The Development of Modern Europe Volume I E-Book

James Robinson

• Herausgeber: Jovian Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 548

Beschreibung

The nation which has unmistakably assumed the leading role in European affairs during the past two hundred years is France. At the opening of the eighteenth century she already enjoyed a commanding position. In the wars to which the ambition of her king, Louis XIV, gave rise, almost all the countries of western Europe took part; even their colonies in distant regions were involved, and the map of the world was fundamentally altered. A generation after Louis XIV's death France began to be recognized as the great teacher of Europe; her philosophers and economists denounced the abuses which existed everywhere and urged the reform of ancient, outworn institutions. When, in due time, France wrought a revolution in her own government, she speedily forced other nations to follow her example. Indeed, carried away by the genius of her general, Napoleon Bonaparte, she seemed at one time about to bring all Europe under her sway...

Leseprobe

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN EUROPE VOLUME I

James Robinson and Charles Beard

JOVIAN PRESS

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Copyright © 2017 by James Robinson and Charles Beard

Published by Jovian Press

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ISBN: 9781537817309

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XIV

EUROPE AND LOUIS XIV

RECONSTRUCTION OF EUROPE AT UTRECHT

RUSSIA AND PRUSSIA BECOME EUROPEAN POWERS

THE WARS OF FREDERICK THE GREAT

THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN FRANCE AND ENGLAND FOR INDIA

THE RIVALRY OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN NORTH AMERICA

THE OLD RÉGIME IN EUROPE

THE SPIRIT OF REFORM

THE ENLIGHTENED DESPOTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

THE EVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

THE FIRST FRENCH REPUBLIC

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

EUROPE AND NAPOLEON

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF EUROPE AT THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA

FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XIV

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FRANCE BEFORE LOUIS XIV

The nation which has unmistakably assumed the leading role in European affairs during the past two hundred years is France. At the opening of the eighteenth century she already enjoyed a commanding position. In the wars to which the ambition of her king, Louis XIV, gave rise, almost all the countries of western Europe took part; even their colonies in distant regions were involved, and the map of the world was fundamentally altered. A generation after Louis XIV’s death France began to be recognized as the great teacher of Europe; her philosophers and economists denounced the abuses which existed everywhere and urged the reform of ancient, outworn institutions. When, in due time, France wrought a revolution in her own government, she speedily forced other nations to follow her example. Indeed, carried away by the genius of her general, Napoleon Bonaparte, she seemed at one time about to bring all Europe under her sway. Even since that arch-disturber of the peace was finally captured and sent to die on the rock of St. Helena, France has twice precipitated serious crises in European affairs, when in 1848 she proclaimed a new revolution, and in 1870 she assumed the responsibility for the last important war that has afflicted western Europe.

Of the long history of France from the conquest of Gaul by Julius Cæsar to the accession of Louis XIV in 1643 little can be said here. The French kings had, from about the year 1100, begun to get the better of their vassals and had succeeded, with some setbacks, in forming a tolerably satisfactory kingdom when, about a hundred years before Louis XIV’s time, the struggle between Protestants and Catholics produced new and terrible disorder which lasted for a whole generation.

After the close of the wars of religion Henry of Navarre (1589-1610), Louis XIV’s grandfather, reformed and strengthened the royal power. He had himself been a Protestant in his earlier days and consequently treated the Huguenots with consideration; he assigned them fortified cities of refuge, and granted them certain privileges in order to protect them from attacks by their Catholic enemies. But Henry was assassinated in 1610 and his great work was left half done, although he has always remained an heroic and popular figure.

Henry’s son, Louis XIII, had little capacity and he prudently delegated the direction of the government to Cardinal Richelieu, probably the greatest minister that France has ever had. Richelieu found that the Huguenots, owing to the exceptional position in which Henry had placed them, were “sharing the monarchy with the king,” as he expressed it. He accordingly reduced them to the position of ordinary subjects by depriving them, after a struggle, of the cities of refuge granted them by Henry IV.

The strength of the disorderly tendencies of the nobility had much increased during the turmoil of the prolonged wars of religion. Richelieu accordingly ordered the destruction of all the unnecessary castles and fortresses within the realm, on the ground that they served as so many temptations to resist the king’s officers. These officers themselves, who too often acted as if they were absolute rulers in their districts, were strictly watched and corrected by the minister, who was ever jealous of his sovereign’s rights.

His successor, the wily Italian, Mazarin, who conducted the government during Louis XIV’s boyhood, was able to put down the last preposterous rising of the discontented nobles in the so-called War of the Fronde.

When Mazarin died in 1661 he left to the young monarch a kingdom such as no previous French king had enjoyed. The nobles, who for centuries had disputed the power with Hugh Capet and his successors, were no longer feudal lords but only courtiers. The Huguenots, whose claim to a place in the state beside the Catholics had led to the terrible civil wars of the sixteenth century, were reduced in numbers and no longer held fortified towns from which they could defy the king’s agents. Richelieu and Mazarin had successfully taken part in the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), and France had come out of it with enlarged territory and increased importance in European affairs.

LOUIS XIV (1643-1715)

Louis XIV carried the work of these great ministers still further. He gave that despotic form to the monarchy which it retained until the French Revolution. He made himself the very mirror of kingship. His brilliant court at Versailles became the model and the despair of other less opulent and powerful princes, who accepted his theory of the absolute authority of kings and would gladly have imitated his luxury. By his incessant wars of aggression he kept Europe in turmoil for over half a century. The distinguished generals — Turenne, Condé, and Vauban — who led his newly organized troops, and the unscrupulous diplomats who arranged his alliances and negotiated his treaties, made France feared and respected by even the most formidable of the other European states.

Louis had the same idea of kingship which the first Stuart king of England, James I, had fifty years earlier tried in vain to induce the English people to accept. God had given kings to men, and it was God’s will that monarchs should be regarded as his lieutenants and that all those subject to them should obey them absolutely, without asking any questions or making any criticisms; for in yielding to their princes they were really yielding to God himself. The Bible was used to prove that the person of the king was sacred and that to attack in any way the anointed of the Lord was sacrilege. If the king were good and wise, his subjects should thank the Lord; if he proved foolish, cruel, or perverse, they must accept their evil ruler as a punishment which God had inflicted upon them for their sins. But in no case might they limit his power or rise against him.

Louis had one distinct advantage over the Stuart kings. The English had generally shown themselves more reluctant than the French to place absolute power in the hands of their rulers. By her Parliament, her courts, and her various declarations of the nation’s rights, England had built up traditions which made it impossible for the Stuarts to establish their claim to be absolute rulers.

In France, on the other hand, there was no Great Charter or Petition of Right; nor had a representative body like the English Parliament developed which could restrain the king and his officers by refusing to grant them money. The French kings, it is true, had from about the year 1300 been accustomed to call together from time to time representatives of the three estates of the realm, — namely, the nobility, the clergy, and the so-called “third estate,” or townspeople. But the Estates General, as this body was called, assembled only at rare intervals, and while they often protested against heavy taxes and bad government, they did not hold the purse strings. The French king was consequently permitted to raise money without asking the permission of the Estates or previously redressing the grievances which they chose to point out. The king could therefore cheerfully dispense with these assemblies, especially as he did not relish their criticisms and demands for reform.

When Louis XIV took personal charge of the government forty-seven years had passed without a meeting of the Estates General, and a century and a quarter was still to elapse before they were again summoned, in 1789.

The French people placed far more reliance upon a powerful king than the English, because they were not protected by the sea from their neighbors, as England was. On every side France had enemies ready to take advantage of any weakness or hesitation which might arise from dissension between a parliament and the king; so the French had become accustomed to trust matters of government to the monarch’s judgment, even if they suffered at times from his tyranny.

In our democratic age the powers which the French king could legally exercise appear shocking. He was permitted to take as much of his people’s money as he could get, and to do with it what he would, since he could both impose new and increase old taxes. No distinction was made between his private funds and the state treasury, from which he could help himself freely, spending what his subjects could ill afford to give him in presents to courtiers, reckless extravagance, or needless wars. What was worse, he could, by simply signing an order, imprison any one he wished for any length of time without any legal proceedings. He could call before him any case which was being tried in the courts and decide it as he pleased. But more will be said of the powers of the French kings when we come to see how they lost them in the great Revolution of 1789.

Louis XIV was personally well adapted to assume the role of God’s representative on earth. He was a handsome man, of elegant and courtly mien and the most exquisite perfection of manner; even when playing billiards he retained an air of world mastery. The first of the Stuarts, on the contrary, had been a very awkward man, whose slouching gait, intolerable manners, and pedantic conversation were utterly at variance with his lofty pretensions. Louis added to his graceful exterior a sound judgment and quick apprehension. He said neither too much nor too little. He was, for a king, a hard worker and spent several hours a day attending to the business of government.

It requires in fact a great deal of energy and application to be a real despot. In order to understand and to solve the problems which constantly face the ruler of a great state, a monarch must, like Frederick the Great or Napoleon, rise early and toil late. Louis was greatly aided by the able ministers who sat in his council, but he always retained for himself the place of first minister. He would never have consented to be dominated by an adviser, as his father had been by Richelieu. “The profession of the king,” he declared, “is great, noble, and delightful if one but feels equal to performing the duties which it involves,” and he never harbored a doubt that he himself was born for the business.

Louis XIV was careful that his surroundings should suit the grandeur of his office. His court was magnificent beyond anything that had been dreamed of in the Occident. He had an enormous palace constructed at Versailles, just outside of Paris, with interminable halls and apartments and a vast garden stretching away behind it. About this a town was laid out, where all those lived who were privileged to be near his Majesty or supply the wants of the royal court. This palace and its outlying buildings, including two or three less gorgeous residences for the king when he occasionally tired of the ceremony at Versailles, probably cost the nation about a hundred million dollars, in spite of the fact that thousands of peasants and soldiers were forced to aid in the construction of the buildings and parks without remuneration. The furnishings and decorations were as rich and costly as the palace was splendid. For over a century Versailles continued to be the home of the French kings and the seat of their government.

This splendor and luxury helped to attract the nobility, who no longer lived on their estates in well-fortified castles, planning how they might escape the royal control. They now dwelt in the effulgence of the king’s countenance; they saw him to bed at night, and in stately procession they greeted him in the morning. It was deemed a high honor to hand him his shirt as he was being dressed, or, at dinner, to provide him with a fresh napkin. Only by living close to the king could the courtiers hope to gain favors, pensions, and lucrative offices for themselves and their friends, and perhaps occasionally to exercise some little influence upon the policy of the government. For they were now entirely dependent upon the good will of their monarch.

The exalted position of the French king, his claims to concentrate in his person, by God’s will, all the powers of government without the cooperation or participation of his people, is a matter of the utmost significance in appreciating the history of Europe during the past two centuries. Only in the light of these pretensions can the French Revolution be understood. It must also be remembered that the other European sovereigns claimed, in general, similar powers and prerogatives. The various ways in which each was finally forced, or induced, during the nineteenth century to accept a constitution which limited his arbitrary control and gave the people a voice in the government are among the most important subjects which we shall have to study.

REFORMS OF COLBERT (1661-1683)

Louis XIV was not indifferent, however, to the welfare of the nation over which he believed God had called him to rule. He permitted his distinguished adviser, the financier Colbert, trained in the service of Mazarin, to remedy such abuses as he could, and even to undertake certain important reforms. Colbert, to whom France still looks back with gratitude, early discovered that Louis’s officials were stealing and wasting vast sums. The offenders were arrested and forced to disgorge, and a new system of bookkeeping was introduced similar to that employed by business men.

He then turned his attention to increasing the manufactures of France both by establishing new industries and by seeing that the older ones kept to a high standard, which would make French goods sell readily in foreign markets. He argued justly that if foreigners could be induced to buy French products, these sales would bring gold and silver into the country and so enrich it. He made rigid rules as to the width and quality of cloths which the manufacturers might produce and the dyes which they might use. He even reorganized the old, mediæval guilds and encouraged their monopoly; for through them the government could keep an eye on all the manufacturing that was carried on, and this would have been far more difficult if everyone had been free to engage in any trade which he might choose. There were serious drawbacks to this kind of government regulation, but France accepted it, nevertheless, for many years.

It was, however, as a patron of art and literature that Louis XIV gained much of his celebrity. Molière, who was at once a playwright and an actor, delighted the court with comedies in which he delicately satirized the foibles of his time. Corneille, who had gained renown by the great tragedy of The Cid in Richelieu’s day, found a worthy successor in Racine, perhaps the most distinguished of French tragic poets. The charming letters of Madame de Sévigné are models of prose style and serve at the same time to give us a glimpse into the more refined side of the court. In the famous memoirs of Saint-Simon, the weaknesses of the king, as well as the numberless intrigues of the courtiers, are freely exposed with inimitable skill and wit.

Men of letters were generously aided by the king with pensions. Colbert encouraged the French Academy, which had been created by Richelieu. This body gave special attention to making the French tongue more eloquent and expressive by determining what words should be used. It is to this day the greatest honor that a Frenchman can obtain to be made one of the forty members of this celebrated group. Colbert founded in 1666 the French Academy of Sciences which has since done so much to extend knowledge; he had an astronomical observatory built at Paris, and gave his support and protection to a magazine devoted to careful reviews of new books, the Journal des Savants, which is still published regularly. The Royal Library, which then possessed only about sixteen thousand volumes, began to grow into that great collection of two and a half million volumes — the largest in existence — which to-day attracts scholars to Paris from all parts of the world. In short, Louis and his ministers believed one of the chief objects of any government to be the promotion of art, literature, and science, and the example they set has been followed by almost every modern state.

Unfortunately for France, the king’s ambitions were by no means altogether peaceful. Indeed, he regarded his wars as his chief glory. He employed a carefully reorganized army and skillful generals in a series of inexcusable attacks on his neighbors by which he not only produced all the incalculable misery at home and abroad which war always brings with it, but finally squandered all the resources of France, which Colbert had so anxiously husbanded, and brought the country to the verge of ruin.

It might properly be asked at this point why, if our purpose be to explain the present, we should stop for even a short consideration of the criminal aggressions of a despotic king, who only succeeded in slightly extending the boundaries of France and whose victims — the tens of thousands who were killed, maimed, robbed, or maltreated in the battles, sieges, and devastations to which his projects gave rise — are all dead and buried these two centuries. There is, however, a good reason for turning back to the wars of Louis XIV, far off though they may at first sight seem. They serve to introduce us to the chief actors who were to appear on the European stage and to explain their several situations, their loves and hates and rivalries, and the extent of the possessions of each, — little Holland with its vast colonial empire, its unrivaled fleet of merchantmen on the sea, its low meadows, its herds and windmills, its flourishing cities, its painters and audacious writers who continually irritated the great Louis; England with its colonial ambitions in India and North America; Germany, an empire the innumerable parts of which had almost fallen asunder; enfeebled Spain, no longer able to take rank among the formidable powers as it had a century before; scattered Austria, not yet an empire as it is to-day; Italy, the disruption of which seemed as hopeless as that of Germany.

EUROPE AND LOUIS XIV

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LOUIS XIV’s ATTEMPT TO ANNEX THE SPANISH NETHERLANDS (1667-1668)

Louis XIV’s predecessors had, on the whole, had little time to think of conquest. They had first to consolidate their realms and gain the mastery over their feudal dependents who long shared the government with them; then the claims to French territory advanced by the English Edwards and Henries had to be met, and the French provinces were finally freed from their grasp in the long and exhausting Hundred Years’ War; lastly, the great religious dispute between the Catholic and Protestant parties was only settled after many years of disintegrating civil strife. But Louis was finally at liberty to look about him and consider how he might best realize the dream of his ancestors and perhaps reestablish the ancient boundaries which Julius Cæsar reported that the Gauls had occupied. The “natural limits” of France appeared to be the great river Rhine on the north and northeast, the Jura Mountains and the Alps on the east; to the south, the Mediterranean and the mighty chain of the Pyrenees, and to the west and northwest, the Atlantic Ocean.

Richelieu had believed it an important part of-his policy to endeavor to restore all the territory to France which Nature seemed to have assigned to her. Mazarin looked longingly toward the Rhine and sought vainly to win Savoy and Nice, which lie on the French side of the Alps. But he was forced to content himself with inducing Austria, at the end of the Thirty Years’ War, to cede to France such rights as she enjoyed in Alsace. A few years later (1659), Mazarin compelled Spain to give up Artois, a few towns on the northern confines of France, and, to the south, all her trifling possessions north of the Pyrenees, — that barrier “which,” as the treaty of 1659 recites, “formerly divided the Gauls from Spain.”

Louis’s efforts to extend the boundaries of France were confined for the most part to the north and east, — to regions now occupied by France herself, by Belgium, the German Empire, and the tiny duchy of Luxemburg. But in his time the map was no such simple matter as it is to-day. France was still hemmed in by Spain on the south, north, and east, as she had been since the times of Charles V, for Spain still held the southern Netherlands and Franche Comté. Then there was a maze of little duchies, counties, bishoprics, and more or less independent towns lying between France and the Rhine, belonging to the weak Holy Roman Empire. Some of this region France had already added to her possessions, as will be seen on the map, and there was reason to believe that she might take advantage of the general demoralization of the Empire to add more. Paris, the French capital, seemed altogether too near the frontier; but, should Louis succeed in adding territory at the expense of Spain and the little states toward the Rhine, it might become nearly the center of an enlarged France.

Louis had no difficulty in finding an excuse for beginning his aggressions. He was married to a Spanish princess, Maria Theresa. When her father died and her younger brother, Charles II, succeeded to the Spanish throne in 1665, Louis maintained that his wife, as the firstborn, was legally the heiress to a great part of the Spanish Netherlands, if not to the whole Spanish realm. He had his lawyers write a book to prove this, and then ordered his troops to take possession of the Spanish Netherlands. He insolently announced that he was only about to undertake a “journey” into the region, as if his invasion was merely a visit to an undisputed portion of his territories. He easily took a few towns on the border and then turned southeast and quickly and completely conquered Franche Comté.

Notwithstanding the formidable appearance of the Spanish Empire and the traditions of power and glory handed down from the preceding century, Spain was really in no condition to resist these pretensions of Louis. The new sovereign, Charles II, was a child of only four years when he came to the throne, and a child he remained, in intellect and capacity, until his death in 1700.

He is described by contemporaries as being without occupations, pleasures, education, sentiment, or the inclination to do anything serious; he could scarcely read and write; he hated the business of state, and delighted in the game of jackstraws even after reaching the years of maturity. Though king, he did not govern, but was the prey of factious nobles and ecclesiastics who were at once prodigal and without administrative capacity. The offices of state were bestowed on aristocratic favorites or sold to speculators.

The finances of Spain were badly deranged; extravagance was regarded as a virtue, and the systematic accounting for receipts and expenditures was held worthy only of the shopkeeper. A keen observer of the time declared that, so far as the state treasury was concerned, “all was chaos, wrapped in impenetrable obscurity”; and no one wanted to straighten out the tangle. A high functionary vauntingly asserted that Spain did not wish a Colbert to reform finances because “it was beneath so great a prince as his king to live with parsimony.” The pension roll was long; the revenues were decreasing and only about one fourth of the taxes remained for the king after the pensions, interest, and charges of the collectors were paid. To meet expenses he was compelled to resort to discreditable methods; the coinage was debased; salaries were only partly paid; and the national debt was cut down by repudiations. The chief reliance was borrowing, although the prudent bankers of Genoa deemed Spain’s credit so poor that they exacted an interest of from twenty-five to forty per cent. In spite of all these expedients, the poor king had to pawn his jewels and plate for personal expenses, and even then he was humiliated by finding his servants deserting him and by the refusal of his tradesmen to trust him. This poverty haunted him to the end.

Under such circumstances it was only natural that the military and naval defenses of the Spanish possessions should be neglected. The army and navy had been worn out in the Thirty Years’ War. The war footing of the army amounted to less than twenty thousand effective soldiers; the old military spirit was gone, pay was in arrears, and the soldiers were reduced to rags and beggary. Nobles would serve only in high places, and there were more generals than regiments. The ocean-going fleet had less than a dozen ships in good fighting condition, and the coast defenses were so defective that the pirates could not be kept off.

The government only reflected the general condition of the country. The gold which flowed in from the colonies, instead of building up Spanish industry and commerce, really checked them, inasmuch as it encouraged idleness and extravagance among the upper classes who disdained mercantile pursuits. The population, which now numbers some eighteen millions, was then but four or five millions; foreigners controlled the manufactures in a large measure; literature had almost perished; and only the Church showed an increase in wealth and in the number of officials. An Italian ambassador declared: “There is no state in Christendom where the ecclesiastics absorb more of the public revenues, or where religious orders are more numerous.”

The evident inability of Spain to check the operations of the French king threw that burden upon other countries whose interests led them to be alarmed by his high-handed policy of territorial aggrandizement. The encroachments of Louis especially affected the Dutch, for if he succeeded in annexing the Spanish Netherlands, the borders of France would touch those of the Dutch United Provinces; the river Scheldt and the port of Antwerp would be in the hands of the French, and thus Dutch trade would be gravely menaced. Thoroughly aroused to the serious dangers, the Dutch turned to Sweden and England for assistance, and in 1668 the three countries agreed to go to war, if necessary, in order to force Louis to relinquish his pretensions.

This formidable combination quickly brought the French monarch to terms, and he consented, in the treaty of Aix-la Chapelle, to return Franche Comté and the Netherlands to Spain on condition that he might retain about a dozen towns on the north, which gave him a long line of fortresses for frontier defense.

LOUIS XIV’S WAR AGAINST THE DUTCH (1672-1678)

The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle left Louis XIV smarting under the humiliation that he had received through the interference of the Dutch. This little people had forced him to relinquish the Spanish provinces when he had them already in his grasp. He heartily abhorred their Protestantism, their republican tendencies, and their willingness to harbor all the writers and printers who directed attacks against him and against the idea of monarchy by the grace of God. Once their seven provinces had belonged to Spain, and France had helped them to win their independence. Now, instead of favoring their former ally, they raised the duties on French products, and opposed the development of the French navy and the acquisition by France of the Spanish Netherlands.

It seemed consequently both an agreeable and an easy undertaking to crush this confederation of merchants whose whole low, muddy territory did not equal a fifteenth part of the great king’s realm. The United Netherlands was composed of those seven provinces, lying in a circle around the Zuider Zee, which had successfully combined, a century earlier, to free themselves from Spanish oppression. They differed greatly in their laws and in the character and occupations of their inhabitants, and were bound together as loosely as possible, so that each of the members of the union had a right to veto any important measure. The most influential province was Holland with its vast commerce and its celebrated cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Delft, Leyden, and The Hague, which was the seat of government of the united provinces. We commonly refer to the present kingdom of the Netherlands as “Holland,” although strictly speaking that is the name of only one province. In the time of Louis XIV the United Netherlands included about the same area as the Dutch kingdom of to-day, which is larger than Massachusetts, but only a quarter the size of the state of New York.

The political troubles in the United Netherlands were due first, to the weakness of the federal congress, the Estates General, in which even the most salutary measures could be defeated by the vote of the representatives of a single province; secondly, to the natural anxiety of Holland to control the affairs of the whole union; thirdly, to the ambition of the descendants of the founder of Dutch liberty, William of Orange, called the Silent, to establish themselves as kings in fact if not in name.

Each province had a governor or stadholder, and as William the Silent owed his power nominally to the fact that he was chosen stadholder by several provinces, so his sons and grandson had the same distinction accorded to them, in grateful recognition of all that the Dutch people owed to the family.

When Louis XIV began his attack on the provinces, the great grandson of William the Silent, a young man of twenty-two, was the representative of the House of Orange. His enemies, who were in authority at the time, disliked the thought of a strong central power and declared that each province was of right a sovereign republic. But the threatening attitude of Louis XIV and the actual approach of the French troops speedily convinced the Dutch that the provinces must stand together. Everyone looked to the descendant of William the Silent for safety in the terrible crisis, and William, Prince of Orange, was chosen commander general of all the troops. He was also appointed hereditary stadholder by some of the more important provinces, beginning with Holland, and while he never became king, he so increased the powers of the stadholder that the Netherlands ceased to be a republic except in name.

The ease with which Louis’s ambassadors were able to turn against the Dutch all of their former allies casts a sad enough light upon the unscrupulous diplomacy of the time. Charles II of England was induced to join Louis by the promise of money which would enable him to amuse himself in his rather expensive fashion without resorting to Parliament. Sweden, the Emperor, and some of the more important German princes also agreed, in return for money or possible territorial gains, to support Louis. Consequently the Dutch seemed to have no chance of opposing the powerful army which Louis sent around well to the east so as to escape crossing the various streams which barred the direct way to the provinces. By this route he also kept out of the Spanish Netherlands and so avoided giving Spain any cause for intervening.

In June, 1672, the French were not far east of Amsterdam, and the city expected to have to surrender every moment. The Dutch were ready to conclude peace and offered to cede the southern portions of their territory to France and pay the expenses of the war. Louis, however, asked still more land and money, and demanded, moreover, that the Dutch should reestablish the Catholic religion on the same footing with the Protestant, and should each year send a solemn embassy to thank him “for having left to the United Provinces the independence which the kings his predecessors had caused them to acquire.” These outrageous demands only strengthened the power of William of Orange, who cut the dikes and put a part of the country under water in order to drive out the French; and after a vain attempt on their part to take Amsterdam on the ice during the winter of 1672-1673, they evacuated Holland.

William of Orange now became the leader of the European opposition to France. Both as stadholder of the Dutch provinces and later as king of England, he was to be the stanch and unwavering enemy of Louis and the most serious obstacle in his path. Young as he was, William exhibited the capacity for leadership, diplomacy, and dogged perseverance which had shown itself in his ancestors. He induced Louis’s recent allies to desert him and organized against the too powerful France a “grand alliance,” including Spain, the Emperor, the elector of Brandenburg, and other German princes. England, which had never sympathized with its king’s love for Louis, became neutral, leaving only Sweden to support France.

When, at the end of six years of intermittent hostilities, a general peace was concluded at Nimwegen, the chief provisions were that France should not only leave the United Netherlands intact but should pledge herself to protect the Dutch merchants and their commerce. France, however, was finally permitted to annex some northern towns and Franche Comté, over which she and Spain had been quarreling for a century and a half.

LOUIS XIV’s PLAN OF ENCROACHING BY “REUNIONS” UPON THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

Although there was no open war for ten years to follow, Louis found a way to encroach steadily upon the Spanish Netherlands and the German territories which lay between him and the Rhine. Franche Comté and certain towns which had been ceded to him by Spain were, by the terms of the treaty, to include “all their territories, domains, seigneuries, appurtenances, dependencies, and annexes by whatsoever title they might be designated, as well as all the men, vassals, subjects, towns, burgs, villages, hamlets, forests, streams, country districts, salt marshes, and all other things connected with them.” These innumerable vestiges of ancient feudal entanglements gave the king of France ample opportunity for extending his claims by reuniting former “dependencies.” To carry out these “reunions,” as they were called, courts were organized with the special purpose of determining what should of right come to France and, under the king’s supervision, they naturally put a liberal construction on the cessions made by the treaty of Nimwegen. Where towns resisted, French troops were sent to bombard them. The Spanish protests received no attention.

Similar uncertainty as to the exact extent of the cessions made to France by the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and by later treaties, led to far more considerable extensions of Louis’s power at the expense of the German states on his borders. His courts turned half rights into whole in Alsace, and French troops seized the important city of Strassburg (1681), to which Louis had no claim whatever. In 1684 the diet of the Empire was induced to ratify the French occupation of Strassburg and of nearly all the territories which had been adjudged to Louis by his courts.

Almost two centuries later Germany was able, as we shall see, to wreak a terrible vengeance upon France and to regain not only Strassburg but the whole of Alsace. But no European state has changed since the time of Louis XIV so completely as Germany, which means to us the German Empire, one of the three or four best organized of the great European powers. It is now a compact federation somewhat like that of the United States, made up of twenty-two monarchies and three city republics. Each member of the union manages its local affairs but leaves all questions of national importance to be settled by the central government at Berlin. Nothing could be more different from this than the “Germanies” — as the French called them — of the seventeenth century. And in order to understand the ease with which Louis appropriated bits of German territory and the alliances which he was constantly making with individual German rulers, we must pause a moment to consider that very anomalous thing known as the Holy Roman Empire.

In spite of its fine name and long history, it scarcely deserved to be ranked among the states of Europe. The great mediæval emperors, like Henry IV and Frederick Barbarossa, had never succeeded in getting the better of their powerful vassals and binding together their territories into a firm monarchy such as France had become. On the contrary, the central power had grown weaker and weaker, while the various dukes, counts, bishops, abbots, and free towns went their own way, paying less and less attention to the Emperor, coining their own money, raising their own taxes, and, for that matter, fighting their own battles, — for each state was permitted to conclude treaties with other countries as if it were independent.

The Emperor, who regarded himself as the successor of the Roman emperors, was selected in a peculiar manner. He did not inherit the crown, but was chosen by a few of the German rulers who had long enjoyed this right and were consequently called “electors.” As they often appear in history, it is well worth while to remember their names. There were first, the three ecclesiastical electors, — the archbishops of Mayence, of Treves, and of Cologne, — who were not only prelates but princes, whose possessions lay upon the Rhine and who had consequently much to do with France. Close to them, geographically, was the elector of the Palatinate; then, further east, the elector of Saxony, and, to the north, the elector of Brandenburg, who was soon (1700) to assume the title of King of Prussia. The seventh elector was the king of Bohemia. Lastly there was the duke of Bavaria, who had managed during the troubles of the Thirty Years’ War to have himself recognized as a new elector.

Although the Empire was not hereditary, it had been so in practice for some two hundred and fifty years, since the electors had been accustomed to select as Emperor the ruler of the Austrian dominions. They were free, however, at any time to choose someone else, and Francis I of France, Henry VIII of England, and other foreign candidates had occasionally had some hopes of securing the imperial crown. Even Louis XIV was induced at one time to make an effort to have himself chosen Emperor and spent some money in gaining the good will of the electors.

The Empire had a general congress, or diet, to which the various members of the union sent representatives and which met at Ratisbon on the Danube. It had little power and was so badly organized and so slow in its proceedings that business dragged along literally for centuries. The Emperor, as emperor, had little or no steady revenue, and the imperial army was made up of contingents from the various states, which came together very reluctantly and tardily. Consequently, although one hears of the Empire entering into treaties of alliance, participating in wars and concluding treaties of peace, it must be remembered that no one, not even the diet or the Emperor himself, had any particular interest in the Empire, but that everything really depended upon the individual German princes, among whom the ruler of the Austrian territories was the most important.

The House of Hapsburg, to which the Austrian territories belonged, and which had so long held the office of Emperor, had slowly accumulated its various kingdoms, duchies, counties, etc., by conquest, inheritance, intrigue, and fortunate marriages, running back into the Middle Ages. In the treaty of Nimwegen with France, the Emperor is called “Most serene and mighty Lord Leopold, Emperor elect of the Romans, ever august, King of Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Margrave of Moravia, Duke of Luxemburg, of Upper and Lower Silesia, Würtemberg and Teck, Prince of Suabia, Count of Hapsburg, Tyrol, Kyburg and Goritz, etc., etc.” Some minor possessions are here modestly omitted, but, on the other hand, Leopold’s title, King of Germany, was meaningless, and Louis XIV protested against his still calling himself duke of Burgundy since the duchy of Burgundy had belonged to France for over a century.

As for Hungary, that was in the hands of the Turks with whom the Hapsburg princes had been warring for two centuries. Just at this period (1683) the Mohammedans were besieging Vienna itself, which was only saved by the timely intervention of the Polish king. After this defeat, however, the power of the Turks rapidly declined, and the Hapsburgs were able in 1699 to force the Sultan to acknowledge their title to Hungary. It was but natural that the eyes of the Emperor should be turned rather to the east than to the west, since his realms lay mainly to the east of Germany proper and his capital was Vienna, not Ratisbon where the diet met, nor Frankfurt-on-the-Main where the imperial elections took place.

While the Austrian ruler was holding together as best he could his motley aggregation of kingdoms, duchies, counties, and principalities, inhabited by Germans, Bohemians, Slavonians, and Hungarians, the elector of Brandenburg was laying the foundation of a kingdom which was to become Austria’s greatest rival and finally the center of the new German Empire from which she has been excluded. Beginning with a strip of territory extending some ninety miles to the east and to the west of the then little town of Berlin, the successive rulers of the House of Hohenzollern have gradually extended their boundaries until the present kingdom of Prussia extends all the way across Germany and embraces nearly two thirds of the present German Empire.

The development of Prussia will be described below. Suffice it to say here that it was in the time of Louis XIV that Brandenburg began to play an important part in European affairs. The Great Elector, as he is still honorably designated by Prussians, who reigned from 1640 to 1688, had joined England and Holland in their alliances against Louis, for he was interested in the fate of his territories on the Rhine, Mark and Cleves. He organized an army out of all proportion to his resources and therewith started his country on the way to military glory.

As for the rest of the states included in the Holy Roman Empire, two or three hundred in number, they differed widely in size and character. One had a duke, another a count at its head, while others were ruled by prelates, archbishops, bishops, or by the heads of monasteries, — abbots, abbesses, and priors. There were many cities like Nuremberg, Augsburg, Frankfort,

Worms, and Cologne, which were just as independent as Bavaria, Würtemberg, or Saxony. Lastly there were the imperial knights whose whole possessions might consist of a single strong castle with a wretched village lying at its base. The burgravate of Reineck is said to have included one castle and twelve poor subjects; the standing army of Count Leimburg Styrum-Wilhelmsdorf was composed of one colonel, nine other officers, and two privates.

Now it so happened that it was the southwestern portion of the Empire on both sides of the Rhine and nearest France that were most broken up into weak and helpless little principalities. It is no wonder that Louis was encouraged to add, bit by bit, through war or courts of “reunion,” the region between France and the Rhine where he already had so many little “enclaves,” or islands of territory. Next to the French boundary lay the duchy of Lorraine, whose duke suffered so much from Louis that he finally took service in the Austrian army. Three bishoprics within his domain — Metz, Verdun, and Toul — had been in the hands of France for a century or more. Alsace, before portions of it were ceded to France in 1648, was divided into some forty independent or dependent little countries, not including the ninety villages of the knights. There were the bishopric of Strassburg, the realms of several abbots and counts, and ten independent towns besides the great free city of Strassburg.

To the north of Alsace lay the ragged possessions of the elector of the Palatinate which Louis hoped to add to France; east and west of him were the lands of the ecclesiastical electors of Mayence and Treves, still farther down the Rhine those of the elector of Cologne, and near him the Prussian duchy of Cleves. To the west of Cologne was the duchy of Jülich and then right in the midst of the Spanish Netherlands the bishopric of Liége. Besides these there were other territories, some too small to appear on even a good map. It will be clear that it is almost impossible to give with any exactness the number of countries which went to make up the singular union known as the Holy Roman Empire. The manner in which Germany finally consolidated itself under the influence of French aggression, which by no means ceased with the death of Louis XIV, will prove one of the most important chapters in this volume.

THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF 1688 AND THE WAR OF THE LEAGUE OF AUGSBURG (1688-1697)

The “reunions” by which Louis increased the French possessions naturally attracted the attention of his enemies, — the Emperor, William of Orange, the king of Spain, and other rulers whose apprehensions were aroused. A new coalition was therefore preparing against Louis when two startling acts on his part consolidated a great part of Europe against him.

The first of these was the revocation of the Edict of Nantes which Louis XIV’s grandfather, Henry IV, had granted to the Huguenots, as the French Protestants were called. Since they were heretics and as such abhorred by the Catholics, they had no rights except those which the king explicitly accorded them, and to revoke the edict was to make all Protestants outlaws. When the Huguenots were deprived by Richelieu of their former dangerous military independence, they had turned to manufacture, trade, and banking, and “as rich as a Huguenot” had become a proverb in France. There were perhaps a million of them among the fifteen million Frenchmen, and they undoubtedly formed by far the most thrifty and enterprising part of the nation. The Catholic clergy, however, continued to urge the complete suppression of heresy.

Louis XIV had scarcely taken the reins of government into his own hands before the perpetual nagging and injustice to which the Protestants had been subjected at all times took a more serious form. Upon one pretense or another their churches were demolished. Children were authorized to renounce Protestantism when they reached the age of seven, and might be taken from their parents to be brought up in a Catholic school. In this way Protestant families were pitilessly broken up. Rough and licentious dragoons were quartered upon the Huguenots in the hope that the insulting behavior of the soldiers might drive the heretics to accept the religion of the king.

At last Louis was led by his officials to believe that practically all the Huguenots had been converted by these drastic measures, and in 1685 he accordingly revoked the Edict of Nantes. The Protestants became outlaws, and their ministers subject to the penalty of death if they continued to perform their duties. But even liberal-minded Catholics, like La Fontaine, the kindly writer of fables, and Madame de Sévigné, hailed the reestablishment of “religious unity” with delight. They honestly believed that only an insignificant and seditious remnant still clung to the beliefs of Calvin. But there could have been no more serious mistake. Thousands of the Huguenots succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the royal officials and fled, — some to the Dutch Netherlands, some to England, some to Brandenburg, some to America, — carrying with them their skill and industry to strengthen the rivals of France.

This revival of ancient fanaticism made a deep impression upon the Protestant powers, especially the Dutch Netherlands, England, and Brandenburg. They had all, at one time or another, been in league with France, but now they all turned against her. Nevertheless, the French king, as if to still further increase the strength and unanimity of his enemies, in the same year that he revoked the Edict of Nantes, laid claim to the Palatinate in the name of his sister-in-law, Charlotte Elizabeth.

In 1686 the German powers signed an alliance known as the League of Augsburg, which was joined by Spain and the Dutch. Catholics and Protestants alike were ready to fight side by side in order to check the boundless insolence of the French king. Moreover a singular revolution soon greatly increased the strength and resources of Louis’s chief adversary, William of Orange, for in 1688 he became king of England.

Upon the death of Charles II of England, who had been very friendly with Louis, he was succeeded by his brother James, who was an avowed Catholic and had married, as his second wife, Mary of Modena, also a Catholic. He was ready to reestablish Catholicism in England, regardless of consequences. Mary, James’s daughter by his first wife, had married William, prince of Orange, the head of the United Netherlands. The nation, therefore, might have tolerated James so long as they could look forward to the accession of his Protestant daughter Mary. But when a son was born to his Catholic second wife, and James showed unmistakably his purpose of favoring the Catholics, messengers were dispatched by a group of Protestants to William of Orange, asking him to come over with his English wife and be their ruler.

William landed in England, November, 1688, and marched upon London, where he received general support from all the English Protestants, regardless of party. James started to oppose William, but his army refused to fight, and his courtiers deserted him. William was glad to forward James’s escape to France, as he would hardly have known what to do with him had James insisted on remaining in the country. A new parliament declared the throne vacant, on the ground that King James II, “having violated the fundamental laws and withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, had abdicated the government.”

By this peaceful revolution the English rid themselves of the Stuart kings and their claims to rule, like the French kings, by the grace of God. Moreover both Charles II and James II had been Catholics and had threatened to reestablish their religion against the wishes of the majority of the people. They had both been in constant friendly communication with the French king who favored this plan. Now all was changed. William was unmistakably Protestant and already the head of a Protestant state; he had come at the bidding of representatives of the people and governed in virtue of an act of Parliament, not by the grace of God. Having the people with him, he easily defeated the attempts which James, with Louis’s assistance, made to regain his throne.

The effects of the English Revolution were important in their influence upon the course of European affairs, for under William’s leadership England immediately joined the League of Augsburg. He was thus able to combine the resources of the Dutch and the English against his arch-enemy, the French king, who made a momentous mistake by occupying the Palatinate in the interests of his sister-in-law, instead of opposing William’s designs on England.

France now stood alone against Europe and was really in no condition to begin a new war, for her treasury was empty, her people burdened with taxes, and her best generals dead. Nevertheless Louis seized the Palatinate and the electorate of Cologne where he was trying to establish his own candidate as archbishop. He also sent his fleet to support James II in his attempt to regain his English throne. In 1689 Louis justified the worst apprehensions of his enemies by a frightful devastation of the Palatinate which he had decided to evacuate. He burned whole towns, destroyed the castles, including the beautiful residence of the elector of the Palatinate at Heidelberg, the magnificent ruins of which stand as a reminder of this cruel attempt to destroy permanently the prosperity of one of the most beautiful and flourishing districts of Germany. Mannheim was ruined by fire and gunpowder, Speyer and Worms destroyed, and the country ravaged as Sherman ravaged Georgia on his famous march to the sea. Though this was defended as a war measure, the ancient grudge of the Germans against France may even to-day be aroused by the sight of the ivy-grown walls which still crown many a hill in the region desolated by Louis’s minister of war, the heartless Louvois.

The war dragged on by land and sea for nearly a decade until at last, in 1697, France, England, the United Netherlands, and the Empire signed the treaties of Ryswick. The chief provisions of these will serve to recall the main issues which have been alluded to in this chapter. Louis surrendered practically all the places (except Strassburg) that he had occupied since the treaty of Nimwegen and agreed to recognize William III as king of England, to make no effort to depose him, and to ratify as William’s successor his wife’s sister, Anne, a stanch Protestant, thus assuring the exclusion of Catholics from the English throne. He restored Lorraine to its rightful ruler, evacuated the right bank of the Rhine, withdrew his candidate for the electorate of Cologne, and accepted a sum of money in lieu of his sister-in-law’s claims on the Palatinate.

RECONSTRUCTION OF EUROPE AT UTRECHT

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THE QUESTION OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION

The willingness of Louis XIV to conclude the Peace of Ryswick, by which he gained so little, is to be explained in part by his anxiety to be ready for a new crisis in European affairs which he and his fellow-monarchs had long foreseen. This was the struggle that was sure to arise when Charles II, the feeble king of Spain, should die. He had neither children nor brothers to whom his vast realms would naturally revert. A successor had therefore to be sought among his more distant kin.

His father’s elder sister had married the French king, Louis XIII, and the younger sister, the Emperor, Ferdinand III, so it had come about that Louis XIV was Charles’s cousin, as was also the reigning Emperor (and head of the Austrian house), Leopold I. Matters were further complicated by the circumstance that Charles’s own elder sister had married Louis, and his younger, Emperor Leopold, so that it was inevitable that each of these rulers would lay claim to the whole or part of the Spanish possessions either in his own name or in that of his children. Both monarchs, however, were well aware that the other powers of Europe would never permit either of them or the heir to the French or the Austrian crown to become king of Spain and thus found an empire of unprecedented extent. Louis therefore designated his younger grandson, Philip of Anjou, as the rightful successor of Charles II, while Leopold worked in the interests of his younger son, the Archduke Charles.

The vital interest of Europe in the settlement of the question becomes apparent as we enumerate the more important of the twenty-two crowns that Charles was so soon to lay down. Besides the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Navarre with their dependencies (which embraced all the peninsula except Portugal), a great part of Italy belonged to the Spanish ruler, namely, Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, the duchy of Milan and certain coast towns, while to the north of France lay the Spanish Netherlands, and on the coast of Africa were other Spanish holdings. But all these territories dwindle into insignificance when compared with Spain’s magnificent colonial empire. This embraced, far to the east, the Philippine Archipelago and the Caroline Islands; to the west — thanks to Columbus — Cuba, Porto Rico, and Trinidad. In North America, Spain controlled Florida, Mexico, Texas, and claimed, indeed, all the great unexplored West. Central America was hers, and all of South America except Brazil, which belonged to the Portuguese.

The Spanish succession was not then a matter of the Spanish kingdom, of a duchy here and there, or a few walled towns which might come into the hands of one European ruler rather than another. The question whether the French king should annex certain fortresses on his northern border, or extend his control over the Alsatian towns, sank into the background. The whole world was now in a sense involved and even the fate of nations yet unborn. The history of Europe was broadening out. The king to whom Madrid, Naples, Milan, and Antwerp should fall was also to be feared — especially by the merchants — as the ruler of Manila, Havana, and Valparaiso.

Nothing need be said here of the relative strength of the claims made by the French king on the one hand and by the Emperor on the other. Too much was at stake to permit the European powers to leave the matter to be settled by diplomats and lawyers. Should the duke of Anjou succeed to the Spanish throne, on condition that he would give up forever all rights to the French crown, there was no assurance that his promise would be kept. Even if it were, the two branches of the House of Bourbon might combine their strength to the detriment of the rest of Europe. If, on the other hand, Leopold’s son should be awarded the prize, there was the risk of a revival of the dangerously extensive empire of Charles V; for the Archduke Charles might, by the death of his older brother, become heir to the Austrian territories and the most natural candidate for the imperial crown.

Important as were the issues in the disposal of Spain’s European lands and interested as were both England and Holland in maintaining a certain balance of power among the European states, it is probable that they would have hesitated to go to war in support of any particular candidate for the Spanish throne had it not been for the New World and the wealth-bringing trade carried on between the European ports and those of the West Indies, Mexico, and South America.