Period 2: Monarchical States to Napoleon: (1648-1815)

Check this flashcard reviewer of all the important dates in Period 2.

2.1: France (Royal Absolutism)

Henry IV (1553–1610)

• Until Henry IV’s assassination, he worked to revitalize his kingdom.
• Duke of Sully: Henry’s finance minister, established government monopolies to restore the finances of the monarchy.
• He limited the power of the French nobility by reining in its influence over regional parliaments.
• His assassination in 1610 and the ascension of his son, Louis XIII — made France vulnerable to aristocratic rebellion and potential religious wars.

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Louis XIII (1601–1643)

• Louis XIII needed a strong minister and he found one in Cardinal Richelieu.
• Richelieu defeated the Huguenots and took away many of the military and political privileges granted them by the Edict of Nantes.
  • He brought France into the Thirty Years’ War on the side of the Protestants.
• The death of Louis XIII in 1643 left France with a minor on the throne — the five-year-old Louis XIV.

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Louis XIV (1638–1715)

• Ann of Austria — Louis XIV’s mother, selected Cardinal Mazarin to be the regent during the king’s childhood.
  • However, Mazarin had a less sure political hand than Richelieu.
• Louis XIV decided to rule without the Chief Minister and dealt with central issues on his own.
• He achieved this by advocating a political philosophy — the notion that the monarch enjoyed certain divine rights.
• Bishop Bossuet: Louis XIV’s chief political philosopher, wrote that because the king was chosen by God, only God was fit to judge the behavior of the king, not parliamentary bodies or angry nobles.
• He built the palace of Versailles, 12 miles outside of Paris, as a way to dominate the French nobility and the Parisian mob.
  • No member of the high aristocracy attended the daily council sessions at Versailles.
• Jean-Baptiste Colbert: Louis most important minister — he centralized the French economy by instituting a system known as mercantilism.
  • Its goal is to build up the nation’s supply of gold by exporting goods to other lands and earning gold from their sale.
  • Colbert succeeded in helping to create France’s vast overseas empire.
• French East Indian Company: Organized by Louis to compete with the Dutch.
• In 1685, he revoked the Edict of Nantes. He demolished the Huguenot churches, and schools, and took their civil rights away.
• France was involved in a series of wars as a means to satiate Louis' desire for territorial expansion.
• William of Orange: The leader of the Netherlands and was committed to waging total war against Louis.
• After 1688, a 25-year war broke out including the — War of Spanish Succession between the French and the English and Dutch allies.
• This war lasted from 1702 to 1713 and ended in the Treaty of Utrecht, which left a Bourbon (Louis's grandson) on the throne of Spain.
• These wars ultimately left the French peasantry hard-pressed to pay the taxes to support Louis XIV's constant desire for glory.

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2.2: England

The Stuarts

King James VI (1603–1625)

• He inherited the throne after Elizabeth died childless in 1603.
• James was ill-suited for the role of English king.
• In the relationship between the king and Parliament at the start of the 17th century, the monarch held the upper hand and could summon a parliament at will.
• He had to consult two house parliaments when he needed to raise additional revenue beyond ordinary experiences.
  • House of Commons; and
  • House of Lords.
• Puritans emerged during the Stuart period.
  • They wanted to see the Church “purified” of all traces of Catholicism.
• James believed the Church of England’s Episcopal structure — which suited to his idea of the divine rights of the kings.
• James then established a three-part program:
  • To unite England with Scotland;
  • To create a continental-style standing army; and
  • To set up new system of royal finance.

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King Charles (1625–1649)

• Charles I did not possess even the somewhat limited political acumen of his father.
  • He lent his support to the so-called Arminian wing of the Anglican Church.
  • He believed that this faction provided the greatest stability for his state.
• Arminius: A Dutch theologian of the early 17th century who argued in favor of free will as opposed to the Calvinist doctrine of predestination.
• In 1633, Charles named William Laud as his Archbishop of Canterbury.
• His relationship with the Parliament started badly when the Parliament granted him tonnage and poundage for only a year instead of his time in monarchy.
• He was forced to pay for the military disasters that he caused and forced himself to loan — however, the Parliament refused to pay his loans and throw him in jail.
• Petition of Rights
  • These included provisions that the King could not demand a loan without the consent of the Parliament.
  • It also prohibited individuals from being imprisoned without a published case.
  • It outlawed using martial law against civilians, which Charles had used to collect his forced loan.
• In August 1628, Charles’s chief minister, Duke of Buckingham, was murdered by an embittered sailor who blamed him for England’s recent military disasters.
• In January 1629, the Parliament was called, and both sides felt that the issue of exclusive rights would lead to the Parliament and the King’s conflict.
• In March 1629, his messengers announced the dissolution of the Parliament.
• For the next 11 years, Personal Rule of Charles was the law of land.
• By 1637, Charles was at the height of his power. He had a balanced budget, and his government policies and restructuring appeared to be effective.
  • A civil war broke out in the nation four years after he reached his peak, destabilizing his position of authority.
• The Scots rioted and signed a national covenant that pledged their allegiance to the king, but also vowed to resist all changes to their Church.
• In 1640, he called an English Parliament because he believed it would be willing to grant money to put down the Scottish rebellion.
  • It was then called “Short Parliament” because it met for only three weeks and was dissolved right after they didn’t meet Charles’s needs.
• Charles was still determined to punish the Scots.
  • The Scots were the victors on the battlefield and invaded northern England.
  • They refused to leave England unless Charles signed a settlement and forced him to pay £850 per day.
• To pay those, he was forced to call another Parliament — the “Long Parliament”, which lasted 20 years.
  • The House of Commons launched the Long Parliament by impeaching Charles’s two chief ministers and executing them.
  • They abolished the king’s prerogative courts, which became the tools for Royal Absolutism.
  • They supported the Grand Remonstrance — a list of 204 parliamentary grievances.
  • They also added two demands:
  • The king name ministers whom Parliament could trust; and
  • That a synod of the Church of England is called to reform the Church.
• Charles then attempted to sieve five of the rulers of the House of Commons — which led to failure, resulting in him to leave London in January 1642.

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The English Revolution

Oliver Cromwell (1653–1658)

• He created the New Model Army, a regularly paid, disciplined force with extremely dedicated Puritan soldiers.
• By 1648, the King was defeated and in the following year, he made a decision to execute Charles.
• From 1649 to 1660, England became a Republic — The Commonwealth; a military dictatorship governed by Cromwell.
• He then made conflicts among his own supporters.
  • The Independents wanted a state church, but were also willing to grant a measure of religious freedom for others.
  • The Presbyterians wanted a state church that would not allow dissent.
• Cromwell dealt with the rise of radical factions within his army — the Levellers and the Diggers.
• In 1649, Cromwell destroyed the Leveller elements in his army.
• In 1650, he led an army to Ireland, where he displayed incredible brutality in putting down resistance by supporters of the Stuarts.
• In 1652, he brought his army into London to disperse a Parliament.
• In 1665, Cromwell gave up on the idea of governing alongside a legislature and divided England into 12 military districts.
• By the time Cromwell passed away, a worn-out England desired to restore the Stuart dynasty.

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James II (1685–1688)

• In 1660, Charles II returned to the throne.
  • Their return turned back the clock to 1642 as the same issues that had led to the revolution against Charles’s father remained unresolved.
  • These issues were not fully addressed during Charles’s reign.
• In 1685, Charles's brother, James II, succeeded the throne.
• Test Act: An act passed during Charles II’s reign that effectively barred Catholics from serving as royal officials or in the military.
• Declaration of Indulgence: It suspended all religious tests for office holders and allowed for freedom of worship.
• James wanted a Royal Absolutism
• The final stages of this conflict took place in 1688.
  • Seven Anglican bishops were put in jail by him for declining to read James' suspension of the laws against Catholics from the pulpit.
  • In June 1688, he unexpectedly fathered a son, having a male heir raised as a Catholic, as opposed to his previous daughter's heir, Mary, who was raised as a Protestant.
• William, the Stadholder from the Netherlands, a husband of Mary, overthrown James after the Glorious Revolution and they took the throne.

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Constitutional Settlements

• The Bill of Rights (1689)
  • It prohibited the use of royal prerogative rights, which Charles and James had previously exercised.
  • The authority to suspend and repeal laws was declared illegal.
  • Parliamentary elections were to be free of royal interference.
  • All taxes were now required to be approved by Parliament.
• The Act of Toleration (1689)
  • It granted Protestant nonconformists the right to public worship but not Unitarians or Catholics.
  • The Test Act remained in effect until the 19th century, when it was amended to allow nonconformists, Jews, and Catholics to sit in Parliament.
• The Mutiny Act (1689)
  • It allowed civil law to be used to govern the army, which had previously been governed solely by royal decree.
  • It also made desertion and mutiny civil offenses for which soldiers could be punished even during times of peace.
• The Act of Settlement (1701)
  • It was enacted to prevent the Catholic Stuart line from gaining control of the English throne.
• The Act of Union (1707)
  • This marked the political reunification of England and Scotland, resulting in the formation of the country known as Great Britain.

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2.3: The Netherlands

A Center of Commerce and Trades

• The Netherlands had already achieved a central role in inter-European trade due to its geographic position and large merchant marine fleet.
• Amsterdam became the center of commerce in Northern Europe.
• Antwerp declined after it was sacked in 1576 during the Dutch War for Independence.
  • The Peace of Westphalia concluded the permanent closing of the Scheldt River that led to Antwerp’s harbor.
• The Bank of Amsterdam established Amsterdam as the financial hub of Europe, issued its own currency, and increased the amount of capital that was available.
• In 1602, the Dutch East India Company was founded.
  • The company was financed by both public and private investment and operated under quasi-governmental control.
  • This gave rise to the popularity of joint-stock companies.
• The Golden Age in the Netherlands produced a high standard of living, with wealth being more equally distributed than in any other place in Europe.

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Political Decentralization

• Dutch Autonomous: In the 17th century, the Netherlands was politically centralized, with each of the seven provinces retaining significant autonomy.
• Wealthy merchants dominated the provincial Estates.
• The executive power came from the House of Orange, whose family members had achieved prominence for leading the revolt against Spain.
  • Stadholder: The male head of the family.
• The Netherlands shifted its focus from fighting for independence from Spain to fighting against England and attempting to survive against France.
• During the struggle with Louis XIV’s France,
  • The power of provincial Estates declined; and
  • William of Nassau, the head of the House of Orange, powers increased tremendously.

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A Golden Age of Art

• Because most Dutch artists were Calvinists, they did not receive large commissions to place their works in churches.
• The Dutch painters chose to paint for private collectors.
• When prices reached speculative levels, pictures were treated like commodities.
• The art market didn’t flourish in Amsterdam as well.
  • Franz Hals: A great portrait painter from Haarlem.
  • Jan Vermeer: A great Dutch painter who composed genre scenes of everyday Dutch life.
  • Rembrandt van Rijn: One of the Dutch Golden Age painters who focused more on a painting based on his, fraught with deep emotional complexity.
  • The Night Watch (1642): One of his paintings, meaning it transforms a standard group portrait of a military company into a revealing psychological study.

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2.4: Economic and Social Life in Early Modern Europe

Economic Expansion and Population Growth

• Population growth was the main factor in Europe's economic expansion.
• The increase in consumers brought more food and other necessities to market as a result of the growing population in Europe.
• Price Revolution: This is the significant increase in prices in the early modern period.
  • This significant increase was caused by population growth, which pushed up the prices of basic commodities.
• A price increase of this magnitude was shocking to a society accustomed to stable prices.

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Rural Life and the Emergence of Economic Classes

• Gentry: A class of individuals, who often had their economic roots in fortunes made in towns and cities.
• The land-buying habits of the gentry forced up the price of land.
• Members of the gentry were able to use their social connections to get local authorities to accept the enclosure of lands for their own personal use.
• Rural poverty became significantly worse in the early modern period.
  • Farmers became beggars.
• Overpopulation then became a problem in most of Western Europe.
• Low population density was much a more serious problem in Eastern Europe.

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Farm Life

• Life was bleak and revolved around a never-ending struggle to find resources to survive.
• Life was centered in the small village, with most people never venturing more than a few miles beyond their birthplace.
• Rural village housing provided little protection from the cold and wet winters.
• The furnishings in these homes were as simple as their surroundings.
• Workdays were longer in the summer and shorter in the winter.
• Three-Field System: Crops were rotated across three pieces of land; mostly used in Northern Europe.
• Two-Field System: Crops rotated on two pieces of land; predominated in the Mediterranean.
• Farmland was laid out in long strips in most rural areas, with individual peasant families owning a portion of land in each of the strips.

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City and Town Life

• Townspeople in general lived better than their rural counterparts.
• Guilds: They emphasized working on specialization skills, with specific tasks such as baking or brewing taking place in specific quarters of the town.
• Capitalist Entrepreneurs: They provide money and focus on organizational skills.
  • They produced clothing in a much larger skill.
  • This work provided a benefit to some rural households to become one of their important source of revenue during the long winter months.
• The guild members saw those as competitions and created greater hardships — which led them to dissatisfaction.

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Family Life and Structure

• The average family contains no more than three or four children.
• Women marry at around the age of 25, while men marry at around the age of 27.
• Marriages were traditionally either arranged or formally approved by the parents.
• Weddings are significant community events because the married couple are now considered full-pledged members of society.
• Single adults were looked at as troublemakers or thieves.

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The Role of Men in the Family

• The father is regarded as the family's patriarchal head.
• In wealthier families, the oldest male child inherited the majority of the estate, ensuring that the family's wealth remained intact.
  • Younger sons were steered toward careers in the Church, the military, or the expanded opportunities provided by the early modern state's administration.
• Boys as young as seven worked as servants or trade apprentices among the poor.

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The Role of Women in the Family

• A daughter's only claim on her parents' estate would be the dowry she receives upon marriage.
• Wives usually decided who would receive their dowry when their husband died.
• Domestic service was usually the only option for poor girls, leaving them with the difficult task of raising their own dowries.

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The Family as Economic Unit

• Early modern families, whether rich or poor, can be seen as economic units.
• Men played a larger role in the public sphere; such as plowing, planting, and commerce.
  • Women had their responsibilities at home.
• In agricultural communities, everyone is required to work.
• Among merchant classes, the private sphere includes bookkeeping and other administration of the family business.
• The main distinction between women's and men's work was that women's work included all the men's work, as well as housekeeping and cooking.
• The upper classes and nobility had the strongest division between men's and women's roles.

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2.5: Events Leading to the Scientific Revolution

• An Anatomy of the World: Written by an English poet, John Donne; he reflected on the multitude of ways that his world had changed as a result of the new discoveries in science.
• The scientific discoveries of the 16th and 17th centuries brought about a fundamental change in the way Europeans viewed the natural world.

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Discovery of the New World

• The discovery of new plant and animal life may have increased interest in natural sciences.
• The connection between navigation and astronomy sparked interest in learning more about the stars.

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Invention of the Printing Press

• The printing press enabled scientific knowledge to spread much more quickly.
• Many books and newsletters kept people up to date on the most recent scientific discoveries by the second half of the 17th century.
• Thomas Hobbes great invention made scientific discoveries spread throughout Europe.

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Rivalry Among Nation-States

• The constant warfare between various nation-states may have pushed scientific development by emphasizing technology.
• Europe was a region with many powerful leaders capable of funding scientific research.
• China's technological development has slowed in comparison to Europe's.

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Reformation

• Max Weber: The founder of sociology.
  • He argued that Protestantism's worldly asceticism aided in the creation of capitalism, which in turn aided in the advancement of the Scientific Revolution.
• These theories ignore the fact that Catholic Italy contributed significantly to the Scientific Revolution.
• The telescope and microscope, as well as the new botany, were invented in Italy.
• The Protestant Reformation did contribute to a larger reading public by encouraging people to read the Bible.

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Renaissance Humanism

• Humanist interest in classical world writings extended to ancient Greek scientific texts as well.
• The Renaissance rediscovered Archimedes' mathematical writings and Galen's anatomical studies.
• Although the ideas contained in such works were eventually rejected by the Scientific Revolution, this basic familiarity with the past was a necessary stage for modern scientific thought to mature.

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2.6: Pre-Scientific Overview

• Scholasticism: A synthesis of Christian theology with the scientific beliefs of the ancient authors.
• Thomas Aquinas: The great architect of scholasticism, who took the works of Aristotle and harmonized them with the teachings of the church.
• Knowledge of God remained the supreme act of learning and was to be attained through both reason and revelation.
• Viewing science outside of this religious framework was simply unthinkable in the Middle Ages.
• The concept of the four elements gave rise to the idea of alchemy — the perfect compound of the four elements in their perfect proportions.
• The four-element approach also dominated the practice of medicine.
  • The four elements combined in the human body to create what was known as the four humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile.
• Astronomy was not a popular subject in the Middle Ages.

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2.7: The Copernican Revolution

Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543)

• He’s a Polish mathematician and astronomer.
• He wrote Concerning the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres.
• Copernicus was a cleric, and he waited many years before publishing his work because he was afraid of the implications of his ideas.
  • He cautiously dedicated the book to Pope Paul II.
• He simply proposed that if the Earth revolved around the Sun, it would solve at least some of the Ptolemaic system's problematic epicycles.
• Since the Heliocentric system explains that the planets move in a circular motion around the Sun, it did not completely eliminate all the epicycles.
• His theories did not cause a revolution in how people perceived the planets and stars.

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Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

• Galileo designed his own telescope that magnified far-away objects 30 times the naked eye’s capacity.
  • He noticed that the Moon had a mountainous surface very much like the Earth.
• Galileo also observed that the distance between the planets and stars was much greater.
• He observed that Jupiter had her own four moons.
• Sunspots and Saturn's rings cast doubt on the entirety of the Ptolemaic system.
• Following the publication of his Dialogues on the Two Chief Systems of the World (1632), the Catholic Church began to condemn Galileo’s work.
  • Galileo received a warning from church officials not to publish any more astronomy-related writings.

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Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

• The greatest figure of Scientific Revolution.
• He wanted to solve the problem posed by the work of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo: how do you explain the orderly manner in which the planets revolve around the Sun?
• Newton worked on the problem for nearly two decades before publishing his masterpiece, Principia, in 1687.
• Newton wondered what force kept the planets in an elliptical orbit around the Sun when they should have been moving in a straight line.
• The same force that drew the apple when it fell from the tree may explain planetary motion — gravity.
• He was very religious. When he gives scientific talks, he wonders why audiences are more interested in science than theology.
• Newton is also the founder of differential calculus.
• He later became the President of the British Royal Society, an organization dedicated to spreading the new spirit of experimentation.

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2.8: The Impact of the Scientific Revolution on Philosophy

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

• He was a lawyer, an official in the government of James I, a historian, and an essayist.
• The only things he never did probably in his life is to perform scientific experiments.
• What he did contribute to science was the experimental methodology.
• He developed the known system: inductive reasoning, or empiricism*.*
• In France, this system became known as the conflict between the ancients and the moderns.
• In England, this system was known as the Battle of the Books*.*

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René Descartes (1596-1650)

• He developed deducting reasoning, or Rationalism.
  • A better understanding of the universe was obtained by using reason rather than the experimental method to move from a general principle to a specific principle.
• He also thought that all of the outdated ideas needed to be cast into doubt because they were so oppressive.
• Cartesian Doubt: I think; therefore I am, he stripped away his belief in everything except his own existence.
  • The system of methodical skepticism that defined his thought.
• Descartes was also a highly gifted mathematician who invented analytical mathematics.
• Descartes’s system can be found in his Discourse on Method (1637).
  • In his work, there are two distinct elements:
  • The world of the mind involved the soul and the spirit, and Descartes left that world to the theologians.
  • The world of matter was made up of an infinite number of particles.

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Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

• He saw life as an act of balancing. He tried to reconcile atheists and Jesuit dogmatists.
• His life’s attempt to achieve this balance is found in his Pensées.
  • Pascal’s Wager: He came to the conclusion that it was better to bet on the existence of God than not because believing always has a greater expected value than not believing.
• He was also a Jansenist, a Catholic group that believed St. Augustine's theory of human sinfulness and the need for salvation through faith because we are predestined.

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Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

• He personally knew Galileo, Bacon, and Descartes as well as William Harvey.
  • William Harvey (1578-1657): He who, rather than relying on the writings of the Ancient Greeks, used dissections to show the role the heart plays in the circulation of blood through the body.
• Hobbes was inspired by prominent scientists to apply experimental methods to politics.
• Hobbes wrote in his classic work, Leviathan, that life without government was “nasty, brutish, and short.”
• Hobbes’s view of the depravity of human nature led him to propose the necessity for absolutism.
• The Great Leviathan — “Man formed states.” Men were the necessary constructs that worked to restrain the human urges to destroy one another.
• His absolutism, which rejected divine right, offended traditional English royalists.

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John Locke (1632-1704)

• His Two Treatises on Government — written before the Revolution 1688, was after William and Mary came to the throne and served as a defense of the revolution as well as a basis for the English Bill of Rights.
• Locke argued that although man is born free in nature, government is necessary as society develops to organize it.
• Humans are free and logical beings who do not relinquish their unalienable rights to life, liberty, and property when they enter into a social contract with the state.
• He disapproved of religious fervor.
• In his Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke attacked the idea that Christianity could be spread by force.
• His influential Essay on Human Understanding contained the idea that children enter the world with no set ideas.
  • At birth the mind is tabula rasa — a blank slate, the infants do not possess the Christian concept of predestination or original sin.

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2.9: The 18th-Century Enlightenment

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)

• There is no better answer to the question “What is the Enlightenment?” than offered by him.
  • His answer was clear: “Dare to know.”
• He implied that people should discard outdated ideas out of respect for custom or intellectual laziness. We should reason about humanity.
• He believed that all previously generations latched the ultimate reward — freedom.
• Enlightenment writers questioned slavery because this freedom extended to politics and religion.
• The Enlightenment has historically been linked to France, where the term "philosophes" is used to describe the period's thinkers.
  • Republic of Letters: An international community of writers who communicated in French.
  • This extended throughout Europe and American colonies, where the ideas of Enlightenment are expressed.

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Voltaire (1694-1778)

• He was considered as greatest philosophes.
• When Voltaire went to England, it altered his brain chemistry.
• He was amazed at the level of religious acceptance and the freedom to publish one's opinions.
• He was also astounded by the respect the English extended to Newton when the scientist was laid to rest at a state funeral amid great ceremony.
• England seemed to offer personal happiness, which France lacked.
• He hated the Catholic Church and all religions for their narrowness and bigotry.
• He was also a Deist — one who believes that God created the universe and then stepped back from creation to allow it to operate under the laws of science.
• Voltaire felt that religion crushed the human spirit and that to be free.
  • Écrasez l’infame! — Crush the horrible thing!; his famous anti-religous slogan.

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Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

• He wrote one of the most influential works of the Enlightenment; the Spirit of the Laws (1748).
• He became president of the Parliament of Bordeaux — a body of nobles that functioned as the province’s law court.
• He was a conservative who opposed a republic and wanted France to restore aristocratic rule to limit royal absolutism.
• In Persian Letters (1721), he critiques his native France through a series of letters between two Persians traveling in Europe.
  • To avoid royal and church censorship, he wrote a satirical work attacking religious zealotry.
• He also saw slavery as being against the natural law.

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Denis Diderot (1713-1784)

• The  Encyclopédie — one of the greatest collaborative achievements of the Enlightenment and was executed the Republic of Letters.
  • It exemplifies the 18th-century belief that all knowledge could be organized and presented scientifically.
  • The first of 28 volumes appeared in 1751.
  • Copies of it were sent and reached Russia, Scandinavia and North America
  • The Catholic Church was furious at the censors' thinly veiled attacks on its religious practices.
• Diderot also admired manual laborers and wrote about tools that made people more productive.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

• He lived a deeply troubled and solitary existence.
• He antagonized many of the other leading philosophes.
• He was perhaps the most radical of the philosophes.
• He believed in the creation of a direct democracy.
• Rousseau helped set the stage for the Romantic Movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries.
• His novel Emile (1762) deals with a young man who receives an education that places higher regard on developing his emotions over his reason.
• In his The Social Contract (1762), “All men are born free, but everywhere they are in chains.”
  • He had little faith in the individual’s potential to use reason as a means of leading a more satisfactory life.
• During the Scientific Revolution, thinkers used reason to discover universal laws behind the natural world.
• During the Enlightenment, thinkers used reason to discover universal laws behind human behavior.

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2.10: The Spread of Enlightenment Thought

Germany

• The greatest figure of the German Enlightenment was Immanuel Kant.
• In Critique of Pure Reason (1781), he argued that all knowledge was not empirical, since the mind shaped the world through unique experiences.
• Kant emphasized that there are levels of knowledge above and beyond that which is known through reason.

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Italy

• Cesare Beccaria in his work On Crimes and Punishment (1764), called for a complete overhaul in the area of jurisprudence.
• It was obvious that criminals deserved some basic rights.
• He opposed both the use of the death penalty and the use of torture to coerce confessions of guilt.
• The overarching Enlightenment theme of humanitarianism can be seen in Beccaria's creative work.

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Scotland

• This is the place that hitherto had not been at the center of European intellectual life.
• David Hume (1711–1776)
  • He went beyond the thinking of French deists and directly entered the atheistic world.
  • In his Inquiry into Human Nature, Hume questioned revealed religion, claiming that no empirical evidence supports the existence of miracles, which are central to Christianity.
• Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
  • He reflected the growing interest in history that was first seen during the Enlightenment with his monumental Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
  • His work criticized Christianity in that he viewed its rise within the Roman Empire as a social phenomenon rather than a divine interference.
  • He also claimed that Christianity lessened the Empire's vitality and caused it to fall.
• Adam Smith (1723-1790)
  • A professor at the University of Glasgow.
  • In 1776, he published an Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, in which he argued against mercantilism.
  • He became associated with the concept of laissez-faire (leave alone) because he argued that individuals should be free to pursue economic gain without being hampered by the state.

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2.11: Women and the Enlightenment

• Women played an important role in the Enlightenment.
• The majority of Parisian salons were organized by women.
• These wealthy and aristocratic people helped philosophers avoid legal trouble with their sociopolitical connections.
• Given their enormous assistance, the male thinkers were generally not strong supporters of women's rights and abilities.
• The Encyclopédie barely bothered to address the condition of women, though the work would never be famous without the help of Marquise de Pompadour — Louis XV’s mistress.
• In Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, he included a discussion of the restrictive nature of the Eastern harem, which, by implication, was a criticism of the treatment of women in Western Europe.
• Rousseau believed women should not be educated equally and should have separate spheres of influence.
• Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) wrote in her Vindication of the Rights of Women that women should enjoy the right to vote as well as to hold political office.

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2.12: European Powers in the Age of Enlightenment

• The 18th century witnessed a number of significant developments for the European nation-states.
  • Prussia and Russia — emerged over the course of the century.
  • Austria, France, and Great Britain — adjusted to changing political, economic, and social circumstances.
• Enlightened Absolutists
  • Catherine the Great of Russia,
  • Joseph II of Austria
  • Frederick II of Prussia
• Most philosophers were monarchists, so they could experiment without fear of losing power.

Prussia and Russia

• In the 17th century, Prussia was a poor German state that was left devastated after the Thirty Years’ War.
  • In Peace of Westphalia, Prussia did receive some minor territorial gains
• By the 16th century, serfdom had been established due to the relatively poor agricultural land and labor shortages.
  • Junkers — Prussian nobility, who looked to the ruler to ensure control over their serfs.
• Frederick William, the Great Elector (r. 1640-1688)
  • Three separate areas of land without natural borders made up his state.
  • Since he lacked sufficient resources on his own to build an army, he turned to the Junkers for assistance.
  • That was the beginning of a long and mutually beneficial relationship between the Prussian monarchy and the Junkers.
  • He left his son, Frederick III, a well-organized army, an expanded territorial base, and arguably the most efficient civil service in all of Europe.
  • He made Prussia into a Kingdom in 1701, gaining the title of King Frederick I.
• Frederick the Great (r. 1740-1786)
  • He was often cited as an enlightened absolutist.
  • At his palace of Sans Souci, he established a glittering intellectual center, where Voltaire would live for a time and where the king himself participated by writing philosophical tracts.
  • Frederick freed the serfs on the royal estates.
  • He also reduced the use of corporal punishment against serfs and abolished the death penalty.
  • Frederick used rational thought to promote royal centralization and absolutism, not individual rights or participatory political institutions.
• Empress Maria Theresa pushed a series of reforms that removed some of the hardships that had been placed on the serf population.
• Joseph II, Theresa's son, wanted religious tolerance to limit the Catholic Church's power in his domains.
  • He saw the Church as opposed to his plan for more centralized authority.
  • In 1781, he issued the first of a series of Edicts of Toleration granting Jews, Lutherans, and Calvinists freedom of worship.
  • After Joseph's death, Leopold II had to abandon some of Joseph's progressive policies to quell aristocratic and peasant uprisings.
• The roots of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748) began during the reign of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI (r. 1711–1740).
  • Charles pushed the other European states to accept Pragmatic Sanction — allowing for the assorted Habsburg lands under his control to remain intact under one ruler.
  • Also granting the right of a female to succeed to the throne of Austria if there was no direct male heir.
  • When Charles died without leaving a son, his daughter Maria Theresa came to the throne.
• Charles's death became an opportunity for Prussia and France to gain territory at the expense of the Austrians.
  • Frederick launched an attack to seize Silesia, the richest part of the Austrian empire, at the northeastern border of Bohemia.
• The conflict became a general European war.
  • Austria gained support from Russia, Sweden, Denmark, and eventually Great Britain.
  • Opposing them was an alliance made up of Prussia, France, and Spain.
• Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748): The Austrian throne was ultimately saved for the Habsburgs
• Diplomatic Revolution: The reversal of longstanding alliances in Europe between the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War.
• Seven Years’ War (1756–1763)
  • It all began in 1756, when Frederick launched an attack to quickly defeat his enemies.
  • Only Peter III, in 1762 staved off the complete destruction of the Prussian state.
  • French and Indian War (1754–1763): It was the North American conflict in Seven Years’ war.
  • The Seven Years’ spanned five continents, resulted in the confiscation of French colonies in Canada and India — called by the Winston Churchill: the first world war.

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Russia

• Until the 18th century, Russia remained largely closed off to Western Europe as a result of the Mongol invasion of the 13th century.
• During the reign of Ivan the Terrible (r. 1533–1584), there was an expansion of the territory under the control of Muscovy.
  • He sought violence to gain control over a recalcitrant nobility.
  • After his death, Russia enter to the period of “Time of Troubles” — which lasted until the selection of tsar from the Romanov Family (1603).
• Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725)
  • He was determined to Westernize his state.
  • He raised royal revenue by head-taxing Russian serfs and monopolizing essential goods.
  • In keeping with his desire to keep a “window to the West,” Peter established the eponymous city of St. Petersburg in 1703.
  • He defeated the Swedes in the Great Northern War (1700–1721).
• Catherine the Great (r. 1762–1796)
  • She began revising and codifying Russian law, but only dabbled in reform.
  • Later in her reign, she realized enlightened thought could threaten her monarchy and abandoned the idea.

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Spain

• Charles III (r.1759-1788) was the well-regarded King of Naples.
• Benito Feijóo: Spain’s foremost Enlightenment thinker,
• In 1759, Charles III ascended to the Spanish throne following the death of his brother.
  • He was determined to continue his Enlightenment-inspired reforms.
  • He continued his goal of limiting the Church’s power in his sovereign state.
  • He was able to decrease the number of clergies.

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Poland

• Prince Mieszko's conversion to Roman Catholicism in 966 is considered to be the official beginning of Polish history.
• Being vulnerable to attacks, they had to deal with the attacks from:
  • Mongols from the east; and
  • Teutonic Knights from the west.
• In order to defeat these groups, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was established.
  • It occurred when the Lithuanian Grand Duke Jagiello, married the Polish Queen Jadwiga.
• The Polish-Lithuanian state's fatal flaw was failing to establish a strong, centralized government in the face of a recalcitrant nobility afraid of losing power.
• The Polish-Lithuanian state remained a significant player in Europe until the end of the century.
  • King Jan Sobieski played a critical role in driving the Turks from the gates of Vienna in 1683.
• When Stanislaw August Poniatowski became king in 1764, he displayed an independent streak.
  • This action just led to the displeasure of the country’s neighbors.
• In 1772, Russia, Prussia, and Austria forced Poland to accept a partition that cost Poland 30% of its territory.
• In 1791, the Polish-Lithuanian parliament produced Europe’s first written constitution.
  • This constitution was never fully implemented, it angered many nobles.
  • The anti-Poniatowski nobles applied to the Russians for assistance.
• In 1793, the Second Partition was carried out as a result of Russia and Prussia's insistence on the constitution's removal.
  • This led to the loss of vast lands in the eastern part of the nation and reduced Poland to a rump state
• In 1794, a Polish revolt broke out under the military leadership of Tadeusz Kosciuszko, who had fought with distinction in the American Revolution.
• In 1795, the third and final partition took place, wiping Poland off the map.
• An independent Polish state would not be revived until the aftermath of World War I.

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Great Britain

• After the turmoil of the 17th century, Great Britain became the most stable nation in Europe in the 18th century.
• George I (r. 1714–1721): He is the ruler of the German state of Hanover, and his sole qualification was that he was the late Queen Anne's Protestant cousin.
• George II (r. 1727–1760): He could reign as an unquestioned absolutist, rather than having to deal with the independent-minded British Parliament.
• Robert Walpole: Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1721 to 1741.
  • He was given complete freedom to alter the political structure to his benefit.
  • To keep hold of the House of Commons, he employed a sophisticated system of political patronage.
  • He resigned in 1741 over British foreign policy.
• Two Parliamentary blocks:
  • Tories: They supported the monarch's prerogative rights and the Church of England.
  • Whigs: They were more closely associated with the spirit of the 1688 Revolution and the idea of religious tolerance.
• George III (r. 1760–1820): He claimed that he wanted the throne to rise above party strife.
• The British government won the Seven Years' War but had a huge deficit.
• In 1763, John Wilkes was arrested for publishing a satirical attack on George III in his paper The North Briton.
• In 1774, American anger at what was viewed as high-handed British policies led to the establishment of the First Continental Congress
• In 1783, the Americans won their independence with the help of France and Spain.
• In 1792, political reform in the UK was resisted after the French Revolution's violence and radicalism.
  • Any expansion of suffrage would have to wait until the Great Reform Bill of 1832.

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France

• Jansenists: A Catholic sect that held beliefs on predestination that were similar to the Calvinist point of view.
• Louis XV (r. 1714–1774): He wished to support the papal decree and ban the group, but found himself blocked by the various provincial parlements.
  • Parlements: Law courts primarily made up of nobles who had the prerogative right of registering royal edicts before they could be enforced.
• Louis XV abolished the parlements but Louis XVI (r. 1774–1792) felt forced to bring them back.

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2.13: The French Revolution

Key Timeline

• Before 1789: Pre-revolutionary period (Ancien Régime)
• 1789–1792: Liberal phase (Constitutional Monarchy)
• 1792–1793: Moderate Republic (Girondins)
• 1793–1794: Radical Republic (Jacobins)
• 1795–1799: Directory (Moderate Republic)
• 1799–1804: Consulate
• 1804–1815: Napoleonic Empire

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The Ancient Régime

• The major problem facing the monarchy was financial.
• France was not bankrupt in 1789.
• Throughout the 18th century, the country had been at war, mostly with Great Britain, a conflict that dated back to the Glorious Revolution (1688).
• France's debts grew so large that interest and debt payments consumed slightly more than half the annual budget.
• In the 17th century, the French monarch had basically granted the nobility freedom from most taxation.
• Louis XVI (r. 1774–1792): His task is to try to convince the nobility to give up their cherished tax-free status.

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The Calling of the Estates General and the Demand for National Assembly

• Assembly of Notables: Leading aristocrats and churchmen were called by Louis XVI to see if they would willingly pay a new land tax that would apply to all.
• Estates General: An institution from medieval times that consisted of a three-house body made up of:
  • The First Estate — clergy.
  • The Second Estate — nobility, and
  • The Third Estate — commons.
• Commons: It refers to everyone from the bourgeoisie to peasants who were neither clergy nor nobility.
• Writers began to declare that the Third Estate was the real embodiment of the political will of the nation.
• This sense of wanting change can be seen in the thousands of Cahiers de doléances (lists of grievances) that were presented to the King.
  • While many demanded lessening royal absolutism, all were loyal to the idea of monarchy.
• May 5, 1789 — marked the first day of the meeting of the Estates General.
• On June 17, 1789, the Third Estate declared that it would not meet as a medieval estate based on social status.
  • They demanded a national assembly with Three Estates representatives representing the political will of the entire French nation.
• Tennis Court Oath: Members of the Third Estate gathered at a tennis court on the grounds of Versailles and promised to continue to meet “until the constitution of the kingdom is established and consolidated upon solid foundations.”
• On June 27, 1789, Louis XVI formally agreed to the consolidation of all three estates into a new national assembly.

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The Storming of the Bastille and the Great Fear

• Bastille: A fortress prison in Paris, famous as a symbol of royal despotism because it had held critics of the monarchy.
• Commune of Paris: The new municipal government that would come to play a pivotal role in the later stages of the Revolution.
• Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834): Appointed by Louis XVI to be the leader of National assembly.
• Great Fear: An agricultural panic over rumors that the nobility was using the increasingly anarchical situation at Versailles and Paris to organize thugs to steal from the peasants.
  • Peasants began to attack some of the great noble estates.
• On August 4, 1789, aristocrats in the National Assembly decided that the only way to halt the violence in the countryside was by renouncing their feudal rights.
  • As a result, France's citizens were all subject to the same laws and social obligations.

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The Constitutional Monarchy

• Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen — written by Lafayette, one of the most influential documents in European history.
  • In Enlightenment language, the work claimed political sovereignty for the nation, not a monarch.
  • Citizens were also declared equal before the law and in their rights and responsibilities as members of society.
• The Rights of Women (1791) — written by Olympe de Gouges.
  • She believed women should have the right to education, property, and divorce.
• Civil Constitution of the Church: In 1790, the king was forced to accept this passage.
  • This legislation made the Church a department of state.
  • Bishops were to be chosen by assemblies of parish priests.
  • Clergy was now civil servants with salaries to be paid by the state.
  • They pledged loyalty to France and the Church's Civil Constitution.
• In response, Pope Pius VI denounced the Civil Constitution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
  • This set in motion a major 19th-century conflict, the dispute between church and state.
• In 1791, a constitution for France was promulgated, creating a constitutional monarchy.
  • France's men were divided into two groups: active and passive citizens.
  • Only men who paid three days' worth of laborers’ wages in taxes were eligible to vote for electors.
  • To vote for members of the assembly, electors had to meet higher property requirements.
• The old French province system was abandoned in favor of 83 departments.
  • Full political rights were granted to Jews and Protestants.
  • Slavery was abolished in France.

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The End of Monarchy

• Count of Artois: The youngest brother of Louis XVI, and it was he who made the fatal decision to encourage his brother to flee France.
• On June 20, 1791, the royal family reached the French town of Varennes, where the king was recognized and escorted back to Paris.
• Jacobins: A political club, and so was named because they met in the Jacobin monastery in Paris.
• Girondins: The Gironde political club in southwestern France supported a revolutionary war to liberate absolutist states.
• The war in April 1792 brought about an increasingly radical situation in Paris.
  • The sans-culottes tried to deal with the scarce supply of bread and feelings of chagrin at being labeled passive citizens without the right to vote.
  • They were also fearful of the Duke of Brunswick — which promised that he would destroy Paris if the royal family was harmed.
• On August 10, 1792, a large mob of sans-culottes stormed the Tuileries palace, where the king and the queen were living, and slaughtered 600 of the king’s Swiss guards.
• On September 21, 1792, France became an official Republic and the royal family was placed under arrest.

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European Reactions to the French Revolution

• In Great Britain, the immediate reaction to the fall of the Bastille and the abolition of French feudalism was quite friendly.
• Britain was eventually brought into the Europe-wide war sparked by the Revolution.
• By the fall of 1792, French armies were pushing the enemy back and began to occupy territories.
  • They captured the Austrian Netherlands.
  • They also captured much of the Rhineland and Frankfurt.
• Wherever French armies went, they brought with them the ideas of the Revolution.
• Edmund Burke: A leading British politician attached to the Whig faction.
  • In his Reflections of the French Revolution (1790), he expressed his opposition to the revolution.
  • He wasn't opposed to the reform; in fact, he has a personal interest in changing some aspects of English political life.
  • He was concerned that the removal of the conventional defense system would change the roles of the monarchy and the church.
  • He then predicted that the Revolution would take more into a more violent direction.

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2.14: The Reign of Terror

• In the Convention, the Girondins and Jacobins continued to disagree over the direction of the Revolution.
  • The Jacobins sat on the left side of the hall, this seating arrangement earned them the label, “the Mountains.”
  • The Girondins sat on the right side of the hall.
  • In the middle section of the hall sat those who were not directly tied to either faction; “the Plain.”
• The Plain held the key to the Revolution because whichever side they aligned with would ultimately triumph.
• The Girondins wished to make a clean break from the absolutist government of the pr
  • The Girondins favored laissez-faire, the idea that the government should not play an active role in regulating the economy.
• The Jacobins believed that the king was a traitor and should therefore be executed.
  • They also felt that the only way to maintain the spirit of the revolution was through a powerful, centralized government in Paris.
  • They favored the sans-culottes, in terms of their economic stand.
• In the spring of 1793, marked the beginning of “Reign of Terror.”
  • It was inspired by the Vendee, a counter-revolutionary revolt that began in March in a western region of France.
• French armies met a major defeat that same month in the Austrian Netherlands.
• In response to these provocations, the Convention created two committees:
  • The Committee of General Security
  • The Committee of Public Safety
• The leaders of the security committee included Danton, Carnot, and Robespierre, a lawyer — they were all associated with the Jacobins faction.
• In August 1793, Lazare Carnot, the head of the military, issued his famous proclamation calling for a levée en masse, drafting everyone for military service.
• Once in power, the Jacobins worked to create what they considered to be the Republic of Virtue.
  • They believed they had to eradicate all signs of the previous monarchical order.
  • They created a new calendar based on 10-day weeks as a result.
  • The seasons were reflected in the renamed months, and 1792—the first year of the Republic—was designated as year one.
• Cult of the Supreme Being: Established by Robespierre to move people away from what he thought was the corrupting influence of the Church.
  • It turned the cathedral of Notre Dame into a Temple of Reason.
• From the summer of 1793, the Committee of Public Safety first began by banning political clubs and popular societies of women.
  • They executed leading Girondins politicians who were accused of being traitors, and the guillotine became a symbol of the age.
• By March 1794, under the leadership of Robespierre, the Terror had an extremely radical faction known as the Hébertists.
  • They were violently anti-Christian and wanted to see the government implement further economic controls.
  • Danton and his followers were brought to the guillotine for arguing that it was time to bring the Terror to a close.
• On 8 Thermidor (July 26, 1794), Robespierre spoke before the Convention about the need for one more major purge.
  • This led him and his supporters to be arrested by the Thermidorians, after a quick trial, 100 leading Jacobins were escorted to the guillotine.

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2.15: The Directory (1795–1799)

• Following the execution of the leading members of the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety, the Thermidorians abolished the Paris Commune.
• This led to the establishment of the government known as the Directory.
  • Led by an executive council of five men who possessed the title of director.
• The new constitution provided for a two-house legislator:
  • Council of the Ancients
  • Council of Five Hundred
• The Directory had to be concerned with the possibility of a royalist reaction.
  • On 13 Vendémiaire (October 5, 1795), a royalist rebellion did break out in parts of Paris.
• Napoleon Bonaparte was told to put down the rebellion, and with a “whiff of grapeshot,” his cannon dispersed the rebels.
• The Directory had been saved, but soon it was to be destroyed by its savior.

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2.16: Napoleon

• Napoleon was born in 1769 to a family of minor nobles on the island of Corsica, which had been annexed by France the year prior to his birth.
• He attended a French military academy, and in 1785 he was commissioned as an artillery officer.
• The Revolution offered tremendous opportunities to young men of ability, and Napoleon became a strong supporter of the Revolution.
• In 1793, after playing a major role in the campaign to retake the French port of Toulon from the British, he was made a general.
• In a series of stunningly quick victories, Napoleon destroyed the combined Austrian and Sardinian armies.
• He also decided to invade Egypt in order to cut Britain’s ties with its colony of India.
• He was unable to do much with his victories on land because a British fleet under the command of Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated a French fleet at the Battle of Abukir on August 1, 1798.
• Napoleon retreated from his army and hurried back to France, where he had learned that the Directory was becoming more unstable.
• On 19 Brumaire (November 10, 1799), Napoleon joined the Abbé Siéyès staged a coup d’état, and overturned the Directory.
• Siéyès then established a new constitution with a powerful executive made up of three consuls: Roger-Ducos, Siéyès, and Napoleon.
• One month after the coup, Napoleon set up a new constitution with himself as First Consul.
  • He staged a plebiscite, a vote by the people, for his new constitution to show popular support, and they passed it overwhelmingly.
• Since Napoleon required that public servants be loyal to him only, he was able to use the talents of those Jacobins and monarchists who were willing to accept his dominance over the French state.
  • Napoleon treated those who were not willing with brutal cruelty.
• He established a secret police force to root out his opponents.
  • He then purged the Jacobins.
  • He also kidnapped and executed the Duke of Enghien after falsely accusing the Duke of plotting against him.
• In 1801, Napoleon created a concordat with Pope Pius VII.
  • It declared that “Catholicism was the religion of the great majority of the French.”
  • However, it didn’t reestablish the Catholic Church as the official state religion.
  • The papacy would choose bishops, but only on the First Consul's advice.
  • All clergy was required to take an oath supporting the state, and the state would pay their salaries.
  • The Church was able to persuade Napoleon to abolish the Jacobin calendar.
• In 1802, following a plebiscite that made him Consul for Life, Napoleon set about to reform the French legal system.
• The Civil Code of 1804 (Napoleonic Code) provided for a single, unitary legal system for all of France.
  • The code established the equality of all people before the law and protected property holders' rights.
  • The code reaffirmed France's paternalistic nature.
  • Women and children were legally obligated to rely on their husbands and fathers.
• In 1804, Napoleon decided to make himself emperor.
  • He invited the Pope to attend the ceremony, which was held at Notre Dame.
• Napoleon wanted to make it clear that he was Emperor of France not by the will of God or by chance of birth, but rather by the weight of his own achievements.

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2.17: France at War with Europe

• Constant warfare was a hallmark of the reign of Napoleon.
• In 1792, with the levée en masse, French armies became larger than their opponent’s forces.
• Napoleon saw the Treaty of Amiens (1802) as a temporary measure to limit British influence.
• After most of the French troops died from disease, Napoleon turned his interest away from the colonies.
  • He even sold the Louisiana Territory to the USA for the paltry sum of around $15 million.
• On October 21, 1805, at the Battle of Trafalgar, Admiral Nelson died in the struggle that ultimately destroyed the French fleet and with it any hope of the French landing in England.
• Third Coalition: Formed in which Austria and Russia joined Great Britain.
  • Napoleon set out to first destroy the Austrians, a goal which he achieved at the Battle of Ulm in October 1805.
  • He then won his greatest victory over a Russian force at Austerlitz.
• Napoleon abolished the Holy Roman Empire and created the Confederacy of the Rhine, a loose grouping of 16 German states under French rule.
  • Napoleon’s victories in Germany resulted in the redrawing of the map.
• When the Prussians saw the extent of French control over German territories, they rushed to join the Third Coalition.
  • Napoleon quickly gathered his forces, and at the Battle of Jena he obliterated the Prussian army and occupied their capital city of Berlin.
• The Russian Tsar Alexander I (r. 1801–1825) decided that it was necessary to make peace with France, after the complete collapse of the Prussian army.
  • He met with Napoleon on a raft on the Nieman River, and on July 7, 1807, the two monarchs signed the Treaty of Tilsit.
  • Because of this, Prussia was saved from extinction and was forced to be an ally of France.
• Seeing that he could not defeat the British navy, Napoleon decided to wage economic war.
  • He established the Continental System, an attempt to ban British goods from arriving on the continent.
  • This system weakened the economies of the state that Napoleon had conquered.

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2.18: The Defeat of Napoleon

The War in Spain

• In 1807, a French army passed through Spain on its way to conquer Portugal, an ally of Great Britain.
• In 1808, a revolt broke out against Spanish King Charles IV bringing his son Ferdinand VII (r. 1808–1833) to the throne.
• Napoleon decided to take this opportunity to occupy Spain and place his brother Joseph on its throne.
• The Spanish nation rose up in a nationalistic fervor to expel the French, who in turn used tremendous brutality against the Spanish people.
• Napoleon was forced to leave his 350,000 troops in Spain.

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Growing Nationalism in Europe

• While Napoleon was still suffering from his "Spanish ulcer," stirrings of nationalism began to churn in other parts of Europe.
• Baron von Stein (1757–1831) and Count von Hardenberg (1750–1822): They were hardly democratic reformers; wanted to see the continuation of monarchical power and aristocratic privilege.
  • They did end Junker monopoly over the ownership of land and abolished serfdom.
  • Stein appointed some bourgeois officers while dismissing some of the more inept Junker officers.
  • He founded a professional war ministry. He then eased military discipline to inspire peasant soldiers to fight for the state.

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The 1812 Invasion of Russia

• Napoleon's advisers warned him that the wars would hurt the French economy. He still sought new conquests.
  • Russia seemed a suitable target because it was still standing as a strong continental rival.
• In June 1812, Napoleon took his “Grand Army” of 600,000 men into Russia, where he fully expected to defeat the Russians in open battle.
  • The Russians merely retreated within their vast landscape.
• When Napoleon invaded Moscow in September, the tsar's retreating army had set fires to the city, leaving no one to fight and no supplies.
  • He then decided to withdraw his army.
  • Only 40,000 of the original Grand Army finally returned to France.
• In 1813, Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Great Britain formed a coalition to fight together until all of Europe was freed from French forces.
  • By March 1814, they were in Paris and by the following month, Napoleon abdicated.

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2.19: The Congress of Vienna, the Bourbon Restoration, and the Hundred Days

• In victory, the allies demanded the restoration of the Bourbon monarchs, Louis XVIII sat on the throne.
• Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba in the Mediterranean, where he maintained the title of Emperor and a small army while his allies paid off his debts.
• In September 1814, the allies met at the Congress of Vienna to create a lasting peace.
• The four great powers, Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia, dominated the proceedings.
• Prince Metternich (1773–1859) an Australian Chancellor, He wanted to ensure that ideas derived from the French Revolution, such as nationalism and liberalism, had no place in a redrawn Europe.
• By giving the territory to the Tsar of Russia as the Duchy of Poland, they ensured that Polish demands for a free and independent Poland went unmet.
• The major powers also wanted to make sure that no country would ever again rule Europe.
• The major powers also built a number of states that would prevent further French expansion.
  • The Dutch region and the Austrian Netherlands to the south formed the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
  • They granted Prussia significant lands along the Rhine to thwart French expansion to the east in the future.
  • They also gave Piedmont the territory of Genoa.
• On March 15, 1815, Napoleon returned to France, having escaped from Elba.
  • As the Bourbons returned and sparked a violent white terror against Jacobins and Bonaparte supporters, he had many supporters in the army and country.
  • White Terror: White, signifying the royalist flag and those loyal to the monarchy.
• At the Battle of Waterloo (June 18, 1815), Wellington aided by Marshal Blucher defeated Napoleon.
• Hundred Days: The name given to Napoleon’s remarkable return, he was exiled once again.
  • He was exiled to the distant island of St. Helena, in the middle of the Atlantic, and died in 1821.

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Period 3: Age of Revolution to World War I (1815-1914)

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