GHG - Nation Building in Europe (Lesson)
Nation Building in Europe
Before we look at all of the wars Europe fought in the 16th and 17th Centuries, let's step back and quickly establish the histories of those nations that participated in those wars. Read below to find out more.
As you know, when Ferdinand and Isabella married in 1469 CE, they united the different kingdoms of Spain into one nation. This unification finished in 1492 when the last of the Moors were evicted from the Spanish territory of Granada. That same year, Spain financed Christopher Columbus's explorations west with the result that Spain conquered a lot of the "New World" and got very rich from their new lands in the west. Ferdinand and Isabella were the grandparents of Charles V, who was elected as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 1519. This meant that the Spanish king ruled Spain, parts of France, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany. Under Charles V, Spain fought many wars against France, the Ottoman Empire and the Protestants. By 1556, Charles V was tired and he abdicated his throne and palace to live in a monastery. His brother, Ferdinand I, took over Austria and the Holy Roman part of Germany while Charles V's son, Philip II, took over Spain. Despite the wealth that the "New World" colonization brought, Spain declared itself bankrupt four times between 1550 and 1570 due to the expense of constantly fighting wars. In 1581, the Dutch revolted against Spain and formed its own Protestant nation—the Netherlands. In 1588, the Spanish Armada (once the strongest navy in the world) fell to the British. By the mid-1600s, Spain's glory days were over along with a lot of its wealth.
As you know, Portugal ousted the Moors from their region early on and developed into a nation before Spain. As a small nation with a small population at the far west of Europe, Portugal got a head start in looking for a sea route to trade with Asia—thanks to their Prince Henry the Navigator (who never actually did any navigating.) While looking for a sea route to Asia, Portuguese explorers established many trading ports along the African coastline. Then, once they had rounded the tip of Africa, they established many trading ports in South Asia and in the Spice Islands of the Indian Ocean. But the Portuguese did not penetrate farther inland in the areas where they established port cities. Still, some of these port cities became very prosperous for Portugal—especially Macau (or Macao,) an Asian territory they ruled for 400 years beginning in the mid-1500s. And in the Western Hemisphere, Portugal established the colony of Brazil in South America. However, Spain annexed the nation of Portugal in 1580. Not until 1640, when the very last heir of the Portuguese kings revolted, did Portugal become an independent nation again.
England's history was full of struggles between the king and the nobility. As England developed over the centuries into the nation we find at the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, the English king signed the Magna Carta (guaranteeing rights and privileges to the nobility along with guaranteeing that the king would follow the law) and established the Parliament (the representative assembly that writes laws for England.) But England's history was also full of struggles over who should actually be the king—there were murders, exiles, invasions, imprisonments (even of child kings) and wars as different families climbed over each other on their way to the royal throne. When the Protestant Reformation began, Henry VIII was sitting on the throne—and we already know his story, so let's skip ahead.
A few years after Henry VIII's death (and a little intrigue,) his daughter—Queen Elizabeth I—ascended the throne. Her reign (1558-1603) is known as the Elizabethan Age. During that time, England defeated the Spanish Armada, funded the first Englishman's circumnavigation of the world, established several joint stock companies to trade around the world, beheaded the Queen of Scotland, secretly helped the Dutch rebel against Spain, attended Shakespeare's plays, battled Catholics and persecuted Puritans. (You might have noticed that a lot of what the English did during the Elizabethan Age involved tormenting Spaniards—this was a reflection of Elizabeth I's personal dislike for the Spanish King Philip II (son of HRE Charles V) and of England's national dislike of Spain in general.) Elizabeth I never married and left no heir when she died—but she did request that the beheaded Scottish queen's son become the next king.
So, James VI of Scotland became King James I of England—this united England and Scotland (politically if not emotionally.) During James I's reign (1603-1624,) England established a colony on North America (starting in Jamestown, which later became Virginia,) published the King James version of the Christian Bible (vernacular bibles were all the rage by then,) and stepped up the persecution of Puritans to the point that they started to leave England and eventually established Massachusetts in North America.
Following James I was Charles I (1625-1649.) Charles I spent his reign antagonizing the remaining Puritans, some of whom were in Parliament—this led to Parliament forcing Charles I to sign the Petition of Right in 1628 which rejected the concept of the Divine Right of Kings and gave Parliament more authority than the king (or queen.) Charles I responded by not calling Parliament into session for eleven years. Only when the Scots rebelled and invaded England in 1640 did Charles I crawl back to Parliament for assistance. Puritans within Parliament, known as Roundheads, led the "Long Parliament"—a session that lasted from 1640 to 1653. In trying to limit Charles I's power again, Parliament (and especially the Roundheads) angered him and he raised an army. Not one to "turn the other cheek," the Roundheads of Parliament raised their own army. The two armies clashed in England's Civil War to determine who was more powerful—the monarchy or Parliament. From 1642 to 1651, the two sides went head to head (with a couple of years of respite every so often.) The short story, though, is that Charles I lost the Civil War and his head. The leader of Parliament, Oliver Cromwell, had the king beheaded in 1649.
For the next nine years, England didn't have a king—instead Cromwell ruled as "Lord Protector," spending his reign persecuting Catholics and the Irish and encouraging protestants to move into Northern Ireland. When Cromwell died in 1658, Parliament invited Charles I's son to return from exile and resume the throne. (If you are keeping count, that's the second son of a beheaded monarch to take the English throne in roughly half of a century.)
After the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453,) France was free of English claims on French lands and really started unifying the nation under a central authority. French King Louis XI took the throne in 1461 and established the role of the French monarch over the French nobility. In 1494 (the same year the Pope was dividing the Atlantic Ocean between Spain and Portugal,) French King Charles VIII invaded Italy and started a lengthy conflict with Austria and Spain (whose rulers were related through the Hapsburg family.) Sixteenth Century France was a contradiction between the beauty of the Renaissance and the horrors brought from religious intolerance as Catholics and French Protestants (also known as Huguenots) fought without mercy. It was a difficult time to be the king of France as illustrated by King Henry III's reign (1574-1589 CE.)
King Henry III constantly saw his authority attacked from many sides—the Catholic League, fighting out of Spain to preserve the Catholicism of Europe the Protestant Huguenots, with support from England and the Dutch in order to establish Protestant rights and the Malcontents, a group of Catholic and Protestant aristocrats led by King Henry III's brother to combat the absolute authority of the king. Like Queen Elizabeth I, King Henry III was a politique—an authority figure that worked solely to maintain the authority of the monarchy and the security of the state—to him, the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598) were tearing his nation apart and he did not want to take a side between the factions. One would think that King Henry's role as a politique who thought only of keeping France from breaking apart (and preserving his job—he wasn't a saint, after all) would make him a hero in his nation instead, it only ignited the various factions against him as an indifferent leader.
The last in the series of the French War of Religions during Henry III's reign was called the War of the Three Henrys—armies representing King Henry III (the sitting king,) the Duke of Guise Henry I of Lorraine (the founder of the Catholic League,) and Henry of Navarre (the leader of the Huguenots) fought. King Henry III had the Duke of Guise Henry I assassinated…and a Catholic priest assassinated King Henry III—the last man standing became the next king of France. Upon taking the crown, Henry of Navarre changed his name (he became King Henry IV) and his religion (he became a Catholic.) King Henry IV issued the "Edict of Nantes" in 1598 ending the French War of Religions and establishing religious tolerance as the official policy in France. Unfortunately for Henry IV, official religious tolerance didn't necessarily translate into reality—he was assassinated by a Catholic fanatic in 1610 CE.
King Henry IV's family of Bourbon continued their reign of France until 1792. But following King Henry IV's death, two Catholic cardinals rose up to power within the French government and were responsible for ushering in a golden age for the French monarchy. The first was Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642)—As the regent (person in charge until a king is old enough) for the young Louis XIII, he was the man responsible for making France a leading power in Europe by the middle of the 1600s. Cardinal Richelieu forced the Huguenots to acknowledge the authority of the French monarchy, restricted the influence of the French nobles who were a constant threat to the monarchy, and aligned the Catholic nation of France with the Protestant nations during the Thirty Years' War.
The Holy Roman Empire was more a collection of city-states than a single nation AND it was more German and Austrian than Roman. The last Holy Roman emperor crowned by the Pope was King Charles V of Spain. As a member of the powerful Hapsburg family that had basically owned the title for hundreds of years, it was not a surprise that he was elected. But as the King of Spain, Charles V had too many distractions in his homeland to give much energy to uniting the Holy Roman Empire. Instead, the city-states were governed by "German" and "Austrian" princes and they were very feudal—therefore, the union of the Holy Roman Empire was fairly weak as individual princes tended to look after their own needs over their neighbors'. The Protestant Reformation further weakened the unity of the Holy Roman Empire as the northern portion became predominantly Protestant while the southern portion remained predominantly Catholic. But there were other factors that seriously undermined the strength of the Holy Roman Empire during the 16th Century CE. Between 1524 and 1525, disgruntled peasants led the Peasants' Revolt. Nothing really changed regarding their status, but between 70,000 and 100,000 peasants died (which was a large chunk of the local population.) Also in the early 16th Century, the Holy Roman Empire lost much of its southeastern territory to the Ottoman Empire. And lastly, as the Holy Roman Empire it was the site of many of the religious wars between the Catholics and the Protestants of the 16th and 17th Centuries fought over what was holy and who had the right to declare it so.
As you saw, each of the nations discussed above were busy establishing their own national identities even as individuals within their nations were busy establishing religious identities. Many of the leaders of these nations attempted to rule as politiques above the religious turmoil within their individual nations. But events throughout the European continent eventually prevented them from doing so and Europe entered the Age of Religious Wars—a period marked with little continental peace and culminating in the Thirty Years' War.
As you flipped through the above timeline, you probably noticed that not all of these wars were strictly religious in nature and that the two sides (Protestant and Catholic) sometimes allied themselves, depending on with whom they fought. During the Age of Religious Wars, the lines between the religious and the political were often blurred as one nation attacked another under the banner of restoring religious unity or Protestant rights. But, in many cases, the wars were barely veiled attempts to restore political domination or establish independence.
The overall results of the Protestant Reformation, Counter-Reformation and the European Wars of Religion were...
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Recap Section
Watch the videos below to review what you've learned.
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