Book: A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1.

C >> Carlton J. H. Hayes >> A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1.




[Sidenote: Recognition of Dutch Independence]

Although William the Silent was assassinated by an agent of Spain
(1584), and Antwerp was captured from the Protestants in 1585, the
ability and genius of Farnese did not avail to make further headway
against the United Provinces; but Philip II, stubborn to the end,
positively refused to recognize Dutch independence. In 1609 Philip III
of Spain consented to a twelve years' truce with the States-General of
The Hague. In the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) the Dutch and Spaniards
again became embroiled, and the freedom of the republic was not
recognized officially by Spain till the general peace of Westphalia in
1648. [Footnote: See below, p. 229.]

The seven provinces, which had waged such long war with Spain,
constituted, by mutual agreement, a confederacy, each preserving a
distinct local government and administration, but all subject to a
general parliament--the States-General--and to a stadtholder, or
governor-general, an office which subsequently became hereditary in the
Orange family. Between the States-General and the stadtholder, a
constitutional conflict was carried on throughout the greater part of
the seventeenth century--the former, supported by well-to-do burghers,
favoring a greater measure of political democracy, the latter, upheld
by aristocratically minded nobles, laboring for the development of
monarchical institutions under the Orange family.

[Sidenote: Natural Opposition of England and France to the Policies of
Philip II]

Not only his efforts in the Netherlands but many other projects of
Philip II were frustrated by remarkable parallel developments in the
two national monarchies of England and France. Both these countries
were naturally jealous opposition and fearful of an undue expansion of
Spain, which might upset the balance of power. Both states, from their
geographical locations, would normally be inimical to Philip II:
England would desire, from her island position, to destroy the monopoly
which Spain claimed of the carrying trade of the seas; France, still
encircled by Habsburg possessions in Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands,
would adhere to her traditional policy of allying herself with every
foe of the Spanish king. Then, too, the papal authority had been
rejected in England and seriously questioned in France: Philip's
crusading zeal made him the champion of the Church in those countries.
For ecclesiastical as well as for economic and political purposes it
seemed necessary to the Spanish king that he should bring France and
England under his direct influence. On their side, patriotic French and
English resented such foreign interest in their domestic affairs, and
the eventual failure of Philip registered a wonderful growth of
national feeling among the peoples who victoriously contended against
him. The beginnings of the real modern greatness of France and England
date from their struggle with Philip II.

[Sidenote: Philip II and Mary Tudor]

At the outset of his reign, Philip seemed quite successful in his
foreign relations. As we have seen, he was in alliance with England
through his marriage with Queen Mary Tudor (1553-1558): she had
temporarily restored the English Church to communion with the Holy See,
and was conducting her foreign policy in harmony with Philip's--because
of her husband she lost to the French the town of Calais, the last
English possession on the Continent (1558). Likewise, as has been said,
Philip II concluded with France in 1559 the advantageous treaty of
Cateau-Cambresis. But during the ensuing thirty years the tables were
completely turned. Both England and France ended by securing respite
from Spanish interference.

[Sidenote: Philip II and Elizabeth]

Mary Tudor died unhappy and childless in 1558, and the succession of
her sister Queen Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn,
altered the relations between the English and Spanish courts. Elizabeth
(1558-1603) was possessed of an imperious, haughty, energetic
character; she had remarkable intelligence and an absorbing patriotism.
She inspired confidence in her advisers and respect among her people,
so that she was commonly called "Good Queen Bess" despite the fact that
her habits of deceit and double-dealing gave color to the French king's
remark that she was the greatest liar in Christendom. This was the
woman with whom Philip II had to deal; he tried many tactics in order
to gain his ends,--all of them hopelessly unsuccessful.

Philip first proposed matrimony, but Elizabeth was very careful not to
give herself, or England, such a master. Then when the queen declared
herself a Protestant and showed no inclination to assist Philip in any
of his enterprises, the Spanish king proceeded to plot against her
throne. He subsidized Roman Catholic priests, especially Jesuits, who
violated the laws of the land. He stirred up sedition and even went so
far as to plan Elizabeth's assassination. Many conspiracies against the
English queen centered in the person of the ill-starred Mary Stuart,
[Footnote: Mary Stuart (1542-1587).] queen of Scotland, who was
next in line of succession to the English throne and withal a Catholic.

[Sidenote: Mary Stuart]

Descended from the Stuart kings of Scotland and from Henry VII of
England, related to the powerful family of Guise in France, Mary had
been brought up at the French court and married to the short-lived
French king, Francis II. Upon the death of the latter she returned in
1561 to Scotland, a young woman of but eighteen years, only to find
that the government had fallen victim to the prevalent factional fights
among the Scotch nobles and that in the preceding year the parliament
had solemnly adopted a Calvinistic form of Protestantism. By means of
tact and mildness, however, Mary won the respect of the nobles and the
admiration of the people, until a series of marital troubles and
blunders--her marriage with a worthless cousin, Henry Darnley, and then
her scandalous marriage with Darnley's profligate murderer, the earl of
Bothwell--alienated her people from her and drove her into exile. She
abdicated the throne of Scotland in favor of her infant son, James VI,
who was reared a Protestant and subsequently became King James I of
England, and she then (1568) threw herself upon the mercy of Elizabeth.
She thought she would find in England a haven of refuge; instead she
found there a prison.

For the score of years during which she remained Elizabeth's prisoner,
Mary Stuart was the object of many plots and conspiracies against the
existing governments of both Scotland and England. In every such scheme
were to be found the machinations and money of the Spanish king. In
fact, as time went on, it seemed to a growing section of the English
people as though the cause of Elizabeth was bound up with Protestantism
and with national independence and prosperity just as certainly as the
success of Mary would lead to the triumph of Catholicism, the political
supremacy of Spain, and the commercial ruin of England. It was under
these circumstances that Mary's fate was sealed. Because of a political
situation over which she had slight control, the ex-queen of Scotland
was beheaded by Elizabeth's orders in 1587.

[Sidenote: The Armada]

Philip II had now tried and failed in every expedient but one,--the
employment of sheer force. Even this he attempted in order to avenge
the death of Mary Stuart and to bring England, politically,
religiously, and commercially, into harmony with his Spanish policies.
The story of the preparation and the fate of the Invincible Armada is
almost too well known to require repetition. It was in 1588 that there
issued from the mouth of the Tagus River the most formidable fleet
which up to that time Christendom had ever beheld--130 ships, 8000
seamen, 19,000 soldiers, the flower of the Spanish chivalry. In the
Netherlands it was to be joined by Alexander Farnese with 33,000
veteran troops. But in one important respect Philip had underestimated
his enemy: he had counted upon a divided country. Now the attack upon
England was primarily national, rather than religious, and Catholics
vied with Protestants in offering aid to the queen: it was a united
rather than a divided nation which Philip faced. The English fleet,
composed of comparatively small and easily maneuvered vessels, worked
great havoc upon the ponderous and slow-moving Spanish galleons, and
the wreck of the Armada was completed by a furious gale which tossed
ship after ship upon the rocks of northern Scotland. Less than a third
of the original expedition ever returned to Spain.

Philip II had thus failed in his herculean effort against England. He
continued in small ways to annoy and to irritate Elizabeth. He tried--
without result--to incite the Catholics of Ireland against the queen.
He exhausted his arsenals and his treasures in despairing attempts to
equip a second and even a third Armada. But he was doomed to bitterest
disappointment, for two years before his death an English fleet sacked
his own great port of Cadiz. The war with England ruined the navy and
the commerce of Spain. The defeat of the Armada was England's first
title to commercial supremacy.

[Sidenote: Economic Benefits of the Period for England]

It was long maintained that the underlying causes of the conflict
between England and Spain in the second half of the sixteenth century
and its chief interest was religious--that it was part of an epic
struggle between Protestantism and Catholicism. There may be a measure
of truth in such an idea, but most recent writers believe that the
chief motives for the conflict, as well as its important results, were
essentially economic. From the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, English
sailors and freebooters, such as Hawkins and Drake, took the offensive
against Spanish trade and commerce; and many ships, laden with silver
and goods from the New World and bound for Cadiz, were seized and towed
into English harbors. The queen herself frequently received a share of
the booty and therefore tended to encourage the practice. For nearly
thirty years Philip put up with the capture of his treasure ships, the
raiding of his colonies, and the open assistance rendered to his
rebellious subjects. Only when he reached the conclusion that his power
would never be secure in the Netherlands or in America did he dispatch
the Armada. Its failure finally freed Holland and marked the collapse
of the Spanish monopoly upon the high seas and in the New World.

[Sidenote: Affairs in France]

Before we can appreciate the motives and results of the interference of
Philip II in French affairs, a few words must be said about what had
happened in France since Francis I (1515-1547) and his son, Henry II
(1547-1559), exalted the royal power in their country and not only
preserved French independence of the surrounding empire of Charles V
but also increased French prestige by means of a strong policy in Italy
and by the extension of frontiers toward the Rhine. Henry II had
married a member of the famous Florentine family of the Medici--
Catherine de' Medici--a large and ugly woman, but ambitious,
resourceful, and capable, who, by means of trickery and deceit, took an
active part in French politics from the death of her husband,
throughout the reigns of her feeble sons, Francis II (1559-1560),
Charles IX (1560-1574), and Henry III (1574-1589). Catherine found her
position and that of her royal children continually threatened by (1)
the Protestants (Huguenots), (2) the great nobles, and (3) Philip II of
Spain.

[Sidenote: Dangers to Royal Power in France: Protestantism]

French Protestantism had grown steadily during the first half of the
sixteenth century until it was estimated that from a twentieth to a
thirtieth of the nation had fallen away from the Catholic Church. The
influence of the advocates of the new faith was, however, much greater
than their number, because the Huguenots, as they were called, were
recruited mainly from the prosperous, intelligent middle class,--the
bourgeoisie,--who had been intrusted by preceding French kings with
many important offices. The Huguenots represented, therefore, a
powerful social class and likewise one that was opposed to the undue
increase of royal power. They demanded, not only religious toleration
for themselves, but also regular meetings of the Estates-General and
control of the nation's representatives over financial matters. The
kings, on their part, felt that political solidarity and their own
personal rule were dependent upon the maintenance of religious
uniformity in the nation and the consequent defeat of the pretensions
of the Huguenots. Francis I and Henry II had persecuted the Protestants
with bitterness. From 1562 to 1593 a series of so-called religious wars
embroiled the whole country.

[Sidenote: Dangers to Royal Power in France: the Nobles]

French politics were further complicated during the second half of the
sixteenth century by the recrudescence of the power of the nobles. The
so-called religious wars were quite as much political as religious--
they resulted from efforts of this or that faction of noblemen to
dictate to a weak king. Two noble families particularly vied with each
other for power,--the Bourbons and the Guises,--and the unqualified
triumph of either would be certain to bring calamity to the sons of
Catherine de' Medici.

[Sidenote: The Bourbons]

The Bourbons bore the proud title of princes of the blood because they
were direct descendants of a French king. Their descent, to be sure,
was from Saint Louis, king in the thirteenth century, and they were
now, therefore, only distant cousins of the reigning kings, but as the
latter died off, one after another, leaving no direct successors, the
Bourbons by the French law of strict male succession became heirs to
the royal family. The head of the Bourbons, a certain Anthony, had
married the queen of Navarre and had become thereby king of Navarre,
although the greater part of that country--the region south of the
Pyrenees--had been annexed to Spain in 1512. Anthony's brother Louis,
prince of Conde, had a reputation for bravery, loyalty, and ability.
Both Conde and the king of Navarre were Protestants.

[Sidenote: The Guise Family]

The Guise family was descended from a duke of Lorraine who had attached
himself to the court of Francis I. It was really a foreign family,
inasmuch as Lorraine was then a dependency of the Holy Roman Empire,
but the patriotic exploits of the head of the family in defending Metz
against the Emperor Charles V and in capturing Calais from the English
endeared the Guises to a goodly part of the French nation. The duke of
Guise remained a stanch Catholic, and his brother, called the Cardinal
of Lorraine, was head of as many as twelve bishoprics, which gave him
an enormous revenue and made him the most conspicuous churchman in
France. During the reign of Henry II (1547-1559) the Guises were
especially influential. They fought valiantly in foreign wars. They
spurred on the king to a great persecution of the Huguenots. They
increased their own landed estates. And they married one of their
relatives--Mary, queen of Scots--to the heir to the throne. But after
the brief reign of Mary's husband, Francis II (1559-1560), the Guise
family encountered not only the active opposition of their chief noble
rivals, the Bourbons, with their Huguenot allies, but likewise the
jealousy and crafty intrigues of Catherine de' Medici.

[Sidenote: Religious Wars in France]

Catherine feared both the ambition of the powerful Guise family and the
disruptive tendencies of Protestantism. The result was a long series of
confused civil wars between the ardent followers, respectively
Catholic and Protestant, of the Guise and Bourbon families, in which
the queen-mother gave support first to one side and then to the other.
There were no fewer than eight of these sanguinary conflicts, each one
ending with the grant of slight concessions to the Huguenots and the
maintenance of the weak kings upon the throne. The massacre of Saint
Bartholomew's Day (1572) was a horrible incident of Catherine's policy
of "trimming." Fearing the undue influence over the king of Admiral de
Coligny, an upright and able Huguenot leader, the queen-mother, with
the aid of the Guises, prevailed upon the weak-minded Charles IX to
authorize the wholesale assassination of Protestants. The signal was
given by the ringing of a Parisian church-bell at two o'clock in the
morning of 24 August, 1572, and the slaughter went on throughout the
day in the capital and for several weeks in the provinces. Coligny was
murdered; even women and children were not spared. It is estimated that
in all at least three thousand--perhaps ten thousand--lost their lives.

[Sidenote: The "Politiques"]

The massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day did not destroy French
Protestantism or render the Huguenot leaders more timid in
asserting their claims. On the other hand, it brought into
clear light a noteworthy division within the ranks of their Catholic
opponents in France--on one side, the rigorous followers of the Guise
family, who complained only that the massacre had not been sufficiently
comprehensive, and, on the other side, a group of moderate Catholics,
usually styled the "Politiques" who, while continuing to adhere to the
Roman Church, and, when called upon, bearing arms on the side of the
king, were strongly opposed to the employment of force or violence or
persecution in matters of religion. The Politiques were particularly
patriotic, and they blamed the religious wars and the intolerant policy
of the Guises for the seeming weakness of the French monarchy. They
thought the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day a blunder as well as a
crime.

The emergence of the Politiques did not immediately make for peace;
rather, it substituted a three-sided for a two-sided conflict.

[Sidenote: Philip II and the War of the Three Henries]

After many years, filled with disorder, it became apparent that the
children of Catherine de' Medici would have no direct male heirs and
that the crown would therefore legally devolve upon the son of Anthony
of Bourbon--Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre and a Protestant. Such an
outcome was naturally distasteful to the Guises and abhorrent to Philip
II of Spain. In 1585 a definite league was formed between Henry, duke
of Guise, and the Spanish king, whereby the latter undertook by
military force to aid the former's family in seizing the throne: French
politics in that event would be controlled by Spain, and Philip would
secure valuable assistance in crushing the Netherlands and conquering
England.[Footnote: At that very time, Mary, Queen of Scots, cousin of
Henry, duke of Guise, was held a prisoner in England by Queen
Elizabeth. See above, p. 99.] The immediate outcome of the agreement
was the war of the three Henries--Henry III, son of Catherine de'
Medici and king of France; Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre and heir
to the French throne; and Henry, duke of Guise, with the foreign
support of Philip II of Spain. Henry of Guise represented the extreme
Catholic party; Henry of Navarre, the Protestant faction; and Henry of
France, the Catholic moderates--the Politiques--who wanted peace and
were willing to grant a measure of toleration. The last two were
upholders of French independence against the encroachments of Spain.

The king was speedily gotten into the power of the Guises, but little
headway was made by the extreme Catholics against Henry of Navarre, who
now received domestic aid from the _Politiques_ and foreign
assistance from Queen Elizabeth of England and who benefited by the
continued misfortunes of Philip II. At no time was the Spanish king
able to devote his whole attention and energy to the French war. At
length in 1588 Henry III caused Henry of Guise to be assassinated. The
king never had a real chance to prove whether he could become a
national leader in expelling the foreigners and putting an end to civil
war, for he himself was assassinated in 1589. With his dying breath he
designated the king of Navarre as his successor.

[Sidenote: Henry of Navarre]

Henry of Navarre, the first of the Bourbon family upon the throne of
France, took the title of Henry IV (1589-1610). [Footnote: It is a
curious fact that Henry of Navarre, like Henry of Guise and Henry of
France, died by the hand of an assassin.] For four years after his
accession, Henry IV was obliged to continue the civil war, but his
abjuration of Protestantism and his acceptance of Catholicism in 1593
removed the chief source of opposition to him within France, and the
rebellion speedily collapsed. With the Spanish king, however, the
struggle dragged on until the treaty of Vervins, which in the last year
of Philip's life practically confirmed the peace of Cateau-Cambresis.

[Sidenote: Decline of Spain and Rise of France]

Thus Philip II had failed to conquer or to dismember France. He had
been unable to harmonize French policies with those of his own in the
Netherlands or in England. Despite his endeavors, the French crown was
now on the head of one of his enemies, who, if something of a renegade
Protestant himself, had nevertheless granted qualified toleration to
heretics. Nor were these failures of Philip's political and religious
policies mere negative results to France. The unsuccessful interference
of the Spanish king contributed to the assurance of French
independence, patriotism, and solidarity. France, not Spain, was to be
the center of European politics during the succeeding century.

[Sidenote: Philip II and the Turks]

In concluding this chapter, a large section of which has been devoted
to an account of the manifold failures of Philip II, a word should be
added about one exploit that brought glory to the Spanish monarch. It
was he who administered the first effective check to the advancing
Ottoman Turks.

After the death of Suleiman the Magnificent (1566), the Turks continued
to strengthen their hold upon Hungary and to fit out piratical
expeditions in the Mediterranean. The latter repeatedly ravaged
portions of Sicily, southern Italy, and even the Balearic Islands, and
in 1570 an Ottoman fleet captured Cyprus from the Venetians. Malta and
Crete remained as the only Christian outposts in the Mediterranean. In
this extremity, a league was formed to save Italy. Its inspirer and
preacher was Pope Pius V, but Genoa and Venice furnished the bulk of
the fleet, while Philip II supplied the necessary additional ships and
the commander-in-chief in the person of his half-brother, Don John of
Austria. The expedition, which comprised 208 vessels, met the Ottoman
fleet of 273 ships in the Gulf of Lepanto, off the coast of Greece, on
7 October, 1571, and inflicted upon it a crushing defeat. The Turkish
warships were almost all sunk or driven ashore; it is estimated that
8000 Turks lost their lives. When news of the victory reached Rome,
Pope Pius intoned the famous verse, "There was a man sent from God
whose name was John."

[Sidenote: Lepanto]

The battle of Lepanto was of great political importance. It gave the
naval power of the Mohammedans a blow from which it never recovered and
ended their aggressive warfare in the Mediterranean. It was, in
reality, the last Crusade: Philip II was in his most becoming role as
champion of church and pope; hardly a noble family in Spain or Italy
was not represented in the battle; volunteers came from all parts of
the world; the celebrated Spanish writer Cervantes lost an arm at
Lepanto. Western Europe was henceforth to be comparatively free from
the Ottoman peril.

[Illustration: THE HABSBURG FAMILY IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH
CENTURIES]

[Illustration: THE VALOIS, BOURBON, AND GUISE FAMILIES, PHILIP OF SPAIN
AND MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS]

[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF TUDOR: SOVEREIGNS OF ENGLAND (1485-1603)]


ADDITIONAL READING


GENERAL, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE HABSBURG TERRITORIES. A. H.
Johnson, _Europe in the Sixteenth Century, 1494-1598_ (1897), ch. iii-
ix, a political summary; Mary A. Hollings, _Renaissance and
Reformation, 1453-1660_ (1910), ch. vi, ix, x, a brief outline; E. M.
Hulme, _Renaissance and Reformation_, 2d ed. (1915), ch. x, xiv, xxiv-
xxviii, a brief and fragmentary account; T. H. Dyer, _A History of
Modern Europe_, 3d ed., rev. by Arthur Hassall (1901), ch. ix, xi-
xxvii, old but containing a multitude of political facts; _Cambridge
Modern History_, Vol. II (1904), ch. ii, iii, vii, viii, and Vol. III
(1905), ch. xv, v; _History of All Nations_, Vol. XI and Vol. XII, ch.
i-iii, by the German scholar on the period, Martin Philippson;
_Histoire generale_, Vol. IV, ch. iii, ix, Vol. V, ch. ii-v, xv. Of the
Emperor Charles V the old standard English biography by William
Robertson, still readable, has now been largely superseded by that of
Edward Armstrong, 2 vols. (1902); two important German works on Charles
V are Baumgarten, _Geschichte Karls V_, 3 vols. (1885-1892), and Konrad
Haebler, _Geschichte Spaniens unter den Habsburgen_, Vol. I (1907). Of
Philip II the best brief biography in English is Martin Hume's (1902),
which should be consulted, if possible, in connection with Charles
Bratli, _Philippe II, Roi d'Espagne: Etude sur sa vie et son
caractere_, new ed. (1912), an attempt to counteract traditional
Protestant bias against the Spanish monarch. Also see M. A. S. Hume,
_Spain, its Greatness and Decay, 1479-1788_ (1898), ch. i-vi, for a
general account of the reigns of Philip II and Philip III; and Paul
Herre, _Papstium und Papstwahl im Zeitalter Philipps II_ (1907) for a
sympathetic treatment of Philip's relations with the papacy. For a
proper understanding of sixteenth-century politics the student should
read that all-important book, Machiavelli's _Prince_, the most
convenient English edition of which is in "Everyman's Library." For
political events in the Germanies in the sixteenth century: E. F.
Henderson, _A Short History of Germany_, 2 vols. in 1 (1902); Sidney
Whitman, _Austria_ (1899); Gustav Welf, _Deutsche Geschichte im
Zeitalter der Gegenreformation_ (1899), an elaborate study; Franz
Krones, _Handbuch der Geschichte Oesterreichs von der aeltesten Zeit_,
Vol. III (1877), Book XIII.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.