Chapter 14: Crisis and Absolutism in Europe

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Europe in Crisis: The Wars of Religion

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The French Wars of Religion

• By 1560, Calvinism and Catholicism had become highly militant (combative) religions.
  • Of the sixteenth-century religious wars, none was more shattering than the French civil wars known as the French Wars of Religion (1562–1598).
• Huguenots were French Protestants influenced by John Calvin.
  • Still, the Catholic majority greatly outnumbered the Huguenot minority, and the Valois monarchy was strongly Catholic.
• Although the religious issue was the most important issue, other factors played a role in the French civil wars.
  • For 30 years, battles raged in France between the Catholic and Huguenot sides.
• Finally, in 1589, Henry of Navarre, the political leader of the Huguenots and a member of the Bourbon dynasty, succeeded to the throne as Henry IV.
• To solve the religious problem, the king issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598.

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Philip II and Militant Catholicism

• The greatest supporter of militant Catholicism in the second half of the sixteenth century was King Philip II of Spain, the son and heir of Charles V.
  • The first major goal of Philip II was to consolidate the lands he had inherited from his father.
  • These included Spain, the Netherlands, and possessions in Italy and the Americas.
• The Catholic faith was important to both Philip II and the Spanish people.
• Philip II, the “Most Catholic King,” became a champion of Catholic causes, a role that led to spectacular victories and equally spectacular defeats.
• The Spanish Netherlands, which consisted of 17 provinces (modern Netherlands and Belgium), was one of the richest parts of Philip’s empire.
• In the northern provinces, the Dutch, under the leadership of William the Silent, the prince of Orange, offered growing resistance.
• Philip’s reign ended in 1598.
• In reality, however, Spain was not the great power that it appeared to be.
  • Spain’s treasury was empty.
• Philip II had gone bankrupt from spending too much on war, and his successor did the same by spending a fortune on his court.

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The England of Elizabeth

• When Elizabeth Tudor ascended the throne in 1558, England had fewer than four million people.
  • Intelligent, careful, and self-confident, Elizabeth moved quickly to solve the difficult religious problem she inherited from her Catholic half-sister, Queen Mary Tudor.
  • Elizabeth was also moderate in her foreign policy.
  • She tried to keep Spain and France from becoming too powerful by balancing power.
• Phillip II of Spain had toyed for years with the idea of invading England.
• In 1588, Philip ordered preparations for an armada—a fleet of warships—to invade England.
  • The hoped-for miracle never came.
• The Spanish fleet, battered by a number of encounters with the English, sailed back to Spain by a northward route around Scotland and Ireland, where it was pounded by storms. Many of the Spanish ships sank.

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Social Crises, War, and Revolution

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Economic and Social Crises

• From 1560 to 1650, Europe witnessed severe economic and social crises.
  • One major economic problem was inflation, or rising prices.
• By 1600, an economic slowdown had begun in parts of Europe.
• Population figures in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reveal Europe’s worsening conditions.
  • Population grew in the sixteenth century.
  • Warfare, plague, and famine all contributed to the population decline and to the creation of social tensions.

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The Witchcraft Trials

• A belief in witchcraft, or magic, had been part of traditional village culture for centuries.
  • Common people—usually the poor and those without property—were the ones most often accused of witchcraft.
  • Under intense torture, accused witches usually confessed to a number of practices.
• By 1650, the witchcraft hysteria had begun to lessen.
• As governments grew stronger, fewer officials were willing to disrupt their societies with trials of witches.
• In addition, attitudes were changing. People found it unreasonable to believe in the old view of a world haunted by evil spirits.

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The Thirty Years’ War

• Religious disputes continued in Germany after the Peace of Augsburg in 1555.
• One reason for the dis- putes was that Calvinism had not been recognized by the peace settlement.
• The war began in 1618 in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire.
  • At first, it was a struggle between Catholic forces, led by the Hapsburg Holy Roman emperors, and Protestant (primarily Calvinist) nobles in Bohemia who rebelled against Hapsburg authority.
  • Soon, however, the conflict became a political one as Denmark, Sweden, France, and Spain entered the war.
• Especially important was the struggle between France and the rulers of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire for European leadership.
• The Thirty Years’ War was the most destructive conflict that Europeans had yet experienced.
• The Peace of Westphalia stated that all German states, including the Calvinist ones, could determine their own religion.

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Revolutions in England

• In addition to the Thirty Years’ War, a series of rebellions and civil wars rocked Europe in the seventeenth century.
• With the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603, the Tudor dynasty came to an end.
• The Stuart line of rulers began with the accession to the throne of Elizabeth’s cousin, the king of Scotland, who became James I of England.
• James believed in the divine right of kings—that is, that kings receive their power from God and are responsible only to God.
• Religion was an issue as well.
  • The conflict that began during the reign of James came to a head during the reign of his son, Charles I.
  • The Puritans (Protestants in England inspired by Calvinist ideas) did not like the king’s strong defense of the Church of England.
  • Charles also tried to impose more ritual on the Church of England.
• Complaints grew until England slipped into a civil war in 1642 between the supporters of the king (the Cavaliers or Royalists) and the parliamentary forces (called the Roundheads because of their short hair).
• Parliament proved victorious, due largely to the New Model Army of Oliver Cromwell, a military genius.
• The victorious New Model Army lost no time in taking control.
• Parliament next abolished the monarchy and the House of Lords and declared England a republic, or commonwealth.
• Cromwell found it difficult to work with the Rump Parliament and finally dispersed it by force.
• After the restoration of the Stuart monarchy, Parliament kept much of the power it had gained earlier and continued to play an important role in government.
• Charles II was sympathetic to Catholicism, and his brother James, heir to the throne, did not hide the fact that he was a Catholic.
  • Parliament was suspicious about their Catholic leanings, especially when Charles suspended the laws that Parliament had passed against Catholics and Puritans.
  • Parliament forced the king to back down on his action.
• In 1685, James II became king.
  • James was an open and devout Catholic, making religion once more a cause of conflict between king and Parliament.
• Parliament objected to James’s policies but stopped short of rebellion.
• A group of English noble- men invited the Dutch leader, William of Orange, husband of James’s daughter Mary, to invade England.
• In January 1689, Parliament offered the throne to William and Mary.
• The Bill of Rights helped create a system of government based on the rule of law and a freely elected Parliament. This bill laid the foundation for a limited, or constitutional, monarchy.
  • Another important action of Parliament was the Toleration Act of 1689.
• By deposing one king and establishing another, Parliament had destroyed the divine-right theory of kingship.
• William was, after all, king by the grace of Parliament, not the grace of God.
• Parliament had asserted its right to be part of the government.

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Response to Crisis: Absolutism

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France under Louis XIV

• One response to the crises of the seventeenth century was to seek more stability by increasing the power of the monarch.
• The result was what historians have called absolutism.
  • Absolutism is a system in which a ruler holds total power.
• The reign of Louis XIV has long been regarded as the best example of the practice of absolutism in the seventeenth century.
• French history for the 50 years before Louis was a period of struggle as governments fought to avoid the breakdown of the state.
• Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII’s chief minister, strengthened the power of the monarchy.
• Louis XIV came to the throne in 1643 at the age of four.
• Due to the king’s young age, Cardinal Mazarin, the chief minister, took control of the government.
  • When Mazarin died in 1661, Louis XIV took over supreme power.
• One of the keys to Louis’s power was his control of the central policy-making machinery of government.
• The greatest danger to Louis’s rule came from very high nobles and royal princes.
• Louis’s government ministers were expected to obey his every wish.
• Although Louis had absolute power over France’s nationwide policy making, his power was limited at the local level.
• Maintaining religious harmony had long been a part of monarchical power in France.
• The cost of building palaces, maintaining his court, and pursuing his wars made finances a crucial issue for Louis XIV.
• He was most fortunate in having the services of Jean- Baptiste Colbert as controller-general of finances.
  • Colbert sought to increase the wealth and power of France by following the ideas of mercantilism
  • The increase in royal power that Louis pursued led the king to develop a standing army numbering four hundred thousand in time of war.
• To achieve his goals, Louis waged four wars between 1667 and 1713
• In 1715, the Sun King died.
• He left France with great debts and surrounded by enemies.

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Absolutism in Central and Eastern Europe

• After the Thirty Years’ War, there was no German state, but over three hundred “Germanies.”
• Of these states, two—Prussia and Austria—emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as great European powers.
• Frederick William the Great Elector laid the foundation for the Prussian state.
• To maintain the army and his own power, Frederick William set up the General War Commissariat to levy taxes for the army and oversee its growth.
  • In 1701, Frederick William’s son Frederick offi- cially gained the title of king.
  • Elector Frederick III became King Frederick I.
• The Austrian Hapsburgs had long played a significant role in European politics as Holy Roman emperors
• The core of the new Austrian Empire was the traditional Austrian lands in present-day Austria, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.
• The Austrian monarchy, however, never became a highly centralized, absolutist state, chiefly because it was made up of so many different national groups.

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Russia under Peter The Great

• A new Russian state had emerged in the fifteenth century under the leadership of the principality of Muscovy and its grand dukes.
• In the sixteenth century, Ivan IV became the first ruler to take the title of czar, the Russian word for caesar.
  • Ivan expanded the territories of Russia eastward.
  • He also crushed the power of the Russian nobility, known as the boyars
  • When Ivan’s dynasty came to an end in 1598, a period of anarchy known as the Time of Troubles followed.
• This period did not end until the Zemsky Sobor, or national assembly, chose Michael Romanov as the new czar in 1613.
• The Romanov dynasty lasted until 1917. One of its most prominent members was Peter the Great.
  • A few years after becoming czar, Peter made a trip to the West.
  • One of Peter’s first goals was to reorganize the army.
  • To impose the rule of the central government more effectively throughout the land, Peter divided Russia into provinces.
  • After his first trip to the West, Peter began to introduce Western customs, practices, and manners into Russia.
  • Because Westerners did not wear beards or the traditional long-skirted coat, Russian beards had to be shaved and coats shortened.
• One group of Russians—upper-class women— gained much from Peter’s cultural reforms.
• The object of Peter’s domestic reforms was to make Russia into a great state and military power.
• A long and hard-fought war with Sweden enabled Peter to acquire the lands he sought.
• On a marshland on the Baltic in 1703, Peter began the construction of a new city, St. Petersburg, his window on the West.

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The World of European Culture

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Mannerism

• The artistic Renaissance came to an end when a new movement, called Mannerism, emerged in Italy in the 1520s and 1530s.
• The Reformation’s revival of religious values brought much political turmoil.
• Mannerism in art reflected this new environment by deliberately breaking down the High Renaissance principles of balance, harmony, and moderation.
  • Mannerism spread from Italy to other parts of Europe and perhaps reached its high point in the work of El Greco (“the Greek”).
  • El Greco was from the island of Crete.
• After studying in Venice and Rome, he moved to Spain.
• In his paintings, El Greco used elongated and contorted figures, portraying them in unusual shades of yellow and green against an eerie background of stormy grays.

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The Baroque Period

• Mannerism was eventually replaced by a new movement—the baroque.
• The Catholic reform movement most wholeheartedly adopted the baroque style.
• This can be seen in the buildings at Catholic courts, especially those of the Hapsburgs in Madrid, Prague, Vienna, and Brussels.
  • Baroque artists tried to bring together the classical ideals of Renaissance art with the spiritual feelings of the sixteenth-century religious revival.
• Perhaps the greatest figure of the baroque period was the Italian architect and sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who completed Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
  • Bernini’s Throne of Saint Peter is a highly decorated cover for the pope’s medieval wooden throne.
• Artemisia Gentileschi is less well-known than the male artists who dominated the seventeenth-century art world in Italy but prominent in her own right.

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 A Golden Age of Literature

• In both England and Spain, writing for the theater reached new heights between 1580 and 1640.
• Other forms of literature flourished as well.
• A cultural flowering took place in England in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
• The period is often called the Elizabethan Era, because so much of it fell within the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
• Of all the dramatists, none is more famous than William Shakespeare.
  • When Shakespeare appeared in London in 1592, Elizabethans already enjoyed the stage.
  • The Globe’s admission charge of one or two pen- nies enabled even the lower classes to attend.
  • William Shakespeare was a “complete man of the theater.”
  • Shakespeare has long been viewed as a universal genius.
  • The theater was one of the most creative forms of expression during Spain’s golden century as well.
• Beginning in the 1580s, the standard for play- wrights was set by Lope de Vega.
  • Lope de Vega made no apologies for the fact that he wrote his plays to please his audiences and satisfy public demand.
• One of the crowning achievements of the golden age of Spanish literature was the work of Miguel de Cervantes.
  • His novel Don Quixote has been hailed as one of the greatest literary works of all time.
  • In the two main characters of this famous work, Cervantes presented the dual nature of the Spanish character.

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Political Thought

• The seventeenth-century concerns with order and power were reflected in the political thought of the time.
• Thomas Hobbes was alarmed by the revolutionary upheavals in England.
  • He wrote Leviathan, a work on political thought, to try to deal with the problem of disorder
• To save themselves from destroying one another, people made a social contract and agreed to form a state.
• John Locke, who wrote a political work called Two Treatises of Government, 1690, viewed the exercise of political power quite differently.
  • He argued against the absolute rule of one person.
  • Unlike Hobbes, Locke believed that before society was organized, humans lived in a state of equality and freedom rather than a state of war.
• In this state of nature, humans had certain natural rights—rights with which they were born.
  • These included rights to life, liberty, and property.
• Like Hobbes, however, Locke believed that problems existed in the state of nature.
• The contract between people and government involved mutual obligations.
• Government would protect the rights of the people, and the people would act reasonably toward the government.
• To Locke, people meant the landholding aristocracy, not landless masses.
  • Locke was not an advocate of democracy, but his ideas proved important to both Americans and French in the eighteenth century.

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