Economic change: Merchant Capital and the Price Revolution

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 515.

To make a long, complicated, and horrible story short, Germany was a battleground for 30 years, and in some regions the combination of warfare, famine, and disease killed off more than half the population. The worst period of the war was in 1644-48, while peace negotiations were being carried out. The war ended in 1648, with the Peace of Westphalia. Very little had been accomplished—northern Germany was still mostly Lutheran, southern German mostly Catholic. Germany would remain divided until 1871. Austria lost all of its territory in the north and the Holy Roman Empire had seen the last gasp of its power in Central Europe. The Spanish had been defeated for the third time in the last two generations (by the English, the Dutch, and not the French); Spain was now clearly in decline, and France had taken its place as the most powerful country on the European continent.

In 1630 the Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus, a Lutheran, intervened in the war y invading northern Germany to support the Lutheran cause. (Again, some Catholic princes actually supported him, since they feared losing their autonomy to the Holy Roman Emperor). Spain then intervened on the side of the Catholic forces. France also became involved—although a Catholic kingdom, France secretly helped fund the Swedish army as a means of countering the threat of being surrounded by Habsburg kingdoms (remember that Austria, Spain, Belgium, and much of Northern Italy were under Habsburg rule). In 1635 the French formally entered the war on the side of the Swedes. So the two most powerful Catholic kingdoms were on opposite sides in this war.

But there were other factors involved in this conflict as well. The British and the Spanish were rivals in the Americas, and the British navy was challenging Spanish dominance over the world's sea routes. Under Philip II, the Spanish had been trying to block the growth of British trade, especially with the Netherlands. Queen Elizabeth responded by promoting British piracy against Spanish ships. Also, the English had developed close ties to the Dutch Calvinist movement, and became involved in providing financial and logistical support to the Dutch rebels against Spain. When England formally allied itself with the Dutch rebels in 1585, Philip II decided to invade England. He sent a huge naval armada to defeat the upstart Protestant kingdom in 1588. But the English fleet sank the Spanish Armada. England's victory in the war (which formally ended in 1604) marked the start of its dominance over the world's oceans and spelled the beginning of the end for Spanish power.

Henry of Navarre, a shrewd politician who became King Henry IV in 1589, finally ended the fighting. He converted to Catholicism and then, in 1598, issued the Edict of Nantes. The Edict of Nantes said that France was a Catholic kingdom, but it did permit the Huguenots to worship, build churches, etc., in particular designated cities (especially in the south). Again, as in Germany, this was not exactly a matter of religious toleration—Catholics and Protestants would live separately in their own regions, and the Catholic faith remained the official state religion. But it did end the period of open religious warfare in France.

The Huguenot's religious fervor was equaled by that of the Jesuits, who played a central role in the French Catholic Church's struggle against Protestantism. Both sides believed that France could have only ONE faith (theirs). Tensions between the two faiths erupted into warfare in 1562. In 1560, the young French King Francois II died without an heir. His brother Charles IX was too young to rule, and so his mother Queen Catherine de Medici (that's right, from THE Medici family) ruled as regent. The Huguenots led by Conde took this as the moment to attempt a coup and install a Huguenot king; they were opposed primarily by the fervent Catholic Duke de Guise (whose family included Mary Queen of Scotts, who had sought to revive Catholic rule in England). The dispute turned into very bloody fighting and mob violence; for six years adherents of the two faiths butchered each other.

In 1572 Henry of Navarre (the Huguenot son of Antoine de Bourbon) worked out a compromise to end the war—he would marry King Charles IX's Catholic sister, thus symbolizing the end of hostilities. But when thousands of Huguenot leaders gathered in Paris for the wedding, the "Queen Mother" Catherine de Medici and the Duke de Guise organized a massacre of Huguenots; thousands of people were murdered in Paris in what became known as the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre; the killings then spread to the provinces, where Catholic mobs killed thousands more Calvinists. The war was on again.

The Netherlands (1566-1609) The "Revolt of the Netherlands" began with religious warfare between Calvinists and Catholics. The Netherlands was at the time ruled by the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor, who was from Belgium and had a great deal of support in that region. When in 1556 Emperor Charles V retired, he left some of his lands—Spain, the Netherlands, half of Italy, and Spanish America—to his son Philip II. Philip, a Spaniard, imposed Spanish oversight on the Netherlands (in the form of Spanish administrators) in an effort to pump more income out of the Netherlands to Spain. That aggravated Catholic-Calvinist tensions, as did the large number of French and Swiss Calvinists who had entered Belgium. The details of the situation in Netherlands are extremely complex, but it comes down to this: Philip tried to crush the Calvinists, who rebelled against Spanish rule; the Calvinists also gained support from some Catholics who opposed Spanish rule (e.g., special taxes that the Spanish had imposed on the Netherlands).

In 1572 the leader of the rebellion, "William the Silent," seized control over the northern half of the Netherlands (Holland). The north then became to center of the revolt, which lasted until 1609. In 1609 the Spanish recognized the independent Dutch Republic, which during the war had become entirely Calvinist. The southern territory, Belgium, remained under Spanish rule and was Catholic. Again, the end of the war had not resulted in religious toleration or in any clear separation of Church and State.

England vs Spain. During the wars of the Revolt of the Netherlands, the English also engaged in naval warfare against Spain, which also had religious as well as political aspects. Henry VIII's daughter Queen Elizabeth I—a protestant (see previous lecture) had come to the English throne in 1558, after the death of her half-sister Queen Mary I. Mary, a Catholic, had restored Catholicism as the state religion and had oppressed Protestants. She had also married the Catholic Spanish King Philip II, in 1554. When Elizabeth became queen she reestablished the Church of England as the state church (see previous lecture). Philip II of Spain, however, insisted that he was the rightful ruler of England (through marriage to Mary). Therefore religious and dynastic conflicts were driving the two states towards war.

Germany Again: The 30 Years War (1618-1648) For nearly 10 years (1609-1617), Europe was free of religious warfare. But then, in 1618, war re-ignited in Germany. In 1618 the Habsburg Prince Ferdinand of Poland, Austria, and Hungary was "elected" as the new King of Bohemia. (A year later he became the Holy Roman Emperor.) Ferdinand was a Catholic, and most Bohemians were Protestants. When the Protestants rebelled, German Catholic princes intervened; they not only attacked Protestants in Bohemia, but also began attacking Protestant principalities in Germany. The so-called Catholic League led by Ferdinand aimed at re-establishing Catholicism across Germany.