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

[Sidenote: "National Monarchies" in 1500]

Before we can safely proceed with the story of European development during the past four hundred years, it is necessary to know what were the chief countries that existed at the beginning of our period and what were the distinctive political institutions of each.

A glance at the map of Europe in 1500 will show numerous unfamiliar divisions and names, especially in the central and eastern portions. Only in the extreme west, along the Atlantic seaboard, will the eye detect geographical boundaries which resemble those of the present day. There, England, France, Spain, and Portugal have already taken form. In each one of these countries is a real nation, with a single monarch, and with a distinctive literary language. These four states are the national states of the sixteenth century. They attract our immediate attention.

ENGLAND

[Sidenote: The English Monarchy]

In the year 1500 the English monarchy embraced little more than what on the map is now called "England." It is true that to the west the principality of Wales had been incorporated two hundred years earlier, but the clannish mountaineers and hardy lowlanders of the northern part of the island of Great Britain still preserved the independence of the kingdom of Scotland, while Irish princes and chieftains rendered English occupation of their island extremely precarious beyond the so- called Pale of Dublin which an English king had conquered in the twelfth century. Across the English Channel, on the Continent, the English monarchy retained after 1453, the date of the conclusion of the Hundred Years' War, only the town of Calais out of the many rich French provinces which ever since the time of William the Conqueror (1066- 1087) had been a bone of contention between French and English rulers.

While the English monarchy was assuming its geographical form, peculiar national institutions were taking root in the country, and the English language, as a combination of earlier Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French, was being evolved. The Hundred Years' War with France, or rather its outcome, served to exalt the sense of English nationality and English patriotism, and to enable the king to devote his whole attention to the consolidation of his power in the British islands. For several years after the conclusion of peace on the Continent, England was harassed by bloody and confused struggles, known as the Wars of the Roses, between rival claimants to the throne, but at length, in 1485, Henry VII, the first of the Tudor dynasty, secured the crown and ushered in a new era of English history.

[Sidenote: Increase of Royal Power in England under Henry VII]

Henry VII (1485-1509) sought to create what has been termed a "strong monarchy." Traditionally the power of the king had been restricted by a Parliament, composed of a House of Lords and a House of Commons, and as the former was then far more influential than the latter, supreme political control had rested practically with the king and the members of the upper house-great land-holding nobles and the princes of the church. The Wars of the Roses had two effects which redounded to the advantage of the king: (1) the struggle, being really a contest of two factions of nobles, destroyed many noble families and enabled the crown to seize their estates, thereby lessening the influence of an ancient class; (2) the struggle, being long and disorderly, created in the middle class or "common people" a longing for peace and the conviction that order and security could be maintained only by repression of the nobility and the strengthening of monarchy. Henry took advantage of these circumstances to fix upon his country an absolutism, or one-man power in government, which was to endure throughout the sixteenth century, during the reigns of the four other members of the Tudor family, and, in fact, until a popular revolution in the seventeenth century.

Henry VII repressed disorder with a heavy hand and secured the establishment of an extraordinary court, afterwards called the "Court of Star Chamber," to hear cases, especially those affecting the nobles, which the ordinary courts had not been able to settle. Then, too, he was very economical: the public revenue was increased by means of more careful attention to the cultivation of the crown lands and the collection of feudal dues, fines, benevolences [Footnote: "Benevolences" were sums of money extorted from the people in the guise of gifts. A celebrated minister of Henry VII collected a very large number of "benevolences" for his master. If a man lived economically, it was reasoned he was saving money and could afford a "present" for the king. If, on the contrary, he lived sumptuously, he was evidently wealthy and could likewise afford a "gift."], import and export duties, and past parliamentary grants, while, by means of frugality and a foreign policy of peace, the expenditure was appreciably decreased. Henry VII was thereby freed in large measure from dependence on Parliament for grants of money, and the power of Parliament naturally declined. In fact, Parliament met only five times during his whole reign and only once during the last twelve years, and in all its actions was quite subservient to the royal desires.

[Sidenote: Foreign relations of England under Henry VII]

Henry VII refrained in general from foreign war, but sought by other means to promote the international welfare of his country. He negotiated several treaties by which English traders might buy and sell goods in other countries. One of the most famous of these commercial treaties was the Intercursus Magnus concluded in 1496 with the duke of Burgundy, admitting English goods into the Netherlands. He likewise encouraged English companies of merchants to engage in foreign trade and commissioned the explorations of John Cabot in the New World. Henry increased the prestige of his house by politic marital alliances. He arranged a marriage between the heir to his throne, Arthur, and Catherine, eldest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Spanish sovereigns. Arthur died a few months after his wedding, but it was arranged that Catherine should remain in England as the bride of the king's second son, who subsequently became Henry VIII. The king's daughter Margaret was married to King James IV of Scotland, thereby paving the way much later for the union of the crowns of England and Scotland.

England in the year 1500 was a real national monarchy, and the power of the king appeared to be distinctly in the ascendant. Parliament was fast becoming a purely formal and perfunctory body.

FRANCE

[Sidenote: The French Monarchy]

By the year 1500 the French monarchy was largely consolidated territorially and politically. It had been a slow and painful process, for long ago in 987, when Hugh Capet came to the throne, the France of his day was hardly more than the neighborhood of Paris, and it had taken five full centuries to unite the petty feudal divisions of the country into the great centralized state which we call France. The Hundred Years' War had finally freed the western duchies and counties from English control. Just before the opening of the sixteenth century the wily and tactful Louis XI (1461-1483) had rounded out French territories: on the east he had occupied the powerful duchy of Burgundy; on the west and on the southeast he had possessed himself of most of the great inheritance of the Angevin branch of his own family, including Anjou, and Provence east of the Rhone; and on the south the French frontier had been carried to the Pyrenees. Finally, Louis's son, Charles VIII (1483-1498), by marrying the heiress of Brittany, had absorbed that western duchy into France.

[Sidenote: Steady Growth of Royal Power in France]

Meanwhile, centralized political institutions had been taking slow but tenacious root in the country. Of course, many local institutions and customs survived in the various states which had been gradually added to France, but the king was now recognized from Flanders to Spain and from the Rhone to the Ocean as the source of law, justice, and order. There was a uniform royal coinage and a standing army under the king's command. The monarchs had struggled valiantly against the disruptive tendencies of feudalism; they had been aided by the commoners or middle class; and the proof of their success was their comparative freedom from political checks. The Estates-General, to which French commoners had been admitted in 1302, resembled in certain externals the English Parliament,-for example, in comprising representatives of the clergy, nobles, and commons,-but it had never had final say in levying taxes or in authorizing expenditures or in trying royal officers. And unlike England, there was in France no live tradition of popular participation in government and no written guarantee of personal liberty.

[Sidenote: Foreign Relations of the French Kings about 1500]

Consolidated at home in territory and in government, Frenchmen began about the year 1500 to be attracted to questions of external policy. By attempting to enforce an inherited claim to the crown of Naples, Charles VIII in 1494 started that career of foreign war and aggrandizement which was to mark the history of France throughout following centuries. His efforts in Italy were far from successful, but his heir, Louis XII (1498-1515), continued to lay claim to Naples and to the duchy of Milan as well. In 1504 Louis was obliged to resign Naples to King Ferdinand of Aragon, in whose family it remained for two centuries, but about Milan continued a conflict, with varying fortunes, ultimately merging into the general struggle between Francis I (1515- 1547) and the Emperor Charles V.

France in the year 1500 was a real national monarchy, with the beginnings of a national literature and with a national patriotism centering in the king. It was becoming self-conscious. Like England, France was on the road to one-man power, but unlike England, the way had been marked by no liberal or constitutional mile-posts.

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

[Sidenote: Development of the Spanish and Portuguese Monarchies]

South of the Pyrenees were the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies, which, in a long process of unification, not only had to contend against the same disuniting tendencies as appeared in France and England, but also had to solve the problem of the existence side by side of two great rival religions-Christianity and Mohammedanism. Mohammedan invaders from Africa had secured political control of nearly the whole peninsula as early as the eighth century, but in course of time there appeared in the northern and western mountains several diminutive Christian states, of which the following may be mentioned: Barcelona, in the northeast, along the Mediterranean; Aragon, occupying the south-central portion of the Pyrenees and extending southward toward the Ebro River; Navarre, at the west of the Pyrenees, reaching northward into what is now France and southward into what is now Spain; Castile, west of Navarre, circling about the town of Burgos; Leon, in the northwestern corner of the peninsula; and Portugal, south of Leon, lying along the Atlantic coast. Little by little these Christian states extended their southern frontiers at the expense of the Mohammedan power and showed some disposition to combine. In the twelfth century Barcelona was united with the kingdom of Aragon, and a hundred years later Castile and Leon were finally joined. Thus, by the close of the thirteenth century, there were three important states in the peninsula -Aragon on the east, Castile in the center, and Portugal on the west- and two less important states-Christian Navarre in the extreme north, and Mohammedan Granada in the extreme south.

While Portugal acquired its full territorial extension in the peninsula by the year 1263, the unity of modern Spain was delayed until after the marriage of Ferdinand (1479-1516) and Isabella (1474-1504), sovereigns respectively of Aragon and Castile. Granada, the last foothold of the Mohammedans, fell in 1492, and in 1512 Ferdinand acquired that part of the ancient kingdom of Navarre which lay upon the southern slope of the Pyrenees. The peninsula was henceforth divided between the two modern states of Spain and Portugal.

[Sidenote: Portugal a Real National Monarchy in 1500]

Portugal, the older and smaller of the two states, had become a conspicuous member of the family of nations by the year 1500, thanks to a line of able kings and to the remarkable series of foreign discoveries that cluster about the name of Prince Henry the Navigator. Portugal possessed a distinctive language of Latin origin and already cherished a literature of no mean proportions. In harmony with the spirit of the age the monarchy was tending toward absolutism, and the parliament, called the Cortes, which had played an important part in earlier times, ceased to meet regularly after 1521. The Portuguese royal family were closely related to the Castilian line, and there were people in both kingdoms who hoped that one day the whole peninsula would be united under one sovereign.

[Sidenote: The Spanish Kingdom in 1500]

From several standpoints the Spanish monarchy was less unified in 1500 than England, France, or Portugal. The union of Castile and Aragon was, for over two centuries, hardly more than personal. Each retained its own customs, parliaments (Cortes), and separate administration. Each possessed a distinctive language, although Castilian gradually became the literary "Spanish," while Catalan, the speech of Aragon, was reduced to the position of an inferior. Despite the continuance of excessive pride in local traditions and institutions, the cause of Spanish nationality received great impetus during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was under them that territorial unity had been obtained. It was they who turned the attention of Spaniards to foreign and colonial enterprises. The year that marked the fall of Granada and the final extinction of Mohammedan power in Spain was likewise signalized by the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, which prefigured the establishment of a greater Spain beyond the seas. On the continent of Europe, Spain speedily acquired a commanding position in international affairs, as the result largely of Ferdinand's ability. The royal house of Aragon had long held claims to the Neapolitan and Sicilian kingdoms and for two hundred years had freely mixed in the politics of Italy. Now, in 1504, Ferdinand definitely secured recognition from France of his rights in Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia. Spain was becoming the rival of Venice for the leadership of the Mediterranean.

[Sidenote: Increase of Royal Power in Spain under Ferdinand and

Isabella]

While interfering very little with the forms of representative government in their respective kingdoms, Ferdinand and Isabella worked ever, in fact, toward uniformity and absolutism. They sought to ingratiate themselves with the middle class, to strip the nobility of its political influence, and to enlist the church in their service. The Cortes were more or less regularly convened, but their functions were almost imperceptibly transferred to royal commissions and officers of state. Privileges granted to towns in earlier times were now gradually revoked. The king, by becoming the head of the ancient military orders which had borne prominent part in the struggle against the Mohammedans, easily gained control of considerable treasure and of an effective fighting force. The sovereigns prevailed upon the pope to transfer control of the Inquisition, the medieval ecclesiastical tribunal for the trial of heretics, to the crown, so that the harsh penalties which were to be inflicted for many years upon dissenters from orthodox Christianity were due not only to religious bigotry but likewise to the desire for political uniformity.

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.