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.




In population and in domestic resources Spain was not so important as
France, but the exploits of Ferdinand and Isabella, the great wealth
which temporarily flowed to her from the colonies, the prestige which
long attended her diplomacy and her armies, were to exalt the Spanish
monarchy throughout the sixteenth century to a position quite out of
keeping with her true importance.


2. THE OLD HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

[Sidenote: The Idea of an "Empire" Different in 1500 from that of a
"National Monarchy"]

The national monarchies of western Europe--England, France, Spain, and
Portugal--were political novelties in the year 1500: the idea of
uniting the people of similar language and customs under a strongly
centralized state had been slowly developing but had not reached
fruition much before that date. On the other hand, in central Europe
survived in weakness an entirely different kind of state, called an
empire. The theory of an empire was a very ancient one--it meant a
state which should embrace all peoples of whatsoever race or language,
bound together in obedience to a common prince. Such, for example, had
been the ideal of the old Roman Empire, under whose Caesars practically
the whole civilized world had once been joined, so that the inhabitant
of Egypt or Armenia united with the citizen of Britain or Spain in
allegiance to the emperor. That empire retained its hold on portions of
eastern Europe until its final conquest by the Ottoman Turks in 1453,
but a thousand years earlier it had lost control of the West because of
external violence and internal weakness. So great, however, was the
strength of the idea of an "empire," even in the West, that Charlemagne
about the year 800 temporarily united what are now France, Germany,
Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium into what he persisted in styling
the "Roman Empire." Nearly two centuries later, Otto the Great, a
famous prince in Germany, gave other form to the idea, in the "Holy
Roman Empire" of which he became emperor. This form endured from 962 to
1806.

[Sidenote: The Holy Roman Empire; Its Mighty Claims in Theory and its
Slight Power in Practice]

In theory, the Holy Roman Empire claimed supremacy over all Christian
rulers and peoples of central and western Europe, and after the
extinction of the eastern empire in 1453 it could insist that it was
the sole secular heir to the ancient Roman tradition. But the greatness
of the theoretical claim of the Holy Roman Empire was matched only by
the insignificance of its practical acceptance. The feudal nobles of
western Europe had never recognized it, and the national monarchs,
though they might occasionally sport with its honors and titles, never
admitted any real dependence upon it of England, France, Portugal, or
Spain. In central Europe, it had to struggle against the anarchical
tendencies of feudalism, against the rise of powerful and jealous city-
states, and against a rival organization, the Catholic Church, which in
its temporal affairs was at least as clearly an heir to the Roman
tradition as was the Holy Roman Empire. From the eleventh to the
thirteenth century the conflict raged, with results important for all
concerned,--results which were thoroughly obvious in the year 1500.

[Sidenote: The Holy Roman Empire practically Restricted by 1500 to the
Germanies]

In the first place, the Holy Roman Empire was practically restricted to
German-speaking peoples. The papacy and the Italian cities had been
freed from imperial control, and both the Netherlands--that is, Holland
and Belgium--and the Swiss cantons were only nominally connected. Over
the Slavic people to the east--Russians, Poles, etc.--or the
Scandinavians to the north, the empire had secured comparatively small
influence. By the year 1500 the words Empire and Germany had become
virtually interchangeable terms.

Secondly, there was throughout central Europe no conspicuous desire for
strong centralized national states, such as prevailed in western
Europe.

[Sidenote: Internal Weakness of the Holy Roman Empire]

Separatism was the rule. In Italy and in the Netherlands the city-
states were the political units. Within the Holy Roman Empire was a
vast hodge-podge of city-states, and feudal survivals--arch-duchies,
such as Austria; margravates, such as Brandenburg; duchies, like
Saxony, Bavaria, and Wuerttemberg; counties like the Palatinate, and a
host of free cities, baronies, and domains, some of them smaller than
an American township. In all there were over three hundred states which
collectively were called "the Germanies" and which were united only by
the slender imperial thread. The idea of empire had not only been
narrowed to one nation; it also, in its failure to overcome feudalism,
had prevented the growth of a real national monarchy.

[Sidenote: Government of the Holy Roman Empire]

What was the nature of this slight tie that nominally held the
Germanies together? There was the form of a central government with an
emperor to execute laws and a Diet to make them. The emperor was not
necessarily hereditary but was chosen by seven "electors," who were the
chief princes of the realm. These seven were the archbishops of Mainz
(Mayence), of Cologne, and of Trier (Treves), the king of Bohemia, the
duke of Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg, and the count palatine of
the Rhine. Not infrequently the electors used their position to extort
concessions from the emperor elect which helped to destroy German unity
and to promote the selfish interests of the princes. The imperial Diet
was composed of the seven electors, the lesser princes (including the
higher ecclesiastical dignitaries, such as bishops and abbots), and
representatives of the free cities, grouped in three separate houses.
The emperor was not supposed to perform any imperial act without the
authorization of the Diet, and petty jealousies between its members or
houses often prevented action in the Diet. The individual states,
moreover, reserved to themselves the management of most affairs which
in western Europe had been surrendered to the central national
government. The Diet, and therefore the emperor, was without a treasury
or an army, unless the individual states saw fit to act favorably upon
its advice and furnish the requested quotas. The Diet resembled far
more a congress of diplomats than a legislative body.

[Sidenote: The Habsburgs: Weak as Emperors but Strong as Rulers of
Particular States within the Holy Roman Empire]

It will be readily perceived that under these circumstances the emperor
as such could have little influence. Yet the fear of impending Slavic
or Turkish attacks upon the eastern frontier, or other fears,
frequently operated to secure the election of some prince who had
sufficiently strong power of his own to stay the attack or remove the
fear. In this way, Rudolph, count of Habsburg, had been chosen emperor
in 1273, and in his family, with few interruptions, continued the
imperial title, not only to 1500 but to the final extinction of the
empire in 1806. Several of these Habsburg emperors were influential,
but it must always be remembered that they owed their power not to the
empire but to their own hereditary states.

Originally lords of a small district in Switzerland, the Habsburgs had
gradually increased their holdings until at length in 1273 Rudolph, the
maker of his family's real fortunes, had been chosen Holy Roman
Emperor, and three years later had conquered the valuable archduchy of
Austria with its capital of Vienna. The family subsequently became
related by marriage to reigning families in Hungary and in Italy as
well as in Bohemia and other states of the empire. In 1477 the Emperor
Maximilian I (1493-1519) married Mary of Burgundy, daughter of Charles
the Bold and heiress of the wealthy provinces of the Netherlands; and
in 1496 his son Philip was united to Joanna, the daughter of Ferdinand
and Isabella and heiress of the crowns of Castile and Aragon. The
fortunes of the Habsburgs were decidedly auspicious.

[Sidenote: Vain Attempts to "Reform" the Holy Roman Empire]

Of course, signs were not wanting of some national life in the
Germanies. Most of the people spoke a common language; a form of
national unity existed in the Diet; and many patriots raised their
voice in behalf of a stronger and more centralized government. In 1495
a Diet met at the city of Worms to discuss with Emperor Maximilian
projects of reform. After protracted debates, it was agreed that
private warfare, a survival of feudal days, should be abolished; a
perpetual peace should be declared; and an imperial court should be
established to settle all disputes between states within the empire.
These efforts at reform, like many before and after, were largely
unfruitful, and, despite occasional protests, practical disunion
prevailed in the Germanies of the sixteenth century, albeit under the
high-sounding title of "Holy Roman Empire."


3. THE CITY-STATES

[Sidenote: "City-States" in 1500]

Before the dawn of the Christian era the Greeks and Romans had
entertained a general idea of political organization which would seem
strange to most of us at the present time. They believed that every
city with its outlying country should constitute an independent state,
with its own particular law-making and governing bodies, army, coinage,
and foreign relations. To them, the idea of an empire was intolerable
and the concept of a national state, such as we commonly have to-day,
unthinkable.

Now it so happened, as we shall see in the following chapter, that the
commerce of the middle ages stimulated the growth of important trading
towns in Italy, in Germany, and in the Netherlands. These towns, in one
way or another, managed to secure a large measure of self-government,
so that by the year 1500 they had become somewhat similar to the city-
states of antiquity. In Germany, though they still maintained their
local self-government, they were loosely attached to the Holy Roman
Empire and were overshadowed in political influence by other states. In
the case of Italy and of the Netherlands, however, it is impossible to
understand the politics of those countries in the sixteenth century
without paying some attention to city-states, which played leading
roles in both.

[Sidenote: Italy in 1500 neither a National Monarchy not Attached to
the Holy Roman Empire]

In the Italy of the year 1500 there was not even the semblance of
national political unity. Despite the ardent longings of many Italian
patriots [Footnote: Of such patriots was Machiavelli (see below, p.
194). Machiavelli wrote in _The Prince:_ "Our country, left almost
without life, still waits to know who it is that is to heal her
bruises, to put an end to the devastation and plunder of Lombardy and
to the exactions and imposts of Naples and Tuscany, and to stanch those
wounds of hers which long neglect has changed into running sores. We
see how she prays God to send some one to rescue her from these
barbarous cruelties and oppressions. We see too how ready and eager she
is to follow any standard, were there only some one to raise it."], and
the rise of a common language, which, under such masters as Dante and
Petrarch, had become a great medium for literary expression, the people
of the peninsula had not built up a national monarchy like those of
western Europe nor had they even preserved the form of allegiance to
the Holy Roman Empire. This was due to several significant events of
earlier times. In the first place, the attempt of the medieval German
emperors to gain control of Italy not only had signally failed but had
left behind two contending factions throughout the whole country,--one,
the Ghibellines, supporting the doctrine of maintaining the traditional
connection with the Germanies; the other, the Guelphs, rejecting that
doctrine. In the second place, the pope, who exercised extensive
political as well as religious power, felt that his ecclesiastical
influence would be seriously impaired by the creation of political
unity in the country; a strong lay monarch with a solid Italy behind
him would in time reduce the sovereign pontiff to a subservient
position and diminish the prestige which the head of the church enjoyed
in foreign lands; therefore the popes participated actively in the game
of Italian politics, always endeavoring to prevent any one state from
becoming too powerful. Thirdly, the comparatively early commercial
prominence of the Italian towns had stimulated trade rivalries which
tended to make each proud of its independence and wealth; and as the
cities grew and prospered to an unwonted degree, it became increasingly
difficult to join them together. Finally, the riches of the Italians,
and the local jealousies and strife, to say nothing of the papal
policy, marked the country as natural prey for foreign interference and
conquest; and in this way the peninsula became a battleground for
Spaniards, Frenchmen, and Germans.

Before reviewing the chief city-states of northern Italy, it will be
well to say a word about two other political divisions of the country.
The southern third of the peninsula comprised the ancient kingdom of
Naples, which had grown up about the city of that name, and which
together with the large island of Sicily, was called the kingdom of the
Two Sicilies.

[Sidenote: Southern Italy in 1500: the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies]

This state, having been first formed by Scandinavian adventurers in the
eleventh century, had successively passed under papal suzerainty, under
the domination of the German emperors, and at length in 1266 under
French control. A revolt in Sicily in the year 1282, commonly called
the Sicilian Vespers, had severed the relation between the island and
the mainland, the former passing to the royal family of Aragon, and the
latter troublously remaining in French hands until 1442. The reunion of
the Two Sicilies at that date under the crown of Aragon served to keep
alive the quarrel between the French and the Spanish; and it was not
until 1504 that the king of France definitely renounced his Neapolitan
claims in favor of Ferdinand of Aragon. Socially and politically Naples
was the most backward state in Italy.

[Sidenote: Italy in 1500: the Papal States]

About the city of Rome had grown up in the course of centuries the
Papal States, or as they were officially styled, the Patrimony of St.
Peter. It had early fallen to the lot of the bishop, as the most
important person in the city, to exercise political power over Rome,
when barbarian invasions no longer permitted the exercise of authority
by Roman emperors; and control over neighboring districts, as well as
over the city, had been expressly recognized and conferred upon the
bishop by Charlemagne in the eighth century. This bishop of Rome was,
of course, the pope; and the pope slowly extended his territories
through central Italy from the Tiber to the Adriatic, long using them
merely as a bulwark to his religious and ecclesiastical prerogatives.
By the year 1500, however, the popes were becoming prone to regard
themselves as Italian princes who might normally employ their states as
so many pawns in the game of peninsular politics. The policy of the
notorious Alexander VI (1492-1503) centered in his desire to establish
his son, Cesare Borgia, as an Italian ruler; and Julius II (1503-1513)
was famed more for statecraft and military prowess than for religious
fervor.

[Sidenote: The City-States of Northern Italy in 1500]

North and west of the Papal States were the various city-states which
were so thoroughly distinctive of Italian politics at the opening of
the sixteenth century. Although these towns had probably reached a
higher plane both of material prosperity and of intellectual culture
than was to be found at that time in any other part of Europe,
nevertheless they were deeply jealous of each other and carried on an
interminable series of petty wars, the brunt of which was borne by
professional hired soldiers and freebooters styled _condottieri_.
Among the Italian city-states, the most famous in the year 1500 were
Milan, Venice, Genoa, and Florence.

[Sidenote: Italian City-States: Milan Governed by Despots]

Of these cities, Milan was still in theory a ducal fief of the Holy
Roman Empire, but had long been in fact the prize of despotic rulers
who were descended from two famous families--the Visconti and the
Sforza--and who combined the patronage of art with the fine political
subtleties of Italian tyrants. The Visconti ruled Milan from the
thirteenth century to the middle of the fifteenth, when a Sforza, a
leader of _condottieri_ established the supremacy of his own
family. In 1499, however, King Louis XII of France, claiming the duchy
as heir to the Visconti, seized Milan and held it until he was expelled
in 1512 by the Holy League, composed of the pope, Venice, Spain, and
England, and a Sforza was temporarily reinstated.

[Sidenote: Venice, a Type of the Commercial and Aristocratic Italian
City-States]

As Milan was the type of Italian city ruled by a despot or tyrant, so
Venice was a type of the commercial, oligarchical city-states. Venice
was by far the most powerful state in the peninsula. Located on the
islands and lagoons at the head of the Adriatic, she had profited
greatly by the crusades to build up a maritime empire and an enviable
trade on the eastern Mediterranean and had extended her sway over rich
lands in the northeastern part of Italy. In the year 1500, Venice
boasted 3000 ships, 300,000 sailors, a numerous and veteran army,
famous factories of plate glass, silk stuffs, and gold and silver
objects, and a singularly strong government. Nominally Venice was a
republic, but actually an oligarchy. Political power was intrusted
jointly to several agencies: (1) a grand council controlled by the
commercial magnates; (2) a centralized committee of ten; (3) an elected
doge, or duke; and (4), after 1454, three state inquisitors, henceforth
the city's real masters. The inquisitors could pronounce sentence of
death, dispose of the public funds, and enact statutes; they maintained
a regular spy system; and trial, judgment, and execution were secret.
The mouth of the lion of St. Mark received anonymous denunciations, and
the waves which passed under the Bridge of Sighs carried away the
corpses. To this regime Venice owed an internal peace which contrasted
with the endless civil wars of the other Italian cities. Till the final
destruction of the state in 1798 Venice knew no political revolution.
In foreign affairs, also, Venice possessed considerable influence; she
was the first European state to send regular envoys, or ambassadors, to
other courts. It seemed in 1500 as if she were particularly wealthy and
great, but already had been sowed the seed of her subsequent decline
and humiliation. The advance of the Ottoman Turks threatened her
position in eastern Europe, although she still held the Morea in
Greece, Crete, Cyprus, and many Ionian and AEgean islands. The discovery
of America and of a new route to India was destined to shake the very
basis of her commercial supremacy. And her unscrupulous policy toward
her Italian rivals lost her friends to the west. So great was the
enmity against Venice that the formidable League of Cambrai, entered
into by the emperor, the pope, France, and Spain in 1508, wrung many
concessions from her.

[Sidenote: Genoa]

Second only to Venice in commercial importance, Genoa, in marked
contrast with her rival, passed through all manner of political
vicissitudes until in 1499 she fell prey to the invasion of King Louis
XII of France. Thereafter Genoa remained some years subject to the
French, but in 1528 the resolution of an able citizen, Andrea Doria,
freed the state from foreign invaders and restored to Genoa her
republican institutions.

The famed city-state of Florence may be taken as the best type of the
democratic community, controlled by a political leader. The city, as
famous for its free institutions as for its art, in the first half of
the fifteenth century had come under the tutelage of a family of
traders and bankers, the wealthy Medici, who preserved the republican
forms, and for a while, under Lorenzo de' Medici (1449-1492), surnamed
the Magnificent, made Florence the center of Italian culture and
civilization.

[Sidenote: Florence, a Type of the Cultured and Democratic Italian
City-State]

Soon after the death of Lorenzo, a democratic reaction took place under
an enthusiastic and puritanical monk, Savonarola, who welcomed the
advent of the French king, Charles VIII, in 1494, and aided materially
in the expulsion of the Medici. Savonarola soon fell a victim to the
plots of his Florentine enemies and to the vengeance of the pope, whom
Charles VIII had offended, and was put to death in 1498, The democracy
managed to survive until 1512 when the Medici returned. The city-state
of Florence subsequently became the grand-duchy of Tuscany.

[Sidenote: The Obscure Duchy of Savoy in 1500]

Before we take leave of the Italian states of the year 1500, mention
should be made of the insignificant duchy of Savoy, tucked away in the
fastnesses of the northwestern Alps, whose duke, after varying
fortunes, was to become, in the nineteenth century, king of a united
Italy.

[Sidenote: The City-States in the Netherlands]

The city-state was the dominant form of political organization not only
in Italy but also in the Netherlands. The Netherlands, or the Low
Countries, were seventeen provinces occupying the flat lowlands along
the North Sea,--the Holland, Belgium, and northern France of our own
day. Most of the inhabitants, Flemings and Dutch, spoke a language akin
to German, but in the south the Walloons used a French dialect. At
first the provinces had been mere feudal states at the mercy of various
warring noblemen, but gradually in the course of the twelfth,
thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, important towns had arisen so
wealthy and populous that they were able to wrest charters from the
lords. Thus arose a number of municipalities--practically self-
governing republics--semi-independent vassals of feudal nobles; and in
many cases the early oligarchic systems of municipal government
speedily gave way to more democratic institutions. Remarkable in
industry and prosperity were Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, Brussels, Liege,
Utrecht, Delft, Rotterdam, and many another.

[Sidenote: Relation of the City-Stats of the Netherlands to the Dukes
of Burgundy]

Beginning in 1384 and continuing throughout the fifteenth century, the
dukes of Burgundy, who as vassals of the French king had long held the
duchy of that name in eastern France, succeeded by marriage, purchase,
treachery, or force in bringing one by one the seventeen provinces of
the Netherlands under their rule. This extension of dominion on the
part of the dukes of Burgundy implied the establishment of a strong
monarchical authority, which was supported by the nobility and clergy
and opposed by the cities. In 1465 a common parliament, called the
States General, was constituted at Brussels, containing deputies from
each of the seventeen provinces; and eight years later a grand council
was organized with supreme judicial and financial functions. Charles
the Bold, who died in 1477, was prevented from constructing a great
central kingdom between France and the Germanies only by the shrewdness
of his implacable foe, King Louis XI of France. As we have seen, in
another connection, Louis seized the duchy of Burgundy on the death of
Charles the Bold, thereby extending the eastern frontier of France, but
the duke's inheritance in the Netherlands passed to his daughter Mary.
In 1477 Mary's marriage with Maximilian of Austria began the long
domination of the Netherlands by the house of Habsburg.

Throughout these political changes, the towns of the Netherlands
maintained many of their former privileges, and their prosperity
steadily increased. The country became the richest in Europe, and the
splendor of the ducal court surpassed that of any contemporary
sovereign. A permanent memorial of it remains in the celebrated Order
of the Golden Fleece, which was instituted by the duke of Burgundy in
the fifteenth century and was so named from the English wool, the raw
material used in the Flemish looms and the very foundation of the
country's fortunes.


4. NORTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPE IN THE YEAR 1500

[Sidenote: Northern and Eastern Europe of Small Importance in the
Sixteenth Century, but of Great Importance Subsequently]

We have now reviewed the states that were to be the main factors in the
historical events of the sixteenth century--the national monarchies of
England, France, Portugal, and Spain; the Holy Roman Empire of the
Germanies; and the city-states of Italy and the Netherlands. It may be
well, however, to point out that in northern and eastern Europe other
states had already come into existence, which subsequently were to
affect in no small degree the history of modern times, such as the
Scandinavian kingdoms, the tsardom of Muscovy, the feudal kingdoms of
Poland and Hungary, and the empire of the Ottoman Turks.

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