Early Modern Europe: Absolutism, Succession, and the Rise of Prussia

Vocabulary flashcards detailing absolutist France under Louis XIV and Louis XV, the financial collapse of the Mississippi Company, political instability in Poland, and the rise of the Austrian Habsburgs and Prussian Hohenzollerns.

Palace of Versailles

The largest secular structure in Europe, utilized by King Louis as a political and propaganda tool to impress French nobility and keep them closely monitored under his control.

Bishop Dusset

A religious figure who justified divine-right monarchy using the Old Testament, arguing that kings are appointed by God and cannot be questioned without committing heresy.

Genesis

A pious Catholic order that opposed teachings of free will and lived similarly to Calvinists or Puritans; several of their teachings were condemned as heresy by Pope Innocent X, driving them underground.

Edict of knots

A decree originally instituted by Henry IV that allowed Protestants to practice in their own towns; it was revoked by King Louis, who outlawed Huguenots from professions and closed their churches and schools.

Huguenots

French Protestants who made up one-tenth of France's population (1,700,000 people) and faced systemic persecution, forced Catholic baptisms, and troop quartering under Louis XIV.

League of Augsburg

A coalition of states that opposed Louis XIV during the Nine Years' War when the French monarch attempted to expand his realm into Germany.

Charles the second

The last Habsburg monarch of Spain, who suffered from extensive physical defects including the 'Habsburg chin' due to generational inbreeding and died without leaving children.

Philip of Anjou (Philip the fifth)

The grandson of Louis XIV who inherited Spain from Charles the second, transferring the Spanish throne from Habsburg control to the Bourbon line.

Gibraltar

A strategic piece of land located at the southern tip of Spain that controls passage into and out of the Mediterranean Sea, which Britain acquired through the War of the Spanish Succession.

House of Anover

The British royal dynasty whose legitimate right to rule Britain was officially recognized by King Louis following the War of the Spanish Succession.

Mississippi company

An enterprise holding trading privileges in Louisiana along the Mississippi River that managed France's national debt and issued company stock in exchange for depreciated government bonds.

John Law

A Scottish mathematician and gambler who established the Mississippi company financial system and fled France after his bank ran out of gold to back paper currency.

Parliaments

French legal institutions that regained political power during the reign of Louis the fifteenth and served as centers of popular resistance against royal authority.

Schem (sejm)

The central legislative assembly in Poland, composed of nobles who held legislative authority but possessed little real centralized power.

Liberum veto

A procedural rule in the Polish Schem that allowed any individual member to halt legislative debate and immediately dissolve the assembly session.

Pragmatic sanction

The legal mechanism created by Habsburg ruler Charles the sixth to guarantee that his daughter, Maria Theresa, would inherit his lands intact without contest.

Cilicia

A Habsburg territory invaded and seized by Frederick of Prussia in 1740 in return for his recognition of Maria Theresa's imperial title.

Siege of Vienna (1683)

A decisive clash that represented the closest the Ottoman Empire came to overrunning Southeast Europe before being driven back by Habsburg, Polish, and Prussian forces.

Frederick William the Great Elector

The Prussian leader who came to power in 1640 and forged a powerful centralized state by organizing a large standing army and making alliances with the landed nobility.

Junkers

The Prussian noble class who were granted authority to enforce serfdom and held high military commands in exchange for absolute loyalty to the Hohenzollern crown.

Frederick the second (Frederick the Great)

The Prussian ruler who ascended the throne in 1740, seized Silesia (Cilicia), and triggered an enduring geopolitical rivalry between Prussia and Austria.