles out of the government, Frederick William expected service to the state in return for those privileges. The junkers were expected to serve in the army as officers or as a highly efficient civil service that could provide better support for the army in the way of tax collection and supplies. They received fancy uniforms and excellent training, and soon had developed a high morale and pride in themselves as the officer class of Brandenburg-Prussia. That tradition of a proud Prussian officer class as the backbone of the state would continue all the way down to the twentieth century. As a result of this policy, Brandenburg-Prussia was the only state in Europe where the government successfully allied with the nobles and used them effectively in government service.
For recruits, Frederick William and his successors started to rely increasingly on peasant draftees rather than on undependable and expensive foreign mercenaries. Such soldiers were much cheaper than mercenaries and much less prone to looting, although not as efficient,. During peacetime, they could be kept in training for a few months each year while letting them farm and be productive the rest of the time. By the end of his reign, Frederick William was able to field an army of 45,000 men, with a smaller, but still sizable standing peacetime army.
In addition to defense, the army also helped Frederick William increase his power internally, since he could use it to demand taxes and enforce his policies. With those taxes, he could increase his army, which further increased his authority, and so on. As a result, Frederick William laid the firm foundations for absolutism in Brandenburg-Prussia.
As far as Brandenburg-Prussia's divided geography was concerned, Frederick William developed a postal system, which better tied together his scattered realm and also generated more revenue for the government. Even so, Brandenburg-Prussia was still a small fish in a big pond, and a turbulent pond at that. The later l600's were hardly more peaceful than the early l600's, with an aggressive Sweden to the north and Louis XIV's France to the west keeping Europe's armies constantly on the march. Thus, Brandenburg-Prussia's geography and revived army both forced and allowed Frederick William to pursue a foreign policy that was, in a word, opportunistic.
Throughout his reign he skillfully switched sides whenever convenient and sold his army's services to the highest bidder or most useful allies. For example, in the fighting between Louis XIV and the Dutch Republic, he switched sides three times. And in the Northern War between Poland and Sweden (l655-60), Frederick William at first was neutral, then on Sweden's side, and finally on Poland's side in return for recognition of his title to Prussia being totally independent of his overlord, Poland. This independent title gave Frederick William special status among German princes, who were still in theory under the power of the Holy Roman Emperor. In fairness to Frederick-William, it should be said that switching sides so often was typical of European diplomacy at this time. Although Frederick William's policies gained him some land and the independent title to Prussia, his major accomplishment was holding his original realm together in the midst of such powerful neighbors while rebuilding its prosperity.
At the same time, Frederick William was every bit as talented a ruler in building his realm economically as he was in military and diplomatic affairs. There were several things he did to restore Brandenburg-Prussia's prosperity. For one thing, he took an active interest in the development and use of new agricultural strains and techniques that would allow crops to thrive in Brandenburg's sandy soils. Considering the fact that the vast majority of the populace then was still concerned with agriculture, this was especially significant. Also, Frederick William encouraged immigration to repopulate his realm. Louis XIV's revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 (which took religious freedom from the French Huguenots) certainly helped Frederick William here, since some 20,000 Huguenots found their way to new homes in Brandenburg-Prussia. This was largely with the help of the Great Elector, who supplied the Huguenots with traveling money, guides, land, tax exemption for six years, and various other privileges. Thus, France's loss was Brandenburg-Prussia's gain, since the Huguenots were some of the hardest working and most highly skilled people in Europe. Finally, the government controlled monopolies on the production and sale of such commodities as salt and silk. The efficient management of these monopolies raised important funds for the government.
Frederick William's military reforms and concern for the economy caused him to use the army during peacetime to develop public works projects. For example, the army built a canal connecting Berlin, the capital, to the Oder River, thus increasing trade and tax revenues. Much of that extra revenue surely went back into the army. But at least it was partially able to pay for itself in peacetime. This also kept the army from causing trouble during times of peace and idleness.
By Frederick-William's death in l688, Brandenburg-Prussia was in better shape than before the Thirty Years War. Its population was back up to pre-war levels, while its tax revenues had increased from 59,000 thalers in the l640's to l,533,000 thalers in l689, over twenty-five times its original revenue. Its army provided more security than ever before while also giving Brandenburg-Prussia an unprecedented amount of international prestige and respect. However, this was only the beginning. Frederick William's reforms set the stage for two centuries of steady growth and expansion that would culminate in the unification of Germany and its rise to the status of a world power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
FC92The Geography and Patterns of Russian History
The last and easternmost state to assume a place in European culture and diplomacy was Russia. Three aspects of Russia.s geography have had a major impact on its history. First of all, its location on a high northern latitude and far inland gave it a cold and dry climate. That, combined with large areas of poor or mediocre soils, made it a cold dry steppe in which it is difficult to survive, let alone prosper. Famine has affected Russia on an average of one year out of three throughout its history.
Second, Russia lies on the vast Eurasian Steppe with no formidable natural barriers, which has invited a number of invasions with tragic results. In its early history, the main threat would come from the nomadic tribes to the east, making Russia a battleground between nomads and farmers. Only more recently have Russia’s neighbors to the west been a serious threat, as seen by the loss of an estimated 27,000,000 people in World War II. Ironically, Russia’s harsh climate has saved it from invasion more than once. Napoleon and Hitler both found out the power of “General Winter” when they made the mistake of trying to conquer this vast northern giant.
Finally, Russia’s inland location to the north and east of Europe has left it largely isolated from the mainstream of developments in Europe. Altogether, Russia’s geographic features have made it a harsh land facing constant invasions. As a result, Russians have historically been torn between needing and wanting foreign ideas with which they could better compete and survive on the one hand and a suspicion of foreigners bred by the continual threat of invasions they have faced on the other.
This love-hate relationship with foreign ideas has created recurring stress throughout Russian history all the way to the present. In its early history, one can see four major stages of development where it has taken place. The first of these was when the first Russian state, centered on Kiev, was confronted with Byzantine influence from the south. The Cyrillic alphabet, Russian Orthodox Christianity, and Russian art and architecture all bear the distinctive marks of Byzantium. The next major influence came from the Mongols who conquered Russia in the 1200’s and introduced the harsh absolutist strain that became a hallmark of later Russian government. The last two phases, the reigns of Ivan IV and Peter I, witnessed growing influence from Western Europe. Ivan IV’s reign saw the first attempts to gain access to the West for its technology, the use of Western artillery in the conquest of two Mongol khanates, and the attempts to replace the traditional Russian nobility with a new nobility of service. While his efforts had only limited success, they helped set the stage for the more widespread and concerted efforts of Peter I to westernize Russia. Despite the conservative backlash that followed Peter’s reign, Russia from that time on was an integral part of Europe and European civilization.
FC92AThe Early History of Russia to 1725
Early history
The earliest written references to inhabitants in Russia were the Scythians, nomadic horsemen who inhabited the southern steppes in the time of the classical Greeks. Russia’s grassy plains provided ideal grazing for these nomads’ sheep and horses. Some time after 500 A.D., various Slavic tribes, ancestors of most of today’s Russians, moved in and settled down in Russia. Then, around 900 A.D., Vikings, known as the Rus, came in and united the Slavs under a state centered around Kiev.
The Rus used Kiev and other Russian cities as bases from which to raid their more civilized neighbors to the south, in particular the Byzantines. The first such raids were successful in forcing tribute from the emperors in Constantinople in order to make the Rus go home. Later raids were met by the dreaded Greek fire, which set the Rus’ navy and the very sea itself ablaze. In the wake of Greek fire came Byzantine missionaries, who converted the Rus and their Slavic subjects to Greek Orthodox Christianity. Byzantine civilization has had a profound impact on Russian culture. Many Russians today still cling to the Orthodox faith in spite of over seventy years of Communist disapproval. The Cyrillic alphabet and the onion domes that grace the tops of the Kremlin also bear solid testimony of Byzantine influence on Russia to this day.
Russian civilization and the Kievan state flourished until l223, when the most devastating wave of nomadic invaders in history arrived: the Mongols. In 1223 C.E. at the Kalka River, the Russian princes were overwhelmed by a small Mongol army whose numbers were exaggerated by panic and confusion to some l50,000 men. Europe itself was only spared Asia’s fate by luck rather than the prowess of its armies. Upon Chinghis Khan’s death his far-flung hordes returned to the Mongol homeland to elect a new khan. However, the Mongols returned to Russia in l237 to finish its conquest. They even struck into Poland and Hungary, giving Europe a taste of things to come. Amazingly, fate intervened again when Chinghis Khan’s successor died. Thus Europe was spared a second time, and the incredible energy that had sent the Mongols to the corners of the known world started to fizzle out. However, Russia remained the western frontier of Mongol power.
Mongol rule was exercised indirectly through whichever Russian princes were most willing and able to carry out the will of their masters. This meant doing things in the rough and brutal Mongol way, so that after two centuries of Mongol rule, much of the Mongol character and way of running a state rubbed off on their Russian vassals. The Mongols’ expectation of blind obedience to authority and the use of such things as a secret police to enforce their will and inspire terror, a postal relay rider system for better communications, and regular censuses and taxation became a major part of the Russian state that would later evolve.
Muscovy
The most successful of the Russian vassals to adapt Mongol ruling methods were the princes of Muscovy (Moscow) who earned the sole right to collect taxes and dispense justice for the Mongols, while increasingly resembling their Mongol masters in their ruling and military techniques. Eventually, the Muscovite princes turned against their Mongol masters and ended their rule in l390. It was around Moscow that the modern state of Russia would form.
Mongol rule was gone, but the Mongol terror was not. Nearly every year, the horsemen of various neighboring khanates would ride in to spread a wide swathe of death and destruction, taking thousands of Russian prisoners to the slave markets back home. These raids would depopulate whole regions of Russia, even Moscow itself being sacked by the Mongols five different times between l390 and l57l. While destabilizing Russian society, these raids also forced the Muscovite princes to tighten their grip on society in order to provide better defense. Muscovite absolutism grew even stronger when the metropolitan, or patriarch, of the Russian Orthodox Church moved to Moscow, giving it claim to the title of “the third Rome” after Constantinople and Rome itself. Likewise, Muscovite rulers laid similar claim to the title of Czars (Caesars).
The first truly memorable Czar was Ivan IV, known as “the Terrible” (l533-84). Ivan’s reign saw four momentous developments, all of which can be seen as growing efforts to bring in influence from Western Europe. The first, the destruction of the neighboring khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan to the south and east, was made possible by the use of European artillery. Although the Mongols of the Crimea still remained to carry out their depredations, destroying these other two khanates did relieve the Russian people of some suffering from nomadic raids. It also opened the way for the rapid expansion of the Russians eastward across Siberia to the Pacific in much the same way the United States would spread rapidly westward to the same ocean in the l800’s.
Second was Ivan’s long but unsuccessful war against Poland and Sweden to conquer Livonia and gain closer access to Western Europe. Compounding this failure was the third development, the Orthodox Church’s growing fear of the Roman Catholic Church. Causing this was increased missionary activity by the Jesuits in the Ukraine and eastern Baltic. Using Western scholarship in debates with the less educated Orthodox clergy, they were able to convert growing numbers of people in these regions. Naturally, the Orthodox clergy saw this as an especially serious threat to their religion and became the most ardent opponents of contact with the West.
Finally there was Ivan’s fight against the boyars, the powerful Russian nobles. Blaming them for the death of his beloved wife, he launched a concerted campaign against them by setting up the Oprichnina, or state within a state, where Muscovy was split between the traditional state and his own Oprichnina. Ivan then launched an eight-year reign of terror (l564-72) against anyone he suspected of disloyalty. He also tried to replace the boyars with a new nobility of service that would be more subservient to the crown. Since Russia’s economy was still quite backward, the czar had to pay this service nobility with land worked by peasants. Consequently, many peasants fled to the freer lands in Siberia, now opened for settlement by Ivan’s wars. The government reacted with a series of laws that tied the free peasants to the soil and made them serfs.
The “Time of Troubles”
Ivan’s reforms and purges made his reign a turbulent and costly one. Also, Ivan’s accidental slaying of his most able son in a fit of passion left the throne to the feebleminded Feodor, who liked to spend most of his time praying and ringing church bells. The reins of government thus fell to the boyar, Boris Gudonov, who succeeded Feodor as Czar in l598. At this point, everything in Russia seemed to go wrong at once. The Boyars resisted his attempts to increase royal power. The Orthodox Church thwarted Boris’ early attempts to bring Western European knowledge and culture to Russia. And, worst of all, in l601 a horrible drought and famine killed millions of peasants who revolted out of desperation and the belief that the famine was the Czar’s fault. The rebels got help from the Poles, who supported a supposed son of Ivan IV as Czar. Boris successfully defended his realm until, right on the verge of victory, he suddenly died, capping off a remarkably unlucky reign. The Poles had little better luck in holding the throne, their candidate being assassinated and replaced by another boyar. More peasant revolts and another Polish invasion, which took Moscow, tore Russia further apart. Finally, the Church managed to rally the people, drive out the Poles, and set up a stable government. A national assembly called the Zemsky Sobor set up a new dynasty, the Romanovs. However, the boyars were as independent and troublesome as ever while increasing their hold on the serfs below. The Church blocked any progressive reforms that it saw as irreligious even making it illegal to play chess or gaze at the new moon. This was the condition of Russia when probably its greatest Czar, Peter the Great, took the throne in l682.
Peter I (1682-1725)
is one of the most interesting characters in Russian history. An enormous man (6’8” tall) with incredible physical strength, he had a strong drive and will to match his physical stature. From an early age, Peter was fascinated with anything from Western Europe, especially technology. He was an amateur clockmaker and dentist (to the dismay of anyone in court with a toothache), and especially loved ships. His early exposure to western ways made him realize how backward Russia was compared to the rest of Europe. Therefore, he was determined that Russia should modernize, which meant it must westernize.The first step was the Great Embassy, a grand tour of Europe where Peter traveled in disguise so he could experience its culture and technology more freely. The huge Czar’s identity was the worst kept secret in Europe, but he did learn about such things as Prussian artillery and Dutch and English shipbuilding first-hand instead of from a distance. In their wake, Peter and his wild entourage left a trail of ransacked houses and enough material to keep Europe gabbing for years about these “wild northern barbarians.” But Peter had also gained a much firmer understanding of European technology, further fueling his determination to bring it to Russia, whether Russia wanted it or not. The subsequent transformation of Russia is known as the “Petrine Revolution”.
Peter first had to secure better communications with the West. At this time, Poland and Sweden effectively blocked such contact in order to keep Russia backwards and at their mercy. Peter’s determination to end Russia’s isolation and gain a “window to the West” as he called it, led to The Great Northern War with Sweden (l700-l72l). This was a desperate life and death struggle for both Sweden in its attempt to stay a great power, and for Russia in its effort to become one. Despite the brilliance of Sweden’s brilliant warrior king, Charles XII, Russia’s superior resources and manpower, along with its winter, wore out the Swedes. The “Swedish meteor” which had burned so brightly in the l600s was quickly fading away. In its place, the Russian giant started to cast its huge shadow westward and make Europe take note that a new power had arrived.
Peter’s new capital and “window to the West” was St. Petersburg. Its location was less than ideal, being on marshy land, twenty-five miles from the sea up the Neva River, and in a high northerly latitude that gave up to nineteen hours of sunlight a day in the summer and as little as five hours a day in the winter. Stone for the city had to be brought in on the backs of laborers, since there were no wheelbarrows. As a result, thousands of laborers died while building this new capital which legend said was built on the bones of the Russian people.
Meanwhile, Peter&dsquo;s other reforms left hardly anything untouched. He more tightly centralized the government and built up a more modern army, navy, and merchant marine along European lines. He dealt with his main obstacle to reform, the Orthodox Church, by not electing a new patriarch when the old one died. Without effective leadership, the Church could do little to fight Peter&dsquo;s reforms. After twenty-one years of this, Peter appointed a council, or Holy Synod, which made the Church little more than a department of state.
Peter tried to westernize the economy by first creating mines to develop the resources needed for industry. By l725, Russia had gone from being an iron importer to an iron exporter. He brought in western cobblers to teach Russians how to make western style shoes. Anyone refusing was threatened with life on the galleys. As a result of Peter&dsquo;s strict measures, Russian industries grew, and with them an “industrial serfdom” tied to their jobs in much the same way the peasants were tied to the soil. Peter also worked to build up commerce and a middle class like that he saw in Western Europe. He raised the status of merchants to encourage more men to take up trade and started an extensive canal building program that connected rivers and made water transport possible between the Baltic and Black Seas. Peter tried to westernize people&dsquo;s lifestyles as well. He updated the alphabet and changed the calendar to get more in line with that of the West. He established newspapers, libraries, and western style schools, imported music, theater, and art from the West, and imposed European fashions upon the Russian people. Even beards were taxed, because they were not in style in Europe.
By Peter’s death, Russia’s economy and culture were starting to look much more western. However, many of these reforms were superficial, touching only the nobles or a limited part of the economy. For one thing, such widespread and comprehensive reforms would naturally cause a good deal of resistance and turmoil in such a traditional society as Russia. Therefore, after Peter died, there was a serious reaction against his reforms in an effort to go back to the old ways. However, Peter, by the force of his character, had so thoroughly exposed Russia to the West that there was no turning back. From this point on, like it or not, Russia was a part of Europe.
FC93The Rise of the Dutch Republic in the 1600's
Introduction
Although it took the Dutch until 1648 to force formal recognition of their independence from Spain, for all intents and purposes, the Dutch Republic was free by the twelve-year truce signed with Spain in 1609. The question arises: how did the Dutch hold off and defeat the biggest military power in Europe? While geographic distance from Spain, foreign aid from France and England, and the occasional desperate measure of opening their dikes to flood out invading armies all certainly played a role, the single most important factor was money. For example, of the 132 military companies in the Dutch army in 1600, only 17 were actually made up of Dutch soldiers. The rest were English (43), French (32), Scottish (20), Walloon (11), and German (9) companies fighting for the Dutch because they had the money to pay them. The war took a tremendous financial effort to win, costing the Dutch 960,000 florins in 1579, 5.5 million florins in 1599, and 18.8 million florins in 1640. Despite this expense, the Dutch were in stronger financial shape than ever by the end of the war and were well on their way to becoming the dominant commercial and economic power in Europe. This economic dominance was the product of a chain reaction of events and processes that, as so often was the case, was rooted in geography.
Geography of the Netherlands
Three geographic factors influenced the rise of the Dutch Republic. First, as the name Netherlands (literally "lowlands") implies, much of the Dutch Republic is below sea level. The Dutch have waged a constant battle in order to claim, reclaim, and preserve their lands from the sea through the construction of dikes, polders (drained lakes and bogs), drainage systems, and windmills (for pumping out water). Roughly 25% of present day Holland is land reclaimed from the sea and still partially protected by hundreds of windmills. The second factor is the Netherlands' position at the mouths of several major rivers and on the routes between the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean. The third factor is the Netherlands' relative scarcity of natural resources. All three of these factors forced the Dutch to be resourceful engineers, merchants, sailors, and artisans. With these geographic factors as a foundation, the Dutch launched themselves on a career that was a classic case of the old saying: it takes money to make money. The whole process started with fish.
In the 1400's, the herring shoals, a mainstay of the Hanseatic League, migrated from the Baltic to North Sea. The Hanseatic League's loss was the Dutch Republic's gain, since, in the absence of refrigeration, salted herring was then an important source of protein in Europe, especially the Netherlands whose population was 40% urban and had to import about 25% of its food. The other half of this trade was salt for preserving the herring. The best sources of salt were off the coasts of France (the Bay of Biscay) and Portugal. These two activities complemented each other well, since the herring season lasted from June to December, so the Dutch could collect salt from December to June.
The Dutch ran large scale operations compared to those of other countries. Unlike the simple open English fishing boats, the Dutch sailed virtual floating factories, called buses, with barrels of salt for curing the herring on board. Although the claims by other competing countries that the Dutch had 3000 ships working the herring shoals were vastly exaggerated (500 being closer to the mark), the Dutch still produced such a volume of salted herring that they could undersell their competition and drive them out of business.
The Dutch pattern of growth
Dutch control of the herring trade touched off a cycle where the Dutch would get profits, invest those profits in new ventures, which generated more profits and so on. This initially led into two general areas of development, foreign trade and the domestic economy, each of which fed back into the cycle of profits and so on. Both of these also led to expansion of trade across the globe to the Mediterranean, West Indies, Africa, East Indies, and the South Pacific, which also fed back into the cycle of profits.
In terms of foreign trade, the Dutch first expanded their operations into the Baltic Sea where they traded for Norwegian timber, Polish grain, and Russian furs for both home consumption and selling abroad. The Baltic trade became so important that the Dutch referred to it as the "Mother Trade."
All this trade required durable, efficient, and cheaply built ships that could operate in the rough waters of the North and Baltic Seas as well as the shallow coastal waterways that were typical of the Netherlands. What the Dutch came up with was the fluyt , a marvel of Dutch efficiency and engineering. The fluyt was both sturdy enough to withstand rough seas and shallow draught for inland waterways. Unlike other countries' merchant ships, which doubled as warships, the fluyt carried few, if any, guns, leaving extra space for cargo. It was cheaper to build, costing little more than half as much as other ships, thanks to the use of mechanical cranes, wind-driven saws, and overall superior shipbuilding techniques.
The fluyt also had simpler rigging that used winches and tackles, thus requiring a crew of only 10 men compared to 20-30 on other European ships. This resulted in two things. First of all, the Dutch could carry and sell goods for half the price their competition had to charge, giving them control of Europe's carrying trade. Second, they were able to dominate Europe's shipbuilding industry.
Meanwhile, the Dutch were developing their domestic economy in two ways. First they invested in a wide variety of industries, some traditional and some new: textiles, munitions, soap boiling, sugar refining, tobacco curing, glass, and diamond cutting. The need for efficient handling of all the money from this and other enterprises spurred the Dutch to develop another aspect of their economy: financial institutions For one thing, they established the Bank of Amsterdam in 1609, the first public bank in North-West Europe, being modeled after the Bank of Venice (f.1587). The vast sums of cash this bank attracted in deposits allowed it to lower interest rates, which in turn brought in more investments, and so on. Even in wartime, the Bank of Amsterdam was able to lower its interest rates from 12% to 4%. The Dutch also created a stock market. At first this was just a commodities market. Only later did it evolve into a futures commodities market where, by the time a shipload of such goods as wool or tobacco landed, someone had already bought it in the hope of reselling it for a profit.
The success of the Baltic Mother Trade and their domestic economy led the Dutch to expand their foreign trade on a global scale. They did this in three basic directions. First was the Mediterranean, where recurring famines hit in the 1590's, signaling the start of a "Little Ice Age" that would afflict Europe for the next century. This opened new markets for Polish grain, which the Dutch traded in return for, among other things, marble. (It was this Italian marble which Louis XIV would buy from the Dutch for his palace at Versailles.) The Dutch even expanded this Mediterranean trade to include doing business with the Ottoman Turks.
Second, when Portugal (then under Spain's rule) closed access to its supplies of salt, the Dutch crossed the Atlantic to find salt in Venezuela. While there, they found the plantations in the West Indies needed slaves, which got them involved in the African slave trade. They also discovered an even more lucrative condiment in the Caribbean than salt: sugar. Soon, the Dutch were founding their own colonies (e.g., Dutch Guiana) and sugar plantations and gaining control of the sugar trade. Soon, sugar was rivaling even the spices of the Far East in value. However, this is not to say the Dutch ignored the Far Eastern trade.
However, breaking into the lucrative Asian Spice market, the third new direction of Dutch expansion, was not so easy. For one thing, they had to find the East Indies. Amazingly, the Portuguese had kept the South East Passage around Africa a secret for a full century since da Gama's epic voyage. The Dutch looked in vain for a northeast passage around Russia. They also sought a southwest passage, which Oliver van der Noort found (1599-1601), making him the third captain to circumnavigate the globe after Ferdinand Magellan and Sir Francis Drake. But that route was no more practical for the Dutch than it had been for the Spanish and English.
Finally, Jan van Linschuten, a Dutch captain who had served Portugal, showed the way around Africa in 1597. Although the first voyage was not a financial success, the second was, bringing back 600,000 pounds of pepper and 250,000 pounds of cloves worth 1.6 million florins, double the initial investment. Investors rushed to get in on the action, forming the Dutch East Indies Company in 1602. This privately owned company operated virtually as an independent state, seizing control of the spice trade from Portugal's weakening grip. From there, always in search of new markets, the Dutch explored the South Pacific, discovering Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania, the last two names bearing evidence of their presence.
Such a far-flung trading empire, combined with the struggle with Spain, required a navy to protect its merchant ships. Therefore, the Dutch developed such a navy, excelling in this as well as their other endeavors. At this point, warships generally followed the principle of the bigger the better. As a result, the man-of-war, as it was called, was a huge and bulky gun platform that did not suit the Dutch needs. For one thing, they needed more of a shallow draught vessel that could sail in their home waters. They also needed a long-range ship that could protect their far-flung commercial interests. The result was the frigate, a sleeker shallow draught vessel with only about 40 guns, but capable of long-range voyages. Dutch frigates, along with their excellent sailors and captains, made the Dutch the supreme naval power of the early 1600's and also helped them dominate the warship-building industry, building navies for both sides in a Danish-Swedish war and even for their French rivals. And, of course, this brought in more money and pushed the Dutch to expand their domestic industries and finance operations in three ways.
A cultural golden age
By the early 1600's, Amsterdam was the center of world trade, which allowed the Dutch to engage in one more type of activity: patronage of the arts. The seventeenth century saw the Dutch Republic become the center of a cultural flowering much as Italy had been during its Renaissance. Along with money to patronize the arts and sciences, the Dutch Republic had both a free and tolerant atmosphere and enterprising spirit willing to challenge old notions and creatively expand the frontiers of the arts and sciences. The Dutch Republic acted as a virtual magnet for Jewish émigrés from Spain and Portugal and Calvinist dissidents from England, some of who would eventually move on to Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts. The Jewish philosopher from Spain, Spinoza, and the French mathematician, Descartes, were two of the shining lights that the Dutch attracted. Notable among Dutch artists were Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, Van Dyck, Steen, Ruysdael, and Hobbema, whose portraits, domestic scenes, landscapes, and mastery of light and shadow brought their age to life on the canvass as no artists before them had done.
Conclusion
The Golden Age of the Dutch Republic was to be short lived, once again largely because of geography. It was the Dutch Republic's great misfortune to border the great land power of the day, France. In the 1670's, the French king, Louis XIV, due to a combination of jealousy of Dutch prosperity and hatred of Protestants, launched a series of wars that would embroil most of Europe and put the Dutch constantly on the front line of battle. At the same time, just across the channel, the growing economic and naval power, England, was challenging the Dutch on the high seas and in the market place. Three brief but sharply fought naval wars plus the strain of fighting off Louis exhausted the Dutch and allowed England to become the premier economic, naval, and colonial power in the world by the 1700's. However, England owed the techniques and innovations for much of what it would accomplish in business and naval development to the Dutch from the previous century.
FC93AThe "Tulipmania" of the 1630s
The tulip seems to have originated in the harsh wind-blown environment of the Himalayas. It was originally a short, stubby flower, but was admired for its beauty and as a symbol of the tenacity of life. Tulips spread westward and became especially popular among the Arabs who cultivated gardens of them. Their popularity spread to the Turks, and the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent even had a tattoo of a tulip to serve as a protective talisman.
The tulip first arrived in Antwerp in 1562 by way of trade with the Turks. By this time, the influx of money from the Americas and expanding trade routes were pushing rich Europeans to look for new ways to spend and invest their money. One area was botany and gardening, thanks to the scientific revolution and the circulation of scientific knowledge by the printing press. This and two other factors made the tulip seem like the perfect thing in which to invest. One was that it was difficult for many Dutch artisans to make a profit, so they were also looking for another source of income requiring little capital investment. The other factor was that tulips reproduce slowly, thus creating a limited supply that could be sold for a high profit. All these things made tulips lucrative to grow and sell.
At first, the tulip trade grew reasonably, as demand for this new sensation grew and the supply remained constant, thus driving prices up. This would draw more people into the speculative market, further increasing demand, driving prices up more, and so on. However, what started as a reasonable trade in tulips soon turned into a frenzy of buying and selling, with each new buyer expecting to be able to sell at a higher price. People were paying outrageous prices, such as plots of land and, a whole trade ship, and, in one case, an entire mansion, for a single bulb. They were also borrowing heavily and going into debt to buy tulip bulbs, counting on future profits from other people caught up in the same frenzy.
Unfortunately, there was a major problem with tulip bulbs, because the most beautiful designs in tulips tend to be recessive traits, and there was no guarantee that a tulip bulb’s offspring would have the same traits as its parent. Eventually, people, realizing this and seeing that tulips were extremely over-priced, wanted to sell their bulbs. Unfortunately, there were no buyers, so prices dropped rapidly. This led to panic selling, since so many people were in debt for tulip bulbs they hoped to sell, causing prices to drop more, leading to more panic selling, and so on. By the end of 1637, the tulip bubble had burst and “tulipmania had collapsed as suddenly as it had bloomed.
Even though the speculative bubble popped, tulips still retained much of their value. Louis XIV would buy 2,000,000 tulips a year from the Dutch for his palace at Versailles. They continue to be a major export for Holland (the Dutch Republic).
FC94Laying the Foundations for Absolutism in France and Europe
The roots of the problems of state building in the 1600's, go back to the turmoil of the Dark Ages which helped give rise to two medieval institutions: feudalism and the medieval Church. Feudalism formalized the fragmentation of France into some 300 different legal systems. Over the centuries, custom and tradition firmly established a multitude of local rights and privileges across France. Various nobles and local officials claimed these rights, privileges, and the offices that went with them as their patrimonial birthrights. Meanwhile, the chaos of the age helped make the medieval Church a major factor in state and society. However, the revival of towns and trade in the High Middle Ages helped lead to the rise of kings. They had always been recognized in theory as the rulers of France, but it had been centuries since anyone had taken them seriously.
By the 1200's kings were making serious claims to rule in fact as well as name, strengthening those claims with the doctrine of Divine Right of Kings. However, they were continually clashing with the Church and the locally entrenched rights and privileges that had evolved during the Dark Ages. French courts, known as Parlements, were particularly troublesome in modifying, slowing down, or even stopping the king's decrees from being carried out. The king could appear before the Parlements and plead his case, but that was seen as being beneath his royal dignity and was rarely done.
This made it especially difficult for kings to get new taxes, which the inflation and high military costs of the 1500's made even more necessary. Kings had to resort to such fund raising techniques as taking out loans and selling offices and noble titles to ambitious members of the middle class. Unfortunately, these created even bigger problems. Kings repaid loans through tax farming where creditors would collect the taxes of certain provinces. Naturally, these creditors would take everything they could get from the provinces, which bred widespread corruption and discontent in the absence of a professional bureaucracy to check these abuses. Selling offices and noble titles also bred corruption and made their owners tax exempt. All this merely reduced the king's tax base even more, forcing him to sell more offices and tax farms, and so on until he was so far in debt he would declare bankruptcy or imprison his creditors on charges of corruption in order to erase his debts.
By the mid 1500's, these financial problems, combined with growing religious turmoil and continuing feudal separatism, helped trigger the French Wars of Religion which devastated France on and off for nearly forty years (1562-98). One outcome of these wars was the willingness of people to recognize the king's power in order to ensure the peace. The new king, Henry IV (1598-1610), and his minister, Sully, used this new attitude favoring absolutism and various economic measures to restore the power of the monarchy. First of all, they repudiated all foreign debts, while repaying French creditors at a much lower rate of interest. Second, they established the Paulette, a tax on hereditary offices that would partially make up for lost revenues when commoners bought into the tax-exempt ranks of the nobility. Third, they built and repaired roads and bridges to encourage internal trade. Finally, in the spirit of the economic theory of the day, mercantilism, which encouraged domestic industries to increase the flow of gold and silver into a country, they promoted such luxury industries as silk and tapestries to compete with foreign industries. By the end of Henry's reign, the royal government was probably as financially solid as it had ever been.
Henry's successor, Louis XIII (1610-43), and his minister, Cardinal Richelieu, continued building royal power. They particularly focused on breaking the power of the nobles by destroying their castles, quickly crushing any of their conspiracies, and infringing on their privileges (such as dueling). They also excluded them from royal councils, relying more on middle class officials who had just recently bought noble titles and were thus more reliable. By 1635, they felt France was strong enough to throw its weight into the Thirty Years War to stop Spain. Unfortunately, the war's expense largely wrecked the progress of the last 35 years and forced Richelieu to resort increasingly on tax farming, but this time with one important innovation.
In order to protect the financiers who bought the tax farms, Richelieu created new officials known as Intendants, whose job was to report corruption and make sure the financiers got their money. Naturally, both the financiers and intendants were quite unpopular, and got involved in numerous disputes. However, since the intendants were new officials with no tradition of being tried in local or Church courts, all their cases went to the royal courts, which favored them and the king's interests. Eventually, Richelieu expanded the intendants' authority, making them supreme in all provincial affairs and rearranging the provinces into 32 non-feudal districts known as generalites. This neatly sidestepped the firmly entrenched interests of local authorities and laid the foundations for more thorough royal control of the provinces and France under Louis XIV.
FC95The Age of Louis XIV, the "Sun King" (1643-1715)
I am the state.— Voltaire, incorrectly quoting Louis XIV
Introduction
From 1643 to 1815 France dominated much of Europe's political history and culture. Foreigners came to France, preferring it to the charms of their own homeland. Even today, many still consider it the place to visit in Europe and the world. In the 1600's and 1700's there was a good reason for this dominance: population. France had 23,000,000 people in a strongly unified state compared to 5,000,000 in Spain and England, and 2,000,000 in the Dutch Republic and the largest of the German states. This reservoir of humanity first reached for and nearly attained the dominance of Europe under Louis XIV, the "Sun King".
Louis' early life and reign (1643-61)
Louis was born in 1638 and succeeded his father, Louis XIII, as king in 1643 at the age of five. Luckily, another able minister and Richelieu's successor, Cardinal Mazarin, continued to run the government. In 1648, encroachment by the government on the nobles' power, poor harvests, high taxes, and unemployed mercenaries plundering the countryside after the Thirty Years War led to a serious revolt known as the Fronde, named after the slingshot used by French boys. Louis and the court barely escaped from Paris with their lives. Although Mazarin and his allies crushed the rebels after five hard years of fighting (1648-53), Louis never forgot the fear and humiliation of having to run from the Parisian mob and fight for his life and throne against the nobles. This bitter experience would heavily influence Louis' policies when he ruled on his own.
From 1643 to 1661, Cardinal Mazarin ruled ably in the young king's interests, although he provided Louis with a rather odd upbringing for a king. Despite an immense fortune, Mazarin was something of a miser who gave the young king inadequate food, clothing, and attention. (Once the young Louis was left unattended and fell into a fountain where he almost drowned.) Louis also got little in the way of a formal education and, even as an adult, was barely literate. But Mazarin did give Louis a sense of what it meant to be a king. As a result, he turned out to be a hard working ruler, but often lacked much common sense and the willingness to entrust enough freedom of action to his subordinates. From his mother, a full-blooded Spanish princess, Louis learned great religious piety and love of ritual, another trait that would influence his reign. In 1661, Mazarin died. Louis' officials, assuming he would be a "do nothing" king like his father, asked to whom they should now answer. Louis' reply was "To me." The age of Louis XIV was about to begin in earnest.
Louis' internal policies
Louis XIV may not have said, "I am the state", but he ruled as if he had said it. Louis was the supreme example of the absolute monarch, and other rulers in Europe could do no better than follow his example. Although Louis wished to be remembered as a great conqueror, his first decade of active rule was largely taken up with building France's internal strength. There are two main areas of Louis' rule we will look at here: finances and the army.
Louis' finance minister, Jean Baptiste Colbert, was an astute businessman of modest lineage, being the son of a draper. Colbert's goal was to build France's industries and reduce foreign imports. This seventeenth century policy where a country tried to export more goods and import more gold and silver was known as mercantilism. While its purpose was to generate revenue for the king, it also showed the growing power of the emerging nation state. Colbert declared his intention to reform the whole financial structure of the French state, and he did succeed in reducing the royal debt by cutting down on the number of tax farms he sold and freeing royal lands from mortgage. Colbert especially concentrated on developing France's economy in three ways.
First of all, Colbert concentrated on developing French internal trade in order to reduce foreign imports. He developed better inland trade routes by building canals and improving ports and river ways, which would connect different parts of the country to each other and open up new markets. Secondly, Colbert worked to develop French industries. Most industries he developed can be seen as being aimed against imports from other countries: mirrors from Venice, lace from England, and iron and firearms from Sweden. He also built a merchant marine to stop foreign powers, especially the Dutch, from carrying French goods and making profits at France's expense. In 1661, France had a merchant marine of 18 ships. By 1681, it was up to 276 ships. Finally, Colbert encouraged the development of overseas colonies much like those of other European powers. During this time, France established and tightened control over colonies in Canada, French Guiana, and Madagascar.
For all his efforts and financial wizardry, Colbert's successes were limited, largely because he was trying to drag a basically medieval economy into the modern world. Guilds were still powerful and held back progress in new production and financing techniques. Local authorities still jealously guarded their rights to charge tolls on trade. Getting across France involved paying up to 100 such local tolls, which of course stifled trade. The tax burden was extremely unfair, with nobles and the Church virtually exempt from taxation even though they controlled much of the land. Colbert's own techniques of having the government control so many aspects of the economy were heavy handed and tended to stifle initiative. His efforts at trying to centrally control France's overseas colonies were especially disastrous.
However, Colbert did make real progress in developing the French economy. A merchant marine and navy were built. Industries were developed. And for a few years Colbert even managed to run the government at a profit. Unfortunately, Louis' desire for glory and conquests led to a long series of wars that embroiled Europe in a new round of bloodshed and wrecked France's economy. Not even Colbert could do anything to stop that.
The army was another primary object of reform. By the mid 1600's, the old system of recruiting armies and fighting wars was clearly outmoded. Mercenaries were disloyal, untrustworthy, and terribly destructive to friend and foe alike. By contrast, the Swedish army of Gustavus Adolphus and the English army of Oliver Cromwell each had loyal native recruits that proved reliable and effective, while Brandenburg-Prussia was transforming its troublesome nobles into a loyal professional officer corps. These lessons were not lost on Louis and his minister of war, Louvois, who built what amounted to one of the first modern national armies. Three aspects of the army they concentrated on were its training and discipline, its equipment, and its supplies.
First of all, soldiers in Louis' new army, whether mercenaries or peasant draftees, found military life was much stricter and more regularized in several ways. For one thing, instead of mercenary captains who recruited, paid, and commanded them, soldiers now answered to the state and its officers. Along these lines, there was also a regular chain of command from the Intendant de l'armee (roughly equivalent to our modern secretary of defense) down through field marshals, generals, colonels, and captains. Officers also got regular training and were much more strictly under the rule of the central government than ever before.
Naturally, the nobles claimed the officers' positions as their birthright. However, the government kept tighter control of its army, largely through new positions filled by men of more humble birth. These lieutenant colonels performed many vital duties in lieu of the noble officers without actually replacing them. In this way, a more modern army helped Louis bring the old troublesome medieval nobility more tightly under his control.
A second reform was that uniforms and equipment were more standardized, which made the army easier to supply, more efficient, and promoted more of a group identity and higher morale. Finally, the army maintained regular supply lines. This reduced the need for foraging, which increased discipline and control over the army and protected the civilian populace from being plundered.
There were two major factors that limited the effectiveness of Louis' military reforms. For one thing, Louis's standing army was large and expensive, having some 400,000 men at its height. It is estimated that a pre-industrial society such as seventeenth century France could only afford to support 1% of its population in the military. Louis' army at its height was nearly twice that, which was a terrible strain on French society. This became especially apparent in Louis' later wars when supply lines broke down, which led to foraging and a breakdown in discipline. Second, the expense of Louis' wars forced him to sell military offices, which brought in less capable and dedicated officers. Overall, Louis' military reforms were much like Colbert's economic reforms. They made progress, but met severe obstacles that prevented them from being completely successful.
Despite these limits to Louis' economic and military reforms, France was the most powerful state in Europe by the late 1660's. Louis realized this quite well, in fact probably too well, because he embarked on an ambitious series of policies that nearly ruined France by the end of his reign. There were three areas where Louis chose to show his power: religion, his palace at Versailles, and foreign expansion.
Religion
was one aspect of Louis' reign that illustrated the absolute nature of his monarchy quite well. Louis himself was quite a pious Catholic, learning that trait from his mother. However, in the spirit of the day, he saw religion as a department of state subordinate to the will of the king. By the same token, not adhering to the Catholic faith was seen as treason.As a result, Louis gradually restricted the rights of the French Huguenots and finally, in 1685, revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had given them religious freedom since the end of the French Wars of Religion in 1598. This drove 200,000 Huguenots out of France, depriving it of some of its most skilled labor. Thus Louis let his political and religious biases ruin a large sector of France's economy.
Versailles
Louis' religious faith was largely a superficial one attached to the elaborate ritual of the Catholic mass. This love of ritual also showed itself in how Louis ran his court at his magnificent palace of Versailles, several miles outside of Paris. Much of the reason for building Versailles goes back to the Fronde that had driven Louis from Paris as a young boy. Ever since then, Louis had distrusted the volatile Paris mob and was determined to move the court away from the influence of that city. Versailles was also the showpiece of Louis' reign, glorifying him as the Sun King with its magnificent halls and gardens.
The palace facade was a quarter of a mile across. The famous Hall of Mirrors alone was 250 feet long. Water pumped from the Seine River to hills 500 feet above Versailles fed its fountains. The Orangery had over 1200 orange trees that were moved inside for the winter. All this was built and maintained at tremendous expense. But it was worth it to Louis, regardless of the burden it put on the French people.
As splendid as it may seem, life at Versailles was not always such a picnic. The site itself was on low marshy ground that made it unhealthy to live in. Except for a few magnificent rooms and bedrooms, most people had small cramped rooms with little or no ventilation. Nevertheless, a noble was considered socially and politically dead if he did not live at Versailles. He lived there at his own expense and was expected to keep up a sumptuous life style in order to be a proper ornament for Louis' court. The seemingly endless round of masquerades, plays, operas, and parties eventually grew old to even the most ardent partygoers. For many, life became a bitter series of petty intrigues over such things as who could stand closest to Louis when he held court or got dressed in the morning. Some even saw this as a plot to ruin the nobles by making them go bankrupt while they were trapped in the gilded cage of Versailles. And indeed, Versailles did bankrupt many nobles along with the French government, helping lead to the French Revolution some 75 years after Louis died.
Louis' diplomacy and wars
Just as Louis's palace at Versailles dominated European culture during the late 1600's and early 1700's, his diplomacy and wars dominated Europeans political history. As Louis himself put it: "The character of a conqueror is regarded as the noblest and highest of titles." Interestingly enough, he never led his troops in battle except for overseeing a few sieges from a safe distance.
Louis' main goals were to expand France to its "natural borders": the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees. This, of course, would make him enemies among the Dutch, Germans, Austrians, Spanish, and English. Therefore, Louis' diplomacy had to clear the way to make sure he did not fight everyone at once. For this purpose he skillfully used money to neutralize potential enemies (such as Charles II of England in the Secret Treaty of Dover) and extracted favorable terms from stalemate or losing situations. But Louis could also make some fateful blunders to hurt his cause. His obsessive hatred of the Dutch dominated his policy too much, as did his own self-confidence and arrogance in trying to publicly humiliate his enemies. However, this just alarmed Louis' enemies more, especially the Dutch, Austrians, and English, who allied against Louis to preserve the balance of power.
Several new inventions transformed the warfare of this period. First of all there was the bayonet, invented in Bayonne, France around 1670. This blade, when attached to the end of a musket, transformed it into a short pike, thus eliminating the need for separate pikemen to protect the musketeers in hand-to-hand combat. Second, there was the flintlock musket, which provided more reliable firing and faster loading than the old matchlock muskets. Finally, there was the introduction of paper cartridges with pre-measured amounts of gunpowder that also sped up the process of loading in combat. With all infantrymen carrying flintlock muskets, premeasured charges of powder, and bayonets for hand-to-hand combat, generals could create much less dense formations and greatly stretch their battle lines.
These new linear tactics vastly increased European armies' firepower and warfare's destructiveness. They also made armies harder to control since they were stretched out over such a great distance. As a result, discipline was tightened even more, which further increased the power of the state over its armies. It also made it harder to attract recruits, leading to a growing reliance on peasant draftees.
The general trend in Louis' wars was for them to become increasingly longer, bloodier, and less successful. His first major conflict, the War of Devolution, lasted only two years (1667-1668). Louis' goal was to conquer the Spanish Netherlands (modern Belgium), which would give him control of the mouth of the Rhine and much of Germany's trade.
At this point, Colbert's financial measures provided Louis a strong economic base with which to wage war. Louis' military reforms had also given him the best fighting machine in Europe. The system of supply lines worked so well that the French officers were even supplied with silverware for their tables. As a result, Louis gained several strategic towns and fortresses in the Spanish Netherlands. However, Europe's suspicion and fear of French aggression had been aroused, and each succeeding war would be progressively harder for Louis to win.
The Dutch War (1672-78) brought in the Dutch Republic, Spain, Brandenburg-Prussia, Denmark, and Austria against Louis. French progress was much slower, and fighting much costlier, as the Dutch in particular fought desperately to defend their homeland, even opening the dikes to flood out the French. Although Louis gained nothing against the Dutch, he did win lands along the Rhine at the expense of various German states, but at considerable cost. France lost its two best field marshals, and the French people endured ever-higher taxes, some peasants even being reduced to making bread from acorns and roots.
Louis' next adventure, the War of the League of Augsburg, also known as the Nine Years War (1688-97), embroiled Europe in an even more prolonged and fruitless conflict. French expansion was directed across the Rhine into Germany while Austria was preoccupied with its Turkish war. Austria put the Turks on hold and allied with the Dutch, English, and several German states to stop French aggression. Fighting raged through most of the 1690's. Peasants were drafted in greater numbers, taxes were raised to intolerable heights, and a major famine in 1694 merely added to the misery. Finally, peace was made in 1697 with little changed, except for everyone being severely weakened by the senseless struggle. By 1700, France's population had declined from an estimated 23,000,000 in 1670 to 19,000,000.
Unfortunately, a new and bloodier war soon arose. This time the prize was Spain and its extensive empire, left without a ruler by the death of Charles II. Louis' grandson had an excellent claim through Louis' wife, a Spanish princess. Predictably, the rest of Europe would not tolerate a French Empire that surpassing even that of Charles V in the 1500's. The resulting conflict, the War of the Spanish Succession, would bring twelve more dreary years of warfare and destruction to Europe (1701-13).
For the first time, Louis' generals suffered decisive defeats, mostly at the hands of the brilliant British general, John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough. French armies were thrown on the defensive, and French peasants were drafted in growing numbers to defend their homeland. Resistance stiffened and the war ground down to a bloody stalemate. Exhaustion on both sides finally led to the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Louis' grandson took the throne of Spain and its American empire, but the French and Spanish thrones could not be united under one ruler. Austria got the Spanish Netherlands to contain French aggression to the north. Just as the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 had contained Hapsburg aggression, the Treaty of Utrecht contained French expansion. Two years later Louis XIV was dead, with little to show for his vaunted ambitions as a conqueror except an exhausted economy and dissatisfied populace.
Results of Louis' reign
The age of Louis XIV was important to European history for several reasons. First of all, it saw the triumph of absolutism in France and continental Europe. Versailles was a glittering symbol and example for other European rulers to follow. Any number of German and East European monarchs modeled their states and courts after Louis XIV, sometimes to the point of financial ruin. Second, Louis' wars showed the system of Balance of Power politics working better than ever. French aggression was contained and the status quo was maintained. All this had its price, since the larger sizes of the armies and the final replacement of the pike with the musket took European warfare to a new level of destruction. Finally, Louis' reign definitely established France as the dominant power in Europe. However, the cost was immense and left his successors a huge debt. Ironically, the problems caused by Louis XIV's reign would help lead to the French Revolution in 1789 and the spread of democratic principles across Europe and eventually the world.
FC96The English Revolution: (1603-88)
The state of monarchy is the supremest thing on earth; for kings are not only God's lieutenants on earth, but even by God himself they are called gods.<\q> — James I of England
A king is a thing men have made for their own sakes, for quietness' sake. Just as in a family one man is appointed to buy the meat...— John Selden
Introduction: a century of change
As the Greek philosopher, Heracleitus, said, nothing is so constant as change. While history has always seen changes taking place, few times and places saw more dramatic changes in such a wide variety of areas ranging from fashions and diet to the Scientific Revolution as England saw in the 1600's. But nowhere were there more sweeping changes than in the realm of government. In 1600, the absolute monarch believing in the concept of Divine Right of Kings was becoming the most fashionable form of rule. By 1700, a new more democratic government with checks and balances between the executive (king) and legislative (Parliament) branches had emerged in England, setting the stage for modern democracies.
Background to the Revolution
There were three main factors that came to the surface in the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) to set the stage for the English Revolution. For one thing, going back to the Magna Charta (1215) which itself drew upon even more ancient Anglo-Saxon traditions, England had a long tradition that no one, not even the king, is above the law. Secondly, Elizabeth reigned in a period of intense religious strife, both within England itself as well as triggering an expensive war with Spain. Finally, the 1500's and 1600's were a period of rampant inflation, which made monarchs everywhere increasingly desperate for money.
The convergence of these factors during Elizabeth's reign generated problems in two critical areas: money and religion. As far as money went, the Queen knew how to get money from Parliament while outwardly showing respect to that body's rights and privileges. However, such treatment gave Parliament a growing sense of its own power and importance, which it was unlikely to give up peacefully. Elizabeth also partly paid for her rising expenses from the struggle with Spain by selling up to one-fourth of the royal estates. This left her successors with even less of an independent financial base, which in turn made them more dependent on Parliament for funds, thus leading to fights over money.
In religion, Elizabeth skillfully maintained peace in England while much of Europe was embroiled in religious wars. She did this by grafting moderate Protestant theology onto Catholic style ritual and organization. She also blunted the ferocity of the religiously radical Puritans (Calvinists) by incorporating many of them into the hierarchy of the Church of England. However, this put many Puritans into positions of authority where they could demand more sweeping reforms beyond the Queen's lukewarm Protestantism. In addition, many of these Puritans were also members of the gentry (lower nobles) and middle classes who controlled the House of Commons in Parliament and voted on taxes. Thus the issues of religion and money became even more tangled.
Religious wars, which threatened everyone's peace and security, and inflation, which made maintaining armies too expensive for rebellious nobles, also combined to help with the rise of absolutism in Europe. This rising tide of absolutism would influence the Stuart kings of England to try to establish absolutism in their own realm in spite of popular opinion. A less skillful and diplomatic ruler than Elizabeth would have trouble dealing with these new forces rising up in England. Such an undiplomatic ruler succeeded Elizabeth in the person of James I (1603-1625).
While Elizabeth had so skillfully kept the issues of money and religion in check, James' absolutist beliefs and abrasive personality brought them to the surface. As far as religion went, James fought the largely Puritan Parliament to keep the Church of England's Catholic style ritual, decorations, and hierarchy of clergy, over which he as king had control. In money matters, king and Parliament clashed over James' growing requests for money to support his lavish lifestyle. He also angered the middle class by raising customs duties, one of his main sources of revenue, to keep pace with inflation. While James and Parliament never completely broke with one another over these issues, their constant squabbling did set the stage for the revolution that was to follow.
Pattern of events (1625-88)
While the individual events of the English Revolution could be somewhat involved and complicated, they did fit into a basic pattern. Parliament and the ruler of England would clash over the issues of religion and taxes as the government became less decisive and/or reasonable. This would trigger a reaction by Parliament that would bring in a new ruler, and then the process would start all over again. This cycle would repeat itself three times over the next sixty years, with each successive stage feeding back into the aforementioned cycle as well as into the next stage.
The first stage would see England plunged into civil war (1642-49) that would result in the beheading of Charles I and the rise of the Puritans and Parliament to power. In the second stage, continued fighting over religion and money, this time between Parliament and its army, would bring in military dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell in the 1650's. After Cromwell's death (1658) would come the third stage with the restoration of the monarchy (1661-88). However, the old conflicts over money and religion would resurface in the reign of James II and lead to his overthrow by Parliament with the help of William III and Mary of Holland in 1688.
This time, Britain would resolve its cycle of conflicts in what is known as the Glorious Revolution (1688) This established a constitutional monarchy where the law is above the king, not the other way around as often happened in absolute monarchies. The Glorious Revolution would have three important results. First of all, it would lead to the political triumph of the rich middle class and nobles in Parliament which had the sole right to grant taxes for one year at a time, thus forcing the king to call Parliament each year if he wanted taxes. Also, in order to keep the king from packing Parliament with his own men for an extended period of time, Parliamentary elections were to be held every two years. While the Glorious Revolution resulted in a political victory for a narrow upper class oligarchy, it opened the way for further reforms over the next 200 years to make England a more truly democratic society.
Second, the Glorious Revolution gave all Englishmen a Bill of Rights guaranteeing such civil liberties as speech, assembly, religion (except for Catholics and Unitarians at this time), and due process of law. Both the political and civil liberties gained by the English would help lead to the French Revolution which in turn would spread the ideas of democracy across Europe and the globe.
Third was the establishment of the Bank of England (1694), which was modeled after the Bank of Amsterdam. This national bank would both provide the government with the funds it needed while repaying its loans with interest. This helped foster a more prosperous economy and encourage more investment in the bank, which in turn helped provide the government with more funds, and so on. This feedback of growing profits would eventually provide Britain with the money to start the other revolution that would spread worldwide: the industrial revolution. had plunged into civil war.
FC96AJames I, Charles I, and the Road to the English Civil War (1603-1642)
James I (1603-25), Elizabeth I's successor (who also ruled Scotland as James VI), was much more overbearing and prone to make enemies than Elizabeth had been. He lectured Parliament on the Divine Right of Kings and even wrote a treatise on it, The Trew Law of Free Monarchies. Such an attitude did not set too well with Parliament. James' abrasive manner, absolutist beliefs, more Catholic concept of what the Church of England should be, and demands for money to support his lavish lifestyle made him many enemies who dubbed him the "most learned fool in Christendom."
In religious matters, the king headed the High Commission, which exercised powers of censorship and excommunication and appointed the higher clergy who in turn chose the local clergy. News of the outside world came mainly from the clergy who got their news from the higher clergy and ultimately the king. As Charles I: put it: "People are governed by the pulpit more than the sword in times of peace." No wonder that religion became the main focal point of trouble at this time. There was also the issue of observing the Sabbath. Puritans felt that Sundays should be reserved for strictly religious activities and discussions. The king, fearing that such discussions might breed revolution, encouraged more frivolous sports on Sundays to keep people militarily fit and harmlessly occupied. Such a policy outraged the Puritans and turned them further against the king.
Money was the other big source of conflict, and the House of Commons in Parliament was the primary battlefield. Among Parliament's most jealously guarded liberties was the right to grant taxes. This had not been such a vital issue when kings could largely get by on the revenue from their estates, various feudal fees, and the right to sell monopolies and titles. However, inflation further reduced the value of the royal estates after Elizabeth sold a quarter of them, James own extravagant lifestyle and the rising cost of warfare in the 1500's and early 1600's led to growing friction between king and Parliament over money.
Parliament then was not so democratic in makeup as today. Even the House of Commons consisted solely of gentry (lower nobles) and merchants with an annual income of at least 40 shillings, a sizable sum back then. The rights and privileges they jealously guarded and fought for, such as immunity from arrest and flogging and the right to free speech, were reserved for them alone, not the lower 90% of society. As one Member of Parliament put it: "He that hath no prosperity in his goods is not free." Still, the rights and privileges Parliament fought for and won in the 1600's set a precedent, and eventually would extend to all of society.
James did have one growing source of revenue: customs duties from a rapidly expanding foreign trade. In order to take advantage of this, James raised the taxable value of various commodities to keep up with their real market value, which had risen due to inflation. Naturally, the merchants in Parliament disliked this tactic and disputed James' right to revise those values without Parliament's consent.
Further aggravating James' problems was the lack of an efficient bureaucracy such as was developing in continental states. Taxes were collected by tax farming, where local merchants paid a lump sum to the king in advance and then collected however many taxes they could get away with. This, of course, led to lower royal revenues, more corruption, and rising tensions.
Thus the stage was set for a conflict between the king on one side and Parliament and the Puritans on the other. During James' reign, relations with Parliament were generally stormy. Constant haggling over money and such religious issues as the existence of bishops in the Church of England would reach fever pitch and then subside with an occasional compromise to patch things up. There was even a temporary alliance between king and Parliament when a proposed marriage alliance with Spain (which was very unpopular with Parliament) fell through and got England involved in the broader conflict known as the Thirty Years War. For the time being, this drove king and Parliament together against the common Catholic enemy. However, the overall situation was deteriorating, and by James' death in 1625, relations between the two parties were, at best, strained.
It was said that James steered the ship of state for the rocks, but left it for his son, Charles I, to wreck it. Charles was undiplomatic, insensitive to public opinion, and a weak monarch who let events get out of control and send England drifting toward civil war. Charles, like his father, was largely a victim of the times, being caught between rising prices and the rising aspirations of Parliament and the Puritans on the one hand and his own ideas favoring Catholicism and absolutism on the other. Charles even resorted to forcing loans out of men and imprisoning those who refused to cooperate. In 1628 Parliament reacted by forcing Charles to sign the Petition of Right in which he agreed not to levy taxes without Parliament's consent, imprison free men without due process of law, or quarter his troops with private citizens. After this, he dissolved Parliament and ruled on his own.
For the next eleven years (1629-40) Charles managed to get by without Parliament by stretching various royal rights and fees to the limit. One of these methods was selling monopolies. Under this system only the man who bought a monopoly on a particular type of goods had the exclusive right to sell or grant the right to others to sell those goods. This wreaked havoc with prices and caused a good deal of discontent, especially since the monopolists controlled a wide range of products including buttons, pins, dyes, butter, tin, beer, barrels, tobacco, dice, pens, paper, gunpowder, feathers, soap, lace, and hay to name just a few. Another method was extending the traditional ship's tax (previously levied only on coastal towns) to the whole countryside. As unpopular as these measures were, they raised the king his money and kept him going.
Charles might have continued like this indefinitely, but in 1637, he tried to impose the English Prayer Book on the Scots and triggered a revolt instead. Unfortunately for Charles, many of the Scots were battle-hardened veterans from the Thirty Years War who made short work of his largely untrained rabble. Desperately in need of money to continue his war, Charles called Parliament in 1640. However, after three weeks of arguing with Parliament over the last eleven years' religious and monetary policies, the king dismissed this "Short Parliament." However, the Scots did not go away. Instead, they occupied part of the north and made Charles promise a large sum of money every day until a final settlement was reached. Charles had no choice but to call Parliament again. This Parliament is known to history as the Long Parliament, because it would sit for over a decade and preside over a civil war and the end of absolute monarchy in England.
The events leading to civil war were a bit more straightforward. Charles, desperate for money and support to take care of the Scots, initially agreed to Parliament's demands. He would not levy taxes or dismiss Parliament without its consent. And he would agree to call Parliament at least every three years. He even let Parliament execute one of his chief ministers, Sir Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford.
However, there was hardly peace between king and Parliament, only an uneasy truce. In November 1641, a spark was struck which led to civil war. A revolt broke out in Ireland, with Irish Catholics killing thousands of English and Scottish Protestants who had taken their best lands. An army was needed, but neither king nor Parliament was going to allow the other to command such an army. When Parliament refused Charles his army, he sent troops in to arrest five Parliamentary leaders. They found refuge in London and support from other towns. Charles left London, and by August 1642, England had plunged into civil war.
FC96BThe English Revolution: From Civil War to Military Dictatorship (1642-60)
Trust in God and keep your powder dry.— remark attributed to Oliver Cromwell
The English Civil War (1642-45)
Few people on either side wanted civil war. However, the issues involved were so important and the differences between the two sides so great that each party felt itself forced into war. Although both sides had support from all classes, one can generalize about where each side got its support. The king's centers of power were in the more agricultural regions of the North and West. His main supporters tended to be the upper nobles, known as peers, from the House of Lords. In the war they were referred to as Cavaliers since they mainly fought as cavalry. Parliament's support came mainly from lower nobles (gentry) and the middle class merchants concentrated in the towns and ports in southeastern England. They were known as Roundheads for their short haircuts, as opposed to the long hair of the Cavaliers. (In fact, many parliamentary leaders, being from the upper classes, kept their hair long.) Both sides also looked outside of England for help. The king hoped for support from the Catholic Irish, while Parliament was allied to the Scots. Since the Roundheads controlled the ports and the navy, the king was virtually cut off from his Irish allies. Meanwhile, the Scots could provide very effective aid to Parliament.
Historians used to think that both sides fought poorly in the early stages of the war, since England, being an island, had no standing army and little in the way of a military since the Hundred Years War. However, recent research shows that both sides drew heavily upon veterans from the Thirty Years War and fought more effectively than previously supposed. Despite inferior manpower and resources, the king's forces did have superior cavalry, led by the king's dashing German nephew, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, and could more than hold their own against the Puritans in the early stages of the war.
The first battle, Edgehill (1642), was a bloody draw, probably cut short by lack of gunpowder. Both sides came out of this realizing the need for training, discipline, and supplies. Ultimately, Parliament's superior resources and the Puritans' greater willingness to submit to military discipline would be decisive in the war's outcome. It was here that one of the key figures of English history first emerged: Oliver Cromwell.
Cromwell was an obscure country gentleman and stern Puritan, typical of many gentry who sided with Parliament. After Edgehill, it was apparent that the Puritans needed better cavalry to face Prince Rupert's wild cavalry charges. Cromwell raised and trained such a regiment, later known as Ironsides for its steadiness in battle. Rather than taking mercenaries drawn from the dregs of society, Cromwell relied mainly on men of a religious nature and committed to the cause instead of looting and plundering. Their first test came in 1644 at Marston Moor. Ironsides held fast against the cavaliers, and the king's forces were crushed.
In January 1645, Parliament passed an ordinance to form the New Model Army. Contrary to the myth of the body of "Bible warriors," the New Model Army was made up of draftees and mercenaries fighting for money. However, following Cromwell's example, it was a highly trained and disciplined professional force with regular pay and equipment. In the 1640's and 1650's it would be the most feared army in Europe. Later that year, it met and destroyed the king's last army at Naseby. Charles surrendered to the Scots hoping to turn them against Parliament. However, they turned him over to Parliament.
More bickering and a second civil war (1645-1648)
Charles was right in assuming he could split the victors, and the reasons for that split were largely the same reasons that had first led to civil war: money, religion, and government. The civil war, like most wars, had been expensive, and Parliament did not have the money to pay the New Model Army it had raised. It tried to disband the army without pay, promising to repay it later. This did not set too well with the troops, who refused to disband. Instead, they set up a General Council of the Army composed of generals, officers, and "agitators", elected from the rank and file. This council took custody of the king, occupied London, and forced 11 parliamentary leaders out of the House of Commons.
Religion was another point of controversy between Parliament and army. Both parties were Puritans, but of somewhat different types. Most of Parliament wanted a state run, or Presbyterian, church. Most of the army, including Cromwell, wanted independent churches with freedom of religion. This was what many of them had fought for, and they were not about to give it up to Parliament.
Finally, there was the issue of what sort of government the victors would establish. Parliament and most of the officers, including Cromwell, were property owners who felt that they were most fit to rule since they had so much property to be responsible for. The rank and file in the army, sensing their power, pushed for a much more radical and democratic government. The most radical of these, the Levelers, wanted the vote for all men, a bill of rights, and the abolition of the monarchy and House of Lords. A meeting of the General Council of the Army led to a deadlock between the officers and common troops. Cromwell ended the discussion and ordered the agitators back to their regiments, having one of them shot in order to convince the others to submit.
At this point, events forced army and Parliament to reunite, because Charles had escaped and raised the Scots and English royalists in revolt with promises of establishing a Scottish style Presbyterian Church if he regained his throne. This second civil war was a short and decisive affair. Cromwell, armed with the New Model Army, moved to annihilate the Scottish and royalist forces in quick succession.
Cromwell's Dictatorship (1649-60)
Once this war was over, Cromwell and the army moved just as decisively to resolve the problems in London. First, there was Parliament, which the army especially disliked since some Parliamentary members had entered into negotiations with Charles to restore the monarchy. This led to Pride's Purge, named after a Colonel Pride who used the army to expel some 100 Presbyterian members. This left a "Rump Parliament" of about 60 members who were more agreeable or submissive to the will of Cromwell and the army. Next came the king, who was tried for treason and executed on January 30, 1649. Bishops and the House of Lords were abolished and the religious independents prevailed.
However, the democratic reforms that the Levelers and much of the army hoped for never materialized. Resulting mutinies were quickly put down and Leveler demonstrations led to the arrest of their leaders. Henceforth, military dictatorship would rule England. At first, Cromwell ruled through the Rump Parliament and a government known as the Commonwealth (1649-53). However, frustrated by what he saw as Parliament's lack of fervor for his type of rule, he established a more blatant dictatorship known as the Protectorate with himself as Lord Protector.
Outside of England, Cromwell faced a war with Scotland, which he conquered and ruled with some moderation since the Scots were fellow Protestants. Catholic Ireland, another enemy, was not so lucky. Cromwell's conquest of Ireland was methodical and brutal, leaving wounds that still have not healed today. Like it or not, Scotland and Ireland were incorporated into the greater Commonwealth of Britain, something no English king had been able to do. Cromwell also had an aggressive foreign policy outside of Britain, fighting successful wars against the Dutch and Spanish. England was becoming a military and naval power to be reckoned with.
Inside England, people felt Cromwell's heavy hand as well. His wars, standing army of 30,000 men, and navy required taxes three times higher than any which James I and Charles I had ever imposed. Churches were more locally controlled, but people were expected to live good religious lives. Theaters, taverns, and racetracks were all closed down. People dressed in somber colors to reflect the mood of the ruling regime. Life under Cromwell seemed like Calvinist Geneva, except on a much grander scale. Rather than put up with this regime, many cavalier families, such as the Washingtons, Madisons, and Monroes, left England for the American colonies, especially Virginia, much like the Puritans had fled to New England from royal repression thirty years earlier. These two ways of life, the aristocratic nobles in the South and the capitalist Puritans in the North, would take root and clash with one another two centuries later. Thus the American Civil War was largely an extension of the English Revolution.
Oliver Cromwell died on September 3, 1658. He was certainly one of the greatest figures in English history, although his motives and the nature of his greatness are still disputed by historians. However, no one of his caliber emerged to take firm control of England after him. His son Richard tried, failed, and resigned. This led to various generals wrangling over power. People in general were tired of the strict Puritan rule. They also longed for a king, since that was the traditional ruler for a country. Finally, a certain General Monk led the army in Scotland to London, restored the Long Parliament, and asked Charles II, Charles I's son who had escaped to France, to come back as the king. England's experiment in government without a king was about to end.
The Age of EnlightenmentUnit 15: The Age of Enlightenment
FC97The Birth of Modern Science
Western science, like so many other aspects of Western Civilization, was born with the ancient Greeks. They were the first to explain the world in terms of natural laws rather than myths about gods and heroes. They also passed on the idea of the value of math and experiment in science, although they usually thought only in terms of one to the exclusion of the other. It is easy for us to be critical of their early scientific theories, but we must remember several things about their world. First, by that time, the human race had learned to exploit the environment for survival (e.g., agriculture, woven cloth, metallurgy, etc.), but knew little about the physical laws that rule nature and the universe. Also, there were no telescopes, microscopes, or other instruments to aid the naked eye in its observations and measurements. Everything they learned about the natural world had to be done with the unaided senses and whatever rational deductions they could make based on them.
Knowing the limitations the Greeks operated under helps us appreciate the scientific view of the world they evolved and handed down to posterity. The Greeks realized the limitations to their observations, and many of them argued that relying on one's senses was a faulty way to unravel the mysteries of the universe. The philosopher, Plato, compared our perception of reality to that of a man chained to the wall of a cave who only sees shadows from the outside world cast against the opposite wall.
However, other Greek philosophers argued that use of the senses for observation, as faulty as it may be, was still worthwhile. One of these Greeks, and by far the most influential figure in Western science until the 1600's, was the philosopher, Aristotle, who created a body of scientific theory that towered like a colossus over Western Civilization for some 2000 years. Given the limitations under which the Greeks were working compared to now, Aristotle's theories made sense when taken in a logical order.
Three basic observations laid the foundations for Aristotle's view of the universe and laws of motion: First of all, there was the theory of the elements. The Greeks came up with several theories on the elements, including Democritus' atomic theory, the idea that all matter is composed of tiny indivisible particles called atoms (from the Greek atomon = indivisible). Other Greeks observed three basic states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas. As a result, they came up with four basic elements to correspond to the states of matter: earth (solid), water (liquid), air (gas), plus fire, which the Greeks saw as an element. Of course, since few objects are made of just one element, it was logical to assume they were compounds of two or more of the terrestrial elements. The Greeks spent a good deal of time figuring out the elements different objects contained by observing the qualities they exhibited. For example, wood is composed of earth (because it is solid), fire (because it burns), and air (because the ash left behind floats on top of water). Second, there was the observation that the stars, sun, planets, and moon seem to orbit the earth in perfect circles. Finally, all dropped objects seem to fall toward the center of the earth. These led to several important conclusions.
For one thing, the theory of four elements plus the perfect circular orbits of the stars and planets gave rise to the idea that the celestial bodies were made of a perfect element, ether. Ether was weightless or very light so the stars and planets could easily orbit the earth every day. It must also be perfect, incorruptible, and unrelated to the earthly elements since its motions are always in perfect circles, a motion rarely seen on earth.
Second, the motion of dropped objects toward the center of the earth (no matter where on earth they are dropped) and the apparent orbits of the heavenly bodies around the earth led to the geocentric theory, the idea that the earth is the center of the universe. Aristotle and most educated Greeks assumed the earth was round since one can see ships disappear over the horizon, the earth casts a round shadow on the moon during lunar eclipses, and the positions of the stars change as we move north or south.
Finally, there was Aristotle's law of motion. Aristotle saw that heavier objects (made of earth and water) have a tendency to fall or sink toward the center of the earth, while lighter objects (made of air and fire) rise or float. He called these tendencies of the elements to rise or fall natural motions and said that all elements have an inclination to rise or fall to their natural resting places in relation to one another. Aristotle called all other terrestrial motions forced or violent motions since they needed an outside force in constant contact with the object in order to take place. Thus the theory of four terrestrial (earthly) elements and the falling of those elements toward the center of the earth led to a law of motion which said everything must stay in contact with a prime mover in order to keep moving and could only be stopped by some other intervening object or force.
Toward a new universe: the downfall of Aristotle (1543-1687)
There were several factors that worked both to overthrow Aristotle's system and to preserve it. First of all, Aristotle's theories relied very little on experiment, which left them vulnerable to anyone who chose to perform such experiments. However, attacking one part of Aristotle's system involved attacking the whole thing, which made it a daunting task for even the greatest thinkers of the day. Secondly, the Church had grafted Aristotle's theories onto its theology, thus making any attack on Aristotle an attack on the tradition and the Church itself.
Finally, there were the Renaissance scholars who were uncovering other Greek authors who contradicted Aristotle. This was unsettling, since these scholars had a reverence for all ancient knowledge as being nearly infallible. However, finding contradicting authorities forced the Renaissance scholars to try to figure out which ones were right. When their findings showed that neither theory was right, they had to think for themselves and find a new theory that worked. This encouraged skepticism, freethinking, and experimentation, all of which are essential parts of modern science.
Pattern of development
The combination of these factors generated a cycle that undermined Aristotle, but also slowed down the creation of a new set of theories. New observations would be made that seemed to contradict Aristotle's theories. This would lead to new explanations, but always framed in the context of the old beliefs, thus patching up the Aristotelian system. However, more observations would take place, leading to more patching of the old system, and so on. The first person who started this slow process of dismantling Aristotle's cosmology was Copernicus. His findings would reinforce the process of finding new explanations, which would lead to the work of Kepler and Galileo. The work of these three men would lead to many new questions and theories about the universe until Isaac Newton would take the new data and synthesize it into a new set of theories that more accurately explained the universe.
Nicolaus Copernicus
was a Polish scholar working at the University of Padua in northern Italy. The problem he wrestled with was the paths of planetary orbits. Through the centuries close observations had shown that the heavens do not always appear to move in perfect, uninterrupted circles. Rather, they sometimes seem to move backwards in what are known as retrogradations. (This, in fact, occurs when Earth passes another planet in its orbit, thus making it appear to go backwards.) In order to account for these irregularities, astronomers did not do away with Aristotle's theory of perfectly circular orbits around the earth. Instead, they expanded upon it, adding smaller circular orbits (epicycles) that spun off the main orbits. These more or less accounted for the retrogradations seen in orbits. Each time a new irregularity was observed, a new epicycle was added. By the 1500's, the model of the universe had some 80 epicycles attached to ten crystalline spheres (one for the moon, sun, each of the five known planets, the totality of the stars, a sphere to move the other spheres, and heaven). The second century Greek astronomer, Ptolemy was the main authority who put order to and passed this cumbersome system of epicycles to posterity.Copernicus' solution was basically geometric. By placing the sun at the center of the universe and having the earth orbit it, he reduced the unwieldy number of epicycles from 80 to 34. His book, Concerning the Revolutions of the Celestial Worlds, published in 1543, laid the foundations for a revolution in how Europeans would view the world and its place in the universe. However, Copernicus' intention was not to create a radically new theory, but to get back to even older ideas by such Greeks as Plato and Pythagoras who believed in a heliocentric (sun centered) universe. Once again, ancient authorities were set against one another, leaving it for others to develop their own theories.
It took some 150 years after Copernicus' death in 1543 to achieve a new model of the universe that worked. The first step was compiling more data that tarnished the perfection of the Ptolemaic universe and forced men to re-evaluate their beliefs.
Johannes Kepler
At this time, Tycho Brahe, using only the naked eye, tracked the entire orbits of various stars and planets. Previously, astronomers would only track part of an orbit at a time and assume that orbit was in a perfect circle. Brahe kept extensive records of his observations, but did not really know what to do with them. That task was left to his successor, Johannes Kepler.
Kepler was a brilliant mathematician who had a mystical vision of the mathematical perfection of the universe that owed a great deal to the ancient Greek mathematician Pythagoras. Despite these preoccupations, Kepler was open minded enough to realize that Brahe's data showed the planetary orbits were not circular. Finally, his calculations showed that those orbits were elliptical.
Galileo
As important as Kepler's conclusions was his method of arriving at it. He was the first to successfully use math to define the workings of the cosmos. Although such a conclusion as elliptical orbits inevitably met with fierce opposition, the combination of Brahe's observations and Kepler's math helped break the perfection of the Aristotelian universe. However, it was the work of an Italian astronomer, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), armed with a new invention, the telescope, which would further shatter the old theory and lead the way to a new one.
In the year 1608, several Flemish gentlemen arrived in Venice carrying a startling new invention: the telescope. Upon hearing of this, Galileo, who was then working in Venice, quickly figured out its principles and built one himself, increasing its magnification from three times to ten. He got the Venetian senate excited about the telescope as an early warning device that could spot enemy ships twenty miles away and make them appear as if they were only two miles away. Galileo's curiosity was a bit more far ranging than spotting enemy ships, and eventually he turned his gaze toward the skies. That was when trouble began.
The impact of that first telescope can better be appreciated by imagining how our views of the universe might change if our technology increased our view of the universe by a factor of ten times. Galileo's findings were probably more disturbing. He saw the sun's perfection marred by sunspots and the moon's perfection marred by craters. He also saw four moons orbiting Jupiter. In his book, The Starry Messenger (1611), he reported these disturbing findings and spread the news across Europe. Most people could not understand Kepler's math, but anyone could look through a telescope and see for himself the moon's craters and Jupiter's moons.
The Church tried to preserve the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic view of the universe by clamping down on Galileo and his book and made him promise not to preach his views. However, in 1632, Galileo published his next book, Dialogue on the Great World Systems, which technically did not preach the Copernican theory (which Galileo believed in), but was only a dialogue presenting both views "equally". Galileo got his point across by having the advocate of the Church and Aristotelian view named Simplicius (Simpleton). He was quickly faced with the Inquisition and the threat of torture. Being an old man of 70, he recanted his views. However, it was too late. Word was out, and the heliocentric heresy was gaining new followers daily.
Galileo's work was the first comprehensive attack on the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic cosmic model. He treated celestial objects as being subject to the same laws as terrestrial objects. However, Galileo was still enthralled with perfect circular motion and, as a result, did not come up with the synthesis of all these new bits of information into a new comprehensive model of the universe. This was left to the last, and probably greatest, giant of the age, Isaac Newton.
Meanwhile, two celestial phenomena added further doubts about the Aristotelan system. First, a bright new star (probably a supernova explosion) suddenly appeared in 1572. Within a year, it was gone from the sky, leaving in its wake doubts about the changeless perfection of the stars. Five years later, a new comet cut across the skies and through the crystalline spheres that were supposed to hold the stars and planets in their orbits. Of course, the question was raised: did such perfect spheres even exist, and, if they did, how could a comet cross through them?
One needs to understand the new problems that the discoveries of the 1500's and early 1600's presented for seventeenth century scientists. Galileo's work had done more to destroy the Aristotelian system than create a new working one. As a result, there was great confusion among scholars as to what the structure of the universe really was. There were three major problems confronting them. One problem bothering seventeenth century scientists concerned the nature of motion. Aristotle's law of inertia said basically two things:
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An object is naturally at rest unless moving toward its natural resting place. It takes forced or violent action to move that object, and that force must be in constant contact for the object to keep moving.
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The object will keep moving until something else intervenes to stop it.
The main problem with Aristotle's law of inertia was the assumption that the moving object had to be in constant contact with the moving force. For example, the question was raised of how could an arrow keep flying once removed from the force driving it. This was explained by saying the air being displaced by the arrow went around behind it and pushed it along. This seemed unlikely, since the same air driving the arrow also would also be slowing it down.
This concept of a prime mover had bothered Renaissance scholars, who then came up with the new theory of Impetus. According to this, moving objects were carried forward by some vague force within the object or imparted to it like the heat in a red-hot piece of iron. The theory of impetus allowed people to discuss motion after contact with a mover was broken. There was just one problem with this theory: it was wrong. Nevertheless, it was an important theory because it challenged Aristotle's authority and opened the way to a new theory. The great French mathematician, Descartes, finally came up with the modern theory of inertia, which said a moving object will keep moving in a straight line until something interferes to stop it or slow it down.
The second problem bothering philosophers was what kept objects from flying out of their orbits and into space. Descartes, like Aristotle, did not believe in the existence of vacuums, since they would create no resistance to moving objects, thus allowing them to accelerate to infinite speed, which, of course, is both impossible and absurd. Space, according the Descartes, was filled with ether and cosmic whirlpools that kept the planets in orbit. Not everyone discounted the existence of vacuums, especially since the experiments of Galileo's student, Toricelli, with barometric pressure proved that vacuums can and do exist. Once again this raised the problem of what keeps the planets and stars in orbit if ether did not
The Englishman, William Gilbert offered a solution in 1600, suggesting that magnetism was the answer. He saw the earth as a giant magnet, keeping both terrestrial and celestial objects from flying off into space. Although his theory was basically wrong, it did open people's minds to the idea of objects exerting a pull on one another. As a result, in 1643, the Frenchman, Roberval, suggested a theory of universal gravitation, the tendency of all matter to have an attraction for all other matter. However, he did not have the math to prove the theory.
Even if Roberval's theory of gravity were right, it raised a third problem: what keeps the moon and other celestial bodies from falling to earth? For Roberval, it was the resistance of ether in space. In 1665, Alphonse Borelli suggested centrifugal force. A mathematician named Huygens figured out the formula for centrifugal force, but he also believed in circular motion. And there was still the problem of what kept the sun, moon, planets, and stars in their orbits. That was where Isaac Newton came in.
The story of Newton being hit on the head by an apple may very well be true. However, the significance of this popular tale is usually lost. People had seen apples fall out of trees for thousands of years, but Newton realized, in a way no one else had realized, that the same force pulling the apples to earth was keeping the moon in its orbit. Of course, Roberval had suggested this before, but Newton proved it mathematically. In order to do this, he had to invent a whole new branch of math, calculus, for figuring out rates of motion and change. The genius of Newton in physics, as well as William Harvey in medicine and Mendeleev in chemistry, was not so much in his new discoveries, as in his ability to take the isolated bits and pieces of the puzzle collected by his predecessors and fit them together. In retrospect, his synthesis seems so simple, but it took tremendous imagination and creativity to break the bonds of the old way of thinking and see a radically different picture.
The implications of Newton's theory of gravity can easily escape us, since we now take it for granted that physical laws apply the same throughout the universe. To the mentality of the 1600’s, which saw a clear distinction between the laws governing the terrestrial and celestial elements, it was a staggering revelation. His three laws of motion were simple, could be applied everywhere, and could be used with calculus to solve any problems of motion that came up.
The universe that emerged was radically different from that of Aristotle. Thanks to Newton, it was within our grasp to understand, predict, and increasingly manipulate the laws of the universe in ways no one had been able to do before. Newton's work also completed the fusion of math promoted by Renaissance humanists, Aristotelian logic pushed by medieval university professors, and experiment to test a hypothesis pioneered by such men as Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo into what we call the scientific method. This fusion had gradually been taking place since the Renaissance, but the invention of calculus made math a much more dynamic tool in predicting and manipulating the laws of nature.
The printing of Newton's book, Principia Mathematica, in 1687 is often seen as the start of the Enlightenment (1687-1789). It was a significant turning point in history, for, armed with the tools of Newton's laws and calculus, scientists had an unprecedented faith in their ability to understand, predict, and manipulate the laws of nature for their own purposes. This sense of power popularized science for other intellectuals and rulers in Europe, turning it into virtual religion for some in the Enlightenment. Even the geometrically trimmed shrubbery of Versailles offers testimony to that faith in our power over nature. Not until this century has that faith been seriously undermined or put into a more realistic perspective
FC98Unravelling the Mysteries of the Heart: William Harvey and the Discovery of the Circulatory System
It seems amazing that the basic functions of the heart, circulatory system, and other bodily organs remained such a mystery to humans for so long, since they are so close to us and so vital to our very existence. However, early doctors faced serious obstacles in determining those functions. Religious taboos seriously limited the amount of human dissections taking place. Surgery's low status and primitive state is seen by the fact that barbers would typically double as surgeons, since they had the necessary cutting tools. Another major limitation was the lack of anesthetics to kill the pain. Heavy doses of liquor or a blow to the head were the closest thing to painkillers that doctors had before the 1800's.
As a result, people would rarely submit to surgery except in the most extreme circumstances (e.g., amputation for gangrene). And by then it was often too late. Without willing patients, surgery was rarely performed and could not advance. And without such advances, few people would risk operations. Caught in this vicious cycle, doctors had to resort to the dissection of animals. However, inferences made from animal dissections about human anatomy were often incorrect. Also, the practice of dissecting animals bled to death led to the misconception that only air flowed through the arteries and left side of the heart. This plus Aristotle's theory of four terrestrial elements led to various conclusions about human biology as seen in the theories of the dominant medical authority since the second century, the Greek physician Galen.
Galen's physiology
While Galen did clear up the misconception that only air flowed through the arteries, he also passed on several misconceptions. For one thing, he said that air passes directly from the lungs to cool the heart, which is the seat of the soul, a furnace to heat the body, and the source of the blood in the arteries, while the liver is the source of blood in the veins. His second contention was that blood then flows out to the body, which absorbs the blood and does not recirculate it. Third, Galen said that air mixes with the blood to form a spirituous substance called pneuma . There are three kinds of pneuma, formed in the liver, heart, and brain, and controlling such things as the passions, senses, and consciousness. According to Galen, pneuma is the main source of the life process and consciousness in an organism. Finally, drawing upon Aristotle's theory of four terrestrial elements, there was the theory of the four humours (blood, bile, black bile, and phlegm), which must be in balance in order for one to be healthy.
These incorrect conclusions about human biology in turn led to two major misconceptions about disease. First of all, scholars saw sickness as a sign of an imbalance of the four humours that should be treated by bloodletting or other forms of purging. This supposedly would rid the body of imbalanced humours and cause it to restore the balance. This tied in closely with the second misconception: that disease is purely a result of internal balance, not external factors. Therefore, each person's disease was seen as a purely individual matter having no relationship to anyone else's disease, no matter how similar the symptoms may be
Despite the Church's support of Galen and feelings against dissection, problems started to arise with Galen's theories over time just through normal observations. This and two other factors, both leading out of the Renaissance, led to new research to figure out what the nature of the heart was. For one thing, the Renaissance artists placed increased emphasis on accurate representation of nature and human anatomy. Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks are the best-known examples of this emphasis on realism. Also, the printing press helped publicize and popularize these ideas within the medical community.
Second, in biology, as in physics and astronomy, the Renaissance oftentimes was not so important for breeding new ideas as for discovering other ancient authors that contradicted the accepted authority, thus forcing scholars to seek the truth for themselves. Interestingly enough, the opposing authority was Aristotle, who differed with Galen on several points, claiming the life process was the product of all the various organs in the body, not of pneuma. This helped open up discussion on the life process and the nature of disease.
As with Aristotle, the combination of these factors generated a cycle that both undermined Galen and slowed down the creation of a new set of theories. New observations would be made that seemed to contradict his theories. This would lead to new explanations, once again framed in the context of the old beliefs, thus patching up the system. However, more observations would take place, leading to more patching of the old system, and so on. Eventually, the system would be so full of holes that someone would take the new data and synthesize it into a new set of theories that more accurately explained the universe.
Much of this research was done at the University of Padua, which was one of the main centers of research and new theories in the 1500's and 1600's. Being controlled by Venice, which had a bit of an anti-clerical tradition, the University of Padua encouraged more of the intellectual freedom needed to develop new theories that better explained nature. Copernicus and Galileo, had both worked there, as did most of the men who discredited Galen's theory and formed the modern theory of circulation. Two men in particular opened the way for challenging the old theories: Vesalius and Paracelsus.
Paracelsus (1493-1541) never received a medical degree, but he continued to teach, write about, and practice medicine. However, he taught from his own experiences, not Galen's books, and he taught in the vernacular. This was contrary to the Hippocratic Oath by which doctors were supposed to teach in Latin to prevent any trade secrets from getting into the wrong hands and being popularized. Paracelsus' actions made him an outsider to the medical community and caused him to challenge many of its most honored (and mistaken) theories and practices. One thing he claimed was that disease was the result of outside forces acting on the body, not an internal imbalance. Although he had no concept of germ theory, this idea opened the way for a new approach to diagnosing and treating disease. Paracelsus was reviled by the medical establishment of his day, but became something of a folk hero to later generations and inspired further challenges to Galen.
Vesalius (1514-64) also took steps in overthrowing Galen and opening the way for a new theory on the heart and circulatory system. Unlike most medical scholars, who had assistants do the actual dissection while they read the appropriate passages from Galen, Vesalius did his own dissections and saw things for himself. He even saw things he was not looking for and that disagreed with Galen. He had a hard time believing that what his eyes saw was true and that Galen could be wrong. Nevertheless, in 1543, the same year that Copernicus (who also worked at Padua) published his book proposing a heliocentric universe, Vesalius published De Fabrica. This book, which was illustrated by the great artist Titian's own art students, provided anatomical drawings of unprecedented accuracy for medical manuals and set the standard for years to come. It also proved many of Galen's anatomical descriptions to be completely wrong.
Thanks to Vesalius and Paracelsus, more evidence kept coming in to cast doubts on Galen. In 1559, one of Vesalius' students, Colombo, published a description of how blood went from the right side of the heart to the lungs and then to the left ventricle. However, he still kept the traditional view that blood flowed out of the heart through both the arteries and veins. In 1574, Fabricius published a work describing valves in the veins preventing the outward flow of blood from the heart. Still, he refused to see that this meant the blood flowed from the veins to the heart. Instead he said the purpose of the valves was to keep too much blood from flowing to the veins from the heart. In 1606, Cesalpino observed blood flowing from the arteries to the veins and toward the heart. However, he also failed to grasp the meaning of this. As obvious as it should have been that Galen's system was not working, scientists' minds were too rigidly set to admit it. Finally, a man came along whose genius, like that of Newton and Mendeleev, was to synthesize the recent evidence into a new system that shattered the old views. That man was William Harvey, an Englishman also working at Padua.
Harvey, who was influenced by Fabricius' work on valves in the veins, developed very modern methods of observation and experimentation. In 1628, nine years after his experiments confirmed his suspicions about Galen's system, Harvey published his findings in De Motu Cordis (Concerning the Motion of the Heart). The wealth of evidence it brought to bear effectively shattered Galen's theory forever.
Harvey showed that blood did not seep through a septum and that blood passes through the lungs to be refreshed, although he was not aware of oxygenation. He pointed out that animals without lungs also had no right ventricle and, that in developing embryos, the blood took a shorter route from the right to left side of the heart. Harvey's most important and astounding contribution was the calculation that, in one hour, the heart pumps more than the body's weight in blood. This could only mean one thing: that the blood circulated from the left side of the heart, through the body, then to the right side of the heart, and from there through the lungs and back to the left side of the heart.
It took nearly half a century for Harvey's work to be accepted by the medical community. Once it was accepted, it provided a much better framework for studying the rest of the body. With the mysteries of the circulatory system unraveled, the respiratory and digestive systems could be better understood. And with those in place, other functions of the body could be figured out. Thanks to Harvey's brilliant synthesis, the way to modern biology was opened.
FC99From Faith to Reason: Deism and Enlightenment Philosophy
God said Newton be And all was light — Alexander Pope
Blinded by Science
Alexander Pope's short poem largely summarizes the impact that Isaac Newton's work had, not just on science, but also on the imaginations of his contemporaries. The 1700s abounded with heightened interest and discoveries in the sciences. Nobles and monarchs pursued different sciences as hobbies as well as funding serious research. In a popular play of the era, a woman even refuses to elope with her lover because she would have to leave her microscope behind. There were serious advances as well.
In astronomy, William Herschel, noticing fluctuations in Saturn's orbit, surmised they were caused by the gravitational pull of a hitherto unknown planet and discovered Uranus. He also showed the vastness of space by demonstrating the Milky Way is not a cloud of gas but a whole galaxy of stars, and that so-called fixed stars were actually entire distant galaxies. Carl Linnaeus, using his system of binary nomenclature, catalogued the huge numbers of new plants and animals being discovered across the planet. In chemistry, Henry Cavendish isolated hydrogen; Joseph Black discovered carbon dioxide, and Antoine Lavoisier, separated water, supposedly an indivisible element, into oxygen and hydrogen. This destroyed Aristotle's theory of four elements and opened the way for the emergence of modern chemistry in the 1800s. And in medicine, Edward Jenner created a vaccine against the deadly disease, smallpox, although germ theory would not be developed for another century.
However, not everyone was impressed with the scientific progress of the day. Among them was Jonathon Swift who satirized much of contemporary society, including its obsession with science, in his book, Gulliver's Travels. In the following selection, Gulliver visits the science academy of the mythical Laputa, a land where everyone is so absorbed in theoretical speculation that they have lost all touch with reality. Supposedly, he based this fictional account on real experiments being conducted at the time.
The first Man I saw was of a meagre Aspect, with sooty Hands and Face, his Hair and Beard long, ragged and singed in several Places, His Clothes, Shirt, and Skin were all of the same Colour. He had been Eight Years upon a Project for extracting Sun-Beams out of Cucumbers, which were to be put into Vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the Air in raw inclement Summers. He told me, he did not doubt in Eight Years more, that he should be able to supply the Governors Gardens with Sun-shine at a reasonable Rate; but he complained that his Stock was low, and entreated me to give him something as an Encouragement to Ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear Season for Cucumbers. I made him a small Present, for my Lord had furnished me with Money on purpose, because he knew their Practice of begging from all who go to see them.
I went into another Chamber, but was ready to hasten back, being almost overcome with a horrible Stink. My Conductor pressed me forward conjuring me in a Whisper to give no Offence, which would be highly resented; and therefore I durst not so much as stop my Nose. The Projector of this Cell was the most ancient Student of the Academy. His Face and Beard were of a pale Yellow; his Hands and Clothes dawbed over with Filth. When I was presented to him he gave me a very close Embrace, (a Compliment I could well have excused). His Employment from his first coming into the Academy, was an Operation to reduce human Excrement to its original Food, by separating the several Parts, removing the Tincture which it receives from the Gall, making the Odour exhale, and skimming off the saliva. He had a weekly Allowance from the Society, of a Vessel filled with human Ordure, about the Bigness of a Bristol Barrel.
There was a most ingenious Architect who had contrived a new Method for building Houses by beginning at the Roof, and working downwards to the Foundations; which he justified to me by the like Practice of those two prudent Insects the Bee and the Spider....
I was complaining of a small Fit of the Cholick; upon which my Conductor led me into a Room, where a great Physician resided, who was famous for curing that Disease by contrary Operations from the same Instrument. He had a large Pair of Bellows with a long slender Muzzle of Ivory. This he conveyed eight Inches up the Anus, and drawing in the Wind, he affirmed he could make the Guts as lank as a dried Bladder. But when the Disease was more stubborn and violent, he let in the Muzzle while the Bellows was full of Wind, which he discharged into the Body of the Patient; then withdrew the Instrument to replenish it, clapping his Thumb strongly against the Orifice of the Fundament; and this being repeated three or four Times, the adventitious Wind would rush out, bringing the noxious along with it (like Water put into a Pump) and the patient recovers. I saw him try both Experiments upon a Dog, but could not discern any Effect from the former. After the latter, the Animal was ready to burst, and made so violent a Discharge, as was very offensive to me and my companions. The Dog died on the Spot, and we left the Doctor endeavouring to recover him by the same Operation...
Deism
The Enlightenment saw more than new advances in the sciences. In fact the very revolutionary nature of those scientific discoveries ensured that no field of thought would remain untouched. This was especially true of religion and philosophy, which had been so closely intertwined with the old scientific theories.
Starting with the rise of towns in the High Middle Ages, several historical forces converged to produce a revolution in European religion and philosophy. First of all, there was the Protestant Reformation. As we have seen, the Reformation led to a series of religious wars that ravaged Europe for nearly a century (c.1550-1650). One result of those religious wars was that many people grew tired of religion and looked for less restrictive modes of thought. Second, the Renaissance, with its interest in ancient Greek philosophies, gave rise to secular ideas that helped spawn the scientific revolution of the Enlightenment as well as. This helped discredit the Church's old ideas on the universe and raise the status of humanity and its ability to reason on its own. Finally, the rise of towns led to resurgence of feudal monarchies into nation states. We have seen how they started challenging the Church's power during the turmoil of the Later Middle Ages. By the sixteenth century, they were using the doctrine of Divine Right of Kings to undercut the Church's authority in order to elevate their own.
All of these factors converged to undermine the role of blind faith in the Church's authority. While faith was still of prime importance, human reason was also an important element, especially in recognizing and avoiding the pitfalls of religious fanaticism and intolerance. After all, if God gave us the power to reason, should we not use it? As time went on the role of reason in religion increased while the role of faith declined correspondingly. Finally, reason completely replaced faith in a philosophy known as Deism. This was based largely on a Greek philosophy, Epicureanism, which saw God as detached from worldly affairs. Our main purpose in life was to avoid pain, not through sensual self-indulgence, which ultimately brings pain, but through a reasonable and moderate way of life.
While Deism incorporated the Epicurean ideas and added its own twists, it was not an organized religion with a central dogma and places of worship. However, despite differences on various points, their beliefs can be summarized as follows:
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God exists, but is detached from the affairs of this world. Drawing upon the mechanistic views of Newtonian science, they saw the universe as a giant clocklike machine that God had set in motion and then left to run on its own.
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Religious truth can only be found through reason, not divine inspiration or clerical authority.
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Miracles do not exist, only natural phenomena for which we have not yet found reasons.
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Universal moral laws exist and can be found in all cultures around the globe, not just in Christian Europe. This reflected the exposure of Europe to other cultures in the Age of Exploration.
Keep in mind that Deism was a philosophy mainly of an upper crust of intellectuals (known then as philosophes). Most people in the Enlightenment stayed devout church members totally untouched by Deistic ideas. However, although Deism was confined to such a narrow upper class, including Thomas Jefferson in the United States, its influence was profound, since it was the ideas of these intellectuals who inspired the revolutionary ideas of the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Deism also downplayed the role God plays in this world. This thrust more power and responsibility upon humanity to solve its own social, political, and economic problems, giving rise to remarkable new ideas in those areas as well.
FC100Enlightenment Political & Social Ideas
The Enlightenment was a period of nearly unbounded optimism and faith in the human race's ability to solve its own problems, including restructuring government and society along more reasonable lines. There were two main factors leading into this search for a rational approach to creating a better society. First of all, Deism, with its idea of a God detached from our affairs, gave us the ability and responsibility to solve our own problems. Second, this was a period of rapid social and economic changes, especially in England with its booming colonial empire and economy. London's population jumped from c.700,000 in 1715 to 2.7 million by 1815. Such rapid growth led to squalid living conditions, alcoholism (gin consumption increasing by a factor of 10 times), drug abuse, and crime. While Deism may have given us the power and responsibility to reform society, these conditions provided an urgent need for such reforms. The result was a flurry of new ideas in political science, economics, psychology, and social reform.
Enlightenment ideas on politics were rooted in John Locke's Two Treatises on Government (1694). Locke's basic idea was that government, rather than being at the whim of an absolute monarch with no checks on his power, existed merely as a trust to carry out the will of the people and protect their "lives, liberty, and property." If it failed in its duties or acted arbitrarily, the subjects had the right to form a new government, by revolution if necessary.
Locke's ideas largely summarized the achievements of the English Revolution of the 1600's. They had a tremendous impact on political thinkers in France chafing under the corrupt reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI. Three of these men, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau would profoundly influence French political thought and provide the theoretical justification for the French Revolution.
Montesquieu, sometimes seen as the father of political science, looked at various types of government and analyzed what made them work in his book, The Spirit of the Laws. Among the ideas he supposedly derived from England was the separation of powers in government, a vital part of our own constitution.
Voltaire, who first made his name by championing the cause of a Jew wrongly accused and executed for a crime, was probably the most famous of the Enlightenment philosophers. Voltaire wrote on a wide range of topics, but should be remembered here for advocating more civil and political liberties, at least for educated people who can understand the implications of their actions. Voltaire was less clear on what rights the illiterate masses should have.
Finally, there was Rousseau who said that people could only legitimately follow laws they themselves have made. Otherwise, they were the victims of someone else's tyranny. Therefore the ideal state is a small-scale democracy in which everyone participates. Together, the ideas of Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau provided the basic ideas we have today on personal rights and liberties and how a government can best be structured to guarantee those rights and liberties.
In economics, the most important figure was Adam Smith, whose The Wealth of Nations pushed for a wholly new attitude toward economics. Smith saw people as selfish and willing to work much harder and produce much more if they had the incentive to do so. He saw the mercantilism of the 1600's and 1700's, where the state tried to import gold and silver while exporting its goods, as stifling to an economy. Therefore, doing away with mercantilist monopolies and restrictions would provide more incentive to produce. There was no need to regulate the market since people's greed and the law of supply and demand would make the market self-regulating. Smith's free market policy, known as laissez faire ("hands off") was widely adopted in the 1800's as Britain, Europe, and the United States rapidly industrialized. It is still a vital part of our economic thinking today.
In psychology, there was Helvetius, who claimed our minds and personalities are blank slates at birth and that we are the products of our environment and the sum total of our past experiences. Combining Helvetius' "blank slate" theory with the prevailing optimism of the age was Jeremy Bentham. He felt we could teach people to act in rational ways by providing an ideal environment where they can learn the right sorts of behavior. Bentham's movement, Utilitarianism, became quite popular and pushed for a wide range of social reforms in such areas as prisons, law codes, and public health.
FC100AEnlightenment Salons and the Changing Role of Women
FC101The Rise of the Modern State in Enlightenment Europe
It appears that God has created me, pack horses, Doric columns, and us kings generally to carry the burdens of the world in order that others might enjoy its fruits.— Frederick II, "the Great", of Prussia
Introduction
Just as the Enlightenment philosophes saw a rational plan in the laws of nature and the universe, they also influenced rulers in building their states along rational lines. For the first time in European history, there was a general realization of the relationship between economic, administrative, diplomatic, and military factors in state building. Despite their vast differences, there was a general trend in both Eastern and Western Europe toward more tightly run bureaucratic states. Public works projects, such as roads, bridges, dams, and canals, multiplied in the hope of building the economy of the mercantilist state. New government departments also appeared in such areas as postal service, forests, agriculture, and livestock raising. States also took censuses and kept statistics in order to plan out policies better.
In order to understand the evolution of the modern state, one needs to understand that the feudal state was patrimonial. In other words, the kingdom was the patrimony (hereditary property) of a dynasty. Likewise, the various judicial and administrative offices that ran the kingdom at the provincial and local levels were the patrimonies of privileged families. The modern concept of kings and officials who were accountable for their actions and responsible for the welfare of their subjects was alien to the old feudal state. This made the feudal state more a federation of separate principalities that, in theory, owed allegiance to a common monarch. In the High Middle Ages, this concept of one monarch, among other things, provided at least some degree of order, helping lead to the rise of towns and feudal monarchies which supported each other and increased each other's strength. Over the years, a common language and culture along with the spread of nationalism after the French Revolution united many of these states into what we would call nations. The feedback between the rise of towns and kings produced two lines of development that would help each other in the rise of the modern state.
For one thing, the rise of towns and a money economy helped provide the basis for the Italian Renaissance and Protestant Reformation. Calvinism, in particular, saw all believers as equal in God's eyes, which discredited Divine Right of Kings, helped justify religious/political revolution, and lay the foundations for modern democracy in the Dutch Revolt and English Revolution. By the late 1600's the religious element was fading from theories of revolution. Such political writings as John Locke's The Social Contract pushed the idea of the ruler being responsible for the welfare of his subjects. Second, kings were building strong nation-states that, by the 1600's, were assuming greater control over all aspects of the state. For example, the economic theory of mercantilism spurred rulers to work to develop the resources of their kingdoms.
Together these led to a growing realization of the interrelationships between administrative, economic, and political factors in the overall welfare of the state. As a result, more and more royal officials were trained professionals. They had to take competitive exams to gain their positions and did their jobs efficiently and impartially. Kings and their officials also paid more attention to building and maintaining public works such as roads, bridges, and canals to improve the economy. While the purpose of these reforms was to increase the tax base for the kings, they also benefited their subjects. Higher standards of administration made people see their officials as a bureaucracy of service rather than one of privilege. And since they were the king's men carrying out his will, people also saw their kings as public servants rather than as privileged owners of the state. Frederick the Great's quotation at the top of the reading best represents this idea of the king as public servant. As a result, in the 1700's the term absolute monarchy gave way to the term "enlightened despot", a monarch who ruled according to enlightened principles rather than the divine right of kings.
The eighteenth century state still had problems. For one thing, it had a modern political administration superimposed upon a feudal social order. Nobles were still the privileged social class, holding most of the important administrative and military positions. Peasants in Central and Eastern Europe were still downtrodden serfs. Even French peasants, who were otherwise free, had feudal obligations imposed upon them.
In spite of this, the centralized states emerging in the Enlightenment were important in the evolution of our own modern states in two ways. First of all, the emergence of a professional bureaucracy, chosen largely for merit, not money or birth, provided the state with a modern administrative structure that continues today. Second, the idea of the rulers and officials being servants, not owners, of the state was central to the revolutionary ideas that swept Europe starting with the French Revolution in 1789. A closer look at several of the major states of eighteenth century Europe will give a better idea of their accomplishments and limitations.
France
under Louis XV may at first glance have seemed like a strongly unified state. But it had serious problems at the center of government. First of all, the court at Versailles with its petty intrigues stifled the work of most capable officials. Instead of tending to their appointed duties, officials spent more time defending their positions at court. Under Louis XV there were 18 foreign secretaries and 14 controller generals, most of them eventually ruined by palace intrigue. Their average terms of office were between two and three years. At the center of this was the king, Louis, who was a somewhat intelligent, but weak willed and disinterested man who let others run the government for him.Another problem for the central government was the intense competition between the council of state (from which all laws supposedly emerged) and the various ministers (justice, finance, war, navy, foreign affairs, and the king's household). The ministers carried out and often formulated the king's policies. However, we have seen what court intrigue did to many of the ministers, and one can imagine the confusion and lack of direction in the central government.
By contrast, the provincial government was fairly efficient. The main figures here were the intendants that ran the 32 generalites (provinces) set up by Richelieu some 100 years before. He was in charge of tax collection, justice, and policing his province, and he had a fairly free hand to carry out these duties as he saw fit. The intendant was the king's agent in the province and was the man most Frenchmen saw as representing royal authority. He also represented the interests of the people to the central government, and his opinion was generally respected by the king's ministers and councilors. In contrast to the unfortunate officials close to Versailles, the intendants generally kept their positions for decades, which allowed them to know their territories and peoples more thoroughly and better rule them. The intendants were often criticized for being too powerful and corrupt. There certainly was some corruption, but in general, the intendants represented efficient and conscientious government. Unfortunately, nobles, anxious to preserve and regain their ancient prestige, even took over more and more intendant positions as the 1700's progressed.
The intendants needed help at the local level. These lower level officials fell into three categories. The first category consisted of feudal officials who had bought or inherited their positions. Such men had little training or care for their work and were a burden to the intendants that were stuck with them. Next, there were subdelegates, who were poorly paid, poorly trained, and also of little use. Finally, there were what we might call true civil servants. These were specialists (engineers, architects, physicians, etc.) who had to take competitive tests to gain their positions. These were the men who usually carried out the directives of the intendants and kept the French state running. It was these officials who would survive the French Revolution and become the nucleus of the modern French civil service.
The Hapsburg Empire
may have been an absolute monarchy, but it was a far cry from being a unified state. The War of the Austrian Succession especially pointed out the need to organize an administration such as Richelieu and Frederick William the Great Elector had done for their respective states a century earlier. The central government in Vienna had a number of governing bodies whose functions overlapped, which led to great confusion. A full one-third or more of all taxes collected never made it to Vienna, so no effective budget could be made. Local government consisted of noble estates (assemblies) that granted or refused the central government its taxes. Nobles in Hungary owned 80% of the land and paid no taxes, leaving the full tax burden to the peasants. The nobles also maintained jurisdiction over the peasants on their lands. It was this mess that the Austrian minister, Count Haugwitz, set out to clean up. He did it at the central, provincial, and local levels. The central government was streamlined into five ministries: foreign affairs, commerce, war, justice, and internal affairs. Typical of the prevailing mercantilist philosophy of the day, the minister of finance was deemed most important in both France and Austria.At the provincial level, an administrative board known as the gubernium largely replaced the power of the noble estates. In 1748, after the disasters of the War of the Austrian Succession, the estates recognized the need to reform the state and granted ten years worth of taxes to the central government. This meant that the empress could rule without the estates for the next decade. As their power withered, that of the gubernium increased. Thus the feudal estates were gradually replaced by a more modern system. Another important principle that took over here was that of the separation of powers within a government, specifically between the courts and the executive/legislative branches. This principle was pushed by the French philosophe, Montesquieu, and has remained an important part of the modern state down to this day.
At the local level, a Hapsburg official, the kreishauptmann, interfered more and more in the affairs traditionally left to the noble estates. The more such officials became involved in the daily affairs of the peasants, the more concerned they and the Hapsburgs were for their welfare and their ability to pay taxes. Therefore, the kreishauptmann became the virtual champion of the peasants against the nobles, preventing them from evicting peasants and taking their lands or forcing them to do extra servile labor.
Maria Theresa's government also effected a major fiscal reform to raise revenue. Even nobles and clergy had to pay regular property and income taxes. This distributed the tax load more evenly, but there were still gross inequities. The average peasant still paid twice the taxes that a noble paid. And Bohemia was liable for twice the taxes that Hungary was. Still, her reforms were a giant step forward for the Austrian Empire, and her system remained the basis for Hapsburg administration to the end of the empire in 1918.
Maria Theresa's son, Joseph I, carried the spirit of enlightened rule even further than his mother had. He was an enlightened ruler who was determined to use his power to make his people live according to enlightened principles whether they liked it or not. Joseph's reforms cut across the whole spectrum of the Hapsburg state and society. In the judicial realm, he had the laws codified, tried to get speedier and fairer trials presided over by trained judges, and outlawed torture, mutilation, and the death penalty. He ordered toleration for both Protestants and Jews and legalized interfaith marriages. Along the same lines, he relaxed censorship, restricting it only to works of pornography, atheism, and what he deemed superstition.
Joseph was a devout Catholic, but saw the Church as a virtual department of state that needed some house cleaning. Therefore, in 1781 he closed down many monasteries or converted them into hospitals and orphanages. He also required a loyalty oath from the clergy to ensure tighter control of the Church. He controlled and encouraged education, especially for the purpose of producing trained civil servants. Through a combination of incentives for families who sent their sons to school and punishments for those who did not, Austria under Joseph had a higher percentage of children in school than any other state in Europe.
Joseph's reforms extended to trying to make his subjects' lives easier. Although he failed to abolish serfdom, he did get the number of days per week that peasants had to work for their lords reduced from four to three and evened out the tax burden paid by peasants and nobles. He tried to encourage trade and industry through high protective tariffs, tax relief, subsidies, loans, and the building of roads and canals. He rewarded immigrants, but severely punished those trying to emigrate from his empire. Sometimes, his decrees could interfere with the minutest aspects of people's lives, such as forbidding them to drink the muddy water of the Danube or to eat gingerbread and encouraging peasants to mix vinegar with their water.
By his death, Joseph had increased his empire's revenues from 66 million to 87 million florins, while virtually tripling the size of his army. Unfortunately, no amount of reform probably could have solved the Empire's most serious problem: the large number of different nationalities and cultures forcibly held under Hapsburg rule. German language and culture were imposed throughout the Empire. But in the long run, the Hapsburg Empire was a virtual time bomb of nationalities waiting to explode and fragment into different states.
Prussia
was the state that most people saw as the epitome of the enlightened despotate. At the center of this was Frederick II himself, whose incredible energy, drive, and intelligence were more than equal to what all the ministers and rulers of any other state in Europe were capable of. Frederick clearly saw the interdependence of foreign, domestic, military, and financial affairs and was determined to direct all these affairs personally. Therefore, he served as his own foreign minister, finance minister, and general staff. (He even scouted enemy positions by himself, much to the worry of his officers.)Frederick's workday started at 4 AM and extended to 10 PM. The vast body of work and responsibilities he undertook required an incredibly organized schedule and work routine. His civil servants in Berlin sent him details and data on specific matters, and he sent back orders he expected them to carry out punctually. His court at Potsdam had neither family, court etiquette, religious holidays, nor other distractions to impair the government's efficiency. The court and government resembled a barrack and were run with military precision. If any one man gave us the idea of the state serving the people rather than the other way around, it was Frederick the Great.
Frederick had little faith in either his troops or bureaucracy and subjected them to severe surveillance and discipline to make sure they did their jobs. Royal agents, known as fiscals, combined the duties of spies and prosecuting attorneys to keep the bureaucrats in line. Any examples of corruption led to immediate dismissal. Civil servants had virtually no civil rights (including that of a trial) and have been described as the "galley slaves" of the state. Even with the fiscals, Frederick felt he needed better information about his government and kingdom. Therefore, he had subordinates report to him about their superiors. He also made an annual tour of the kingdom from May to August, personally examining officials, interviewing private citizens, inspecting local conditions, and gathering immense amounts of information. There were few things of importance that escaped Frederick's notice for long.
Unlike the rest of Europe, where most public offices were either bought or inherited, Prussia required all of its civil servants to earn their positions by passing a civil service exam. Most candidates had a college education in jurisprudence and government management. All of them, regardless of class, also had to spend one to two years on a royal farm to familiarize themselves with the various aspects of agriculture, in particular the new scientific agricultural techniques being developed and the problems of lord-serf relations.
At the provincial level, there were 15 provincial chambers, each with 15 to 20 members. Since the members were responsible for each other's actions, there was little corruption at this level. The provincial chambers had two main duties: to collect taxes; and stimulate the economy to raise the tax base. In true mercantilist spirit, they had sandy wastes reclaimed, swamps drained, and new settlements founded. They went to England and Holland to study commercial and agricultural methods there, sought out markets for Prussian goods, and arrested any vagabonds they found, since laziness and indolence were public offenses in Prussia.
At the local level there were the steurrat and landrat, who administered towns and rural affairs respectively. The steuerrat ruled from 6 to 10 towns, and left them little in the way of home rule. In addition to collecting taxes, he fixed food prices, enforced government decrees, regulated the guilds, and kept the garrison properly housed. The landrat had much the same duties in the countryside, but was not so closely supervised by the central government, largely because the king had too little money to closely control the Junkers (nobles). The landrat was always a local noble and estate owner and was elected to his position by his fellow Junkers as often as he was appointed by the king. The landrat exercised all the functions of local government: tax collecting, administering justice, maintaining public order, and conscripting recruits for the army. As long as he did his job and did not abuse the peasants too severely, the central government largely left him alone.
To a large extent, poverty built the Prussian state of the 1700's. It created a tightly run and loyal officer class by forcing impoverished nobles into service to the state. It also forced Prussia's rulers to adopt the tight-fisted economic measures that became the basis of Prussian discipline and regimentation into this century.
Russia
Catherine the Great of Russia also strived to be an enlightened despot, at least in appearance. However, Russia was too big and too far behind the West for it to be transformed into an enlightened society overnight. The court, to be sure, reflected the fashions and manners of courts in the rest of Europe. However, this was a mere facade to mask the still medieval nature of the rest of society in the countryside. Symbolizing this facade was the series of fake villages stocked with healthy prosperous looking peasants that Catherine's prime minister, Potemkin, set up to fool Catherine into thinking her realm was indeed on a par with the West. Unfortunately for Russia, parity with the West was far from the case, and Russia would pay a heavy price for its backwardness in the years to come.
FC102The Flow of Ideas in the Enlightenment
Starting with the scientific revolution, we need to go back to the Renaissance with new findings in astronomy and physiology that seemed to contradict old theories, especially those of Aristotle. At first these led to explanations that were still framed in the context of old theories, especially if another ancient authority, such as Plato or Pythagoras, could be used to back it up. However, these natural philosophers, as they were called, kept finding more and more evidence that seemed to contradict the old theories until they had to come up with new syntheses and theories of their own. We have looked at two of these processes in particular: Newton’s synthesis in physics and astronomy, and Harvey’s synthesis concerning the circulatory system.
In addition to creating the scientific basis for the industrial revolution in the 1800s, they also opened the way for new ideas outside of science. Key to this was the fact that the scientific revolution had discredited the Church and raised the belief in humanity’s ability to reason. For some, this led to the philosophy of Deism, the belief that God exists but is not actively involved with this world, leading to the conclusion that humans can and must solve their own social, economic, and political problems. Out of this came a new branch of study, the social sciences.
In the realm of political science, a whole new body of ideas emerged concerning the state and our relationship to it: the belief in civil liberties for everyone (or at least all men), democracy, and the separation of powers within a government. Central to all of these was the idea that the state, instead of being a divinely ordained absolute monarchy, is an implied contract between ruler and subjects, each with mutual rights and obligations. In economics, the prevailing idea, as expressed in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, was free trade capitalism. In psychology there was the Blank Slate theory that our characters are purely the result of our environment and experiences. This would spark a nature versus nurture debate that still goes on.
The new theories about the state had a very real impact on many Enlightenment rulers, such as Frederick the Great of Prussia and Joseph II of Austria, who were increasingly aware of the impact of their administrative, economic, and political policies on their own power. Therefore, following the prevailing philosophy of mercantilism, they started establishing better civil services by choosing more o f their officials based on merit, sometimes determined by civil service exams. They also created more public works (roads, bridges, canals, etc.) to improve the economy and their tax base. Sometimes these mercantilist policies were too heavy-handed in how they were carried out, but in many cases they benefited society. Unfortunately, at this time, trying to impose these reforms on a society that still had many feudal features also impeded progress: such things as tax exempt nobles, hereditary offices (including the monarchy), and extra feudal dues burdening the peasants.
Of course, these reforms were done in most cases for the benefit of the king, but they also often benefited society as a whole, giving rise to the idea that the state was working for the benefit of the people instead of the other way around. Out of that idea came rising expectations for more benefits from the state. People even started feeling that when those expectations were not met, they had the right to rebel. That is exactly what would happen in France in 1789.
FC103Balance of Power Politics in the Age of Reason (1715-1789)
Dogs! Do you want to live forever?— Frederick the Great, to his troops in the heat of battle.
Introduction
The period from 1715-1789 was one of transition between the religious wars of the 1500's and early 1600's and the wars of nationalism and democracy starting with the French Revolution. This was also the era of balance of power politics where Europe operated as an integrated system, so that one state's actions would trigger reactions from all the other states. As a result, it was hard for one state to gain an overwhelming position in Europe without everyone else, in particular Britain, ganging up to restore the balance. Finally, it was a period of intense competition between European states, a competition that would launch Europe into the two bloodiest centuries in all human history.
Diplomatic maneuvering (1715-1740)
The death of Louis XIV in 1715 ended the bloodiest and most exhausting period of warfare up to that point in European history. The scale of bloodshed and expenditure was so massive that it would take several years before Europe would be ready for another major war. However, mutual distrust kept the various powers eyeing each other suspiciously and constantly maneuvering to maintain a stable or superior position in case war did break out. Spain and Austria conspired to take Gibraltar from England, causing Britain and France to ally to stop this plot. Britain, Austria, and Holland signed the Barrier Treaty in 1718, by which Austria got the Spanish Netherlands (modern Belgium) in return for manning the barrier fortresses against French aggression. Because of this maneuvering (or maybe in spite of it) peace ruled over most of Europe for nearly two decades.
The first major disturbance was the War of the Polish Succession (1733-39). The death of the Polish king led to rival claims by French and Austrian candidates, and these claims led to war. Austria and its ally, Russia, being closer to Poland, emerged victorious over France and Spain. The only compensation was that the Spanish Bourbons got control of Southern Italy and Sicily. The War of Polish Succession symbolized the growing importance of Eastern and Central Europe in diplomatic affairs. In fact, events surrounding two of these states, Prussia and Austria, would dominate European affairs for much of the eighteenth century.
The rise of Prussia
Since the late 1600's, Prussia had been quietly but steadily gaining strength. Under Frederick William the Great Elector (1640-88) and his grandson, Frederick William I (1713-40), Prussia evolved from a small war ravaged principality to a highly centralized independent kingdom. The two pillars of Prussian strength were a highly disciplined and efficient army and bureaucracy. Prussia was a poor country, and Frederick William I did a masterful job of making the most from the least. He did this through a combination of intense economizing and severe discipline and regimentation of virtually every aspect of Prussian society. History has seen few skinflints of Frederick William I's caliber. He cut his bureaucracy in half, cut the salaries of the remaining civil servants in half, dismissed most of his palace staff, sold much of his furniture and crown jewels, and even forcibly put tramps to work. But he expected no more of his subjects than he did of himself as the first servant of the state, probably a legacy of his Calvinist upbringing.
Frederick William's main expense was the army, which is not surprising when one considers Prussia was surrounded by Austria, Russia, and France, all with large armies of at least 90,000 men. By his death in 1740, Prussia’s army numbered some 80,000 men. Frederick William's pride and joy was his regiment of grenadiers, all of them over six feet tall (a remarkable height back then). His friends would give him any six-foot tall recruits they could find, while he kidnapped most of the rest. In spite of this military buildup, Frederick William I followed a peaceful foreign policy and left his son, Frederick II, both a large army and full treasury.
Frederick II presents a fascinating contrast to his father. While the old king detested anything that suggested France and culture, his son treasured those very things. This made Frederick's childhood very difficult. On the one hand, he was required to wear a military uniform and live the life of an officer. On the other hand, he took every possible chance to learn music, speak French, and curl his hair and dress in French fashion. This infuriated the king who often beat his son in fits of rage. The king's chronic illness did not help his temper. Neither did Frederick's tendency to tease his father and see how far he could push him. At one point, Frederick tried to escape from Prussia, was captured, court-martialled, condemned to death, and finally released after a lengthy imprisonment. It is a wonder that one of them did not kill the other. However, when Frederick William I died, father and son were reconciled. It is interesting to see how similar to and different from his father Frederick II would turn out to be as king.
The War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48)
Frederick's eyes were turned toward the rich province of Silesia, then under Hapsburg rule. The timing could not have been better for Prussia. Austria was in pitiful shape to fight a war, having just lost a disastrous struggle with the Ottoman Turks. Its generals and ministers were old men past their prime, while the administration was full of corruption and confusion. And to make matters worse, the old emperor, Charles VI had just died, leaving only a young woman, Maria Theresa, to succeed him. Charles had gotten most of Europe's rulers to sign the Pragmatic Sanction, a document recognizing Maria Theresa as the lawful heiress. But many questioned the legality of Maria and her husband taking the throne, and set up the elector of Bavaria as an alternate candidate. This was the situation for the unfortunate Maria Theresa (who was also pregnant) when Frederick invaded Silesia.
However, as Frederick William I had warned the young Frederick, wars were generally much harder to end than start, and this one did not stop at Silesia. France, Spain, Bavaria, and Saxony all joined Prussia, hoping to pick Austria clean. Austria's ally, Russia, was neutralized when Sweden joined the other side against it and Austria. That left Britain, who was already involved in a war with Spain over control of the West Indies trade. Britain, which generally tried to maintain the balance of power and its trade, backed Austria. Unfortunately for Austria, Britain had a small army and was mainly concerned with defending George II's principality of Hanover from neighboring Prussia. As if Frederick William I had been a prophet, a simple move into Silesia had triggered what amounted to a global conflict, with fighting in India and the American colonies as well as Europe.
Mollwitz, the first battle of the War of the Austrian Succession, was a bit embarrassing for Frederick. His army won, but not until he had run prematurely from the field. After that, however, he showed a flair for brilliant generalship and decisive movements that were unequalled until Napoleon some fifty years later. Frederick's victory at Mollwitz left him with Lower Silesia and left Maria Theresa, who had just given birth to a son, somewhat destitute. However, the young queen showed she had some spirit and fight of her own. She rallied the Hungarian nobles to her side, raised an army, and secured an alliance with England. Next, she made a secret truce with Frederick, giving him Lower Silesia if he would drop out of the war. Then, she surprised everyone by invading Bavaria and throwing her enemies, now without Frederick, off balance.
With Austria's fortunes restored, the war dragged on for eight more years. Frederick would occasionally re-enter the war, revive his allies with his brilliant leadership, and then be bought off with more of Silesia. At last, bloodshed and exhaustion led to the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. Frederick kept Silesia, while Maria Theresa had survived and saved the rest of her empire. However, she was burning for revenge against Frederick.
The "Diplomatic Revolution" of 1756
The first thing Maria Theresa needed to do was reorganize the Hapsburg Empire. Therefore, she centralized the government, reorganized finances, and built up the army. Next, she set about looking for allies to help her gang up on Frederick. First, she renewed her alliance with Russia, thus securing her eastern flank and endangering Prussia's at the same time.
In this she was helped by Prussia's own position and actions. The Austro-Russian alliance already threatened Frederick with a two front war. If he were also attacked from the west and faced a three front war, that would be disastrous. His choice for allies lay between France and Britain. France, his traditional ally was slow moving and reluctant to fight another war. England, on the other hand, threatened him with its Hanoverian lands on his western border, and had signed a treaty agreeing to pay for Russian armies. By secretly allying with Britain, Frederick felt he was neutralizing the threats to both his western and eastern borders, since Britain would now guard, not threaten, his western borders, and subsidize his armies, not Russia's.
Frederick felt that Russia could not fight without British money. He also felt France would not mind his alliance with Britain to keep the balance of power in Germany. He was wrong on both accounts. Louis XV was furious about Frederick making this treaty with Britain without consulting France. As a result, France allied with Austria and agreed to finance Russia's war effort. This ended 250 years of hostility between France and Austria and brought about a virtual diplomatic revolution in how the powers in Europe were aligned. Frederick, finding himself surrounded by enemies, took the initiative and invaded Saxony. The Seven Years War had begun. Now it was Frederick's turn to prove himself in the face of overwhelming odds.
The Seven Years War (1756-63)
was actually two conflicts combined into one giant war. In addition to the continental war of Prussia against Austria, Russia, and France, there was also the struggle for colonial empire between Britain and France. The war assumed global dimensions, extending from Europe to North America, the West Indies, Africa, India, and the Philippines.Prussia's struggle was especially desperate. Frederick, faced with a three front war, was forced to race from one frontier to the next in order to prevent his enemies from combining in overwhelming force. Even then, he still was always outnumbered. Frederick's oblique formation, where he stacked one flank to crush the opposing enemy flank and roll it up, worked time and again to save the day for Prussia. After two brilliant Prussian victories in 1757, Britain came to the rescue with troops to guard Hanover and money to pay for the Prussian army, thus neutralizing the French war effort on the continent.
Even with France out of the picture, the war against Austria and Russia raged year after year and fell into a sort of vicious cycle where Frederick would clear one frontier of enemies. Meanwhile, another enemy would invade Prussia elsewhere, forcing Frederick to rush there to expel this new threat. However, this only exposed another frontier to invasion, and the cycle went on. Against such odds, Frederick lost as many battles as he won. However, his iron will and determination to save Prussia gave him the strength to bounce back, gather a new army, and drive back each new invasion. The Seven Years War became something of a patriotic struggle for the Prussian people, who were called on in greater numbers to defend their homeland. Junkers (nobles) only 14 or 15 years of age rushed to enlist, as did many peasants. The civil service carried on throughout much of the war without pay. The heroic example of Frederick inspired many Germans outside of Prussia to praise him as the first German hero within memory able to defeat French armies. Even French philosophes sang his praises.
But the grim business of war dragged on and on. From Frederick's point of view, this was a war of attrition and exhaustion. If he could hang on long enough and inflict enough casualties, his enemies would tire of the war and go home. As luck would have it, the Tsarina Elizabeth died in 1762. Her successor, Paul, was an ardent admirer of Frederick. Not only did he abandon Austria, but also he offered Russian troops to help Frederick. But Paul was soon murdered by his wife, Catherine, who ascended the throne and pulled Russia completely out of the war. This left only Austria and Prussia, who were both exhausted by the war.
Meanwhile, Britain was striving to build a colonial empire and eliminate French competition. Part of its strategy was to protect Hanover in order to keep Frederick in the war and divert French men and money away from the colonial wars. The colonial struggle took place over North America (known as the French and Indian Wars), the West Indies, India, and slave stations on the African coast. In each case, British financial and naval superiority proved decisive, cutting French troops off from home support while bringing British colonial armies overwhelming reinforcements. The resulting British victories cut French colonial trade by nearly 90% while British foreign trade actually increased. This both deprived France of the means to carry on the colonial war and gave Britain added resources for it, which led to more British victories, more British money, and so on.
In 1762, Spain suddenly joined France's side. By this time, the British war machine was in high gear under the capable leadership of Prime Minister, William Pitt. Therefore, British forces easily crushed the Spanish and took Havana in Cuba and Manila in the Phlippines.
By the end of 1762, both sides were ready for peace. The resulting Treaty of Paris in 1763 was a victory for Prussia and Britain. Prussia, while getting no new lands, kept Silesia and confirmed its position as a major power. Britain stripped France of Canada and most of its Indian possessions, and emerged as the dominant colonial power in the world. Although Russia gained no new lands, it emerged as an even greater European power.
The Partitions of Poland
The Treaty of Paris had effects in both Eastern and Western Europe. In the East, the emergence of Russia as a major power was a matter of concern to other European nations. The country directly in Russia's path of expansion was Poland. At one point, Poland had been a major power in its own right that had picked on the emerging Russian state. Now the tables were turned. Russia was a growing giant, and Poland was crumbling to pieces, largely because of a powerful nobility and weak elective monarchy. Frederick also had his eyes on Poland, in particular the lands cutting Prussia off from the rest of his lands in Germany. Since Russia, Prussia, and Austria were still exhausted from the Seven Years War, they agreed to divide part of Poland peacefully among themselves in 1771. However, their greed was not satisfied, and there were two more such partitions in 1793 and 1795, which eliminated Poland from the map. Since that time until the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in 1989), Poland has mostly lived under the yoke of foreign (mainly Russian) domination.
The American Revolution
In the West, the last major event before the French Revolution was the American War for Independence (1775-83). For once, Britain, the big colonial power, found itself ganged up on by France, Spain, and Holland. This war had two important results in Europe. First, it left France bankrupt, which helped spark the French Revolution. Second, it established a democratic republic that many Frenchmen saw as an inspiration for their own revolution and the spread of democratic ideas across Europe and the globe.