Absolute Monarchies and the Reformation

ABSOLUTE MONARCHIES AND THE REFORMATION Establishment of Great Monarchies.—Towards the end of the 15th century the three great nations of western Europe— England, France and Spain—formed each a national state, united under the unrestricted authority of a single sovereign, .reigning by hereditary right. He judged his people in his courts, controlled them through his officials and taxed them. In France and Spain he maintained an army whose commanders he nominated. He determined peace or war.

The French king, who ruled over the most populous and fertile of the three kingdoms, was possessed of ample revenues and an exceedingly powerful army. He took part in the Italian wars in order first to conquer the kingdom of Naples and then Milan. His plans were frustrated by a coalition of the Italian States and subsequently by Ferdinand, king of Aragon, who was already master of Sicily, and Pope Julius II., who was supported by the Swiss and the emperor. As a result the French armies were driven out of Italy.

The Habsburg family had been possessed of but a small heredi tary domain, but its importance was increased by its imperial elevation in 1439, and it soon raised itself to the first rank by marriage alliances, following the method epitomized in the half line: Tu, felix Austria nube. Maximilian (q.v.) had married, in 1477, the duchess of Burgundy, who was heiress of the Low Countries, and her son, Philip, married Joanna, heiress to the two Spanish crowns, who transmitted the whole inheritance to her eldest son, the emperor Charles V. The younger son, Ferdi nand, married the heiress of Bohemia and Hungary and brought these two kingdoms into the hereditary possessions of the Habs burgs, who thus came to rule over a great part of Europe.

The Renaissance.

The Renaissance (q.v.) was a European event in the sense that it gave rise to an artistic technique and ideal, common to all Europe. It was preluded by the invention of printing which made possible the publication of the Greek and Latin classics, and by facilitating their study gave birth to the Humanism (q.v.) that was the essential characteristic of the Renaissance.

The task of the Renaissance was not only to foster the arts which had been flourishing since the I2th century, but also to imitate classic art as the Italians knew it. The Renaissance re jected the pious and ascetic Christian ideal of the middle ages and returned to a pagan worship of beauty in the study of the nude and of mythology. It replaced Gothic sculpture and archi tecture by imitations of Roman statues and monuments; and in literature writers returned to the literary forms of the ancient world—tragedy, comedy, epic. The Renaissance began in Italy in the I 5th century and there reached its zenith after the begin ning of the i6th century with Raphael and Michael Angelo; it spread during the early i6th century into Germany and France, reaching England towards its close during the lifetime of Shake speare, and entering Spain at the beginning of the 1 nth century in the days of Cervantes and Velasquez.

The Renaissance caused a cleavage in the artistic and literary life of Europe by creating an informed and highly polished litera ture and art that could not be understood by the uneducated, but were for those alone who had received a training and educa tion preparatory to their enjoyment. The most famous artists and writers worked solely for a privileged public and their works never reached the mass of the people, who were forced to be content with popular forms of literature and art that were scorned by the learned.

The Reformation.

The reforms demanded in the 15th cen tury by the councils for the purpose of restoring discipline in the Church, although they upheld the principle of papal authority, were frustrated by the opposition of the popes. The Reformation in the i6th century took the very different form of a revolt against the pope, and involved a far-reaching change in the organ ization of the clergy and the rites of the Church (see REFORMA TION). It was the work of theologians who sought to restore the purity of Christian belief by establishing it on the study of the Holy Scriptures.

The clergy, who were in possession of powerful weapons for the discovery and destruction of heretics, had always been suc cessful up till then in suppressing revolts. The reformers were able to preach their doctrines and organize churches only in coun tries in which they were supported by the secular power. All the great monarchs were opposed to them. The reformed churches of Luther in Saxony, of Zwingli at Zurich, of Calvin at Geneva, were all established in countries nominally dependent on the empire ; and the propagation of the Reformation was rendered possible only by the continuous warfare between the monarchs of the several States and by their quarrels with the pope.

The Lutheran Reformation was adopted by nearly all the secular princes and towns in Germany because, through it, they profited by seizing the ecclesiastical estates and freeing them selves from ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and it was also accepted by Denmark and Sweden. Calvinism spread at a later date, in spite of the opposition of the rulers, in France, Scotland, the Netherlands, and in Hungary, Bohemia and Poland. After sudden changes of policy, the English kings established the Anglican Church which, while preserving much of the traditional cere monies and organization, adopted a Protestant attitude.

The Counter Reformation.

The clergy, disorganized and at variance among themselves, were unable to prevent the growth of the Reformation. The opposition was first promoted by the monastic orders, chief among which was the order of the Jesuits (q.v.) who placed their entire resources at the service of the pope; then by the Council of Trent (see TRENT, COUNCIL OF), summoned by the pope with the support of the kings of Spain, France and Germany. This council did not re-establish the unity of the Church as had been hoped ; but it maintained the authority of tradition, confirmed all the rites of the middle ages, and pre served intact the organization of the clergy. It reformed the Church. but only in the sense of re-affirming already accepted practices. Bishops were instructed to supervise the conduct of the clergy, and the teaching of the catechism, and to establish seminaries for the education of the priests. Then followed the movement known as the Counter Reformation, directed by the pope and the Jesuits, with the object of regaining the ground lost to the Reformation. It was successful in all the dominions of the house of Austria, and in Poland, Belgium and Ireland; and Calvinism in France was sensibly weakened. The religious unity of Europe was broken for ever. The Roman Catholic Church maintained its power in all the Latin countries, in most of France and in Poland and the Habsburg lands. In the northern countries the reformed churches, which were classed together as Protestants, prevailed. Germany was divided between the two.

Conflict Between France and Austria.

The two most powerful monarchies in Europe took part in a contest which, under three different forms, lasted from 15 21 to 1648. It opened with the personal rivalry between Francis I. and Charles V. Francis, when defeated, allied himself with the opponents of the Church, the Lutheran princes in Germany, and with the enemies of Christianity, the sultan of Turkey and the Corsairs. Although Francis was unable to hold his conquests in Italy, his successor, Henry II., with the help of the princes, defeated the attempt of Charles V. to render Germany submissive. The defeat of the emperor was acknowledged in the Peace of Augsburg in which recognized the independence of the princes and their right to impose the Lutheran religion upon their subjects.

The war which had been going on between the French and Spanish kings was finally ended by a peace, concluded in for the purpose of extirpating Calvinism. This task was under taken by Philip II. of Spain, who, after his conquest of Portugal in 158o, sought to re-establish Catholicism in England, France and the Netherlands, and to establish his supremacy in Europe. Philip sought to take advantage of the religious wars in France that lasted from 1562 to 1598 and of the conflict between Eliza beth and Mary Stuart over the succession to the English throne.

He leagued himself with Henry of Guise, the head of the League, and with the Jesuits and the English malcontents. Af ter he had reconquered Belgium he made ready to attack Henry III. and Elizabeth simultaneously. But the disaster of the Armada ruined all his plans in 1588, and all the people whom he had threatened `English, French, Dutch, German—allied themselves against him. Spain was ruined, unable to reconquer the Netherlands, and incapable even of defending her coasts against the English fleet. Henry IV. revived the royal power in France and forced Spain to sign the Peace of Vervins in 1S98.

The Thirty Years' War.

The German branch of the house of Habsburg, which held the title of emperor, was greatly weakened by quarrels between the archdukes and by revolts on the part of the Protestant nobility in Bohemia, Moravia, Hun gary, and even in the archduchy of Austria. The German princes were divided into two hostile camps ; the Protestant Union, which was established in 1608, and the Catholic League, established in 1609. The unity of the Habsburgs was restored on the accession of Ferdinand II. in 1618; but in that year the revolt of the Protestant nobility in Bohemia—who chose as king the elector palatine, leader of the Protestant Union—opened the Thirty Years' War (q.v.). Led by Maximilian of Bavaria and Philip III. of Spain the Catholic League allied itself with the emperor. The war was successively waged in all parts of Germany. Wallenstein (q.v.), who had raised an army for the service of Ferdinand, supported it by levies exacted from the country he occupied and used it in an attempt to re-establish the arbitrary authority of the emperor over the German princes. Ferdinand became powerful enough to confiscate the territory of the duke of Mecklenburg and to take away from the princes the Church lands which they had seized.

The war was extended by the intervention of Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden and ally of France, who invaded Ger many and forced the Lutheran princes to make common cause with him. His victories destroyed the hopes of the emperor; but after his death in 1632 the reverses sustained by the Swedish armies and by the German princes, determined the French king to take part in the war in 1635 and to fight simultaneously the Habsburgs in Germany and in Belgium. Sweden, the United Provinces, and the Protestant princes of Germany allied them selves to a Catholic France, directed by a cardinal, and thus the war lost its character of a contest between two religions. Spain was rendered powerless by a revolt in Portugal and Catalonia in 1640; and after many abortive attempts France and Sweden undertook a common action on the Danube and in Bohemia directed against Vienna. The war ended in the defeat of the emperor and of the last attempt at hegemony in Europe on the part of the house of Habsburg.

Treaties of Westphalia, the Pyrenees and Oliva.—The Congress of Westphalia (see WESTPHALIA, TREATY OF), where peace was concluded in 1648, marks an epoch in the history of Europe. This congress was the first at which representatives from the great majority of the European States were assembled. Its acts were drawn up in Latin as being the international lan guage of the day. At this congress the order of precedence among the States was established and the precedents that have since been followed in European diplomacy were there created (see DIPLOMACY). The treaty left the emperor with merely a nominal sovereignty over Germany; it confirmed the independence of the princes, lords and towns (to the number of about 300) and rec ognized their right of making laws, of declaring and carrying on war and of concluding treaties with foreign Powers.

Ravaged and depopulated by the war, Germany lay broken up and at the mercy of an invader; but war went on between France and Spain; and Charles X. of Sweden, already master of a great part of the Baltic sea-board, plunged into war against Poland (which was, for the moment, at his mercy), Russia and Denmark, and almost captured Copenhagen. The elector of Bran denburg seized the opportunity to make himself master of the duchy of Prussia. War in the west of Europe was terminated by the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, which left Spain finally ruined and incapable of defending her possessions. The northern war was brought to a close by the Treaty of Oliva in 166o, which left the control of the Baltic in the hands of the king of Sweden.

Louis XIV.

Richelieu and Mazarin had broken the opposition of the nobles and the parlements and had established an absolute monarchy in France. Louis XIV. profited by their work through out the whole of his long reign (1643-1715). He ruled over the most populous kingdom in Europe, possessed the greatest army of the day, the most experienced generals and the cleverest diplomats. He took up his residence in the palace which he built at Versailles, where he organized a court ceremonial which rendered the person of the monarch the object of a form of worship, and his court became the focus of society and fashion. The princes of Europe, above all in Germany, dazzled by the magnificence of Louis XIV., sought to model themselves upon him. Versailles became the pattern for all courts, its etiquette the precedence for all ceremonial, and French fashions were copied in every country. Famous writers who sang the praises of the great king aroused throughout Europe an admiration for French literature and French customs ; French became the language of polite society and, after the Congress of Nijmwegen in 1678, the language of European diplomacy.

Revolution in England.

The two English revolutions had political consequences of lasting effect in Europe. The Great Re bellion began with the Bishops' wars (q.v.) with Scotland and a revolt occasioned by a dispute over the liturgy and episcopacy. Its outcome was a republic ultimately founded on new principles –the sovereign right of the people, the electoral nature of power, and the equality of civil rights—principles which were put into application in two American colonies, Connecticut and Rhode Island. It was the origin of a type of government new to the world—democratic representative government.

The revolution of 1688 was a revolt of the English Protestants against a Roman Catholic king who sought to make Roman Catholicism the religion of England. It finally turned the English monarchy into a constitutional monarchy controlled by parlia ment. Locke, a survivor of the first revolution, formulated in 1689 the theory of limited monarchy, and of religious toleration in 169o; the basic principles of the political philosophy of the 18th century. Thus in the zenith of the absolutism of the 17th century the English nation had already laid the foundations of the political system of loth century Europe.

Louis XIV. and the Supremacy of France.

Europe was now divided up between a number of powerful military States and a number whose feebleness was due either to their small size or to their being too disorganized to be capable of defence. The powerful States sought, by conquest or marriage, to acquire the territories of the weak ones. These arenas of war and of diplo matic intrigue covered the small divided States of Italy and Ger many, and, in eastern Europe, the shores of the Baltic and the valley of the Danube. The once powerful Spain had become in capable of defending her external possessions, and the approach ing extinction of the dynasty aroused the rivalries of the vari ous claimants. France had an advantage over the other Powers in that the emperor was occupied in repelling the Turks, and Charles II. of England was not ambitious of engaging in Conti nental wars. Unable to obtain the succession to the Spanish crown in the name of the Infanta, his wife, Louis XIV. went to war in order to conquer a part of the Netherlands. The interven tion of Holland checked him in 1668, and he invaded that coun try in 1672. His further progress was arrested by a coalition of the United Provinces, the emperor, the German princes, and Spain, which forced him to evacuate Holland and to transfer the war to the district of the Rhine and Moselle. But the coalition proved too weak to overthrow Louis XIV., and the Peace of Nijmwegen in 1678 was concluded at the expense of Spain. In 1683, when the emperor, the German princes and Poland were fully occupied in repelling the Turkish invasion, and the forces of Austria were engaged against the Turks in Hungary, Louis XIV. seized the opportunity to extend his territory through the Chambres de Reunion and also annexed Strasbourg in 1681. The German States could only reply with the defensive League of Augsburg (1686).

The political situation was completely altered by the English revolution of 1688 which brought England and Holland into the coalition concluded at the Hague. Henceforward, even his victo ries proved useless to Louis XIV., and with his finances and his armies exhausted, he was compelled to sue for peace. By the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 he restored all the territories which he had annexed in time of peace, with the exception of Strasbourg. By the Treaty of Carlowitz in 1699, the emperor forced the sultan to surrender all Hungary; and, mistress of the Danube, Austria became once more a great Power.

Louis XIV. appeared to have regained the hegemony of Europe when the succession to the Spanish crown was secured by will to his grandson, the duke of Anjou. But the Spanish and French monarchies were not to be united under one sovereign. The em peror undertook the War of the Spanish Succession with only a few German princes for allies. Louis XIV., through his hostile measures, aroused the indignation of the English and the Dutch and caused them to enter into a new coalition against him. The ally of Spain and of Bavaria, Louis XIV. had at first the ad vantage of carrying on the war in Belgium, Bavaria, and in Italy, but after Marlborough, who commanded the Anglo-Dutch army, and Prince Eugene, the imperial commander, had joined forces in Bavaria and won the decisive victory of Blenheim, the French armies were driven out of Germany (1704), and out of Belgium and Italy (1706). When the Allies invaded an exhausted France, Louis XIV. sued for peace from 1709 onwards, without being able to obtain acceptable conditions; and he was only saved by the advent to power of a Tory ministry which withdrew England from the war in 171I, and negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. In 1714 the victories obtained by the French armies over the imperial troops, compelled the emperor to accept the peace of Rastadt.

The Entry of Russia into Europe.

United since the 17th century under the sceptre of the tsar of Moscow, Russia has continued separate from Europe by religion and custom. The Russian people held the Orthodox faith and had adopted oriental customs like long robes, the seclusion of women and the knout. Peter the Great (1689-1725) took the European title of emperor and sought to transform his empire into a European State. He compelled his subjects to adopt European clothes and European customs ; he opened communications with Europe by conquering the Baltic provinces ; he built in this Europeanized land a capital with a German name, St. Petersburg (Leningrad) . He created a navy on the English model, an army on the German model, a senate in imitation of the Swedish senate. He organized the Russian Church after the Lutheran pattern and divided Russian society into classes in imitation of European society—an aris tocracy composed of landowners, a middle-class composed of merchants.

Peter the Great made war on Sweden, compelled her to cede its Baltic provinces, thus making an end to Swedish supremacy in the Baltic and in 1709 destroyed her army. In 1717 he forced Poland to enter into an agreement which, by limiting the strength of the Polish army, placed the country in the power of Russia. Although the immense country of which he was lord was very thinly peopled (the census of 1723 reckoned the population at 14,000,000), Peter the Great possessed a large and disciplined army recruited from the peasants, and the Russian empire was henceforth one of the great Powers of Europe.

Balance of Power.

The Treaties of Utrecht and Rastadt marked the close of French hegemony in Europe. England re tained possession of her conquests of Gibraltar, Minorca and Nova Scotia. The Habsburgs acquired the scattered possessions of the Spanish monarchy—Belgium, the Milanais and the kingdom of Naples. But France, though conquered, suffered no loss of terri tory. Two new kings, in Germany the king of Prussia, and in Italy the king of Sardinia, founded two kingdoms of no great size but possessing powerful armies which enabled them to play a part in diplomacy and war, and caused them to become, in the 19th cen tury, the rallying points of German and Italian unity.

Henceforth relations between the European States were based on the principle of the balance of power (q.v.) between the great Powers, England, France and Austria, later joined by Russia and Prussia. Henceforth policy had no other aim than "the interest of the state," by which was implied aggrandisement and the great Powers sought to acquire new territory at the expense of the lesser, seeking at the same time to prevent any one among them from becoming supreme by maintaining a balance between them selves. Whenever a Power was seen to be growing over-strong, the others demanded a "compensation," to increase their strength and thus to preserve the equilibrium.

The establishment of the balance of power was followed by the peace (1714-40) which arose out of the accord between the British Government under Walpole, and the French, which was in the hands of the regent and Fleury. Only a few crises disturbed the general peace ; the intrigues of Elizabeth Farnese, queen of Spain, who sought to obtain kingdoms for her two sons, involved Spain in very brief wars and in changes of alliance which called for the diplomacy of all Europe ; and the election of the king of Poland in 1733 resulted in a short war against the emperor, which assured the kingdom of Naples to Charles of Spain and the re version of Lorraine to France.

The Anglo-French and Austro-Prussian Wars-1740 1763.—Bef ore the middle of the century, however, Europe was dragged into war by two distinct disputes that arose from different causes, but became artificially connected as one European war, viz., the rivalry between Great Britain and France in America and India, and that between Austria and Prussia in Germany. The result was two wars of the same duration, both broken by an interval of peace. The first began in America and was occasioned through the English trade with the Spanish colonies. It was fought between England and Spain, the ally of France, simul taneously with the war waged in Germany against the emperor by France and her allies, the German princes. The British king took part in the latter as the ally of Austria, while the king of Prussia seized the opportunity to conquer Silesia. This war of the Austrian Succession (q.v.) ended in the Treaty of Aix-la Chapelle in 1748, peace being restored to Europe at no heavier cost than the cession of Silesia to Prussia, of a small part of the Milanais to the king of Sardinia, and of the duchy of Parma and Placentia to the second son of the queen of Spain.

The second war, the "Seven Years' War" (q.v.) lasting from 1756 to 1763, also had its origin in the quarrel between the French and British colonists in America, and was accompanied on the European Continent by a war directed against the king of Prussia by a coalition of three great Powers, France, Austria and Russia, joined by Sweden and the German princes. In order to guarantee Hanover, the British Government in 1756 concluded with the king of Prussia a treaty which transformed itself into an alliance.

This change in the system of alliances, which was in marked contrast to the traditional French policy of hostility to Austria, was confirmed by the Franco-Austrian entente, resulting in the marriage of the archduchess Marie Antoinette with Louis XVI. Frederick the Great attacked by Austria, Russia and France over came each of them in turn ; but his tiny kingdom was exhausted, and on three occasions, and 1761 he believed himself lost. He was saved by the death of Elizabeth, empress of Russia, in 1762; and in the following year the Treaty of Paris, which de prived France of Canada, set the seal upon British supremacy in America and on the seas, while the Treaty of Hubertusburg, by which Silesia was ceded to Frederick, crowned that monarch's achievement in making Prussia a great power (1763) .

The Doctrines of the 18th Century.

The practice of po litical liberty and religious toleration, which had been established in England since 1688, not only inspired the teaching of Locke but also as the "natural religion" of the free-thinkers, spread among the educated classes. It was founded on belief in the goodness of God and in the immortality of the soul and, in oppo sition to ascetic Christianity, which believed human nature to be essentially evil, held that it was good, simply because it was a creation of a benevolent deity. This optimism became the common foundation of natural philosophy and political economy and overthrew, among thinkers throughout Europe, the moral concepts formed by a long tradition of Christian theology. In Germany it was disseminated under the name of Au f kliirung and became the inspiration of such classic poets as Lessing, Goethe and Schiller; and it justified the new economic doctrine of laissez faire, laissez passer, which had been formulated by the French physiocrats and systematized by the Scotsman, Adam Smith. The French "philosophes," by their writings, were chiefly respon sible for the spreading of these new ideas through Europe ; and they were admirers of England, where many of them had lived and which they held up as an example to the world. Montesquieu was above all interested in political liberty; Voltaire specially advocated religious toleration ; and such writers won a European reputation, their works helping to create in the sphere of politics and morals a common public opinion among the intellectual aris tocracy of Europe.

The effect of these doctrines upon the sovereigns and their ministers since the middle of the 18th century was very unequal. Even when they admired Montesquieu they cared little for po litical liberty, and religious toleration was dearer to them only be cause it weakened the power of the clergy. Nevertheless, they were nearly all influenced by humanitarian ideas, which they sought to put into practice by founding charitable institutions, abolishing torture and cruel punishments, and adopting measures likely to result in the welfare of their subjects. A few even agreed to the liberty of industry and commerce for which the economists clamoured while protesting that their political ideal was that of the paternal despotism obtaining in China ; all were agreed in upholding the absolute power of the State and hence it came about that this form of government received in Germany the name of "enlightened despotism." This was the inspiration of Pombal in Portugal, Tanucci in Italy, Florida Blanca in Spain, Turgot in France and of the sovereigns, Frederick II. in Prussia, Catherine in Russia, Leopold of Tuscany, and above all of Joseph II. of Austria, who received the nickname of "the crowned phil osopher." The Eastern Question.—The countries which had taken part in the great wars above mentioned were successful in maintain ing peace for a quarter of a century, and the peace so established was only disturbed in Europe by the two attempts of Joseph II., in 1779 and 1785, to conquer Bavaria, for the War of American Independence, in which France fought against England in America and on the seas, did not much disturb the peace of Europe.

But in eastern Europe a serious crisis arose when Catherine II. dispatched troops to Poland to subdue the Poles. The accidental invasion of Turkish territory by Russian troops, led to the war (1 7 7 o-74) between Russia and Turkey. Austria entered into occupation of part of Poland, and Frederick II. took the oppor tunity to propose to Catherine a scheme that resulted in the first partition of Poland (17 7 2) between Prussia, Russia and Austria —the partition inspired by the principle of "compensations" (see POLAND) . The peace that was concluded with Turkey in at Kutchuk Kainardji gave Catherine an excuse for seizing the Crimea in 1783, while the war at sea afforded her the opportunity of forming the armed neutrality of the North (178o), directed against British naval supremacy.

So weak did the Ottoman empire appear that Joseph II. and Catherine entered into an alliance to partition Turkey in Europe. But the war against Turkey turned out disastrously. Austria was paralysed by revolts in Hungary and Belgium against the reforms initiated by Joseph II. and Russia was held in check by the attack made upon her by Gustavus IV. of Sweden. Catherine and Joseph were compelled to abandon their project and to conclude with the sultan the treaties of Sistowa in 1791, and of Jassy in 1792. (See also EASTERN QUESTION.)