Chapter 15: Absolutism and Constitutionalism

Seventeenth-Century Crisis and Rebuilding

The Social Order and Peasant Life

Peasants occupied the lower tiers of a society organized in hierarchical levels.
At the top, the monarch was celebrated as a semidivine being, chosen by God to embody the state.
In addition to being rigidly hierarchical, European societies were patriarchal in nature, with men assuming authority over women as a God-given prerogative.
In the seventeenth century most Europeans lived in the countryside.
The hub of the rural world was the small peasant village centered on a church and a manor.
In western Europe, a small number of peasants in each village owned enough land to feed themselves and had the livestock and plows necessary to work their land.
Rich or poor, east or west, bread was the primary element of the diet.
The richest ate a white loaf, leaving brown bread to those who could not afford better.
An important annual festival in many villages was the killing of the family pig.
The whole family gathered to help, sharing a rare abundance of meat with neighbors and carefully salting the extra and putting down the lard.
In some areas, menstruating women were careful to stay away from the kitchen for fear they might cause the lard to spoil.

Famine and Economic Crisis

European rural society lived on the edge of subsistence.
Because of the crude technology and low crop yield, peasants were constantly threatened by scarcity and famine.
Given the harsh conditions of life, industry also suffered. The output of woolen textiles, one of the most important European manufactures, declined sharply in the first half of the seventeenth century.
The urban poor and peasants were the hardest hit.
When the price of bread rose beyond their capacity to pay, they frequently expressed their anger by rioting.
Historians have used the term “moral economy” for this vision of a world in which community needs predominate over competition and profit.

The Thirty Years’ War

In the first half of the seventeenth century, the fragile balance of life was violently upturned by the ravages of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648).
The war is traditionally divided into four phases.
The first, or Bohemian, phase (1618–1625) was characterized by civil war in Bohemia between the Catholic League and the Protestant Union.
The second, or Danish, phase of the war (1625–1629)— so called because of the leadership of the Protestant king Christian IV of Denmark (r. 1588– 1648)— witnessed additional Catholic victories.
The third, or Swedish, phase of the war (1630– 1635) began with the arrival in Germany of the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus (r. 1594–1632) and his army.
The 1648 Peace of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years’ War marked a turning point in European history.
The Thirty Years’ War was the most destructive event for the central European economy and society prior to the world wars of the twentieth century.
Many small farmers lost their land, allowing nobles to enlarge their estates and consolidate their control.

Achievements in State-Building

In the context of war and economic depression, seventeenth-century monarchs began to make new demands on their people.
Traditionally, historians have distinguished between the “absolutist” governments of France, Spain, central Europe, and Russia and the constitutionalist governments of England and the Dutch Republic.
Rulers encountered formidable obstacles in achieving these goals. Some were purely material.
Without paved roads, telephones, or other modern technology, it took weeks to convey orders from the central government to the provinces.
Nonetheless, over the course of the seventeenth century both absolutist and constitutional governments achieved new levels of central control.
Over time, centralized power added up to something close to sovereignty.
A state may be termed sovereign when it possesses a monopoly over the instruments of justice and the use of force within clearly defined boundaries.
While seventeenth-century states did not acquire total sovereignty, they made important strides toward that goal.

Warfare and the Growth of Army Size

The driving force of seventeenth-century state-building was warfare.
In medieval times, feudal lords had raised armies only for particular wars or campaigns; now monarchs began to recruit their own forces and maintain permanent standing armies.
Along with professionalization came an explosive growth in army size.
The French took the lead, with the army growing from roughly 125,000 men in the Thirty Years’ War to 340,000 at the end of the seventeenth century.
Noble values of glory and honor outshone concerns for safety or material benefit.
Because they personally led their men in battle, noble officers experienced high death rates on the battlefield.
Other European powers were quick to follow the French example.
The rise of absolutism in central and eastern Europe led to a vast expansion in the size of armies.
Instead of building a land army, the British focused on naval forces and eventually built the largest navy in the world.

Popular Political Action

As governments continuously raised taxes to meet the costs of war, neighborhood riots over the cost of bread turned into armed uprisings.
Popular revolts were extremely common in England, France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy during the Thirty Years’ War.
Despite initial successes, the revolt lacked unity and strong leadership and could not withstand the forces of the state.
In France urban uprisings became a frequent aspect of the social and political landscape.
Beginning in 1630 and continuing on and off through the early 1700s, major insurrections occurred at Dijon, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Lyons, and Amiens.
Municipal and royal authorities often struggled to overcome popular revolt.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century, this leverage had largely disappeared.
Municipal governments were better integrated into the national structure, and local authorities had prompt military support from the central government.

Absolutism in France and Spain

The Foundations of Absolutism

Louis XIV’s absolutism had long roots. In 1589 his grandfather Henry IV (r. 1589–1610), the founder of the Bourbon dynasty, acquired a devastated country.
Civil wars between Protestants and Catholics had wracked France since 1561.
“Henri le Grand” (Henry the Great), as the king was called, promised “a chicken in every pot” and inaugurated a remarkable recovery.
He did so by keeping France at peace during most of his reign.
Although he had converted to Catholicism, he issued the Edict of Nantes, allowing Protestants the right to worship in 150 traditionally Protestant towns throughout France.
After the death of Henry IV, his wife, the queenregent Marie de’ Medici, headed the government for the nine-year-old Louis XIII (r. 1610–1643).
In 1628 Armand Jean du Plessis— Cardinal Richelieu (1585– 1642)— became first minister of the French crown.
Richelieu’s maneuvers allowed the monarchy to maintain power within Europe and within its own borders despite the turmoil of the Thirty Years’ War.
Cardinal Richelieu’s political genius is best reflected in the administrative system he established to strengthen royal control.
Under Richelieu, the French monarchy also acted to repress Protestantism.
Louis personally supervised the siege of La Rochelle, an important port city and a major commercial center with strong ties to Protestant Holland and England.
Richelieu did not aim to wipe out Protestantism in the rest of Europe, however.
His main foreign policy goal was to destroy the Catholic Habsburgs’ grip on territories that surrounded France.
Richelieu’s successor as chief minister for the next child-king, the four-year-old Louis XIV, was Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602–1661).
His struggle to increase royal revenues to meet the costs of war led to the uprisings of 1648–1653 known as the Fronde.
Much of the rebellion died away, and its leaders came to terms with the government.
The violence of the Fronde had significant results for the future.
The twin evils of noble rebellion and popular riots left the French wishing for peace and for a strong monarch to reimpose order.

Louis XIV and Absolutism

In the reign of Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715), the longest in European history, the French monarchy reached the peak of absolutist development.
To symbolize his central role in the divine order, when he was fifteen years old Louis danced at a court ballet dressed as the sun, thereby acquiring the title of the “Sun King.”
In addition to parading his power before the court, Louis worked very hard at the business of governing.
Although personally tolerant, Louis hated division within the realm and insisted that religious unity was essential to his royal dignity and to the security of the state.
Despite his claims to absolute authority, multiple constraints existed on Louis’s power.
As a representative of divine power, he was obliged to rule in a manner consistent with virtue and benevolence.
Louis’s need to elicit noble cooperation led him to revolutionize court life at his spectacular palace at Versailles.

Life at Versailles

Through most of the seventeenth century, the French court had no fixed home, following the monarch to his numerous palaces and country residences.
In 1682 Louis moved his court and government to the newly renovated palace at Versailles, a former hunting lodge.
The palace quickly became the center of political, social, and cultural life.
The glorious palace, with its sumptuous interiors and extensive formal gardens, was a mirror to the world of French glory, soon copied by would-be absolutist monarchs across Europe.
Louis further revolutionized court life by establishing an elaborate set of etiquette rituals to mark every moment of his day, from waking up and dressing in the morning to removing his clothing and retiring at night.
Courtiers vied for the honor of participating in these ceremonies, with the highest in rank claiming the privilege of handing the king his shirt.
Courtiers sought these rewards for themselves and their family members and followers.
A system of patronage— in which a higher-ranked individual protected a lower-ranked one in return for loyalty and services— flowed from the court to the provinces.
Although they could not hold public offices or posts, women played a central role in the patronage system.
At court the king’s wife, mistresses, and other female relatives recommended individuals for honors, advocated policy decisions, and brokered alliances between factions.
Louis XIV was also an enthusiastic patron of the arts, commissioning many sculptures and paintings for Versailles as well as performances of dance and music.
With Versailles as the center of European politics, French culture grew in international prestige.
French became the language of polite society and international diplomacy, gradually replacing Latin as the language of scholarship and learning

French Financial Management Under Colbert

France’s ability to build armies and fight wars depended on a strong economy.
Fortunately for Louis, his controller general, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–1683), proved to be a financial genius.
Colbert’s central principle was that the wealth and the economy of France should serve the state.
Mercantilism is a collection of governmental policies for the regulation of economic activities by and for the state.
It derives from the idea that a nation’s international power is based on its wealth, specifically its supply of gold and silver.
To increase exports, Colbert supported old industries and created new ones, focusing especially on textiles, which were the most important sector of the economy.
Colbert also hoped to make Canada— rich in untapped minerals and some of the best agricultural land in the world— part of a vast French empire.
He sent four thousand colonists to Quebec, whose capital had been founded in 1608 under Henry IV.
During Colbert’s tenure as controller general, Louis was able to pursue his goals without massive tax increases and without creating a stream of new offices.
The constant pressure of warfare after Colbert’s death, however, undid many of his economic achievements.

Louis XIV’s Wars

Louis XIV wrote that “the character of a conqueror is regarded as the noblest and highest of titles.”
In pursuit of the title of conqueror, he kept France at war for thirty-three of the fifty-four years of his personal rule.
The wars of the 1680s and 1690s brought no additional territories but placed unbearable strains on French resources.
Louis’s last war was endured by a French people suffering high taxes, crop failure, and widespread malnutrition and death.
In 1700 the childless Spanish king Charles II (r. 1665–1700) died, opening a struggle for control of Spain and its colonies.
In 1701 the English, Dutch, Austrians, and Prussians formed the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV.
War dragged on until 1713.
The Peace of Utrecht, which ended the war, allowed Louis’s grandson Philip to remain king of Spain on the understanding that the French and Spanish crowns would never be united.
The Peace of Utrecht represented the balance of power principle in operation, setting limits on the extent to which any one power— in this case, France— could expand.

The Decline of Absolutist Spain in the Seventeenth Century

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, France’s position appeared extremely weak.
Struggling to recover from decades of religious civil war that had destroyed its infrastructure and economy, France could not dare to compete with Spain’s European and overseas empire or its mighty military.
By the early seventeenth century the seeds of Spanish disaster were sprouting.
Between 1610 and 1650 Spanish trade with the colonies in the New World fell 60 percent due to competition from local industries in the colonies and from Dutch and English traders.
In Madrid, however, royal expenditures constantly exceeded income.
To meet mountainous state debt, the Crown repeatedly devalued the coinage and declared bankruptcy, which resulted in the collapse of national credit.
Spanish aristocrats, attempting to maintain an extravagant lifestyle they could no longer afford, increased the rents on their estates.
High rents and heavy taxes in turn drove the peasants from the land, leading to a decline in agricultural productivity.
The Spanish crown had no solutions to these dire problems.
Philip III (r. 1598–1621), a melancholy and deeply pious man, handed the running of the government over to the duke of Lerma, who used it to advance his personal and familial wealth.
Philip IV (r. 1621–1665) left the management of his several kingdoms to Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares.
Spain’s situation worsened with internal conflicts and fresh military defeats through the remainder of the seventeenth century.
In 1640 Spain faced serious revolts in Catalonia and Portugal.
In 1688 the Spanish crown reluctantly recognized the independence of Portugal, almost a century after the two crowns were joined.
The era of Spanish dominance in Europe had ended.

Absolutism in Austria and Prussia

The Return of Serfdom in the East

While economic and social hardship was common across Europe, important differences existed between east and west.
The gradual erosion of the peasantry’s economic position was bound up with manipulation of the legal system.
The local lord was also the local prosecutor, judge, and jailer.
Between 1500 and 1650 the consolidation of serfdom in eastern Europe was accompanied by the growth of commercial agriculture, particularly in Poland and eastern Germany.
With the approval of kings, landlords systematically undermined the medieval privileges of the towns and the power of the urban classes. Instead of selling products to local merchants, landlords sold directly to foreigners, bypassing local towns.
This development both reflected and promoted the supremacy of noble landlords in most of eastern Europe in the sixteenth century.

The Austrian Habsburgs

Like all of central Europe, the Habsburgs emerged from the Thirty Years’ War impoverished and exhausted.
Their efforts to destroy Protestantism in the German lands and to turn the weak Holy Roman Empire into a real state had failed.
Habsburg victory over Bohemia during the Thirty Years’ War was an important step in this direction.
Ferdinand II (r. 1619–1637) drastically reduced the power of the Bohemian Estates, the largely Protestant representative assembly.
With the support of this new nobility, the Habsburgs established direct rule over Bohemia.
Under their rule the condition of the enserfed peasantry worsened substantially: three days per week of unpaid labor became the norm.
Ferdinand III (r. 1637–1657) continued to build state power.
He centralized the government in the empire’s German-speaking provinces, which formed the core Habsburg holdings.
The Hungarian nobility, despite its reduced strength, effectively thwarted the full development of Habsburg absolutism.
Throughout the seventeenth century Hungarian nobles rose in revolt against attempts to impose absolute rule.
Despite checks on their ambitions in Hungary, the Habsburgs made significant achievements in statebuilding elsewhere by forging consensus with the church and the nobility.
Vienna became the political and cultural center of the empire.
By 1700 it was a thriving city with a population of one hundred thousand and its own version of Versailles, the royal palace of Schönbrunn.

Prussia in the Seventeenth Century

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Hohenzollern family had ruled parts of eastern Germany as the imperial electors of Brandenburg and the dukes of Prussia.
The estates of Brandenburg and Prussia were dominated by the nobility and the landowning classes, known as the Junkers.
Frederick William profited from ongoing European war and the threat of invasion from Russia when he argued for the need for a permanent standing army.
They agreed to do so in exchange for reconfirmation of their own privileges, including authority over the serfs.
Thereafter, the estates power declined rapidly, for the Great Elector had both financial independence and superior force.
By following his own sage advice, Frederick William tripled state revenue during his reign and expanded the army drastically.
In 1688 a population of 1 million supported a peacetime standing army of 30,000.
In 1701 the elector’s son, Frederick I, received the elevated title of king of Prussia (instead of elector) as a reward for aiding the Holy Roman emperor in the War of the Spanish Succession.

The Consolidation of Prussian Absolutism

Frederick William I, “the Soldiers’ King” (r. 1713– 1740), completed his grandfather’s work, eliminating the last traces of parliamentary estates and local self government.
Penny-pinching and hard-working, Frederick William achieved results.
The king and his ministers built an exceptionally honest and conscientious bureaucracy to administer the country and foster economic development.
Nevertheless, Prussians paid a heavy and lasting price for the obsessions of their royal drillmaster.
Army expansion was achieved in part through forced conscription, which was declared lifelong in 1713.
Desperate draftees fled the country or injured themselves to avoid service.
Finally, in 1733 Frederick William I ordered that all Prussian men would undergo military training and serve as reservists in the army, allowing him to preserve both agricultural production and army size.
With all men harnessed to the war machine, Prussian civil society became rigid and highly disciplined.
Thus the policies of Frederick William I, combined with harsh peasant bondage and Junker tyranny, laid the foundations for a highly militaristic country.

The Development of Russia and the Ottoman Empire

The Mongol Yoke and the Rise of Moscow

The two-hundred-year period of rule by the Mongol khan (king) set the stage for the rise of absolutist Russia.
The Mongols, a group of nomadic tribes from presentday Mongolia, established an empire that, at its height stretched from Korea to eastern Europe.
By 1480 Ivan III was strong enough to defy Mongol control and declare the autonomy of Moscow.
To legitimize their new position, the princes of Moscow modeled themselves on the Mongol khans.
Loyalty from the highest-ranking nobles, or boyars, helped the Muscovite princes consolidate their power.
Another source of legitimacy for Moscow was its claim to the political and religious legacy of the Byzantine Empire.
The marriage of Ivan III to the daughter of the last Byzantine emperor further enhanced Moscow’s assertion of imperial authority

The Tsar and His People

Developments in Russia took a chaotic turn with the reign of Ivan IV (r. 1533–1584), the famous “Ivan the Terrible,” who rose to the throne at age three.
Ivan’s reign was successful in defeating the remnants of Mongol power, adding vast new territories to the realm, and laying the foundations for the huge, multiethnic Russian empire.
As landlords demanded more from the serfs who survived the persecutions, growing numbers of peasants fled toward wild, recently conquered territories to the east and south.
There they joined free groups and warrior bands known as Cossacks.
After the death of Ivan and his successor, Russia entered a chaotic period known as the “Time of Troubles” (1598–1613).
Although the new tsar successfully reconsolidated central authority, he and his successors did not improve the lot of the common people.
Despite the turbulence of the period, the Romanov tsars, like their Western counterparts, made several important achievements during the second half of the seventeenth century.
After a long war, Russia gained land in Ukraine from Poland in 1667 and completed the conquest of Siberia by the end of the century.
Russian imperialist expansion to the east paralleled the Western powers’ exploration and conquest of the Atlantic world in the same period.

The Reforms of Peter the Great

Heir to Romanov efforts at state-building, Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725) embarked on a tremendous campaign to accelerate and complete these processes.
A giant for his time at six feet seven inches, and possessing enormous energy and willpower, Peter was determined to build the army and to continue Russian territorial expansion.
Returning to Russia, Peter entered into a secret alliance with Denmark and Poland to wage a sudden war of aggression against Sweden with the goal of securing access to the Baltic Sea and opportunities for westward expansion.
Eighteen-year-old Charles XII of Sweden (1697– 1718) surprised Peter.
He defeated Denmark quickly in 1700, then turned on Russia.
Peter responded to this defeat with measures designed to increase state power, strengthen his armies, and gain victory.
Peter also greatly increased the service requirements of commoners.
In the wake of the Narva disaster, he established a regular standing army of more than two hundred thousand peasant-soldiers, drafted for life and commanded by noble officers.
Peter’s new war machine was able to crush the small army of Sweden in Ukraine at Poltava in 1709, one of the most significant battles in Russian history.
The government drafted twenty-five thousand to forty thousand men each summer to labor in St. Petersburg, many of whom died from hunger, sickness, and accidents.
There were other important consequences of Peter’s reign.
For Peter, modernization meant westernization, and both Westerners and Western ideas flowed into Russia for the first time.
He required nobles to shave their heavy beards and wear Western clothing, previously banned in Russia.
Peter’s reforms were unpopular with many Russians.
For nobles, one of Peter’s most detested reforms was the imposition of unigeniture—inheritance of land by one son alone—cutting daughters and other sons from family property.
Despite the unpopularity of Peter’s reforms, his modernizing and westernizing of Russia paved the way for it to move somewhat closer to the European mainstream in its thought and institutions during the Enlightenment, especially under Catherine the Great.

The Growth of the Ottoman Empire

Most Christian Europeans perceived the Ottomans as the antithesis of their own values and traditions and viewed the empire as driven by an insatiable lust for warfare and conquest.
The Ottomans came out of Central Asia as conquering warriors, settled in Anatolia (present-day Turkey), and, at their peak in the mid-sixteenth century, ruled one of the most powerful empires in the world.
The Ottoman Empire was built on a unique model of state and society.
Agricultural land was the personal hereditary property of the sultan, and peasants paid taxes to use the land.
The Ottomans also employed a distinctive form of government administration.
The top ranks of the bureaucracy were staffed by the sultan’s slave corps.
The less fortunate formed the core of the sultan’s army, the janissary corps.
The Ottomans divided their subjects into religious communities, and each millet, or “nation,” enjoyed autonomous self-government under its religious leaders.
The Ottoman Empire recognized Orthodox Christians, Jews, Armenian Christians, and Muslims as distinct millets, but despite its tolerance, the empire was an explicitly Islamic state.
The millet system created a powerful bond between the Ottoman ruling class and religious leaders, who supported the sultan’s rule in return for extensive authority over their own communities.
Istanbul (known outside the empire by its original name, Constantinople) was the capital of the empire.
Sultans married women of the highest social standing, while keeping many concubines of low rank.
Sultan Suleiman undid these policies when he boldly married his concubine, a former slave of Polish origin named Hürrem, and had several children with her.
Over time, the sultan’s exclusive authority waned in favor of a more bureaucratic administration.

Alternatives to Absolutism in England and the Dutch Republic

While France, Prussia, Russia, and Austria developed absolutist states, England and the Netherlands evolved toward constitutionalism, which is the limitation of government by law.
Constitutionalism also implies a balance between the authority and power of the government, on the one hand, and the rights and liberties of the subjects, on the other.
Despite their common commitment to constitutional government, England and the Dutch Republic represented significantly different alternatives to absolute rule.
After decades of civil war and an experiment with republicanism, the English opted for a constitutional monarchy in 1688.

Absolutists Claims in England

In 1588 Queen Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558–1603) exercised very great personal power; by 1689 the English monarchy was severely circumscribed.
In 1603 Elizabeth’s Scottish cousin James Stuart succeeded her as James I (r. 1603–1625).
King James was well educated and had thirty-five years’ experience as king of Scotland.
James’s greatest problem, however, stemmed from his absolutist belief that a monarch has a divine right to his authority and is responsible only to God.
The expenses of England’s intervention in the Thirty Years’ War, through hostilities with Spain (1625–1630) and France (1627–1629), only exacerbated tensions. Charles I’s response was to refuse to summon Parliament from 1629 onward.

Religious Divides and the English Civil War

Relations between the king and the House of Commons were also embittered by religious issues.
In the early seventeenth century growing numbers of English people felt dissatisfied with the Church of England established by Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547).
Many Puritans believed that the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century had not gone far enough.
For James, bishops were among the chief supporters of the throne.
His son and successor, Charles I, further antagonized religious sentiments.
Charles had ruled from 1629 to 1640 without Parliament, financing his government through extraordinary stopgap levies considered illegal by most English people.
In 1641 the Commons passed the Triennial Act, which compelled the king to summon Parliament every three years.
The Commons impeached Archbishop Laud and then threatened to abolish bishops.
The next act in the conflict was precipitated by the outbreak of rebellion in Ireland, where English governors and landlords had long exploited the people.
Without an army, Charles I could neither come to terms with the Scots nor respond to the Irish rebellion. After a failed attempt to arrest parliamentary leaders, Charles left London for the north of England.
The English civil war (1642–1649) pitted the power of the king against that of the Parliament.
After three years of fighting, Parliament’s New Model Army defeated the king’s armies at the Battles of Naseby and Langport in the summer of 1645.
In 1649 the remaining representatives, known as the “Rump Parliament,” put Charles on trial for high treason.
Charles was found guilty and beheaded on January 30, 1649, an act that sent shock waves around Europe.

Cromwell and Puritanical Absolutism in England

With the execution of Charles, kingship was abolished.
The question remained of how the country would be governed. One answer was provided by philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679).
Hobbes’s longing for a benevolent absolute monarch was not widely shared in England.
Instead, Oliver Cromwell and his supporters enshrined a commonwealth, or republican government, known as the Protectorate
The army prepared a constitution, the Instrument of Government (1653), that invested executive power in a lord protector (Cromwell) and a council of state.
On the issue of religion, Cromwell favored some degree of toleration, and the Instrument of Government gave all Christians except Roman Catholics the right to practice their faith.
Cromwell adopted mercantilist policies similar to those of absolutist France. He enforced a Navigation Act (1651) requiring that English goods be transported on English ships.
The Protectorate collapsed when Cromwell died in 1658 and his ineffectual son succeeded him.
Fed up with military rule, the English longed for a return to civilian government and, with it, common law and social stability.
By 1660 they were ready to restore the monarchy.

The Restoration of the English Monarchy

The Restoration of 1660 brought to the throne Charles II (r. 1660–1685), eldest son of Charles I, who had been living on the continent
Parliament enacted the Test Act of 1673 against those outside the Church of England, denying them the right to vote, hold public office, preach, teach, attend the universities, or even assemble for meetings.
In politics, Charles II’s initial determination to work well with Parliament did not last long.
Finding that Parliament did not grant him an adequate income, in 1670 Charles entered into a secret agreement with his cousin Louis XIV.
When Charles died and his Catholic brother James became king, the worst English anti-Catholic fears were realized.
In violation of the Test Act, James II (r. 1685–1688) appointed Roman Catholics to positions in the army, the universities, and local government.
James’s opponents, a powerful coalition of eminent persons in Parliament and the Church of England, bitterly resisted James’s ambitions.
In December 1688 James II, his queen, and their infant son fled to France and became pensioners of Louis XIV.
Early in 1689 William and Mary were crowned king and queen of England.

Constitutional Monarchy and Cabinet Government

The English call the events of 1688 and 1689 the “Glorious Revolution” because they believe it replaced one king with another with barely any bloodshed.
In England, the revolution represented the final destruction of the idea of divine-right monarchy.
The men who brought about the revolution framed their intentions in the Bill of Rights, which was formulated in direct response to Stuart absolutism.
The Glorious Revolution and the concept of representative government found its best defense in political philosopher John Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690).
Locke (1632–1704) maintained that a government that oversteps its proper function— protecting the natural rights of life, liberty, and property— becomes a tyranny.
The events of 1688 and 1689 did not constitute a democratic revolution.
The revolution placed sovereignty in Parliament, and Parliament represented the upper classes.
In the course of the eighteenth century, the cabinet system of government evolved.
The term cabinet derives from the small private room in which English rulers consulted their chief ministers.
In a cabinet system, the leading ministers, who must have seats in and the support of a majority of the House of Commons, formulate common policy and conduct the business of the country.
England’s brief and chaotic experiment with republicanism under Oliver Cromwell convinced its people of the advantages of a monarchy, albeit with strong checks on royal authority.

The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century

In the late sixteenth century the seven northern provinces of the Netherlands fought for and won their independence from Spain.
The independence of the Republic of the United Provinces of the Netherlands was recognized in 1648 in the treaty that ended the Thirty Years’ War.
Rejecting the rule of a monarch, the Dutch established a republic, a state in which power rested in the hands of the people and was exercised through elected representatives.
In each province, the Estates appointed an executive officer, known as the stadholder, who carried out ceremonial functions and was responsible for military defense.
The political success of the Dutch rested on their phenomenal commercial prosperity.
The moral and ethical bases of that commercial wealth were thrift, frugality, and religious toleration.
The Dutch came to dominate the shipping business by putting profits from their original industry— herring fishing— into shipbuilding.
Trade and commerce brought the Dutch the highest standard of living in Europe, perhaps in the world.
Consequently, the Netherlands experienced very few of the food riots that characterized the rest of Europe.

Baroque Art and Music

The term baroque may have come from the Portuguese word for an “odd-shaped, imperfect pearl” and was commonly used by late-eighteenth-century art critics as an expression of scorn for what they considered an overblown, unbalanced style.
Rome and the revitalized Catholic Church of the late sixteenth century spurred the early development of the baroque.
Taking definite shape in Italy after 1600, the baroque style in the visual arts developed with exceptional vigor in Catholic countries— in Spain and Latin America, Austria, southern Germany, and Poland. Yet baroque art was more than just “Catholic art” in the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth.
In painting, the baroque reached maturity early with Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), the most outstanding and most representative of baroque painters.
In music, the baroque style reached its culmination almost a century later in the dynamic, soaring lines of the endlessly inventive Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750).
Organist and choirmaster of several Lutheran churches across Germany, Bach was equally at home writing secular concertos and sublime religious cantatas.