absolutism pt 2

Civil War in France

  • 1562-1598 between French Catholics and Huguenots

Huguenots

  • French Protestants

St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre

  • Catholics attacked Huguenots
  • 1572 - Six week slaughter of Huguenots
  • represents the complete breakdown of order in France

Henry IV

  • victor of the civil war
  • became king of France from 1589-1610
  • Protestant
  • converted to Catholicism to secure crown
  • reduced nobles’ power and prevent peasant abuse by landlords
  • sought to heal France
  • government reached all areas of French life
    • improved roads and built bridges
    • administered justice
    • revived agriculture
  • groundwork for absolutism enabled
    • building of royal government
    • reducing noble influence
  • some people didn’t like his compromise and was stabbed to death by a fanatic in 1610

Edict of Nantes

  • outlawed persecution of Huguenots

Louis XIII

  • son of Henry IV
  • ruled from 1610-1643 after inheriting the throne at 9

Cardinal Richelieu

  • appointed Cheif Minister in 1624
  • focused on government changes
    • established strong administrative systems, armies, tax collection and business regulation
    • targeted noblels and Huguenots
  • nobles
    • fought their armies
    • gave them high positions in court (bonded them together)
  • Huguenots
    • smashed walled cites, outlawed armies
  • supported Protestant German princes in Thirty years’ war
    • to prevent Catholic HRE from expanding
    • Habsburg power a threat to France

Louis XIV

  • king at age 4
    • Cardinal Mazarin led France as Chief Minister
  • experienced the Fonde upsisings
    • groups protested royal power, drove Louis from his palace (lasting impact)
  • established lavish style for European monarchs
  • longest reign in Europe - 72 years
  • took control at 23 bc Mazarin died in 1661
  • strengthened power of gov. nobels
  • costly wars to expand French borders
    • proved disastrous
    • Alliances of Dutch and England fought to maintain balance of power
  • War of Spanish Succession
    • France bankrupt
    • resulted in increased poverty & discontent with Louis XIV
  • Legacy
    • France was a military power
    • brilliant cultural period
    • lavish buildings, decorated palaces and churches, great playwrights and artists
    • final years more sad than glorious
    • costly wars ruined France and brought suffering to French people
    • warfare and building Versailles created staggering debt
    • corrupt, complicated, unjust tax system not changed
    • poor carried tax burden
    • nobles, clergy and government officials exempt from paying tax at expense of poor
    • Louis XIV abuse of power
    • nobility and peasantry (most of France) want change in system
    • revolution on the horizon

Cardinal Mazarin

  • chosen by Richelieu
  • hated by French nobility
    • strengthening the central government
    • tax increases
  • absolutism primarily around war, peace, religion, etc.
  • no oppressive control over lives of subjects
    • local institutions elites retained authority prevented influence on a national level

Jean Baptiste Colbert - minister of finance

  • 27 million pound debt reduced → turned into 29 million pound surplus
  • fixed French economy when it was almost bankrupt
    • imposed Mercantilist policies
    • put high tariffs of foreign gods
    • established overseas colonies with strict trade regulations

Revoking the Edict of Nantes

  • Louis XIV wanted religious unification
  • hounded, bullied, bribed Huguenots to convert
  • revoked edict
  • protestant schools and churches closed
    • ministers exiled
  • non-converters
    • forced to be gallery slaves (row on ships)
    • children baptized Catholic
    • resulted in an emigration of 250,000 people from France

Persecuting Huguenots

  • major blow to French economy similar to expulsion of Jews and Muslims had to Spain.
    • among hardest working & prosperous

Versailles

  • Palace of Versailles
    • demonstrated wealth, power, & glory of France
    • 10,000 people lived and worked there
  • Versailles: A Center of The Arts
    • made ballet & opera popular
    • purpose of art to glorify the king & absolute rule
    • emphasis on human potential, not God
  • Louis XIV Patron of the Arts
    • enabled cultural flowering
    • supported century of arts
      • musical entertainments
      • plays sponsored with the best writers
      • French styles in painting, music, architecture, and decorative arts: a model for Europe
      • new dance drama, ballet, popularized

War of Spanish Succession

  • England, Netherlands, and Austria vs. France and Spain
  • Treaty of Utrecht
    • recognized Philip V as ruler
    • restricted France and Spain from becoming one empire
    • France loses colonies to England
  • The Spanish Throne
    • 1700 - given to Louis XIV’s grandson Philip V
    • Bourbon control over France/Spain

Fragmented Empire

  • HRE in the 1600s was a loose patchwork of separate states
    • no central government, German princes chose their respective religion for their provinces
    • Ruled by Ferdinand II in 1619
    • chosen by electors → had little power
      • German princes usually have a lot of power
    • Ferdinand II was a devout Catholic and moved to suppress a Protestant uprising in Prague
    • Defenestration of Prague
    • started out a religious conflict, became a political conflict
      • Habsburgs lost, HRE dissolved

Ferdinand II

  • chosen by electors → little power
  • devout Catholic
  • wanted to suppress a Protestant uprising in Prague

Defenestration of Prague

  • when Protestant nobles tossed two royal officials out a window
    • Catholics and Protestants sought alliances, making a local conflict a European war

Peace of Westphalia

  • 1648 - series of treaties aimed at creating a general European peace

Thirty Years War- reasons for, gain and loss of power, regions involved

  • basically all of Europe was involved but mostly France, Spain, Austria, Germany, and others
  • France gained the most territory
    • along with Sweden and Brandenbury
  • Habsburg rulers lost a majority of their power and Germany was divided into more than 360 separate states
    • wouldn’t unify until 1871
  • Protestantism protect in the Germanies
  • 4 phases - Bohemian, Danish, Swedish, French
  • Austria and Prussia rose to prominence after Thirty Years’ War
  • Habsburg Austria Expands
    • kept the title of HRE but focused on expanding German lands
    • added Bohemia, Hungary and parts of Poland and some Italian states
      • divided by geography and culture
      • many parts had their own languages, laws, and customs
    • attempted, but unsuccessful in fully centralizing government
    • settled officials in seized lands and put down revolts

Pragmatic Sanction

  • Charles VI died and left no male heir in 1740
  • issued this as a means of ensuring that the Habsburg possessions could be inherited by his daughter
  • Prussia under Frederick II was the main aggressor; Maria Theresa pleaded with her Hungarian subjects for support; they came to her aid along with Britain and Russia

War of Austrian Succession

  • Charles VI persuaded other rulers to recognize his daughter
    • ignored him and immediately seized Austrian land in Silesia
  • symbolizes a challenge to Maria Theresa’s legitimacy to rule on the account that she was a woman

Maria Theresa

  • was an absolute monarch
    • believed her decisions were for the good of the people
    • strengthened authority by limiting the nobles and the church
  • unsuccessful in driving Prussia out of Silesia
    • regardless she preserved the empire and gained the support of her people
    • reorganized bureaucracy and improved tax collection (forced the nobles/clergy to pay)
    • burden on peasants became lessened

Hohenzollerns

  • united the lands that became Prussia
  • Prussia became Protestant
    • think __P__russia - __P__rotestant

Frederick I

  • came to power in 1713
    • gained Junker (noble) support by appointing them to positions in the army and government
    • reduced noble independence
    • stressed military values and had one of the best-trained armies in Europe

similar to Louis XIV

also tied nobles to high positions in army/government to limit their influence in rural towns

Frederick II

  • not “his father’s son”
    • preferred playing the flute and writing poetry
    • tried fleeing the country with his friend
    • when his father found out, Frederick was thrown in solitary confinement and forced to watch his friend get beheaded
  • became king in 1740 and immediately challenged Austria over Silesia
  • brilliant leadership and willingness to use his disciplined army lead to him being called Frederick the Great
  • Europe was forced to recognize Prussia

Silesia

Tsar

  • title meaning caesar and represented being ordained by God

Development of Russia

  • Russian state emerged during the 15th century, much different history/traditions
    • no Roman Catholic influence
    • strongly influenced by the Mongols
    • less affected by the Renaissance
    • didn’t experience the turmoil fo the Reformation
    • Russia had no ties with Europe until the 18th century

Ivan III (Great)

  • 1462-1505, many accomplishments
    • conquered territory around Moscow
    • liberated Russia from the Mongols
    • began centralizing Russia’s government
  • Vasily, his son, succeeded him and ruled for 28 years
    • added more territory
    • increased the power of the centralized government

Ivan IV (Terrible)

  • Vasily’s son came to the throne at 3 years old
  • boyars tried to control him when he was young
    • when he turned 16, he seized power from the boyars and proclaimed himself Tsar
    • married Anastasia, a Romanov (boyar family)
  • major achievements during the “good period” (1547-1560)
    • won great victories
    • added lands to Russia
    • gave Russia a code of laws
    • ruled justly
  • bad period began in 1560 when Anastasia died (1560-1584)
    • accused boyars of poisoning Anastasia
    • turned on them and organized his own police force
    • chief duty was to hunt down and murder anyone considered a traitor
    • thousands were executed: boyars, their families and peasants
    • in 1581 he got into a fight with his son
    • accidentally killed him, leaving no capable heir
    • Ivan attacked his son’s wife because he didn’t approve of the way she was dressed. she had a miscarriage and Ivan’s son was killed by him when he tried to protect his wife
  • enemies during “bad period”
    • hired his own police force with the focus of hunting down and murdering traitors
    • executed the boyars, their families and the peasants who worked their land
    • appointed new nobles he could trust (beginning of shady politics in Russia)
  • developed differently compared to Europe
    • ties to Constantinople, not Rome
    • Mongol rule meant to exposure to the Renaissance
    • geographical size
    • Eastern Orthodox followers, meant no Reformation

Boyars

  • landowning nobility

Time of Troubles

  • boyars struggled for power in the wake of Ivan’s death, resulting in chaos and anarchy
    • lasted from 1584-1613
    • different boyar families made claims to the throne and were mysteriously murdered
    • ended when representatives from different cities met to choose the next tsar

Romanov dynasty

  • rule Russia from 1613-1917
    • Michael I was the first Romanov tsar
    • he and his two successors brought back some stability to Russia
  • Russia had continuing challenges
    • still weak from the Time of Troubles
    • boyars had government control
    • tsars faced mutiny from Moscow garrison
  • passed laws and put down the revolt to pave the way for future Romanovs

Peter the Great

  • in 1697, a year after becoming ruler, he embarked on the Grand Embassy
    • goal was to learn about European customs and manufacturing techniques
    • wanted to compete both militarily and commercially, saw westernizing as a way to make Russia stronger
    • began issuing reforms that increased his power
    • Russian Orthodox Church was brought under state control
    • reduced the boyar’s power, gave power to lower-ranking families
    • trained army with European tactics and being a soldier became a lifetime job, imposed taxes to refund
  • end of Peter the Great
    • ongoing struggle with his son Alexis
    • Alexis was imprisoned and mysteriously died
    • Peter died in 1725 with no heir
      • soldiers and nobles decided leader for the next 30+ years
    • Peter’s legacy was split
      • laid the foundation for modern Russia
      • failed to achieve stability

Westernizing Russia

  • window on the west
    • Peter wanted to make it easier to travel to the West, desired a warm water port
    • Needed a port to enable western trade and intervention in Europe
      • Led to wars with Sweden/Ottomans
      • Captured Black Sea in 1696 but forced to return it in 1711
    • War with Sweden
      • Peter captured modern day Estonia and Latvia
      • Gave Russia a port on the Baltic Sea
      • Enabled a “Window to the West”
      • Eased travel/enabled European influence
    • Established St. Petersburg
      • Built a city in northwest Russia to symbol the “Window to the West”
      • Built on a swamp, 100k serfs died building it
  • Russia’s future depended on having a warm-water port
    • needed to make westward travel easier
    • to promote education
    • increased trade
  • Peter undertook these to westernize:
    • introduced potatoes, became a staple in the Russian diet
    • started Russia’s first newspaper
    • raised the status of women, allowed them to attend social gatherings
    • ordered nobles to replace their traditional clothes with Western fashions
    • advanced education, open a school of navigation and a school of the arts and sciences
    • forced many to leave Russia to study the sciences
  • Peter introduced
    • new foodstuffs
    • newspaper
    • raised status of women
    • western fashion
    • advanced education

Catherine the Great (Catherine II)

  • was a German princess
    • came to Russia at 15, wed heir to Russian throne
    • learned Russian
    • embraced Russian Orthodox faith
    • won the loyalty of the people
  • husband was Peter III, mentally unstable, murdered by Russian army officers
  • Catherine took the throne
    • organized government/codified laws
    • state-sponsored education
    • embraced Western ideas
    • encourage French language/customs, student of French thinkers that led the enlightenment
    • established warm water port on the Black Sea (did what Peter couldn’t)