Western Civilization: A Global and Comparative Approach

Volume II: Since 1600

Kenneth L. Campbell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317452294
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern History
• Index: History

Featuring the one author, one voice approach, this text is ideal for instructors who do not wish to neglect the importance of non-Western perspectives on the study of the past. The book is a brief, affordable presentation providing a coherent examination of the past from ancient times to the present. Religion, everyday life, and transforming moments are the three themes employed to help make the past interesting, intelligible, and relevant to contemporary society.

1	Absolutism and Political Revolution in the Seventeenth Century

The central question of political theory in the first half of the seventeenth century was whether kings held their authority directly from God by divine right and therefore were above the law or whether kings owed their authority to the consent of the people (an idea known as popular sovereignty) and therefore were below the law. Divine right theory provided a justification for political absolutism, the principle that a single ruler could make major decisions about state policy without consulting his or her subjects and without interference from a representative assembly. However, the success of absolute governments depended to a large degree on the individual leadership of particular rulers.

In reality, most European nations could be placed on a spectrum between the abstract poles of absolutism and popular sovereignty. In England, monarchical power depended on the support of royal ministers, judges, and justices of the peace, all of whom maintained some degree of autonomy. The French law courts, known as parlements, also operated independently of express royal control. By the seventeenth century, more people in Europe had become educated, especially in urban areas, and were as likely to question political authority as they were to challenge religious or intellectual authorities. During the sixteenth century, the Protestant Huguenots in France had developed theories of political resistance to justify their rebellion against the monarchy. Such theories became more widespread in the seventeenth century. But so did the theory of the divine right of kings and belief in absolute monarchy grow alongside and in response to resistance theories. The religious wars of the sixteenth century increasingly turned into political struggles in the course of the seventeenth.

By 1600 European expansion had exacerbated international tensions as well, further contributing to the trend toward absolute monarchy. France, ever jealous of the power and colonial wealth of Spain, began to seek territory abroad to counter the empire of its Habsburg rivals. Spain used the wealth that it acquired from its American colonies to finance its territorial wars in Europe—wealth that largely ended up in the hands of Dutch, German, and Italian merchants. The French joined the English in attacking Spanish shipping in an attempt to cut off Spain’s source of funds. The dynastic and territorial wars that spilled over into the seventeenth century and the increasing cost of those wars led European rulers to seek even greater authority over their subjects and the economic resources of their states.

The Shaping of the Past: The Assassination of Henry IV and the Rise of French Absolutism

When Henry of Navarre claimed the French throne as Henry IV (r. 1593–1610), he took control in a nation that had been weakened by thirty years of political division and religious warfare. The two most daunting tasks facing Henry were to resolve the religious crisis and to restore the prestige of the monarchy. To accomplish the first task, he issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598. The edict granted limited toleration to the Huguenots, allowing them all political rights and the freedom to worship in specified places. Although the measure did end the religious wars, it merely papered over the religious differences dividing Catholics and Protestants. To restore the power and prestige of the French monarchy, Henry took advantage of institutions and practices already in place rather than try to create a new political system. He used the royal council to overrule the French parlements, although when the council removed cases from the courts it created dissension among them. He reasserted the monarch’s power to appoint ministers, naming the Duke of Sully, a Huguenot, as his chief minister. Henry did not radically overhaul the French system of taxation, but he and Sully introduced reforms to make tax collection more efficient.

In his exercise of royal authority, imposing rule on municipalities and provinces throughout France, Henry IV claimed to be acting in the interests of the French people. He placed officials loyal to the monarchy in important magisterial positions in the towns. Although he allowed the Huguenots control over 100 fortified towns, he still took an active interest in municipal posts there to ensure their allegiance to the Crown. By establishing royal clients in towns throughout France, Henry took a major step toward reviving and expanding royal authority. In the provinces, Henry won the allegiance of individual members of the nobility by awarding them financial grants. However, by imposing restraints on the political power of the nobility and dictating marriages based solely on the political interests of the monarchy, he alienated many of the nobles. Catholic nobles also resented Henry’s heavy reliance upon Sully, who had remained a Huguenot even after Henry’s conversion to Catholicism.

Although Henry had gone a long way toward strengthening the monarchy and bringing an end to religious warfare, the religious passions of the sixteenth century had not yet died in the early seventeenth. Catholics disapproved of the Edict of Nantes and some still distrusted their formerly Protestant king, who had not recognized the decrees of the Council of Trent as binding on the French church. Meanwhile, some Huguenots never forgave his conversion to Catholicism and were upset at some erosion of their privileges in the later years of Henry’s reign. There were more than twenty plots against Henry’s life between 1593 and 1604. Then, on May 14, 1610, in an apparent act of religious terrorism, a man named François Ravaillac stabbed Henry to death while the king was stuck in his coach because of some obstruction in the road. The suspicious circumstances of his death led to speculation about a conspiracy involving the Catholic Church, the Jesuits, and the king of Spain.

Henry IV left a strong legacy to France; his assassination left one almost as powerful. He had reaffirmed the ideology of sacred monarchy in France when he was alive; his death confirmed his status as a religious martyr who had sacrificed his life for the French nation. His assassination therefore strengthened his subjects’ devotion to the monarchy. The French people longed for a strong, powerful monarch capable of maintaining peace in the kingdom. The assassination of Henry IV thus set the stage for the rise of absolute monarchy in France. In 1614 the Estates General—in its last session before 1789—proposed an article declaring that “the king of France receives his crown from God alone, and rules supreme within his kingdom.” The French people had no desire to return to a state of civil war, such as they had known after the death of Henry III in the previous century.

Henry’s son and heir, Louis XIII (1601–1643), was less than ten years old at the time of his father’s death. Louis’s mother, the Italian Maria de’ Medici (1573–1642), acted as regent for her son, ruling France with the aid of Concino Concini (d. 1617), an Italian adventurer and a favored member of her entourage. Marie was a devoted Catholic with little sympathy for the French Huguenots, who viewed her as likely to revoke the privileges granted to them by the Edict of Nantes. A greater cause for their consternation occurred when, within a year of Henry’s death, their supporter, the Duke of Sully, resigned as superintendent of finances as a result of his dissatisfaction with his treatment by Maria’s royal council. Showing much greater deference to the church than her husband had, Maria supported efforts to introduce Catholic reform measures into France. Maria and Concini ignored the young king until 1617, when Louis became ready to assert himself. Upon taking control in France, Louis sanctioned the murder of Concini, had another government minister condemned to death, and may have considered having his mother killed before sending her into exile from the court.

The person who did the most to continue the efforts of Henry IV to strengthen the French monarchy, however, was Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642). Appointed chief of the royal council in 1624, Richelieu became chief minister for Louis XIII four years later. Although he virtually ruled the French government during the reign of Louis XIII, Richelieu always did what he believed to be in the king’s best interests and thought of himself only as a servant of the Crown. Nor did he ever act without the support and the consent of the king, who took a more active role in government and the formation of royal policy than is usually portrayed. In fact, Louis retained Richelieu only because of his effectiveness in enhancing royal authority in the kingdom. He strengthened the royal navy financially, administratively, and militarily. He used royal officials known as intendants as a check on the power of the nobility and provincial governors. The intendants traveled throughout France as representatives of the Crown to see that the royal will was being followed, to ensure that taxes owed the Crown were collected, and to exercise general administrative functions related to provincial government.

Richelieu also stripped the Huguenots of their political and military power. He was not concerned with the religious views of the Huguenots; rather he objected to the share of political authority that they, along with the French nobility and provincial governors, enjoyed at the expense of the king. Richelieu repressed a Huguenot rebellion and in 1627 successfully besieged the Huguenot fortress at La Rochelle; following the victory, he rescinded many of the Huguenots’ political and military privileges. Not wanting to make permanent enemies of the Huguenots, however, he left alone the provisions of the Edict of Nantes that called for religious tolerance.

Absolutism in France Under Louis XIV

The reign of Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715) in France is often taken as the epitome of absolute monarchy in Europe. When Louis XIV personally assumed the reins of power in 1661 at the age of twenty-three, he was filled with visions of royal glory and military triumph. He tried to foster a golden age of culture by sponsoring elaborate construction projects such as the immense royal palace at Versailles, patronizing artists and writers such as Molière and Racine, and establishing the French Academy of Sciences. Each of these undertakings was intended to reflect the glory of the “Sun King,” as Louis was known in recognition of the central position of the sun in the new Copernican universe. As the sun was superior to all the planets, Louis was superior to all other monarchs—or so he wanted his subjects and the world to believe.

In addition to seeking to enhance his power and reputation through military victory and cultural enterprises, Louis XIV also tried to set a moral and religious tone for his kingdom under the guidance of Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704). Louis XIV represented the epitome of the divine right king and the absolute monarch in the seventeenth century. He reportedly said “I am the state” and sincerely believed that his interests and France’s interests perfectly coincided. After he revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and expelled the Huguenots from France, he remained, like most other Frenchmen, impervious to the economic and intellectual resources that France lost. Bossuet praised this move by Louis, who was fulfilling the role of the monarchy favored by the bishop—ruling in the service of religion.

Claude Lefebvre, portrait of Louis XIV, 1670

Visitors to the official website of the Chateau of Versailles—w­w­w­.c­h­a­t­e­a­u­v­e­r­s­a­i­l­l­e­s­.f­r­/­e­n­—can access some of the masterpieces located there, learn more about the construction and the history of the palace, and read about the life and reign of Louis XIV, and the ways in which he used Versailles to symbolize and strengthen his monarchy.

The emergence of France as a great military power, the flourishing of French culture, and the reputation of Louis as the Sun King represent the success of absolute monarchy in France. But absolute monarchy under Louis XIV did not come without cost. Absolute monarchy in France also involved stripping the nobility of their political rights and power, the growth of religious intolerance, as exemplified by the expulsion of the Huguenots, and the burdens borne by the common people—ever-increasing taxes and the sacrifice of sons, husbands, and fathers to the king’s armies in his quest for glory. Louis’s finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–1683), had the thankless task of increasing royal revenues to feed the insatiable war machine necessitated by Louis’s obsession for military glory. To raise money, Colbert levied new taxes on paper goods and granted a particularly unpopular extension of the salt monopoly that raised the price of a necessary commodity. Five out of six designated regions in France fell under the gabelle, or salt tax, which as a direct tax on consumers was already one of the most hated taxes in France.

How absolute was the monarchy of Louis XIV? Under Louis, the government had the power to tax without popular consent and to arrest people without charging them with crimes. The power of the state was perhaps best exemplified by lettres de cachet, sealed warrants issued by the king or an authorized royal official that could have anyone thrown in prison without recourse to the judicial system or due process of law. The warrants were not issued arbitrarily and were generally accompanied by some sort of police investigation; their purpose was detention, not punishment. That distinction, however, would have been small consolation to someone sitting in the Bastille, a large fortified prison in the heart of Paris.

The Habsburgs in Spain and Austria

A comparative analysis of the history of several absolute monarchies in seventeenth-century Europe reveals some common themes, but some differences as well. For example, the two branches of the Habsburg dynasty created absolute monarchies in Spain and Austria, but the history of those two countries differed considerably over the course of the century. The main distinction between the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs was that in Spain the Habsburgs were a hereditary dynasty, whereas the Austrian Habsburgs depended on continued election to retain their hold on the imperial throne. The Spanish Habsburgs had no wish to see the Austrian Habsburgs lose the imperial crown and therefore threw their own weight into German politics. But the Spanish kings had to contend with problems of their own and by the end of the seventeenth century the Austrian Habsburgs had emerged as the stronger dynastic power of the two.

As Louis XIII had relied heavily on Richelieu to strengthen royal power, Philip III (r. 1598–1621) of Spain relied heavily on Francisco Gomez de Sandoval y Rojas, the Duke of Lerma, while Philip IV (r. 1621–1665) entrusted state affairs to Gaspar de Guzmán, the Count Duke of Olivares (1587–1645). Lerma was committed to strengthening or at least preserving the power of the Spanish Habsburgs, but financial pressures led him to negotiate peace with England in 1604 and a truce with the Dutch in 1609, bringing a temporary end to the Count...