A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1.
by
Carlton J. H. Hayes
Part 5 out of 12
painters, the sculptors, and the architects now sought models not
exclusively in their own Christian masters but in many cases in pagan
Greek and Roman forms. Gradually the two lines of development were
brought together, and the resulting union--the adaptation of classical
art-forms to Christian uses--was marked by an unparalleled outburst of
artistic energy.
From that period of exuberant art-expression in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, our present-day love of beautiful things has come
down in unbroken succession. With no exaggeration it may be said that
the sixteenth century is as much the basis of our modern artistic life
as it is the foundation of modern Protestantism or of modern world
empire. The revolutions in commerce and religion synchronized with the
beginning of a new era in art. All arts were affected--architecture,
sculpture, painting, engraving, and music.
[Sidenote: Architecture]
In architecture, the severely straight and plain line of the ancient
Greek temples or the elegant gentle curve of the Roman dome was
substituted for the fanciful lofty Gothic. A rounded arch replaced the
pointed. And the ancient Greek orders--Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian--
were dragged from oblivion to embellish the simple symmetrical
buildings. The newer architecture was used for ecclesiastical and other
structures, reaching perhaps its highest expression in the vast
cathedral of St. Peter, which was erected at Rome in the sixteenth
century under the personal direction of great artists, among whom
Raphael and Michelangelo are numbered.
[Sidenote: In Italy]
The revival of Greek and Roman architecture, like humanism, had its
origin in Italy; and in the cities of the peninsula, under patronage of
wealthy princes and noble families, it attained its most general
acceptance. But, like humanism, it spread to other countries, which in
turn it deeply affected. The chronic wars, in which the petty Italian
states were engaged throughout the sixteenth century, were attended, as
we have seen, by perpetual foreign interference. But Italy, vanquished
in politics, became the victor in art. While her towns surrendered to
foreign armies, her architects and builders subdued Europe and brought
the Christian countries for a time under her artistic sway.
[Sidenote: In France]
Thus in France the revival was accelerated by the military campaigns of
Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I, which led to the revelation of
the architectural triumphs in Italy, the result being the importation
of great numbers of Italian designers and craftsmen. Architecture after
the Greek or Roman manner at once became fashionable. Long, horizontal
lines appeared in many public buildings, of which the celebrated palace
of the Louvre, begun in the last year of the reign of Francis I (1546),
and to-day the home of one of the world's greatest art collections, is
a conspicuous example.
[Sidenote: In Other Countries]
In the second half of the sixteenth century, the new architecture
similarly entered Spain and received encouragement from Philip II.
About the same time it manifested itself in the Netherlands and in the
Germanies. In England, its appearance hardly took place in the
sixteenth century. it was not until 1619 that a famous architect, Inigo
Jones (1573-1651), designed and reared the classical banqueting house
in Whitehall, and not until the second half of the seventeenth century
did Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723), by means of the majestic St.
Paul's cathedral in London, render the new architecture popular in
England.
[Sidenote: Sculpture]
Sculpture is usually an attendant of architecture, and it is not
surprising, therefore, that transformation of the one should be
connected with change in the other. The new movement snowed itself in
Italian sculpture as early as the fourteenth century, owing to the
influence of the ancient monuments which still abounded throughout the
peninsula and to which the humanists attracted attention. In the
fifteenth century archaeological discoveries were made and a special
interest fostered by the Florentine family of the Medici, who not only
became enthusiastic collectors of ancient works of art but promoted the
study of the antique figure. Sculpture followed more and more the Greek
and Roman traditions in form and often in subject as well. The plastic
art of Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was strikingly
akin to that of Athens in the fifth or fourth centuries before Christ.
The first great apostle of the new sculpture was Lorenzo Ghiberti
(1378-1455), whose marvelous doors on the baptistery at Florence
elicited the comment of Michelangelo that they were "worthy of being
placed at the entrance of paradise." Slightly younger than Ghiberti was
Donatello (1383-1466), who, among other triumphs, fashioned the
realistic statue of St. Mark in Venice. Luca della Robbia (1400-1482),
with a classic purity of style and simplicity of expression, founded a
whole dynasty of sculptors in glazed terra-cotta. Elaborate tomb-
monuments, the construction of which started in the fifteenth century,
reached their highest magnificence in the gorgeous sixteenth-century
tomb of Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti, the founder of the princely family
of Visconti in Milan. Michelangelo himself was as famous for his
sculpture as for his painting or his architecture; the heroic head of
his David at Florence is a work of unrivaled dignity. As the style of
classic sculpture became very popular in the sixteenth century, the
subjects were increasingly borrowed from pagan literature. Monuments
were erected to illustrious men of ancient Rome, and Greek mythology
was once more carved in stone.
The extension of the new sculpture beyond Italy was even more rapid
than the spread of the new architecture. Henry VII invited Italian
sculptors to England; Louis XII patronized the great Leonardo da Vinci,
and Francis I brought him to France. The tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella
in Spain was fashioned in classic form. The new sculpture was famous in
Germany before Luther; in fact, it was to be found everywhere in
sixteenth-century Europe.
[Sidenote: Painting]
Painting accompanied sculpture. Prior to the sixteenth century, most of
the pictures were painted directly upon the plaster walls of churches
or of sumptuous dwellings and were called frescoes, although a few were
executed on wooden panels. In the sixteenth century, however, easel
paintings--that is, detached pictures on canvas, wood, or other
material--became common. The progress in painting was not so much an
imitation of classical models as was the case with sculpture and
architecture, for the reason that painting, being one of the most
perishable of the arts, had preserved few of its ancient Greek or Roman
examples. But the artists who were interested in architecture and
sculpture were likewise naturally interested in painting; and painting,
bound by fewer antique traditions, reached a higher degree of
perfection in the sixteenth century than did any of its allied arts.
Modern painting was born in Italy. In Italy it found its four great
masters--Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian. The
first two acquired as great a fame in architecture and in sculpture as
in painting; the last two were primarily painters.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), a Florentine by birth and training, was
patronized in turn by the Sforza family of Milan, by the Medici of
Florence, and by the French royal line. His great paintings--the Holy
Supper and Madonna Lisa, usually called La Gioconda--carried to a high
degree the art of composition and the science of light and shade and
color. In fact, Leonardo was a scientific painter--he carefully studied
the laws of perspective and painstakingly carried them into practice.
He was also a remarkable sculptor, as is testified by his admirable
horses in relief. As an engineer, too, he built a canal in northern
Italy and constructed fortifications about Milan. He was a musician and
a natural philosopher as well. This many-sided man liked to toy with
mechanical devices. One day when Louis XII visited Milan, he was met by
a large mechanical lion that roared and then reared itself upon its
haunches, displaying upon its breast the coat-of-arms of France: it was
the work of Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo influenced his age perhaps more
than any other artist. He wrote extensively. He gathered about himself
a large group of disciples. And in his last years spent in France, as a
pensioner of Francis I, he encouraged painting in that country as well
as in Italy.
Michelangelo (1475-1564), Florentine like Leonardo, was probably the
most wonderful of all these artists because of his triumphs in a vast
variety of endeavors. It might almost be said of him that "jack of all
trades, he was master of all." He was a painter of the first rank, an
incomparable sculptor, a great architect, an eminent engineer, a
charming poet, and a profound scholar in anatomy and physiology.
Dividing his time between Florence and Rome, he served the Medici
family and a succession of art-loving popes. With his other qualities
of genius he combined austerity in morals, uprightness in character, a
lively patriotism for his native city and people, and a proud
independence. To give any idea of his achievements is impossible in a
book of this size. His tomb of Julius II in Rome and his colossal
statue of David in Florence are examples of his sculpture; the
cathedral of St. Peter, which he practically completed, is his most
enduring monument; the mural decorations in the Sistine Chapel at Rome,
telling on a grandiose scale the Biblical story from Creation to the
Flood, are marvels of design; and his grand fresco of the Last Judgment
is probably the most famous single painting in the world.
[Sidenote: Raphael]
Younger than Michelangelo and living only about half as long, Raphael
(1483-1520), nevertheless, surpassed him in the harmonious composition
and linear beauty of his painting. For ineffable charm of grace, "the
divine" Raphael has always stood without a peer. Raphael lived the
better part of his life at Rome under the patronage of Julius II and
Leo X, and spent several years in decorating the papal palace of the
Vatican. Although he was, for a time, architect of St. Peter's
cathedral, and displayed some aptitude for sculpture and for the
scholarly study of archæeology, it is as the greatest of modern
painters that he is now regarded. Raphael lived fortunately, always in
favor, and rich, and bearing himself like a prince.
[Sidenote: Titian]
Titian (c. 1477-1576) was the typical representative of the Venetian
school of painting which acquired great distinction in bright coloring.
Official painter for the city of Venice and patronized both by the
Emperor Charles V and by Philip II of Spain, he secured considerable
wealth and fame. He was not a man of universal genius like Leonardo da
Vinci or Michelangelo; his one great and supreme endowment was that of
oil painting. In harmony, light, and color, his work has never been
equaled. Titian's portrait of Philip II was sent to England and proved
a potent auxiliary in the suit of the Spanish king for the hand of Mary
Tudor. His celebrated picture of the Council of Trent was executed
after the aged artist's visit to the council about 1555.
From Italy as a center, great painting became the heritage of all
Europe. Italian painters were brought to France by Louis XII and
Francis I, and French painters were subsidized to imitate them. Philip
II proved himself a liberal patron of painting throughout his
dominions.
[Sidenote: Dürer]
In Germany, painting was developed by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), a
native of Nuremberg, who received a stimulus from Italian work and was
royally patronized by the Emperor Maximilian. The career of Dürer was
honored and fortunate: he was on terms of friendship with all the first
masters of his age; he even visited and painted Erasmus. But it is as
an etcher or engraver, rather than as a painter, that Dürer's
reputation was earned. His greatest engravings--such as the Knight and
Death, and St. Jerome in his Study--set a standard in a new art which
has never been reached by his successors. The first considerable
employment of engraving, one of the most useful of the arts,
synchronized with the invention of printing. Just as books were a means
of multiplying, cheapening, and disseminating ideas, so engravings on
copper or wood were the means of multiplying, cheapening, and
disseminating pictures which gave vividness to the ideas, or served in
place of books for those who could not read.
The impetus afforded by this extraordinary development of painting
continued to affect the sixteenth century and a greater part of the
seventeenth. The scene shifted, however, from Italy to the Spanish
possessions. And Spanish kings, the successors of Philip II, patronized
such men as Rubens (1577-1640) and Van Dyck (1599-1641) in the Belgian
Netherlands, or Velasquez (1590-1660) and Murillo (1617-1682) in Spain
itself.
[Sidenote: Rubens and Van Dyck]
If the work of Rubens displayed little of the earlier Italian grace and
refinement, it at any rate attained to distinction in the purely
fanciful pictures which he painted in bewildering numbers, many of
which, commissioned by Marie de' Medici and King Louis XIII of France,
are now to be seen in the Louvre galleries in Paris. And Van Dyck
raised portrait painting to unthought-of excellence: his portraits of
the English royal children and of King Charles I are world-famous.
[Sidenote: Velasquez]
[Sidenote: Murillo]
Within the last century, many connoisseurs of art have been led to
believe that Velasquez formerly has been much underrated and that he
deserves to rank with the foremost Italian masters. Certainly in all
his work there is a dignity, power, and charm, especially in that well-
known Maids of Honor, where a little Spanish princess is depicted
holding her court, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting, her dwarfs and
her mastiff, while the artist himself stands at his easel. The last
feat of Velasquez was to superintend the elaborate decorations in honor
of the marriage of the Spanish Infanta with King Louis XIV of France.
Murillo, the youngest of all these great painters, did most of his work
for the Catholic Church and naturally dealt with ecclesiastical
subjects.
A somewhat different type of painter is found in the Dutchman,
Rembrandt (1606-1669), who lived a stormy and unhappy life in the towns
of Leyden and Amsterdam. It must be remembered that Holland, while
following her national career of independence, commerce, and colonial
undertaking, had become stanchly Protestant. Neither the immoral
paganism of antiquity nor the medieval legends of Catholicism would
longer appeal to the Dutch people as fit subjects of art. Rembrandt,
prototype of a new school, therefore painted the actual life of the
people among whom he lived and the things which concerned them--lively
portraits of contemporary burgomasters, happy pictures of popular
amusements, stern scenes from the Old Testament. His Lesson in Anatomy
and his Night Watch in their somber settings, are wonderfully realistic
products of Rembrandt's mastery of the brush.
[Sidenote: Rembrandt]
[Sidenote: Music]
Thus painting, like architecture and sculpture, was perfected in
sixteenth-century Italy and speedily became the common property of
Christian Europe. Music, too, the most primitive and universal of the
arts, owes in its modern form very much to the sixteenth century.
During that period the barbarous and uncouth instruments of the middle
ages were reformed. The rebeck, to whose loud and harsh strains the
medieval rustic had danced, [Footnote: The rebeck probably had been
borrowed from the Mohammedans.] by the addition of a fourth string and
a few changes in form, became the sweet-toned violin, the most
important and expressive instrument of the modern orchestra. As
immediate forerunner of our present-day pianoforte, the harpsichord was
invented with a keyboard carried to four octaves and the chords of each
note doubled or quadrupled to obtain prolonged tones.
[Sidenote: Palestrina]
In the person of the papal organist and choir-master, Palestrina (1524-
1594), appeared the first master-composer. He is justly esteemed as the
father of modern religious music and for four hundred years the
Catholic Church has repeated his inspired accents. A pope of the
twentieth century declared his music to be still unrivaled and directed
its universal use. Palestrina directly influenced much of the Italian
music of the seventeenth century and the classical German productions
of the eighteenth.
NATIONAL LITERATURE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
[Sidenote: Latin and the Vernaculars]
Latin had been the learned language of the middle ages: it was used in
the Church, in the universities, and in polite society. If a lecturer
taught a class or an author wrote a book, Latin was usually employed.
In those very middle ages, however, the nations of western Europe were
developing spoken languages quite at variance with the classical,
scholarly tongue. These so-called vernacular languages were not often
written and remained a long time the exclusive means of expression of
the lower classes--they consequently not only differed from each other
but tended in each case to fall into a number of petty local dialects.
So long as they were not largely written, they could achieve no fixity,
and it was not until after the invention of printing that the national
languages produced extensive national literatures.
Just when printing was invented, the humanists--the foremost scholars
of Europe--were diligently engaged in strengthening the position of
Latin by encouraging the study of the pagan classics. Virgil, Cicero,
Caesar, Tacitus, and the comedies of Plautus and Terence were again
read by educated people for their substance and for their style.
Petrarch imitated the manner of Latin classics in his letters; Erasmus
wrote his great works in Latin. The revival of Greek, which was also
due to the humanists, added to the learning and to the literature of
the cultured folk, but Greek, even more than Latin, was hardly
understood or appreciated by the bulk of the people.
Then came the sixteenth century, with its artistic developments, its
national rivalries, its far-away discoveries, its theological debates,
and its social and religious unrest. The common people, especially the
commercial middle class, clamored to understand: and the result was the
appearance of national literatures on a large scale. Alongside of
Latin, which was henceforth restricted to the liturgy of the Roman
Catholic Church and to particularly learned treatises, there now
emerged truly literary works in Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese,
German, English, etc. The printing of these works at once stereotyped
their respective languages, so that since the sixteenth century the
written forms of the vernacular tongues have been subject to relatively
minor change. Speaking generally, the sixteenth century witnessed the
fixing of our best known modern languages.
To review all the leading writers who employed the various vernaculars
in the sixteenth century would encroach too much upon the province of
professed histories of comparative literature, but a few references to
certain figures that tower head and shoulders above all others in their
respective countries may serve to call vividly to mind the importance
of the period for national literatures.
[Sidenote: Italian Literature]
At the very outset, one important exception must be made in favor of
Italy, whose poetry and prose had already been immortalized by Dante,
Petrarch, and Boccaccio a hundred years and more before the opening of
the sixteenth century. But that country, as we have already repeatedly
observed in many kinds of art, anticipated all others in modern times.
Italy, almost the last European land to be politically unified, was the
first to develop a great national literature.
But Italian literature was broadened and popularized by several
influential writers in the sixteenth century, among whom stand
preeminent the Florentine diplomat Machiavelli (1469-1527), whose
_Prince_ really founded the modern science of politics, and who
taught the dangerous doctrine that a ruler, bent on exercising a
benevolent despotism, is justified in employing any means to achieve
his purpose; Ariosto (1474-1533), whose great poem _Orlando
Furioso_ displayed a powerful imagination no less than a rare and
cultivated taste; and the unhappy mad Tasso (1544-1595), who in
_Jerusalem Delivered_ produced a bulky epic poem, adapting the
manner of Virgil to a crusading subject, and in Aminta gave to his
countrymen a delightful pastoral drama, the exquisite lyrics of which
were long sung in opera.
[Sidenote: French literature]
French literature, like other French art, was encouraged by Francis I.
He set up printing presses, established the College of France, and
pensioned native writers. The most famous French author of the time was
the sarcastic and clever Rabelais (c. 1490-1553), whose memorable
_Gargantua_ comprised a series of daring fanciful tales, told with
humor of a rather vulgar sort. The language of _Gargantua_ is
somewhat archaic--perhaps the French version of Calvin's
_Institutes_ would be a better example of the French of the
sixteenth century. But France, thus seriously beginning her national
literature, was to wait for its supremacy until the seventeenth
century--until the institution of the French Academy and the age of
Louis XIV.
[Sidenote: Spanish Literature]
Spanish literature flourished in the golden era when Velasquez and
Murillo were painting their masterpieces. The immortal _Don
Quixote_, which was published in 1604, entitles its author,
Cervantes (1547-1616), to rank with the greatest writers of all time.
Lope de Vega (1562-1635), far-famed poet, virtually founded the Spanish
theater and is said to have composed eighteen hundred dramatic pieces.
Calderon (1600-1681), although less effective in his numerous dramas,
wrote allegorical poems of unequaled merit. The printing of large cheap
editions of many of these works made Spanish literature immediately
popular.
[Sidenote: Portuguese Literature]
How closely the new vernacular literatures reflected significant
elements in the national life is particularly observable in the case of
Portugal. It was of the wonderful exploring voyages of Vasco da Gama
that Camoens (1524-1580), prince of Portuguese poets, sang his stirring
_Lusiads_.
[Sidenote: German Literature]
In the Germanies, the extraordinary influence of humanism at first
militated against the development of literature in the vernacular, but
the Protestant reformer, Martin Luther, in his desire to reach the ears
of the common people, turned from Latin to German. Luther's translation
of the Bible constitutes the greatest monument in the rise of modern
German.
To speak of what our own English language and literature owe to the
sixteenth century seems superfluous. The popular writings of Chaucer in
the fourteenth century were historically important, but the presence of
very many archaic words makes them now difficult to read. But in
England, from the appearance in 1551 of the English version of Sir
Thomas More's _Utopia_, [Footnote: Originally published in Latin
in 1516.] a representation of an ideal state, to the publication of
Milton's grandiose epic, _Paradise Lost_, in 1667, there was a
continuity of great literature. There were Cranmer's Book of Common
Prayer and the King James Version of the Bible; Edmund Spenser's
graceful _Faerie Queene_; [Footnote: For its scenery and mechanism, the
Orlando Furioso of Ariosto furnished the framework; and it similarly
shows the influence of Tasso.] the supreme Shakespeare; Ben Jonson and
Marlowe; Francis Bacon and Richard Hooker; Thomas Hobbes and Jeremy
Taylor; and the somber Milton himself.
BEGINNINGS OF MODERN NATURAL SCIENCE
[Sidenote: Two-fold Development of Culture, Science and Art]
Human civilization, or culture, always depends upon progress in two
directions--the reason, and the feelings or emotions. Art is the
expression of the latter, and science of the former. Every great period
in the world's history, therefore, is marked by a high appreciation of
aesthetics and an advance in knowledge. To this general rule, the
sixteenth century was no exception, for it was distinguished not only
by a wonderful development of architecture, sculpture, painting,
engraving, music, and literature,--whether Roman, Greek, or
vernacular,--but it is the most obvious starting point of our modern
ideas of natural and experimental science.
Nowadays, we believe that science is at once the legitimate means and
the proper goal of the progress of the race, and we fill our school
curricula with scientific studies. But this spirit is essentially
modern: it owes its chief stimulus to important achievements in the
sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth.
[Sidenote: Characteristics of the Sixteenth Century]
Five elements contributed to impress the period that we are now
reviewing with a scientific character. In the first place, the
humanists encouraged a critical spirit in comparing and contrasting
ancient manuscripts and in investigating the history of the distant
past; and their discovery and application of pagan writings served to
bring clearly and abruptly before the educated people of the sixteenth
century all that the Greeks and Romans had done in astronomy, physics,
mathematics, and medicine, as well as in philosophy, art, and
literature. Secondly, the invention of printing itself was a scientific
feat, and its extended use enabled scientists, no less than artists,
immediately to acquaint the whole civilized world with their ideas and
demonstrations.
Thirdly, the marvelous maritime discoveries of new routes to India and
of a new world, which revolutionized European commerce, added much to
geographical knowledge and led to the construction of scientific maps
of the earth's surface. Fourthly, the painstaking study of a small
group of scholars afforded us our first glimpse of the real character
of the vast universe about our own globe--the scientific basis of
modern astronomy. Lastly, two profound thinkers, early in the
seventeenth century,--Francis Bacon and Descartes,--pointed out new
ways of using the reason--the method of modern science.
In an earlier chapter, an account has been given of the maritime
discoveries of the sixteenth century and their immediate results in
broadening intellectual interests. In this chapter, some attention
already has been devoted to the rise of humanism and likewise to the
invention of printing. It remains, therefore, to say a few words about
the changes in astronomy and in scientific method that characterized
the beginning of modern times.
[Side Note: Astronomy]
In the year 1500 the average European knew something about the universe
of sun, moon, planets, and stars, but it was scarcely more than the
ancient Greeks had known, and its chief use was to foretell the future.
This practical aspect of astronomy was a curious ancient misconception,
which now passes under the name of astrology. It was popularly believed
prior to the sixteenth century that every heavenly body exerted a
direct and arbitrary influence upon human character and events,
[Footnote: Disease was attributed to planetary influence. This
connection between medicine and astrology survives in the sign of
Jupiter 4, which still heads medicinal prescriptions.] and that by
casting "horoscopes," showing just how the stars appeared at the birth
of any person, the subsequent career of such an one might be foreseen.
Many silly notions and superstitions grew up about astrology, yet the
practice persisted. Charles V and Francis I, great rivals in war, vied
with each other in securing the services of most eminent astrologers,
and Catherine de' Medici never tired of reading horoscopes.
[Sidenote: "The Ptolemaic System"]
Throughout the middle ages the foremost scholars had continued to
cherish the astronomical knowledge of the Greeks, which had been
conveniently collected and systematized by a celebrated mathematician
and scholar living in Egypt in the second century of the Christian era
--Ptolemy by name. Among other theories and ideas, Ptolemy taught that
the earth is the center of the universe, that revolving about it are
the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, the other planets, and the fixed
stars, and that the entire machine is turned with incredible velocity
completely around every twenty-four hours. This so-called Ptolemaic
system of astronomy fitted in very nicely with the language of the
Bible and with the popular prejudice that the earth remains stationary
while the heavenly bodies daily rise and set. It was natural that for
many centuries the Christians should accept the views of Ptolemy as
almost divinely inspired.
[Sidenote: "The Copernican System"]
However, a contradictory theory of the solar system was propounded and
upheld in the sixteenth century, quite supplanting the Ptolemaic theory
in the course of the seventeenth. The new system is called Copernican
after its first modern exponent--and its general acceptance went far to
annihilate astrology and to place astronomy upon a rational basis.
Copernicus [the Latin form of his real name, Koppernigk (1473-1543)]
was a native of Poland, who divided his time between official work for
the Catholic Church and private researches in astronomy. It was during
a ten-year sojourn in Italy (1496-1505), studying canon law and
medicine, and familiarizing himself, through humanistic teachers, with
ancient Greek astronomers, that Copernicus was led seriously to
question the Ptolemaic system and to cast about in search of a truthful
substitute. Thenceforth for many years he studied and reflected, but it
was not until the year of his death (1543) that his results were
published to the world. His book--_On the Revolutions of the
Celestial Bodies_, dedicated to Pope Paul III--offered the theory
that the earth is not the center of the universe but simply one of a
number of planets which revolve about the sun. The earth seemed much
less important in the Copernican universe than in the Ptolemaic.
The Copernican thesis was supported and developed by two distinguished
astronomers at the beginning of the next century--Kepler (1571-1630)
and Galileo (1564-1642), one a German, the other an Italian. Kepler
taught astronomy for a number of years at Gratz and subsequently made
his home in Prague, where he acquired a remarkable collection of
instruments [Footnote: From Tycho Brahe, whose assistant he was in
1600-1601.] that enabled him to conduct numerous interesting
experiments. While he entertained many fantastic and mystical theories
of the "harmony of the spheres" and was not above casting horoscopes
for the emperor and for Wallenstein, that soldier of fortune,
[Footnote: See below, pp. 223, 226.] he nevertheless established
several of the fundamental laws of modern astronomy, such as those
governing the form and magnitude of the planetary orbits. It was Kepler
who made clear that the planets revolve about the sun in elliptical
rather than in strictly circular paths.
Galileo popularized the Copernican theory. [Footnote: Another
"popularizer" was Giordano Bruno (c. 1548-1600).] His charming lectures
in the university of Padua, where he taught from 1592 to 1610, were so
largely attended that a hall seating 2000 had to be provided. In 1609
he perfected a telescope, which, although hardly more powerful than a
present-day opera glass, showed unmistakably that the sun was turning
on its axis, that Jupiter was attended by revolving moons, and that the
essential truth of the Copernican system was established. Unfortunately
for Galileo, his enthusiastic desire to convert the pope immediately to
his own ideas got him into trouble with the Roman Curia and brought
upon him a prohibition from further writing. Galileo submitted like a
loyal Catholic to the papal decree, but had he lived another hundred
years, he would have rejoiced that almost all men of learning--popes
included--had come to accept his own conclusions. Thus modern astronomy
was suggested by Copernicus, developed by Kepler, and popularized by
Galileo.
The acquisition of sound knowledge in astronomy and likewise in every
other science rests primarily upon the observation of natural facts or
phenomena and then upon deducing rational conclusions from such
observation. Yet this seemingly simple rule had not been continuously
and effectively applied in any period of history prior to the sixteenth
century. The scientific method of most of the medieval as well as of
the ancient scholars was essentially that of Aristotle. [Footnote:
Exception to this sweeping generalization must be made in favor of
several medieval scientists and philosophers, including--Roger Bacon, a
Franciscan friar of the thirteenth century.] This so-called deductive
method of Aristotle assumed as a starting-point some general of
principle as a premise or hypothesis and thence proceeded, by logical
reasoning, to deduce concrete applications or consequences. It had been
extremely valuable in stimulating the logical faculties and in showing
men how to draw accurate conclusions, but it had shown a woeful
inability to devise new general principles. It evolved an elaborate
theology and a remarkable philosophy, but natural experimental science
progressed relatively little until the deductive method of Aristotle
was supplemented by the inductive method of Francis Bacon.
[Sidenote: Modern Method of Science: Introduction. Francis Bacon]
Aristotle was partially discredited by radical humanists, who made fun
of the medieval scholars who had taken him most seriously, and by the
Protestant reformers, who assailed the Catholic theology which had been
carefully constructed by Aristotelian deduction. But it was reserved
for Francis Bacon, known as Lord Bacon (1561-1626), to point out all
the shortcomings of the ancient method and to propose a practicable
supplement. A famous lawyer, lord chancellor of England under James I,
a born scientist, a brilliant essayist, he wrote several philosophical
works of first-rate importance, of which the _Advancement of
Learning_ (1604) and the _Novum Organum_ (1620) are the most
famous. It is in these works that he summed up the faults which the
widening of knowledge in his own day was disclosing in ancient and
medieval thought and set forth the necessity of slow laborious
observation of facts as antecedent to the assumption of any general
principle.
[Sidenote: Descartes]
What of scientific method occurred to Lord Bacon appealed even more to
the intellectual genius of the Frenchman Descartes (1596-1660). A
curious combination of sincere practicing Catholic and of original
daring rationalist was this man, traveling all about Europe, serving as
a soldier in the Netherlands, in Bavaria, in Hungary, living in
Holland, dying in Sweden, with a mind as restless as his body. Now
interested in mathematics, now in philosophy, presently absorbed in
physics or in the proof of man's existence, throughout his whole career
he held fast to the faith that science depends not upon the authority
of books but upon the observation of facts. "Here are my books," he
told a visitor, as he pointed to a basket of rabbits that he was about
to dissect. The _Discourse on Method_ (1637) and the _Principles
of Philosophy_ (1644), taken in conjunction with Bacon's work,
ushered in a new scientific era, to some later phases of which we shall
have occasion to refer in subsequent chapters.
ADDITIONAL READING
THE RENAISSANCE. GENERAL. _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. I (1902),
ch. xvi, xvii; _Histoire générale_, Vol. IV, ch. vii, viii, Vol. V, ch.
x, xi; E. M. Hulme, _Renaissance and Reformation_, 2d ed. (1915), ch.
v-vii, xix, xxix, xxx. More detailed accounts: Jakob Burckhardt, _The
Civilization of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy_, trans. by S.
G. C. Middlemore, 2 vols. (1878), 1 vol. ed. (1898), scholarly and
profound; J. A. Symonds, _Renaissance in Italy_, 5 parts in 7 vols.
(1897-1898), interesting and suggestive but less reliable than
Burckhardt; Ludwig Geiger, _Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und
Deutschland_ (1882), in the great Oncken Series; F. X. Kraus,
_Geschichte der christlichen Kunst_, 2 vols. in 4 (1896-1908), a
monumental work of great interest and importance, by a German Catholic.
HUMANISM. The best description of the rise and spread of humanism is J.
E. Sandys, _A History of Classical Scholarship_, Vol. II (1908). For
the spirit of early humanism see H. C. Hollway-Calthrop, _Petrarch: his
Life and Times_ (1907); J. H. Robinson and H. W. Rolfe, _Petrarch, the
First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters_, 2d ed. (1914), a selection
from Petrarch's letters to Boccaccio and other contemporaries,
translated into English, with a valuable introduction; Pierre de
Nolhac, _Pétrarque et l'humanisme_, 2d ed., 2 vols. in 1 (1907). Of the
antecedents of humanism a convenient summary is presented by Louise
Loomis, _Mediæval Hellenism_ (1906). A popular biography of Erasmus is
that of Ephraim Emerton, _Desiderius Erasmus_ (1899); the Latin
_Letters of Erasmus_ are now (1916) in course of publication by P. S.
Allen; F. M. Nichols, _The Epistles of Erasmus_, 2 vols. (1901-1906),
an excellent translation of letters written prior to 1517; Erasmus's
_Praise of Folly_, in English translation, is obtainable in many
editions. D. F. Strauss, _Ulrich von Hutten, his Life and Times_,
trans. by Mrs. G. Sturge (1874), gives a good account of the whole
humanistic movement and treats Hutten very sympathetically; _The
Letters of Obscure Men_, to which Hutten contributed, were published,
with English translation, by F. G. Stokes in 1909. An excellent edition
of _The Utopia_ of Sir Thomas More, the famous English humanist, is
that of George Sampson (1910), containing also an English translation
and the charming contemporary _Biography_ by More's son-in-law, William
Roper. The standard summary of the work of the humanists is the German
writing of Georg Voigt, _Die Wiederbelebung des classischen
Alterthums_, 3d ed., 2 vols. (1893). Interesting extracts from the
writings of a considerable variety of humanists are translated by
Merrick Whitcomb in his _Literary Source Books_ of the Renaissance in
Germany and in Italy (1898-1899).
INVENTION OF PRINTING. T. L. De Vinne, _Invention of Printing_, 2d
ed. (1878), and, by the same author, _Notable Printers of Italy
during the Fifteenth Century_ (1910), two valuable works by an
eminent authority on the subject; G. H. Putnam, _Books and their
Makers during the Middle Ages_, 2 vols. (1896-1897), a useful
contribution of another experienced publisher; Johannes Janssen,
_History of the German People_, Vol. I, Book I, ch. i. There is an
interesting essay on "Publication before Printing" by R. K. Root in the
_Publications of the Modern Language Association_, Vol. XXVIII
(1913), pp. 417-431.
NATIONAL LITERATURES. Among the many extended bibliographies of
national literatures the student certainly should be familiar with the
_Cambridge History of English Literature_, ed. by A. W. Ward and
A. R. Waller, 12 vols. (1907-1916); and with G. Lanson, _Manuel
bibliographique de la littérature française moderne_, 1500-1900, 4
vols. (1909-1913). See also, as suggestive references, Pasquale
Villari, _The Life and Times of Machiavelli_, 2 vols. in i (1898);
A. A. Tilley, _The Literature of the French Renaissance_, 2 vols.
(1904); George Saintsbury, _A History of Elizabethan Literature_
(1887); and Sir Sidney Lee, _Life of Shakespeare_, new rev. ed.
(1915).
ART IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. Architecture: A. D. F. Hamlin, _A
Textbook of the History of Architecture_, 5th ed. (1902), a brief
general survey; _A History of Architecture_, Vols. I, II by Russell
Sturgis (1906), III, IV by A. L. Frothingham (1915); Banister Fletcher,
_A History of Architecture_, 5th ed. (1905); James Fergusson, _History
of Architecture in All Countries_, 3d rev. ed., 5 vols. (1891-1899).
Sculpture: Allan Marquand and A. L. Frothingham, _A Text-book of the
History of Sculpture_ (1896); Wilhelm von Lubke, _History of
Sculpture_, Eng. trans., 2 vols. (1872). Painting: J. C. Van Dyke, _A
Text-book of the History of Painting_, new rev. ed. (1915); Alfred von
Woltmann and Karl Woermann, _History of Painting_, Eng. trans., 2 vols.
(1894). Music: W. S. Pratt, _The History of Music_ (1907). See also the
_Lives of Seventy of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and
Architects_ by Giorgio Vasari (1512-1574), the contemporary and friend
of Michelangelo, trans. by Mrs. Foster in the Bohn Library; Osvald
Siren, _Leonardo da Vinci: the Artist and the Man_ (1915); and Romain
Rolland, _Michelangelo_ (1915).
SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. _Cambridge Modem
History_, Vol. V (1908), ch. xxiii, Vol. IV (1906), ch. xxvii,
scholarly accounts of Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, and their
contemporaries. A veritable storehouse of scientific facts is H. S. and
E. H. Williams, _A History of Science_, 10 vols. (1904-1910).
Specifically, see Arthur Berry, _Short History of Astronomy_ (1899);
Karl von Gebler, _Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia_, Eng. trans. by
Mrs. George Sturge (1879); B. L. Conway, _The Condemnation of Galileo_
(1913); and Galileo, _Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences_, Eng.
trans. by Crew and Salvio (1914). _The Philosophical Works of Francis
Bacon_, ed. by J. M. Robertson (1905), is a convenient edition. On the
important thinkers from the time of Machiavelli to the middle of the
eighteenth century, see Harald Hoffding, _A History of Modern
Philosophy_, Vol. I (1900); W. A. Dunning, _A History of Political
Theories from Luther to Montesquieu_ (1905); Paul Janet, _Histoire de
la science politique dans ses rapports avec la morale_, 3d ed., Vol. II
(1887).
PART II
DYNASTIC AND COLONIAL RIVALRY
In the seventeenth century and in the greater part of the eighteenth,
public attention was directed chiefly toward dynastic and colonial
rivalries. In the European group of national states, France was the
most important. Politically the French evolved a form of absolutist
divine-right monarchy, which became the pattern of all European
monarchies, that of England alone excepted. In international affairs
the reigning family of France--the Bourbon dynasty after a long
struggle succeeded in humiliating the rulers of Spain and of Austria--
the Habsburg dynasty. The hegemony which, in the sixteenth century,
Spain had exercised in the newly established state-system of Europe was
now supplanted by that of France. Intellectually, too, Italian
leadership yielded to French, until France set the fashion alike in
manners, morals, and art. Only in the sphere of commerce and trade and
exploitation of lands beyond the seas was French supremacy questioned,
and there not by declining Portugal or Spain but by the vigorous
English nation. France, victorious in her struggle for dynastic
aggrandizement on the continent of Europe, was destined to suffer
defeat in her efforts to secure colonies in Asia and America.
This period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was marked
likewise by the constant decay of old political and social institutions
in Italy and in Germany, by the gradual decline of the might and
prestige of the Ottoman Turks, and by the extinction of the ancient
kingdom of Poland. In their place appeared as great world powers the
northern monarchies of Prussia and Russia, whose royal lines--
Hohenzollerns and Romanovs--were to vie in ambition and prowess, before
the close of the period, with Habsburgs and Bourbons.
Socially, the influence of nobles and clergy steadily declined. As
steadily arose the numbers, the ability, and the importance of the
traders and commercial magnates, the moneyed people, all those who were
identified with the new wealth that the Commercial Revolution was
creating, the lawyers, the doctors, the professors, the merchants,--the
so-called middle class, the _bourgeoisie_, who gradually grew
discontented with the restrictive institutions of their time. Within
the _bourgeoisie_ was the seed of revolution: they would one day in
their own interests overturn monarchy, nobility, the Church, the whole
social fabric. That was to be the death-knell of the old regime--the
annunciation of the nineteenth century.
CHAPTER VI
THE GROWTH OF ABSOLUTISM IN FRANCE AND THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN BOURBONS
AND HABSBURGS, 1589-1661
GROWTH OF ABSOLUTISM IN FRANCE: HENRY IV, RICHELIEU, AND MAZARIN
For the first time in many years France in 1598 was at peace. The Edict
of Nantes, which in that year accorded qualified religious toleration
to the Huguenots, removed the most serious danger to internal order,
and the treaty of Vervins, concluded in the same year with the king of
Spain, put an end to a long and exhausting foreign war. Henry IV was
now free to undertake the internal reformation of his country.
Sorry, indeed, was the plight of France at the close of the sixteenth
century. Protracted civil and foreign wars had produced their
inevitable consequences. The state was nearly bankrupt. Country
districts lay largely uncultivated. Towns were burned or abandoned.
Roads were rough and neglected, and bridges in ruins. Many of the
discharged soldiers turned highwaymen, pillaged farmhouses, and robbed
travelers. Trade was at a standstill and the artisans of the cities
were out of work. During the wars, moreover, great noblemen had taken
many rights into their own hands and had acquired a habit of not
obeying the king. The French crown seemed to be in danger of losing
what power it had gained in the fifteenth century.
That the seventeenth century was to witness not a diminution but a
pronounced increase of royal power, was due to the character of the
French king at this critical juncture. Henry IV (1589-1610) was strong
and vivacious. With his high forehead, sparkling eyes, smiling mouth,
and his neatly pointed beard (_Henri quatre_), he was
prepossessing in looks, while his affability, simplicity, and constant
expression of interest in the welfare of his subjects earned him the
appellation of "Good King Henry." His closest companions knew that he
was selfish and avaricious, but that his quick decisions were likely to
be good and certain to be put in force. Above all, Henry had soldierly
qualities and would brook no disloyalty or disobedience.
[Sidenote: Sully]
Throughout his reign, Henry IV was well served by his chief minister,
the duke of Sully, [Footnote: 1560-1641.] an able, loyal, upright
Huguenot, though avaricious like the king and subject to furious fits
of jealousy and temper. Appointed to the general oversight of financial
affairs, Sully made a tour of inspection throughout the country and
completely reformed the royal finances. He forbade provincial governors
to raise money on their own authority, removed many abuses of tax-
collecting, and by an honest, rigorous administration was able between
1600 and 1610 to save an average of a million livres a year. The king
zealously upheld Sully's policy of retrenchment: he reduced the
subsidies to artists and the grants to favorites, and retained only a
small part of his army, sufficient to overawe rebellious nobles and to
restore order and security throughout the realm. To promote and
preserve universal peace, he even proposed the formation of a World
Confederation--his so-called "Grand Design"--which, however, came to
naught through the mutual jealousies and rival ambitions of the various
European sovereigns. It proved to be much too early to talk
convincingly of general pacifism and disarmament.
[Sidenote: Agricultural Development]
While domestic peace was being established and provision was being made
for immediate financial contingencies, Henry IV and his great minister
were both laboring to increase the resources of their country and
thereby to promote the prosperity and contentment of the people. Sully
believed that the true wealth of the nation lay in farming pursuits,
and, therefore, agriculture should be encouraged even, if necessary, to
the neglect of trade and industry. While the king allowed Sully to
develop the farming interests, he himself encouraged the new commercial
classes.
In order to promote agriculture, Sully urged the abolition of interior
customs lines and the free circulation of grain, subsidized stock
raising, forbade the destruction of the forests, drained swamps,
rebuilt the roads and bridges, and planned a vast system of canals.
On his side, Henry IV was contributing to the wealth of the middle
class. It was he who introduced silkworms and the mulberry trees, on
which they feed, thereby giving an impetus to the industry which is now
one of the most important in France. The beginnings of the industrial
importance of Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles date from the reign of Henry
IV.
The king likewise encouraged commerce. A French merchant marine was
built up by means of royal bounties. A navy was started. Little by
little the French began to compete for trade on the high seas at first
with the Dutch, and subsequently with the English. French trading posts
were established in India; and Champlain was dispatched to the New
World to lay the foundations of a French empire in America. It was
fortunate for France that she had two men like Henry IV and Sully, each
supplementing the work of the other.
The assassination of Henry IV by a crazed fanatic in 1610 threatened
for a time to nullify the effects of his labors, for supreme power
passed to his widow, Marie de' Medici, an ambitious but incompetent
woman, who dismissed Sully and undertook to act as regent for her nine-
year-old son, Louis XIII. The queen-regent was surrounded by worthless
favorites and was hated by the Huguenots, who feared her rigid
Catholicism, and by the nobles, Catholic and Huguenot alike, who were
determined to maintain their privileges and power.
The hard savings of Henry IV were quickly exhausted, and France once
more faced a financial crisis. In this emergency the Estates-General
was again convened (1614). Since the accession of Louis XI (1461), the
French monarchs with their absolutist tendencies had endeavored to
remove this ancient check upon their authority: they had convoked it
only in times of public confusion or economic necessity. Had the
Estates-General really been an effective body in 1614, it might have
taken a position similar to that of the seventeenth-century Parliament
in England and established constitutional government in France, but its
organization and personnel militated against such heroic action. The
three estates--clergy, nobles, and commoners (bourgeois)--sat
separately in as many chambers; the clergy and nobles would neither tax
themselves nor cooperate with the Third Estate; the commoners, many of
whom were Huguenots, were disliked by the court, despised by the First
and Second Estates, and quite out of sympathy with the peasants, the
bulk of the French nation. It is not surprising, under the
circumstances, that the session of 1614 lasted but three weeks and
ended as a farce: the queen-regent locked up the halls and sent the
representatives home--she needed the room for a dance, she said. It was
not until the momentous year of 1789--after a lapse of 175 years--that
the Estates-General again assembled.
After the fiasco of 1614, affairs went from bad to worse. Nobles and
Huguenots contended between themselves, and both against the court
favorites. As many as five distinct uprisings occurred. Marie de'
Medici was forced to relinquish the government, but Louis XIII, on
reaching maturity, gave evidence of little executive ability. The king
was far more interested in music and hunting than in business of state.
No improvement appeared until Cardinal Richelieu assumed the guidance
of affairs of state in 1624. Henceforth, the royal power was exercised
not so much by Louis XIII as by his great minister.
[Sidenote: Cardinal Richelieu]
Born of a noble family of Poitou, Armand de Richelieu (1585-1642), at
the age of twenty-one had been appointed bishop of the small diocese of
Luçon. His eloquence and ability as spokesman for the clergy in the
fatuous Estates-General of 1614 attracted the notice of Marie de'
Medici, who invited him to court, gave him a seat in the royal council,
and secured his nomination as a cardinal of the Roman Church. From 1624
until his death in 1642, Richelieu was the most important man in
France.
With undoubted loyalty and imperious will, with the most delicate
diplomacy and all the blandishments of subtle court intrigue, sometimes
with sternest and most merciless cruelty, Richelieu maintained his
influence over the king and proceeded to destroy the enemies of the
French crown.
[Sidenote: Richelieu's Policies]
Richelieu's policies were quite simple: (1) To make the royal power
supreme in France; (2) to make France predominant in Europe. The first
involved the removal of checks upon royal authority and the triumph of
absolutism; the second meant a vigorous foreign policy, leading to the
humiliation of the rival Habsburgs. In both these policies Richelieu
was following the general traditions of the preceding century,
essentially those of Henry IV, but to an exaggerated extent and with
unparalleled success. Postponing consideration of general European
affairs, let us first see what the great cardinal accomplished in
France.
[Sidenote: Disappearance of Representative Government]
First of all, Richelieu disregarded the Estates-General. He was
convinced of its futility and unhesitatingly declined to consult it.
Gradually the idea became current that the Estates-General was an out-
worn, medieval institution, totally unfit for modern purposes, and that
official business could best--and therefore properly--be conducted, not
by the representatives of the chief social classes in the nation, but
by personal appointees of the king. Thus the royal council became the
supreme lawmaking and administrative body in the country.
Local estates, or parliaments, continued to exist in certain of the
most recently acquired provinces of France, such as Brittany, Provence,
Burgundy, and Languedoc, but they had little influence except in
apportioning taxes: Richelieu tampered with their privileges and vetoed
many of their acts.
[Sidenote: The Royal Army]
The royal prerogative extended not only to matters of taxation and
legislation, including the right to levy taxes and to make expenditures
for any purpose without public accounting, but it was preserved and
enforced by means of a large standing army, which received its pay and
its orders exclusively from the crown. To the royal might, as well as
to its right, Richelieu contributed. He energetically aided Louis XIII
in organizing and equipping what proved to be the best army in Europe.
Two factions in the state aroused the cardinal's ire--one the
Huguenots, and the other the nobles--for both threatened the autocracy
which he was bent upon erecting. Both factions suffered defeat and
humiliation at his hands.
Richelieu, though a cardinal of the Roman Church, was more politician
and statesman than ecclesiastic; though living in an age of religious
fanaticism, he was by no means a bigot. As we shall presently see, this
Catholic cardinal actually gave military support to Protestants in
Germany--for political purposes; it was similarly for political
purposes that he attacked the Protestants in France.
As has already been pointed out, French Protestantism meant an
influential political party as well as a religion. Since Henry IV had
issued the Edict of Nantes, the Huguenots had had their own assemblies,
officers, judges, and even certain fortified towns, all of which
interfered with the sovereign authority and impaired that uniformity
which thoughtful royalists believed to be the very cornerstone of
absolutism. Richelieu had no desire to deprive the Huguenots of
religious freedom, but he was resolved that in political matters they
should obey the king. Consequently, when they revolted in 1625, he
determined to crush them. In spite of the considerable aid which
England endeavored to give them, the Huguenots were entirely subdued.
Richelieu's long siege of La Rochelle, lasting nearly fifteen months,
showed his forceful resolution. When the whole country had submitted,
the Edict of Alais was published (1629), leaving to the Protestants
freedom of conscience and of worship but depriving them of their
fortifications and forbidding them to hold assemblies. Public office
was still open to them and their representatives kept their judicial
posts. "The honest Huguenot retained all that he would have been
willing to protect with his life, while the factious and turbulent
Huguenot was deprived of the means of embarrassing the government."
The repression of the nobles was a similar statesmanlike achievement,
and one made in the face of redoubtable opposition. It had long been
customary to name noblemen as governors of the various provinces, but
the governors had gradually become masters instead of administrators:
they commanded detachments of the army; they claimed allegiance of the
garrisons in their towns; they repeatedly and openly defied the royal
will. The country, moreover, was sprinkled with noblemen's castles or
_châteaux_, protected by fortifications and armed retainers,
standing menaces to the prompt execution of the king's orders. Finally,
the noblemen at court, jealous of the cardinal's advancement and
spurred on by the intrigues of the disaffected Marie de' Medici or of
the king's own brother, hampered the minister at every turn. Of such
intolerable conditions, Richelieu determined to be quit.
Into the ranks of noble courtiers, Richelieu struck terror. By means of
spies and trickery, he ferreted out conspiracies and arbitrarily put
their leaders to death. Every attempt at rebellion was mercilessly
punished, no matter how exalted in rank the rebel might be. Richelieu
was never moved by entreaties or threats--he was as inexorable as fate
itself.
[Sidenote: Demolition of Private Fortifications ]
The cardinal did not confine his attention to noblemen at court. As
early as 1626 he published an edict ordering the immediate demolition
of all fortified castles not needed for defense against foreign
invasion. In carrying this edict into force, Richelieu found warm
supporters in peasantry and townsfolk who had long suffered from the
exactions and depredations of their noble but warlike neighbors. The
ruins of many a _chateau_ throughout modern France bear eloquent
witness to the cardinal's activity.
[Sidenote: Centralization of Administration]
[Sidenote: The Intendants]
Another enduring monument to Richelieu was the centralization of French
administration. The great minister was tired of the proud, independent
bearing of the noble governors. Without getting rid of them altogether,
he checked these proud officials by transferring most of their powers
to a new kind of royal officer, the intendant. Appointed by the crown
usually from among the intelligent, loyal middle class, each intendant
had charge of a certain district, supervising therein the assessment
and collection of royal taxes, the organization of local police or
militia, the enforcement of order, and the conduct of courts. These
intendants, with their wide powers of taxation, police, and justice,
were later dubbed, from their approximate number, the "thirty tyrants"
of France. But they owed their positions solely to the favor of the
crown; they were drawn from a class whose economic interests were long
and well served by the royal power; and their loyalty to the king,
therefore, could be depended upon. The intendants constantly made
reports to, and received orders from, the central government at Paris.
They were so many eyes, all over the kingdom, for an ever-watchful
Richelieu. And in measure as the power of the _bourgeois_
intendants increased, that of the noble governors diminished, until, by
the eighteenth century, the offices of the latter had become largely
honorary though still richly remunerative. To keep the nobles amused
and in money, and thereby out of mischief and politics, became, from
Richelieu's time, a maxim of the royal policy in France.
[Side Note: Richelieu's Significance]
Such, in brief, was the work of this grim figure that moved across the
stage at a critical period in French history. Richelieu, more than any
other man, was responsible for the assurance of absolutism in his
country at the very time when England, by means of revolution and
bloodshed, was establishing parliamentary government; and, as we shall
soon see, his foreign policy covered France with European glory and
prestige.
In person, Richelieu was frail and sickly, yet when clothed in his
cardinal's red robes he appeared distinguished and commanding. His
pale, drawn face displayed a firm determination and an inflexible will.
Unscrupulous, exacting, and without pity, he preserved to the end a
proud faith in his moral strength and in his loyalty to country and to
king.
Richelieu died in 1642, and the very next year the monarch whom he had
served so gloriously followed him to the grave, leaving the crown to a
boy of five years--Louis XIV.
[Side Note: Minority of Louis XIV]
[Sidenote: Cardinal Mazarin]
The minority of Louis XIV might have been disastrous to France and to
the royal power, had not the strong policies of Richelieu been
exemplified and enforced by another remarkable minister and cardinal,
Mazarin. Mazarin (1602-1661) was an Italian, born near Naples, educated
for an ecclesiastical career at Rome and in Spain. In the discharge of
several delicate diplomatic missions for the pope, he had acted as
nuncio at Paris, where he so ingratiated himself in Richelieu's favor
that he was invited to enter the service of the king of France, and in
1639 he became a naturalized Frenchman.
Despite his foreign birth and the fact that he never spoke French
without a bad accent, he rose rapidly in public service. He was named
cardinal and was recognized as Richelieu's disciple and imitator. From
the death of the greater cardinal in 1642 to his own death in 1661,
Mazarin actually governed France.
[Sidenote: Unrest of the Nobles]
Against the Habsburgs, Mazarin continued the great war which Richelieu
had begun and brought it to a successful conclusion. In domestic
affairs, he encountered greater troubles. The nobles had naturally
taken umbrage at the vigorous policies of Richelieu, from which Mazarin
seemed to have no thought of departing. They were strengthened,
moreover, by a good deal of popular dislike of Mazarin's foreign birth,
his avarice, his unscrupulous plundering of the revenues of the realm
for the benefit of his own family, and his tricky double-dealing ways.
[Sidenote: The Fronde]
The result was the Fronde, [Footnote: Probably so called from the name
of a street game played by Parisian children and often stopped by
policemen.] the last attempt prior to the French Revolution to cast off
royal absolutism in France. It was a vague popular protest coupled with
a selfish reaction on the part of the influential nobles: the pretext
was Mazarin's interference with the parlement of Paris.
[Sidenote: The Parlements]
The parlements were judicial bodies [Footnote: There were thirteen in
the seventeenth century.] which tried important cases and heard appeals
from lower courts. That of Paris, being the most eminent, had, in
course of time, secured to itself the right of registering royal
decrees--that is, of receiving the king's edicts in formal fashion and
entering them upon the statute books so that the law of the land might
be known generally. From making such a claim, it was only a step for
the parlement of Paris to refuse to register certain new edicts on the
ground that the king was not well informed or that they were in
conflict with older and more binding enactments. If these claims were
substantiated, the royal will would be subjected to revision by the
parlement of Paris. To prevent their substantiation, both Louis XIII
and Louis XIV held "beds of justice"--that is, appeared in person
before the parlement, and from their seat of cushions and pillows
declared their will regarding the new edict and directed that it be
promulgated. There were amusing scenes when the boy-king, at the
direction of Mazarin, gave orders in his shrill treble to the learned
lawyers and grave old judges.
Egged on by seeming popular sympathy and no doubt by the
contemporaneous political revolution in England, the parlement of Paris
at length defied the prime minister. It proclaimed its immunity from
royal control; declared the illegality of any public tax which it had
not freely and expressly authorized; ordered the abolition of the
office of intendant; and protested against arbitrary arrest or
imprisonment. To these demands, the people of Paris gave support--
barricades were erected in the streets, and Mazarin, whose loyal army
was still fighting in the Germanies, was obliged temporarily to
recognize the new order. Within six months, however, sufficient troops
had been collected to enable him to overawe Paris and to annul his
concessions.
[Sidenote: Suppression of the Fronde]
[Sidenote: Triumph of Absolutism in France]
Subsequent uprisings, engineered by prominent noblemen, were often more
humorous than harmful. To be sure, no less a commander than the great
Condé, one of the chief heroes of the Thirty Years' War, took arms
against the Cardinalists, as Mazarin's party was called, but so slight
was the aid which he received from the French people that he was
speedily driven from his country and joined the Spanish army. The
upshot of the Fronde was (1) the nobility were more discredited than
ever; (2) the parlement was forbidden to devote attention to political
or financial affairs; (3) Paris was disarmed and lost the right of
electing its own municipal officers; (4) the royal authority was even
stronger than under Richelieu because an unsuccessful attempt had been
made to weaken it. Henry IV, Richelieu, and Mazarin had made straight
the way for the despotism of Louis XIV.
STRUGGLE BETWEEN BOURBONS AND HABSBURGS THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR
[Sidenote: Dynastic Character of Wars in the Seventeenth Century.]
Every European country, except England, was marked in the seventeenth
century by a continued growth of monarchical power. The kings were
busily engaged in strengthening their hold upon their respective states
and in reaching out for additional lands and wealth. International
wars, therefore, assumed the character of struggles for dynastic
aggrandizement. How might this or that royal family obtain wider
territories and richer towns? There was certainly sufficient national
life in western Europe to make the common people proud of their
nationality; hence the kings could normally count upon popular support.
But wars were undertaken upon the continent of Europe in the
seventeenth century not primarily for national or patriotic motives,
but for the exaltation of a particular royal family. Citizens of border
provinces were treated like so many cattle or so much soil that might
be conveniently bartered among the kings of France, Spain, or Sweden.
[Sidenote: Habsburg Dominions in 1600.]
This idea had been quite evident in the increase of the Habsburg power
during the sixteenth century. In an earlier chapter we have noticed how
that family had acquired one district after another until their
property included: (1) Under the Spanish branch--Spain, the Two
Sicilies, Milan, Franche Comte, the Belgian Netherlands, Portugal, and
a huge colonial empire; (2) Under the Austrian branch--Austria and its
dependencies, Hungary, Bohemia, and the title of Holy Roman Emperor.
Despite the herculean labors of Philip II, France remained outside
Habsburg influence, a big gap in what would otherwise have been a
series of connected territories.
[Sidenote: Ambition of the Bourbons.]
In measure as the French kings--the Bourbons--strengthened their
position in their own country, they looked abroad not merely to ward
off foreign attacks but to add land at their neighbors' expense.
Richelieu understood that his two policies went hand in glove--to make
the Bourbons predominant in Europe was but a corollary to making the
royal power supreme in France.
[Sidenote: The Thirty Years' War.]
The chief warfare of the seventeenth century centers, therefore, in the
long, terrible conflict between the Habsburgs and the Bourbons. Of this
struggle, the so-called Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) may be treated as
the first stage. Let us endeavor to obtain a clear idea of the
interests involved.
When Richelieu became the chief minister of Louis XIII (1624), he
found the Habsburgs in serious trouble and he resolved to take
advantage of the situation to enhance the prestige of the Bourbons. The
Austrian Habsburgs were facing a vast civil and religious war in the
Germanies, and the Spanish Habsburgs were dispatching aid to their
hard-pressed kinsmen.
The war, which proved momentous both to the Habsburgs and to their
enemies, resulted from a variety of reasons--religious, economic, and
political.
[Sidenote: The Thirty Years' War: Ecclesiastical Causes]
The peace of Augsburg (1555) had been expected to settle the religious
question in the Germanies. But in practice it had failed to fix two
important matters. In the first place, the provision forbidding further
secularization of church property ("Ecclesiastical Reservation") was
not carried out, nor could it be while human nature and human
temptation remained. Every Catholic ecclesiastic who became Protestant
would naturally endeavor to take his church lands with him. Then, in
the second place, the peace had recognized only Catholics and
Lutherans: meanwhile the Calvinists had increased their numbers,
especially in southern and central Germany and in Bohemia, and demanded
equal rights. In order to extort concessions from the emperor, a union
of Protestant princes was formed, containing among its members the
zealous young Calvinist prince of the Palatinate, Frederick, commonly
called the Elector Palatine of the Rhine. The Catholics were in an
equally belligerent frame of mind. Not only were they determined to
prevent further secularization of church property, but, emboldened by
the progress of the Catholic Reformation in the Germanies during the
second half of the sixteenth century, they were now anxious to revise
the earlier religious settlement in their own interest and to regain,
if possible, the lands that had been lost by the Church to the
Protestants. The Catholics relied for political and military support
upon the Catholic Habsburg emperor and upon Maximilian, duke of Bavaria
and head of the Catholic League of Princes. Religiously, the enemies of
the Habsburgs were the German Protestants.
[Sidenote: The Thirty Years' War: Political Causes]
But a hardly less important cause of the Thirty Years' War lay in the
politics of the Holy Roman Empire. The German princes had greatly
increased their territories and their wealth during the Protestant
Revolution. They aspired, each and all, to complete sovereignty. They
would rid themselves of the outworn bonds of a medieval empire and
assume their proper place among the independent and autocratic rulers
of Europe. On his side, the emperor was insistent upon strengthening
his position and securing a united powerful Germany under his personal
control. Politically, the enemies of the Habsburgs were the German
princes.
With the princes was almost invariably allied any European monarch who
had anything to gain from dividing Germany or weakening Habsburg
influence. In case of a civil war, the Habsburgs might reasonably
expect to find enemies in Denmark, Sweden, and France.
[Sidenote: Four Periods in the Thirty Years' War]
The war naturally divides itself into four periods: (1) The Bohemian
Revolt; (2) The Danish Period; (3) The Swedish Period; (4) The French
or International Period.
[Sidenote: 1. The Bohemian Revolt]
The signal for the outbreak of hostilities in the Germanics was given
by a rebellion in Bohemia against the Habsburgs. Following the death of
Rudolph II (1576-1612), a narrow-minded, art-loving, and unbalanced
recluse, his childless brother Matthias (1612-1619) had desired to
secure the succession of a cousin, Ferdinand II (1619-1637), who,
although a man of blameless life and resolute character, was known to
be devoted to the cause of absolutism and fanatically loyal to the
Catholic Church. Little opposition to this settlement was encountered
in the various Habsburg Bohemian dominions, except in Bohemia. In that
country, however, the nobles, many of whom were Calvinists, dreaded the
prospective accession of Ferdinand, who would be likely to deprive them
of their special privileges and to impede, if not to forbid, the
exercise of the Protestant religion in their territories. Already there
had been encroachments on their religious liberty.
One day in 1618, a group of Bohemian noblemen broke into the room where
the imperial envoys were stopping and hurled them out of a window into
a castle moat some sixty feet below. This so-called "defenestration" of
Ferdinand's representatives was followed by the proclamation of the
dethronement of the Habsburgs in Bohemia and the election to the
kingship of Frederick, the Calvinistic Elector Palatine. Frederick was
crowned at Prague and prepared to defend his new lands. Ferdinand II,
raising a large army in his other possessions, and receiving assistance
from Maximilian of Bavaria and the Catholic League as well as from
Tuscany and the Spanish Habsburgs, intrusted the allied forces to an
able veteran general, Count Tilly (1559-1632). King Frederick had
expected support from his father-in-law, James I of England, and from
the Lutheran princes of northern Germany, but in both respects he was
disappointed. What with parliamentary quarrels at home and a curiously
mistaken foreign policy of a Spanish alliance, James confined his
assistance to pompous advice and long words. Then, too, most of the
Lutheran princes, led by the tactful John George, elector of Saxony,
hoped by remaining neutral to obtain special concessions from the
emperor.
Within a very brief period, Tilly subdued Bohemia, drove out Frederick,
and reestablished the Habsburg power. Many rebellious nobles lost their
property and lives, and the practice of the Protestant religion was
again forbidden in Bohemia. Nor was that all. The victorious
imperialists drove the fugitive Frederick, now derisively dubbed the
"winter king," out of his original wealthy possessions on the Rhine,
into miserable exile, an outcast without land or money. The conquered
Palatinate was turned over to Maximilian of Bavaria, who was further
rewarded for his services by being recognized as an elector of the Holy
Roman Empire in place of the deposed Frederick.
The first period of the war was thus favorable to the Habsburg and
Catholic causes. Between 1618 and 1620, revolt had been suppressed in
Bohemia and an influential Rhenish electorate had been transferred from
Calvinist to Catholic hands.
Now, however, the northern Protestant princes took alarm. If they had
viewed with composure the failure of Frederick's foolhardy efforts in
Bohemia, they beheld with downright dismay the expansion of Bavaria and
the destruction of a balance of power long maintained between Catholic
and Protestant Germany. And so long as the ill-disciplined remnants of
Frederick's armies were behaving like highwaymen, pillaging and burning
throughout the Germanics, the emperor declined to consider the grant of
any concessions.
[Sidenote: 2. Danish Intervention. Christian IV]
At this critical juncture, while the Protestant princes were wavering
between obedience and rebellion, Christian IV of Denmark intervened and
precipitated the second period of the war. Christian IV (1588-1648) was
impulsive and ambitious: as duke of Holstein he was a member of the
Holy Roman Empire and opposed to Habsburg domination; as king of
Denmark and Norway he was anxious to extend his influence over the
North Sea ports; and as a Lutheran, he sought to champion the rights of
his German co-religionists and to help them retain the rich lands which
they had appropriated from the Catholic Church. In 1625, therefore,
Christian invaded Germany, supported by liberal grants of money from
England and by the troops of many of the German princes, both Calvinist
and Lutheran.
[Sidenote: Wallenstein]
Against the Danish invasion, Tilly unaided might have had difficulty to
stand, but fortune seemed to have raised up a codefender of the
imperialist cause in the person of an extraordinary adventurer,
Wallenstein. This man had enriched himself enormously out of the
recently confiscated estates of rebellious Bohemians, and now, in order
to benefit himself still further, he secured permission from the
Emperor Ferdinand II to raise an independent army of his own to restore
order in the empire and to expel the Danes. By liberal promises of pay
and plunder, the soldier of fortune soon recruited an army of some
50,000 men, and what a motley collection it was! Italian, Swiss,
Spaniard, German, Pole, Englishman, and Scot,--Protestant was welcomed
as heartily as Catholic,--any one who loved adventure or hoped for
gain, all united by the single tie of loyalty and devotion to
Wallenstein. The force was whipped into shape by the undoubted genius
of its commander and at once became an effective machine of war. Yet
the perpetual plundering of the land, on which it lived, was a constant
source of reproach to the army of Wallenstein.
The campaigning of the second period of the war took place in North
Germany. At Lutter, King Christian IV was defeated overwhelmingly by
the combined forces of Tilly and Wallenstein, and the Lutheran states
were left at the mercy of the Catholic League. Brandenburg openly
espoused the imperialist cause and aided Ferdinand's generals in
expelling the Danish king from German soil. Only the lack of naval
control of the Baltic and North seas prevented the victors from seizing
Denmark. The desperation of Christian and the growingly suspicious
activity of Sweden resulted in the peace of Lubeck (1629), by which the
king of Denmark was left in possession of Jutland, Schleswig, and
Holstein, but deprived of the German bishoprics which various members
of his family had taken from the Catholic Church.
Following up its successes, the Catholic League prevailed upon the
Emperor Ferdinand II in the same year (1629) to sign the Edict of
Restitution, restoring to the Church all the property that had been
secularized in violation of the peace of Augsburg of 1555. The edict
was to be executed by imperial commissioners, all of whom were
Catholics, and so well did they do their work that, within three years
of the promulgation of the edict, Roman Catholicism in the Germanies
had recovered five bishoprics, thirty Hanse towns, and nearly a hundred
monasteries, to say nothing of parish churches of which the number can
hardly be estimated.
So far, the religious and economic grievances against the Habsburgs had
been confined mainly to Calvinists, but now the Lutheran princes were
alarmed. The enforcement of the Edict of Restitution against all
Protestants alike was the signal for an emphatic protest from Lutherans
as well as from Calvinists. A favorable opportunity for intervention
seemed to present itself to the foremost Lutheran power--Sweden. Not
only were many Protestant princes in Germany in a mood to welcome
foreign assistance against the Catholics, but the emperor was less able
to resist invasion, since in 1630, yielding to the urgent entreaties of
the Catholic League, he dismissed the plundering and ambitious
Wallenstein from his service.
The king of Sweden at this time was Gustavus Adolphus (1611-1632), the
grandson of that Gustavus Vasa who had established both the
independence and the Lutheranism of his country. Gustavus Adolphus was
one of the most attractive figures of his age--in the prime of life,
tall, fair, and blue-eyed, well educated and versed in seven languages,
fond of music and poetry, skilled and daring in war, impetuous, well
balanced, and versatile. A rare combination of the idealist and the
practical man of affairs, Gustavus Adolphus had dreamed of making
Protestant Sweden the leading power in northern Europe and had
vigorously set to work to achieve his ends. His determination to
encircle the whole Baltic with his own territories--making it literally
a Swedish lake--brought him first into conflict with Muscovy, or, as we
call it today, Russia. Finland and Esthonia were occupied, and Russia
agreed in 1617 to exclusion from the Baltic sea coast. Next a stubborn
conflict with Poland (1621-1629) secured for Sweden the province of
Livonia and the mouth of the Vistula River. Gustavus then turned his
longing eyes to the Baltic coast of northern Germany, at the very time
when the Edict of Restitution promised him aggrieved allies in that
quarter.
[Sidenote: 3. Swedish Intervention: Gustavus Adolphus]
It was likewise at the very time when Cardinal Richelieu had crushed
out all insurrection, whether Huguenot or noble, in France and was
seeking some effective means of prolonging the war in the Germanies to
the end that the rival Habsburgs might be irretrievably weakened and
humiliated. He entered into definite alliance with Gustavus Adolphus
and provided him arms and money, for the time asking only that the
Protestant champion accord the liberty of Catholic worship in conquered
districts.
[Sidenote: French Aid]
Gustavus Adolphus landed in Pomerania in 1630 and proceeded to occupy
the chief northern fortresses and to treat for alliances with the
influential Protestant electors of Brandenburg and Saxony. While
Gustavus tarried at Potsdam, in protracted negotiation with the elector
of Brandenburg, Tilly and the imperialists succeeded, after a long
siege, in capturing the Lutheran stronghold of Magdeburg (May, 1631).
The fall of the city was attended by a mad massacre of the garrison,
and of armed and unarmed citizens, in streets, houses, and churches; at
least 20,000 perished; wholesale plundering and a general conflagration
completed the havoc. The sack of Magdeburg evoked the greatest
indignation from the Lutherans. Gustavus Adolphus, now joined by the
electors of Brandenburg and Saxony and by many other Protestant princes
of northern Germany, advanced into Saxony, where, in September, 1631,
he avenged the destruction of Magdeburg by defeating decisively the
smaller army of Tilly on the Breitenfeld, near Leipzig. Then Gustavus
turned southwestward, making for the Rhine valley, with the idea of
forming a union with the Calvinist princes. Only the prompt protest of
his powerful ally, Richelieu, prevented the rich archbishoprics of
Cologne, Trier, and Mainz from passing immediately under Swedish
control. Next Gustavus Adolphus turned east and invaded Bavaria. Tilly,
who had reassembled his forces, failed to check the invasion and lost
his life in a battle on the Lech (April, 1632). The victorious Swedish
king now made ready to carry the war into the hereditary dominions of
the Austrian Habsburgs. As a last resort to check the invader, the
emperor recalled Wallenstein with full power over his freelance army.
About the same time the emperor concluded a close alliance with his
kinsman, the ambitious Philip IV of Spain.
The memorable contest between the two great generals--Gustavus Adolphus
and Wallenstein--was brought to a tragic close in the late autumn of
the same year on the fateful field of Lützen. Wallenstein was defeated,
but Gustavus was killed. Although the Swedes continued the struggle,
they were comparatively few in numbers and possessed no such general as
their fallen king. On the other side, Wallenstein's loyalty could not
be depended upon; rumors reached the ear of the emperor that his
foremost general was negotiating with the Protestants to make peace on
his own terms; and Wallenstein was assassinated in his camp by
fanatical imperialists (February, 1634). The tragic removal of both
Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus, the economic exhaustion of the whole
empire, and the national desire on the part of many Protestant princes,
as well as on the part of the Catholic emperor, to rid the Germanies of
foreign soldiers and foreign influence--all these developments seemed
to point to the possibility of concluding the third, or Swedish, period
of the war, not perhaps as advantageously for the imperialist cause as
had ended the Bohemian revolt or the Danish intervention, but at any
rate in a spirit of reasonable compromise. In fact, in May, 1635, a
treaty was signed at Prague between the emperor and such princes as
were then willing to lay down their arms, whereby all the military
forces in the empire were henceforth to be under the direct control of
the emperor (with the exception of a contingent under the special
command of the Lutheran elector of Saxony); all princely leagues within
the empire were to be dissolved; mutual restoration of captured
territory was to be made; and, as to the fundamental question of the
ownership of ecclesiastical lands, it was settled that any such lands
actually held in the year 1627, whether acquired before or after the
religious peace of Augsburg of 1555, should continue so to be held for
forty years or until in each case an amicable arrangement could be
reached.
What wrecked the peace of Prague was not so much the disinclination of
the Protestant princes of Germany to accept its terms as the policy of
Cardinal Richelieu of France. Richelieu was convinced more than ever
that French greatness depended upon Habsburg defeat; he would not
suffer the princes to make peace with the emperor until the latter was
soundly trounced and all Germany devastated; instead of supplying the
Swedes and the German Protestants with assistance from behind the
scenes, he now would come boldly upon the stage and engage the emperor
in open combat.
[Sidenote: 4. French Intervention. Richelieu's Policy in the Germanies]
The final, or French, period of the Thirty Years' War lasted from 1635
to 1648--almost as long as the other three periods put together.
Richelieu entered the war not only to humble the Austrian Habsburgs
and, if possible, to wrest the valuable Rhenish province of Alsace from
the Holy Roman Empire, but also to strike telling blows at the
Continental supremacy of the Spanish Habsburgs, who, since 1632, had
been actively helping their German kinsmen. The Spanish king, it will
be remembered, still held the Belgian Netherlands, on the northern
frontier of France, and Franche Comté on the east, while oft-contested
Milan in northern Italy was a Spanish dependency. France was almost
surrounded by Spanish possessions, and Richelieu naturally declared war
against Spain as against the emperor. The wily French cardinal could
count upon the Swedes and many of the German Protestants to keep the
Austrian Habsburgs busily engaged and upon the assistance of the Dutch
in humbling the Spaniard, for Spain had not yet formally recognized the
independence of the Dutch Netherlands. Inasmuch as England was chiefly
concerned with troublesome internal affairs, the enemies of France
could hardly expect aid from across the Channel.
[Sidenote: Condé and Turenne]
At first, the French suffered a series of military reverses, due in
large part to unpreparedness, incompetent commanders, and ill-
disciplined troops. At one time it looked as if the Spaniards might
capture Paris. But with unflagging zeal and patriotic devotion,
Richelieu pressed on the war. He raised armies, drilled them, and
dispatched them into the Netherlands, into Alsace, into Franche Comté,
into northern Italy, and into Roussillon. He stirred up the Portuguese
to revolt and recover their independence (1640). And Mazarin, who
succeeded him in 1642, preserved his foreign policy intact. Young and
brilliant generals now appeared at the head of the French forces, among
whom were the dashing Prince of Condé (1621-1686), and the master
strategist Turenne (1611-1675), the greatest soldier of his day. The
former's victory of Rocroi (1643) dated the commencement of the
supremacy of France in war, a supremacy which was retained for a
century.
[Sidenote: Peace of Westphalia (1648)]
Finally, Turenne's masterly maneuvering against the Spaniards and his
forcible detachment of Maximilian of Bavaria from the imperial alliance
broke down effective opposition and ended the Thirty Years' War in the
Germanies. The various treaties which were signed in 1648 constituted
the peace of Westphalia.
The political clauses of the peace of Westphalia provided: (1) Each
German state was free to make peace or war without consulting the
emperor--each prince was invested with sovereign authority; (2) France
received Alsace, except the free city of Strassburg, and was confirmed
in the possession of the bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun; (3)
Sweden was given territory in Pomerania controlling the mouth of the
Oder, and the secularized bishopric of Bremen, surrounding the city of
that name and dominating the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser; (4)
France and Sweden received votes in the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire,
with implied rights to exercise an oversight of German affairs; (5)
Brandenburg secured eastern Pomerania and several bishoprics, including
Magdeburg; (6) The Palatinate was divided between Maximilian of Bavaria
and the son of the deposed Frederick--each bearing the title of
elector; (7) Switzerland and the United Provinces (Holland) were
formally recognized as independent of the empire and of Spain
respectively.
The religious difficulties were settled as follows: (1) Calvinists were
to share all the privileges of their Lutheran fellow-Protestants; (2)
All church property was to be secured in the possession of those,
whether Catholics or Protestants, who held it on 1 January, 1624; (3)
An equal number of Catholic and Protestant judges were to sit in the
imperial courts. Inasmuch as after 1648 there was little relative
change of religion in Germany, this religious settlement was
practically permanent.
[Sidenote: Evil Effects of the Thirty Years' War on Germany]
One of the most striking results of the peace of Westphalia was the
completion of a long process of political disruption in the Germanies.
Only the form of the Holy Roman Empire survived. The already shadowy
imperial power became a mere phantom, nor was a change destined to come
until, centuries later, the Prussian Hohenzollerns should replace the
Austrian Habsburgs. Meanwhile the weakness of Germany enabled France to
extend her northern boundaries toward the Rhine.
Far more serious than her political losses were the economic results to
Germany. The Thirty Years' War left Germany almost a desert. "About
two-thirds of the total population had disappeared; the misery of those
that survived was piteous in the extreme. Five-sixths of the villages
in the empire had been destroyed. We read of one in the Palatinate that
in two years had been plundered twenty-eight times. In Saxony, packs of
wolves roamed about, for in the north quite one-third of the land had
gone out of cultivation, and trade had drifted into the hands of the
French or Dutch. Education had almost disappeared; and the moral
decline of the people was seen in the coarsening of manners and the
growth of superstition, as witnessed by frequent burning of witches."
[Sidenote: Continuation of War between French Bourbons and Spanish
Hapsburgs. Peace of the Pyrenees 1659]
The peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War in the Germanies,
but it did not stop the bitter contest between France and Spain.
Mazarin was determined to secure even greater territorial gains for his
country, and, although Condé deserted to Spain, Turenne was more than a
match for any commander whom the Spaniards could put in the field.
Mazarin, moreover, by ceding the fortress of Dunkirk to the English,
obtained aid from the veteran troops of Cromwell. It was not until 1659
that, in the celebrated treaty of the Pyrenees, peace was concluded
between France and Spain. This provided: (1) France added the province
of Roussillon on her southern frontier and that of Artois on the north;
(2) France was recognized as protector of the duchy of Lorraine; (3)
Condé was pardoned and reinstated in French service; (4) Maria Theresa,
eldest daughter of the Spanish Habsburg king, Philip IV, was to marry
the young French Bourbon king, Louis XIV, and, in consideration of the
payment of a large dowry, was to renounce all claims to the Spanish
dominions.
The treaty of the Pyrenees was the last important achievement of
Cardinal Mazarin. But before he died in 1661 he had the satisfaction of
seeing the triumph of those policies which he had adopted from
Richelieu: the royal power firmly established within France; the
Habsburgs, whether Austrian or Spanish, defeated and humiliated; the
Bourbon king of France respected and feared throughout Europe.
[Sidenote: Development of International Law]
[Sidenote: In Italy]
Not least among the results of the conflict between Habsburgs and
Bourbons was the stimulus given to the acceptance of fixed principles
of international law and of definite usages for international
diplomacy. In ancient times the existence of the all-embracing Roman
Empire had militated against the development of international relations
as we know them to-day. In the early middle ages feudal society had
left little room for diplomacy. Of course, both in ancient times and in
the middle ages, there had been embassies and negotiations and
treaties; but the embassies had been no more than temporary missions
directed to a particular end, and there had been neither permanent
diplomatic agents nor a professional diplomatic class. To the
development of such a class the Italy of the fifteenth century had
given the first impetus. Northern and central Italy was then filled, as
we have discovered, with a large number of city-states, all struggling
for political and economic mastery, all dependent for the maintenance
of a "balance of power" upon alliances and counter alliances, all
employing diplomacy quite as much as war in the game of peninsular
politics. It was in Italy that there grew up the institution of
passports, the distinction between armed forces and civilians,
international comity, and in fact the very notion that states have an
interest in the observance of law and order among themselves. Of
special importance, in this connection, was Venice, which gradually
evolved a regular system of permanent diplomats, and incidentally
obliged her ambassadors to present detailed reports on foreign affairs;
and, because of their commercial preeminence in the Mediterranean, the
Venetians contributed a good deal to the development of rules of the
sea first in time of peace, and subsequently in time of war.
[Sidenote: In Europe in Sixteenth Century]
During the sixteenth century the Italian ideas of statecraft and inter-
state relations, ably championed by Machiavelli, were communicated to
the nations of western Europe. Permanent embassies were established in
foreign countries by the kings of Spain, Portugal, France, and England.
Customs of international intercourse grew up. Diplomacy became a
recognized occupation of distinguished statesmen.
[Sidenote: Thirty Years' War and International Law]
Two institutions might have thwarted or retarded the development of
international law: one was the Catholic Church with its international
organization and its claim to universal spiritual supremacy; the other
was the Holy Roman Empire, with its claim to temporal predominance and
with its insistence upon the essential inequality between itself and
all other states. But the Protestant Revolt in the sixteenth century
dealt a severe blow to the claim and power of the Catholic Church. And
the long struggle between Bourbons and Habsburgs, culminating in the
Thirty Years' War, reduced the Holy Roman Empire to a position, in
theory as well as in fact, certainly no higher than that of the
national monarchies of France, England, and Spain, or that of the Dutch
Republic.
From the treaties of Westphalia emerged a real state-system in Europe,
based on the theory of the essential equality of independent sovereign
states, though admitting of the fact that there were Great Powers.
Henceforth the public law of Europe was to be made by diplomats and by
congresses of ambassadors. Westphalia pointed the new path.
Another aspect of international relations was emphasized in the first
half of the seventeenth century. It was the Thirty Years' War, with its
revolting cruelty, which brought out the contrast between the more
humane practice of war as an art in Italy and the savagery which
disgraced the Germanies. The brutality of the struggle turned thinkers'
attention to the need of formulating rules for the protection of non-
combatants in time of war, the treatment of the sick and wounded, the
prohibition of wanton pillage and other horrors which shocked the
awakening conscience of seventeenth-century Europe. It was the
starting-point of the publication of treatises on international law.
[Sidenote: Grotius]
The first effective work, the one which was destined long to influence
sovereigns and diplomats, was Grotius's _On the Law of War and
Peace_. Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) [Footnote: Known in his native
country as Huig van Groot. The last years of his life he spent as
ambassador of Sweden at the French court.] was a learned Dutch
humanist, whose active participation in politics against the stadholder
of the Netherlands and whose strong protests for religious toleration
against the dominant orthodox Calvinists of his country combined to
bring upon himself a sentence of life imprisonment. Immured in a Dutch
fortress in 1619, he managed to escape and fled to Paris, where he
prepared and in 1625 published his immortal work. _On the Law of War
and Peace_ is an exhaustive and masterly text-book--the first and
one of the best of the systematic treatises on the fundamental
principles of international law.
ADDITIONAL READING
HENRY IV, RICHELIEU, AND MAZARIN. Brief general accounts: H. O.
Wakeman, _The Ascendancy of France, 1598-1715_ (1894), ch. i-vii; Mary
A. Hollings, _Renaissance and Reformation, 1453-1660_ (1910), ch. xi,
xii; J. H. Sacret, _Bourbon and Vasa, 1610-1715_ (1914), ch. i-vii; A.
J. Grant, _The French Monarchy, 1483-1789_, Vol. I (1900), ch. vi-ix;
G. W. Kitchin, _A History of France_, 3d and 4th editions (1894-1899),
Vol. II, Book IV, ch. i-iii, Vol. III, Book IV, ch. iv-viii; H. T.
Dyer, _A History of Modern Europe from the Fall of Constantinople_, 3d
ed. rev. by Arthur Hassall (1901), ch. xxix-xxxv; Victor Duruy,
_History of Modern Times_, trans. and rev. by E. A. Grosvenor (1894),
ch. xvii, xviii, xx; _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. II, ch. xx (by
Stanley Leathes, on Henry IV), Vol. IV, ch. iv (on Richelieu), xxi (on
Mazarin); _Histoire générale_, Vol. V, ch. vi-viii, Vol. VI, ch. i.
More detailed works: _Histoire de France_, ed. by Ernest Lavisse, Vol.
VI, Part I (1904), Livre IV (on Henry IV), Vol. VI, Part II (1905),
Livres I-III (on Henry IV and Richelieu, by J. H. Mariéjol), Vol. VII,
Part I (1906), Livre I (on Mazarin, by E. Lavisse); P. F. Willert,
_Henry of Navarre_ (1897), in "Heroes of the Nations" Series; C. C.
Jackson, _The First of the Bourbons_, 2 vols. (1890); J. B. Perkins,
_Richelieu and the Growth of French Power_ (1900), in the "Heroes of
the Nations" Series, and, by the same author, an admirable writer and
authority on the whole period, _France under Mazarin_, 2 vols. (1886);
Georges (Vicomte) d'Avenel, _Richelieu et la monarchie absolue_, 4
vols. (1884-1890), the foremost French work on the subject; Gabriel
Hanotaux, _Origines de l'institution des intendants de provinces_
(1884), a careful study of the beginnings of the office of intendant by
a famous French statesman and historian; P. A. Chéruel, _Histoire de
France pendant la minorité de Louis XIV_, 4 vols. (1879-1880), and, by
the same author, _Histoire de France sous le ministère de Mazarin,
1651-1661_, 3 vols. (1882), a very elaborate treatment of Mazarin's
public career in France; Louis Batiffol, _The Century of the
Renaissance in France_, Eng. trans. by Elsie F. Buckley (1916),
containing an excellent chapter on the French monarchy at the close of
the sixteenth century.
THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. General treatments: E. F. Henderson, _A Short
History of Germany_, Vol. I (1902), ch. xvii, xviii, a good, short
introduction; S. R. Gardiner, _The Thirty Years' War_ (1897), in the
"Epochs of Modern History" Series, the best brief survey; _History of
All Nations_, Vol. XII, ch. iv-viii, by Martin Philippson, a well-known
German historian; _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. IV (1906), ch. i,
iii, v-vii, xiii, xiv, xx, xxii; _Histoire générale_, Vol. V, ch. xii;
Anton Gindely, _The Thirty Years' War_, trans. from the German by
Andrew Ten Brook, 2 vols. (1884), a popular treatment by a recognized
authority in this field, breaking off, unfortunately, in the year 1623;
Gustav Droysen, _Das Zeitalter des dreissigjährigen Krieges_ (1888) and
Georg Winter, _Geschichte des dreissigjährigen Krieges_ (1893), two
bulky volumes in the Oncken Series devoted respectively to the
political and military aspects of the war; Émile Charvériat, _Histoire
de la guerre de trente ans_, 2 vols. (1878), a reliable French account
of the whole struggle. On the history of the Germanies from the
religious peace of Augsburg to the peace of Westphalia there is the
painstaking _Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Gegenreformation und
des dreissigjährigen Krieges, 1555-1648_, by Moritz Ritter, 3 vols.
(1889-1908). For the history of Austria during the period, see Franz
Kroncs, _Handbuch der Geschichte Oesterreichs von der ältesten Zeit_,
Vol. III (1877), Books XIV-XV. For the Netherlands, with special
reference to Spain's part in the war: Henri Pirenne, _Histoire de
Belgique_, Vol. IV, _1567-1648_ (1911). For Bohemia: Ernest Denis, _Fin
de l'indépendance bohême_, Vol. II (1890), and, by the same author, _La
Bohême depuis la Montagne-Blanche_, Vol. I (1903). For Denmark and
Sweden: R. N. Bain, _Scandinavia, a Political History of Denmark,
Norway, and Sweden, from 1513 to 1900_ (1905). There is a convenient
biography of _Gustavus Adolphus_ by C. R. L. Fletcher in the "Heroes of
the Nations" Series (1890), and a more detailed study in German by
Gustav Droysen, 2 vols. (1869-1870). On Wallenstein there are two
standard German works: Leopold von Ranke, _Geschichte Wallensteins_, 3d
ed. (1872), and Anton Gindely, _Waldstein_, 1625-1630, 2 vols. (1886).
The best brief treatment of European international relations in the
time of Richelieu and Mazarin is Emile Bourgeois, _Manuel historique de
politique étrangère_, 4th ed., Vol. I (1906), ch. i, ii, vi. For a
brief treatment of the development of international law during the
period, see D. J. Hill, _History of Diplomacy in the International
Development of Europe_, Vol. II (1906), ch. vii. The treaties of
Westphalia are in the famous old compilation of Jean Dumont, _Corps
universel diplomatique du droit des gens_, 8 vols. (1726-1731).
CHAPTER VII
THE GROWTH OF ABSOLUTISM IN FRANCE AND THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN BOURBONS
AND HABSBURGS, 1661-1743
THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV
Upon the death of Cardinal Mazarin in 1661, the young king Louis XIV
declared that he would assume personal charge of the domestic and
foreign affairs of the French monarchy. From that date, throughout a
long reign, Louis was in fact as well as in name ruler of the nation,
and his rule, like that of Napoleon, stands out as a distinct epoch in
French history.
[Sidenote: Louis XIV the Heir to Absolutist Tendencies]
Louis XIV profited by the earlier work of Henry IV, Sully, Richelieu,
and Mazarin. He inherited a fairly compact state, the population of
which was patriotic and loyal to the crown. Insurrections of
Protestants or rebellions of the nobles were now things of the past.
The Estates-General, the ancient form of representative government, had
fallen into disuse and oblivion. Local administration was conducted by
faithful middle-class officials, the intendants; and all powers of
taxation, war, public improvements, police, and justice were centered
in the hands of the king. Abroad, the rival Habsburgs had been humbled
and French boundaries had been extended and French prestige heightened.
Everything was in readiness for a great king to practice absolutism on
a scale never before realized.
[Sidenote: Absolutism. Monarchy by Divine Right]
The theories of government upon which the absolutism of Louis XIV was
based received a classic expression in a celebrated book written by
Bossuet (1627-1704), a learned and upright bishop of the time.
Government, according to Bossuet, [Footnote: The statements of the
arguments in favor of monarchy by divine right are taken from Bossuet's
famous book, _La politique tirée des propres paroles de l'Ecriture
Sainte_.] is divinely ordained in order to enable mankind to satisfy
the natural instincts of living together in organized society. Under
God, monarchy is, of all forms of government, the most usual and the
most ancient, and therefore the most natural: it is likewise the
strongest and most efficient, therefore the best. It is analogous to
the rule of a family by the father, and, like that rule, should be
hereditary. Four qualities are referred by the eloquent bishop to such
an hereditary monarch: (1) That he is sacred is attested by his
anointing at the time of coronation by the priests of the Church--it is
accordingly blasphemy and sacrilege to assail the person of the king or
to conspire against him; (2) That he is to provide for the welfare of
his people and watch over their every activity may be gathered from the
fact that he is, in a very real sense, the father of his people, the
paternal king; (3) His power is absolute and autocratic, and for its
exercise he is accountable to God alone--no man on earth may rightfully
resist the royal commands, and the only recourse for subjects against
an evil king is to pray God that his heart be changed; (4) Greater
reason is given to a king than to any one else--the king is an earthly
image of God's majesty, and it is wrong, therefore, to look upon him as
a mere man. The king is a public person and in him the whole nation is
embodied. "As in God are united all perfection and every virtue, so all
the power of all the individuals in a community is united in the person
of the king."
[Sidenote: Louis XIV]
Such was the theory of what is called divine-right monarchy or
absolutism. It must be remembered that it had been gaining ground
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, until it was accepted
practically by all the French people as well as by most of their
Continental neighbors. Even in England, as we shall presently
see,[Footnote: See below, pp. 263 ff.] the Stuart kings attempted, for
a time with success, to assert and maintain the doctrine. It was a
political idea as popular in the seventeenth century as that of
democracy is to-day. And Louis XIV was its foremost personification.
Suave, dignified, elegant in manners and speech, the French king played
his part well; he appeared to have been born and divinely appointed to
the kingly calling.
For a king, Louis worked hard. He was conscientious and painstaking.
Day after day he reviewed the details of administration. Over all
things he had a watchful eye. Systematically he practiced what he
termed the "trade of a king." "One reigns by work and for work," he
wrote his grandson.
No prince was more fortunate than Louis XIV in his personal advisers
and lieutenants. Not only were his praises proclaimed by the silver-
tongued Bossuet, but he was served by such men as Colbert, the
financier and reformer; Louvois, the military organizer; Vauban, the
master builder of fortifications; Condé and Turenne, unconquerable
generals; and by a host of literary lights, whom he patronized and
pensioned, and who cast about his person a glamour of renown. Louis was
hailed as the "Grand Monarch," and his age was appropriately designated
the Age of Louis the Fourteenth.
[Sidenote: Versailles and the Court of Louis XIV]
At Versailles, some twelve miles from Paris, in the midst of what had
been a sandy waste, the Grand Monarch erected those stately palaces,
with their lavish furnishings, and broad parks and great groves and
myriads of delightful fountains, which became Europe's pleasure center.
Thither were drawn the French nobility, who, if shorn of all political
power, were now exempted from disagreeable taxes and exalted as
essential parts of a magnificent social pageant. The king must have
noblemen as _valets-de-chambre_, as masters of the wardrobe or of
the chase or of the revels. Only a nobleman was fit to comb the royal
hair or to dry off the king after a bath. The nobles became, like so
many chandeliers, mere decorations for the palace. Thus, about
Versailles gathered the court of France, and the leaders of fashion met
those of brains.
[Sidenote: "The Age of Louis XIV"]
It was a time when French manners, dress, speech, art, literature, and
science were adopted as the models and property of civilized Europe.
Corneille (1606-1684), the father of the French stage; Molière (1622-
1673), the greatest of French dramatists; Racine (1639-1699), the
polished, formal playwright; Madame de Sévigné (1626-1696), the
brilliant and witty authoress of memoirs; La Fontaine (1621-1695), the
popular rhymer of whimsical fables and teller of scandalous tales; and
many another graced the court of Versailles and tasted the royal
bounty. French became the language of fashion as well as of diplomacy--
a position it has ever since maintained.
[Sidenote: "Rule of the Robe"]
While the court of Louis XIV was thus the focal point of French--almost
of European--life, the professional and mercantile classes, who
constituted the Third Estate, enjoyed comparative security and
prosperity and under the king held all of the important offices of
actual administration. Because of the judicial offices which the middle
class filled, the government was popularly styled the "rule of the
robe."
[Sidenote: "Colbert"]
Colbert (1619-1683), one of Louis's greatest ministers, was the son of
a merchant, and was intensely interested in the welfare of the class to
which he belonged. Installed in office through the favor of Mazarin, he
was successively named, after the cardinal's death, superintendent of
public works, controller-general of finances, minister of marine, of
commerce and agriculture, and of the colonies. In short, until his
death in 1683, he exerted power in every department of government
except that of war. Although he never possessed the absolute personal
authority which marked the ministries of Richelieu and Mazarin, being
plainly subservient to the king's commands, nevertheless he enjoyed for
many years the royal favor and by incessant toil succeeded in
accomplishing a good deal for the material prosperity of France. In
many respects his policies and achievements resembled Sully's.
[Sidenote: Attempted Financial Reform]
First, financial reform claimed all the energies of Colbert. Under the
government of Richelieu, and more particularly under that of Mazarin,
the hard savings of Sully had been squandered, enormous sums had been
granted to favorites, and the ever-increasing noble class had been
exempted from taxation, an evil system of tax-gathering, called
"farming the taxes," [Footnote: "Farming the taxes," that is,
intrusting the collection of taxes to individuals or corporations that
squeezed as much money as they could from the taxpayers and kept for
themselves what they collected over and above the lump sum due the
government.] had grown up, and the weight of the financial burden had
fallen almost exclusively upon the wretched peasantry. Colbert sternly
and fearlessly set about his task. He appointed agents whose honesty he
could trust and reformed many of the abuses in tax-collecting. While he
was unable to impose the direct land tax--the _taille_--upon the
privileged nobility, he stoutly resisted every attempt further to
augment the number of exemptions, and actually lowered this direct tax
upon the peasantry by substituting indirect taxes, or customs duties,
which would in some degree affect all the people. To lighten the burden
of the country-folk, he sought to promote agriculture. He provided that
no farmers' tools might be seized for debt. He encouraged the breeding
of horses and cattle. He improved the roads and other means of interior
Back to Full Books
|