A Short History of Europe: From Charlemagne to the Treaty of Europe (10 page)

Now the French entered the conflict, declaring war on Spain in 1635 and the Holy Roman Empire in 1636. The fighting started off badly for France. Spanish troops invaded from the south and Habsburg forces triumphed in the east, even threatening Paris before they were repulsed. When the prime movers of
the war, Cardinal Richelieu and King Louis XIII died in 1642 and 1643 respectively, the French began working to bring it to an end. However, with Swedish support, France now began to win and, following the defeats of the imperial army at the Battles of Zusmarshausen and Lens, only the imperial territories of Austria remained in Habsburg possession. French victories led to the Peace of Westphalia,
ending both the Thirty Years’ War and the Eighty Years’ War in the Netherlands.

The power of the Holy Roman Empire was limited as a result of the war and Germany was split into numerous states that enjoyed sovereignty, despite their membership of the Empire. Spain was also weakened. During the conflict, the Portuguese had ended 60 years of personal union with Spain when they elected John IV of
Braganza as king in 1640. The Spanish also lost control of the Netherlands, having to accept the independence of the Dutch Republic in the Treaty of Westphalia. France, meanwhile, became the dominant force in Europe.

The importance of the Treaty of Westphalia in the history of Europe cannot be overestimated. Apart from establishing the boundaries for many of the participants in the war, it set
the ground-rules for the modern nation state, changing forever the relationship between subject and ruler. Citizens of a country were now subject to the laws of their own national government. The last great European religious war was over.

Following the Treaty of Westphalia, France was the most powerful, as well as the most populous, state in Europe. The defeated participants
in the Thirty Years’ War – Spain and the Holy Roman Empire – were in decline and after years of war and rebellion, the French were hungry for peace and stability. When Cardinal Mazarin, France’s First Minister, died in 1661, the young Louis XIV (ruled 1643–1715) decided he would govern alone. Louis would become the embodiment of a new type of ruler, the absolute monarch, whose power is derived directly
from God and who embodies the state.

A complex mix of factors led to the rise of the absolute monarch. Following the end of feudal partitioning, power began to be centralised in the monarch, increasing the authority of the state and diminishing the power of the nobles. Further centralisation in the form of standing armies, professional bureaucracies and the acceptance of state laws by all, also
contributed.

Louis believed that the king should have total and absolute power and that, ruling by the grace of God, he enjoyed divine right. Thus, everyone and every institution owed obedience to the sovereign – nobles, parliaments, communes and corporations. Responsibilities were devolved to secretaries of state, but the final decisions lay with Louis. He insisted on control of the Church and,
despite the fact that the French had fought on the Protestant side in the Thirty Years’ War, he made life very difficult for Protestants in France. As a result, some 200,000 left the country. Absolutism also affected the arts since, in Louis’ mind, the only purpose of literature and art was to celebrate the achievements of the king. He spent astronomical sums of money on this ‘official’ art, creating
vast architectural projects such as the Palace of Versailles.

A number of other monarchs can also be said to have espoused the tenets of absolutism, most notably Peter the Great of Russia (ruled 1682–1725), the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I of Austria (ruled 1658–1705), Charles XI (ruled 1660–97) and Charles XII of Sweden (ruled 1697–1718) and Frederick the Great of Prussia (ruled 1740–86).

Under Louis XIV, France’s long struggle to curb Habsburg power in Europe continued for many years and through numerous wars. In order to protect France and, at the same time, bask in the glory of conquest, as befitting the ‘Sun King’, Louis sought to extend the French frontiers. To do this, he created a standing army, raising taxes to do so. Commanded by brilliant
generals, it became the best-trained and best-equipped army in Europe.

In 1665, France invaded the Spanish Netherlands and seven years later it was the turn of the United Provinces. Meanwhile, Montbéliard, Colmar, Strasburg, parts of the Saar and Luxembourg were annexed. The Spanish Habsburgs were unable to prevent this French expansionism and the Austrian branch was engaged in fighting off the
Turkish threat from the east. Vienna was saved in 1683 only by the intervention of the Poles, led by King John III Sobieski (ruled 1674–96). Finally the Turks were defeated by imperial forces at the Battle of Mohacs in 1687 and the Battle of Zenta in 1697.

By the time war broke out between Louis’ troops and the Habsburgs in 1689, Louis’ absolutist power in France was waning. The League of Augsburg
was formed against the French, consisting of the Catholic Habsburgs of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, as well as the Protestant nations of England and Holland. The war was brought to a close with the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick which attempted to achieve a compromise that would suit all and establish a balance of power in Europe to prevent further warfare.

Within three years, however, the War of
Spanish Succession had broken out between the Holy Roman Empire, Austria, Great Britain, the Dutch Republic, Prussia and Portugal on one side and France, Spain, Hungary and the Electorate of Bavaria on the other. It arose over a dispute about the succession to the Spanish throne by the Bourbon Philip V (ruled 1700–46), Louis XIV’s grandson. Fighting was ended by two treaties – the Treaty of Utrecht
in 1713 and the Treaty of Rastadt the following year. Philip of Anjou became King Philip V of Spain; Austria gained all of Spain’s possessions in Italy – Milan, Naples and Sicily – as well as the Spanish Netherlands; Britain gained Gibraltar, Malta and Minorca in the Mediterranean and Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in Canada, as well as a lucrative agreement to supply Spain’s colonies in the Americas
with slaves for 30 years. More than 400,000 people had died, but, critically, French power had been curbed in Europe and a balance had been achieved that would bring a welcome period of calm and relative stability.

For some monarchs, absolutist ambitions brought dire consequences. In the case of the Stuarts in England and Scotland, they resulted in revolution,
execution and, ultimately, the end of their dynasty. The crowns of England and Scotland had been united in 1603 on the death of Elizabeth I when the Stuart, James VI of Scotland, was offered the throne and also became James I of England. His son, Charles I (ruled 1625–49), made life and worship very difficult for the Protestants in Scotland and England – Presbyterians and Puritans, respectively. His
ill-considered attempt to impose the Anglican Prayerbook on the Scots resulted in them invading England. Then, as he tried to get Parliament to pay for an army to fight the Scots, they rebelled, issuing the Grand Remonstrance against him, condemning the policy that had led to this situation. Bloody civil war broke out in 1642 and Parliamentary troops, mostly Puritans, led by Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658),
defeated Charles at the Battles of Marston Moor (1644) and Naseby (1645). Charles I was eventually captured and executed in 1649.

England became a republic for the only time in its history, with Oliver Cromwell as, effectively, head of state for the next 11 years. From 1653 to 1658, he was officially designated Lord Protector of England. On Cromwell’s death, however, the Stuarts were restored
in the shape of the former king’s son, Charles II (ruled 1660–85). When Charles died, his brother, James II (ruled 1685–88) rapidly displayed that he had learned nothing from the problems encountered by their father. Indeed, he espoused the Catholic cause and even showed signs of wanting to reign as absolutely. It proved too much for the English who deposed James in a bloodless coup – the Glorious
Revolution – and offered the throne to the Protestant Dutch aristocrat, William of Orange (ruled 1689–1702), James’s son-in-law. In 1689, William and his wife, Mary (ruled 1689–94), became King and Queen of Great Britain after their acceptance of a Bill of Rights that, amongst other things, made the monarch subservient to the law of the land. Britain’s future as a constitutional monarchy was secure
and a model was created for the rest of Europe.

The conclusions of the Council of Trent had penetrated deep into society. Amongst the areas given special attention by the cardinals were the arts. The brilliance of the High Renaissance had given way in the sixteenth century to the witty, intellectual style that became known as Mannerism. The Council of Trent, however,
called for representational art that could be understood by the uneducated, illiterate masses and not just an educated elite. A generation later, that style, later to be described as ‘Baroque’, blossomed exuberantly across Europe.

Baroque artists rejected the cool restraint of neoclassicism as displayed in the Renaissance and championed a dramatic and expressive sensuousness. Artistic effects
such as
trompe l’oeil
and
chiaroscuro
delighted the viewer as did the grandiose quality of Baroque works of art, whether in the discipline of sculpture, of painting or of architecture. The magnificent naturalism of Caravaggio (1571–1610) or Annibale Carracci (1560–1609) gave painting new impetus for the first time since Raphael with technical innovation and staggering emotional impact. Artists
across Europe also developed the style in their own way – Diego Velasquez (1599–1660) in Spain, Pieter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641) in Antwerp and Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) and Jan Vermeer (1632–75) in the Netherlands.

Literature, too, was given new life. In Spain, Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) published
Don Quixote
. Meanwhile in England, William Shakespeare (1564–1616),
was creating the greatest works in the history of English literature.

Perhaps the most vivid manifestation of Baroque style was in architecture. Dramatically exuberant buildings were built, designed to demonstrate power and control and ultimately to create awe in the eye of the beholder. St Peter’s Square in Rome designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) and the Piazza Navona by Francesco
Borromini (1599–1667) in the same city provide stunningly grandiloquent examples of the architecture of the time and their influence can be seen in buildings across Europe.

The Baroque period also engendered a critical scientific revolution that at last left behind the medieval view of the world. The mathematician, Johann Kepler (1571–1630), developed the groundbreaking heliocentric view of the
universe shown in the work of Copernicus, concluding that not only the earth but also the other planets revolved around the sun. The Italian Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) showed that movement obeyed mathematical laws and demonstrated empirically that Copernicus was correct. Isaac Newton (1642–1727), working in England, developed laws of gravitation while William Harvey (1578–1657) made invaluable
discoveries about the circulation of the blood. In France, meanwhile, the great thinker, René Descartes (1596–1650), challenged absolutism with his rationalist view of the world, as discussed in his
Discours de la Méthode
. This work is often cited as sowing the seeds for the mode of thinking that would characterise the eighteenth century – the period known as the Enlightenment.

The Age of Enlightenment

The sheer joy of Baroque art and architecture had provided a little light relief for those who lived in the seventeenth century, for it had been a difficult and dangerous time to be alive. War, famine and pestilence had ravaged Europe, resulting in a population of around 100 million, a headcount that had not changed in a century. Successive poor harvests
and a lack of agricultural development did not help and a series of disastrous epidemics – smallpox, typhus and cholera – had a devastating effect. Plague was almost as virulent as in the fourteenth century and, even though the number of babies surviving birth was on the rise, it had been more than offset by the frighteningly high death rate.

Furthermore, the second half of the century had seen
Europe in deep recession, as imports of gold to Spain went into decline. Only trade prospered and Great Britain and, especially, the Netherlands were the major beneficiaries, the Channel and North Sea ports becoming the most important in the world. Dutch shipping controlled the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and they dominated the important spice trade through the Dutch East India Company, founded
in 1602, creating a large colonial empire in the process. By 1700, the British had overhauled the Dutch to become the world’s leading global trader, building an empire of their own and adding 13 colonies along the North American east coast to possessions in Canada and the West Indies. The Bank of England, founded in 1694 by a Scotsman, William Paterson, became the world’s most important financial
institution and sterling Europe’s strongest currency.

Meanwhile, across Europe, affairs were less secure, especially economically. High rents and taxes created poverty and social unrest. The nobility, enriched by the money generated by increased rents, moved to large expensively appointed town houses from their country estates and became courtiers. The rich became richer and the poor became poorer,
and angrier. Much of the seventeenth century had been blighted by clashes between lords and peasants, both in the countryside and in towns.

The horrific conflicts and diseases of the seventeenth century may have been long gone, but life was not a lot better in the eighteenth century, especially for the poor. With improvements in medicine and healthcare, the population rose, but there was barely
enough food to feed them all. Towns became overcrowded as peasants left the countryside in search of better prospects, only to find appalling living conditions. People began to realise the need for improvements in transportation, roads and safety. Town planners began to create large open spaces, providing recreational opportunities.