PERIODS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY
PERIOD V., 1598–1715.
_In Eight Volumes. Crown 8vo. With Maps._
=PERIODS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY=
General Editor--ARTHUR HASSALL, M.A.,
Student of Christ Church, Oxford.
The object of this series is to present in separate Volumes a
comprehensive and trustworthy account of the general development
of European History, and to deal fully and carefully with the more
prominent events in each century.
The Volumes will embody the results of the latest investigations, and
will contain references to and notes upon original and other sources of
information.
It is believed that no such attempt to place the History of Europe in
a comprehensive, detailed, and readable form before the English Public
has yet been made, and it is hoped that the Series will form a valuable
continuous History of Mediæval and Modern Europe.
=Period I.--The Dark Ages.= A.D. 476–918. By C. W. C. OMAN, M.A.,
Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. 7_s._ 6_d._
=Period II.--The Empire and the Papacy.= A.D. 918–1272. By T. F. TOUT,
M.A., Professor of History at Victoria University, Manchester.
=Period III.--The Close of the Middle Ages.= A.D. 1272–1494. By R.
LODGE, M.A., Professor of History at the University of Glasgow.
=Period IV.--Europe in the 16th Century.= A.D. 1494–1598. By A. H.
JOHNSON, M.A., Historical Lecturer to Merton, Trinity, and University
Colleges, Oxford. 7_s._ 6_d._
=Period V.--The Ascendancy of France.= A.D. 1598–1715. By H. O.
WAKEMAN, M.A., Fellow of All Souls College, and Tutor of Keble College,
Oxford. 6_s._
=Period VI.--The Balance of Power.= A.D. 1715–1789. By A. HASSALL,
M.A., Student of Christ Church, Oxford. 6_s._
=Period VII.--Revolutionary Europe.= A.D. 1789–1815. By H. MORSE
STEPHENS, M.A., Professor of History at Cornell University, Ithaca,
U.S.A. 6_s._
=Period VIII.--Modern Europe.= A.D. 1815–1878. By G. W. PROTHERO, Litt.
D., Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh.
THE ASCENDANCY
OF FRANCE
1598–1715
BY
HENRY OFFLEY WAKEMAN, M.A.
FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE
TUTOR OF KEBLE COLLEGE, OXFORD
AUTHOR OF ‘AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND’
_PERIOD V_
SECOND EDITION
London
RIVINGTON, PERCIVAL AND CO.
1897
[_All rights reserved._]
PREFACE
I have not attempted in the following pages to write the history of
Europe in the seventeenth century in detail. The chronicle of events
can be found without difficulty in many other works. I have therefore
endeavoured as far as possible to fix attention upon those events only
which had permanent results, and upon those persons only whose life
and character profoundly influenced those results. Other events and
other persons I have merely referred to in passing, or left out of
account altogether, such as for instance the history of Portugal and
the Papacy, the internal affairs of Spain, Italy, and Russia. Following
out this line of thought I have naturally found in the development
of France the central fact of the period which gives unity to the
whole. Round that development, and in relation to it, most of the
other nations of Europe fall into their appropriate positions, and
play their parts in the drama of the world’s progress. Such a method
of reading the history of a complicated period may, of course, be open
to objection from the point of view of absolute historical truth. The
effort to give unity to a period of history may easily fall into the
inaccuracy of exaggeration. The picture may become a caricature, or
so strong a light may be shed on one part as to throw the rest into
disproportionate gloom. It would be presumptuous in me to claim that
I have avoided such dangers. All that I can say is, that they have
been present to my mind continually as I was writing, and that I
have been emboldened to face them both by the fact that the history
of the seventeenth century lends itself in a very marked way to such
a treatment, and by the conviction that it is far more important to
the training of the human mind, and the true interests of historical
truth that a beginner should learn the place which a period occupies
in the story of the world than have an accurate knowledge of the
smaller details of its history. To know the meaning and results of
the Counter-Reformation is some education, to know the official and
personal names of the Popes none at all.
With regard to the spelling of names I have endeavoured to follow what
I humbly conceive to be the only reasonable and consistent rule, that
of custom. It seems to me to be as pedantic to write Henri, Karl,
or Friedrich, as it is admitted to be to write Wien or Napoli, and
inconsistent on any theory except that of the law of custom to write
anything else. But with regard to some names, custom permits more than
one form of spelling. It is as customary to write Trier as Trêves, or
Mainz as Mayence. These cases mainly arise with reference to names of
places which are situated on border lands, and are spelt sometimes
according to one language, and sometimes according to another. In these
cases I have followed the language of the nation which was dominant in
the period of which I treat, and accordingly write Alsace, Lorraine,
Basel, Köln, Saluzzo, etc. The use of an historical atlas is presumed
throughout.
H. O. W.
ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD.
_March, 1894._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. EUROPE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, 1
II. FRANCE UNDER HENRY IV., 14
III. THE COUNTER-REFORMATION AND RELIGIOUS TROUBLES IN GERMANY, 39
IV. THE BEGINNING OF THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR, 53
V. THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR FROM THE PEACE OF LÜBECK TO THE
PEACE OF PRAGUE, 78
VI. THE AGGRANDISEMENT OF FRANCE, 106
VII. FRANCE UNDER RICHELIEU AND MAZARIN, 133
VIII. NORTHERN EUROPE TO THE TREATY OF OLIVA, 166
IX. LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT, 185
X. LOUIS XIV. AND THE UNITED PROVINCES, 207
XI. LOUIS XIV. AND WILLIAM III., 235
XII. SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE, 266
XIII. THE NORTHERN NATIONS FROM THE TREATY OF OLIVA TO THE
PEACE OF UTRECHT, 290
XIV. THE PARTITION TREATIES AND THE GRAND ALLIANCE, 312
XV. THE WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION AND THE DEATH OF
LOUIS XIV., 342
MAPS
NO.
1. Acquisitions of territory by France during the
period, _To face page_ 25
2. Germany according to the peace of Westphalia,
showing the march of Gustavus Adolphus,
1630–1632, _To face page_ 124
3. The countries of the Upper Rhine and Danube, showing the PAGE
march of Turenne, 1675, and of Marlborough, 1704, 241
4. Northern Italy, illustrating the campaigns of Prince
Eugene 1701–1706, 343
5. The Netherlands, illustrating the campaigns of Condé,
Turenne and Marlborough, 348
GENEALOGICAL TABLES
1. The Sovereigns of Europe during the century, 376
2. The House of Bourbon, 378
3. The Cleves-Jülich succession, 380
4. The Spanish Succession, 381
INDEX 383
CHAPTER I
EUROPE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Importance of the century--France at the beginning of the
century--The States-General, the Parlement de Paris, Religious
Toleration--Germany--The Emperor, the Imperial Courts, the
Diet--Disunion of Germany--England--Spain--Italy.
[Sidenote: =Importance of the Seventeenth Century.=]
The seventeenth century is the period when Europe, shattered in its
political and religious ideas by the Reformation, reconstructed its
political system upon the principle of territorialism under the rule
of absolute monarchs. It opens with Henry IV., it closes with
Peter the Great. It reaches its climax in Louis XIV. and the
Great Elector. It is therefore the century in which the principal
European States took the form, and acquired the position in Europe,
which they have held more or less up to the present time. A century,
in which France takes the lead in European affairs, and enters on a
course of embittered rivalry with Germany, in which England assumes a
position of first importance in the affairs of Europe, in which the
Emperor, ousted from all effective control over German politics, finds
the true centre of his power on the Danube, in which Prussia becomes
the dominant state in north Germany, in which Russia begins to drive
in the Turkish outposts on the Pruth and the Euxine--a century, in
short, which saw the birth of the Franco-German Question and of the
Eastern Question--cannot be said to be deficient in modern interest.
The map of Europe at the close of the seventeenth shows the same great
divisions as it does at the close of the nineteenth century, with the
notable exception of Italy. Prussia and Russia have grown bigger,
France and Turkey have grown smaller, the Empire has become definitely
Austrian, but in all its main divisions the political map of Europe
is practically unchanged. The states which were formed in the general
reconstruction of Europe after the religious wars of the sixteenth
century are the states of which modern Europe is now composed. Great
nations are apt to change their forms of internal government much
more often than they do their political boundaries and influence; but
it is a remarkable thing that, with the great exception of France,
the principal European states possess at the present time not only
a similar political position, but a similar form of government to
that which they possessed at the close of the seventeenth century. In
spite of the wave of revolutionary principles, which flowed out from
France over Europe at the end of the eighteenth century, the principal
states of Europe at the present time are in all essentials absolute
monarchies, and these monarchies are as absolute now as they were
then, with the two exceptions of Italy, which did not then exist, and
France, which is now a Republic, but has been everything in turn and
nothing long. The formation of the modern European states system is
therefore the main element of continuous interest and importance in the
history of the seventeenth century, that is to say, the acquisition
by the chief European states of the boundaries, which they have since
substantially retained, the adoption by them of the form of government
to which they have since adhered, and the assumption by them,
relatively to the other states, of a position and influence in the
affairs of Europe which they have since enjoyed. The sixteenth century
saw the final dismemberment of medieval Europe, the seventeenth saw its
reconstruction in the modern form in which we know it now.
[Sidenote: =The condition of France, 1598.=]
Of the European nations which were profoundly affected by the
Reformation, France was the first to emerge from the conflict.
French Calvinism differed from the south German type by being more
distinctly political in its objects, and the leaders of the French
Catholics, especially the ambitious chiefs of the house of Guise, had
quite as keen a desire for their own aggrandisement as they had for
the supremacy of their religion. The religious wars in France soon
became mainly faction fights among the nobles for political objects
in which personal rivalry was embittered by religious division, and
all honest and law-abiding citizens--that sturdy middle-class element
which has always formed the backbone of the French nation--soon longed
for the strong hand which should at any rate keep faction quiet. The
authority of the Crown had ever been in France the sole guarantee of
order and of progress. Under the weak princes of the House of Valois
that guarantee ceased to exist. Shifty, irresolute, inconstant, they
preferred the arts of the intriguer to the policy of the statesman, the
poniard of the assassin to the sword of the soldier, and when Henry
III., the murderer of the Duke of Guise, in his turn fell
murdered by the dagger of the monk Clément, France drew a long sigh of
relief. Like England after Bosworth Field, France after Ivry was ready
to throw herself at the feet of a conqueror who was strong enough to
ensure peace and suppress faction. The House of Bourbon ascended the
French throne upon the same unwritten conditions as the House of Tudor
ascended the English throne. It was to rule because it knew how to
rule, and the conditions of its rule were to be internal peace, and
national consolidation.
[Sidenote: =The States-General.=]
But the task before the first Bourbon was far more difficult than
that which absorbed all the energies of the first Tudor. He had no
machinery to his hand which he could use to veil the arbitrariness
of his action, or to guide public opinion. Parliament in England had
often been the terror of a weak king. The Tudors soon made it the
tool of a strong king. In France Henry had to rely openly upon the
powers of the Crown and upon military force. It is true that the
States-General still existed, though they were seldom summoned, but
their constitution and traditions rendered them unfit to play the
part of an English Parliament. They met in three houses representing
the Clergy, the Nobility, and the Commonalty, the latter house, the
Tiers-Etat as it was called, being usually about as large as the other
two put together; but instead of there being a political division
running through the three estates of those for the policy of the Crown
and those against it, as was usually the case in England, the tendency
in France always was for the two privileged houses to coalesce against
the Tiers-Etat. The Crown had therefore only to balance one against
the other, and leave them to entangle themselves in mutual rivalries
in order to gain the victory. In the long history of the English
Parliament it is very rare to find serious questions raised between
the two houses. Nobles and Commons have as a rule acted together for
weal or for woe in attacking or supporting the policy of the Crown.
The unity of Parliament has been its most significant feature. In
France it has been quite otherwise. Mutual jealousy and social rivalry
played their part with such effect that they destroyed the political
usefulness of the States-General. Unable to act together they could not
extort from the Crown either the power over the purse, or the right
of legislation, which were the two effective checks upon the king’s
prerogative exercised by the English Parliament. All that they could do
was to present a list of grievances and ask for a remedy. They had no
power whatever of compelling a favourable answer, much less of giving
effect to it. The procedure was for each Estate to draw up its own
list (_cahier_) of those matters which it wished to press upon
the attention of the Crown. When the lists were completed they were
formally presented to the king and a formal answer of acceptance or
rejection was expected from him, but as the Estates separated directly
the answer was given, the Crown was apt not to be over prompt in
fulfilling its promises.
[Sidenote: =The Parlement de Paris.=]
As a constitutional check upon misgovernment the States-General in
France were therefore of little use. That function, as far as it was
discharged at all, had by accident devolved upon the Parlement de
Paris. The Parlement was in its origin nothing more than a court of
law which sat at Paris to administer justice between the king and his
subjects, and between subject and subject. In course of time it grew
into a corporation of lawyers and judges, not altogether unlike our
Inns of Court in England amalgamated into one, having just that kind
of political influence which a close and learned corporation, whose
business it was to make by judicial decision a great deal of the law of
the country, could not fail to have. In one point indeed the Parlement
had almost established a definite right. As the highest court of the
realm its duty was to register the edicts of the king, a duty which
was easily turned into a right to refuse to register them if it so
willed. Thus the Parlement claimed an indirect veto upon the royal
legislation. It is true that the king could always override the refusal
of the Parlement to register an edict by coming in person to its
session and holding what was called a _lit de justice_; but this
was a proceeding which involved a good deal of inconvenience, and was
not unlikely to excite tumults; it would not therefore be resorted to
except on critical occasions. [Sidenote: =Position of the Crown.=]
So completely had the constitution of France become in its structure
despotic, that there was absolutely no constitutional means of
exercising control over the king’s will than this very doubtful right
of the Parlement de Paris to refuse to register the king’s edict. And
if there was no constitutional check upon the king’s will, there was
also no machinery which the king could utilise in order to associate
himself with his people in the task of government. He stood on a
pedestal by himself in terrible isolation surrounded by his courtiers,
faced by the nobility, backed by his army, unable to know his people’s
wants, and unable to help them to know their own.
[Sidenote: =Religious toleration.=]
But this was not all. Henry IV. had to encounter open enmity abroad,
and give an earnest of religious peace at home, as well as to crush
civil dissensions. It was not till his conversion to Catholicism drew
the teeth of Spain, and proved to the majority of his subjects that
he desired above all things to be a national and not a party king,
that he can be said really to have reigned. The peace of Vervins,
concluded in 1598, marked the issue of France from the throes of her
Reformation wars. Her religious struggle was over. Calvinism had
made its great effort to win religious and political ascendency in
France, and had failed. France was to remain a Catholic country, and
the bull of absolution granted to Henry IV. by Pope Clement VIII. in
1595 duly emphasised the return of the Most Christian King into the
pale of Catholic obedience. But if Calvinism had failed, neither had
Papalism wholly won the day. Catholic, France had determined to be,
but she was far from assuming as yet the mantle of the champion of
rigid orthodoxy just laid down by Philip II. [Sidenote: =The Edict of
Nantes.=] The same year which saw the death of Philip II. and the real
beginning of the reign of Henry IV. saw also the promulgation of the
Edict of Nantes with its announcement of the new policy of liberty of
conscience. By this famous edict religious toleration and political
recognition was accorded to the French Calvinists. They were to be
allowed to worship as they pleased, provided they paid tithes to the
Church, and observed religious festivals like other Frenchmen. They
were to receive a grant from the State in return. They were to be
equally eligible with Catholics for all public offices. They were to
be represented in the Parlements, and were to have exclusive political
control for eight years over certain towns in the south and west of
France, of which the most important were Nismes, Montauban, and La
Rochelle. Thus they obtained not merely toleration as a religious
body, and part endowment by the State, but also recognition in certain
places as a political organisation. The political settlement was
evidently but a palliative, the religious settlement was a cure. No
country as patriotic as France, no government as strong as an absolute
monarchy could tolerate longer than was necessary an _imperium in
imperio_ under the control of a religious sect. But the toleration
of Calvinism in a country professedly Catholic was a solution of the
religious question thoroughly acceptable to the genius of the French
nation. It enabled France at once to fix her whole attention upon the
absorbing business of political aggrandisement. It excused her somewhat
for not thinking it obligatory to play a purely Catholic rôle in the
pursuit of that aggrandisement. The first of those nations of Europe,
which had been seriously affected by the Reformation, to arrive at
a satisfactory solution of the problem of religious division, she
was able to set an example to Europe of a policy entirely outside
religious considerations. Under a king who had conformed, but had not
been converted, France, pacified, but not yet united, was ready to mix
herself up in the web of political intrigue and religious rivalry in
which Germany was helplessly struggling, with the simple if selfish
object of using the misfortunes of her neighbours for her own advantage.
[Sidenote: =Germany: The Emperor.=]
The state of Germany was indeed pitiable. The Empire had become but
the shadow of a great name. The successor of Augustus had nothing in
common with his prototype but his title. Roman Emperor he might be in
the language of ceremony, punctiliously might the imperial hierarchy
of dignity be ordered according to the solemnities of the Golden Bull,
but all the world knew that in spite of this wealth of tradition and
of prescription, the Emperor could wield little more power in German
politics than that which he derived from his hereditary dominions.
The archduke of Austria must indeed be a figure in Germany under any
circumstances, still more so if he happened to be also king of Hungary
and king of Bohemia; but if the electors set the Imperial Crown at his
feet and hailed him as Cæsar, though much was thereby added to his
dignity and something to his legal rights, not one whit accrued to
him of effective force. It is true that his legal position as head
and judge over the princes accrued to him, not so much because he was
emperor and the representative of Augustus and Charles the Great, as
because he was German king and the successor of Henry the Fowler and
Otto the Great. Nevertheless, the fact, from whatever quarter derived,
that the German constitution gave to the Emperor the lordship over the
other princes and the right of deciding disputes which arose between
them, made him the only possible centre of German unity.
[Sidenote: =The Imperial Courts.=]
That right was exercised through a court (the _Reichskammergericht_)
the members of which were mainly nominated by the princes themselves.
For the purpose of ensuring the enforcement of its decrees, Germany was
divided into circles, in which the princes and the representatives of
the cities who were members of the diet met, and if necessary, raised
troops to give effect to the sentences pronounced. Since the beginning
of the Reformation, however, there had been a difficulty in getting
this machinery to work owing to the religions dissensions, and the
Emperor had begun the practice of referring imperial questions which
had arisen to the Imperial or Aulic Council (_Reichshofrath_), which
was entirely nominated by him and under his influence.
[Sidenote: =The Diet.=]
In all important matters of administrative policy the Emperors, since
the middle of the fifteenth century, had been obliged to consult the
Diet, but the Diet was in no sense a representative assembly of the
classes of which the nation was composed, as were the Parliament of
England and the States-General of France, but was merely a feudal
assembly of the chief feudal vassals of the Empire. It was, in fact,
a congress of petty sovereigns gathered under their suzerain. It was
divided into three houses. The first consisted of six of the seven
electors, three ecclesiastical, _i.e._ the archbishops of Köln, Mainz,
and Trier, and three lay, the electors of Saxony and Brandenburg
and the elector-palatine, for the fourth lay elector the king of
Bohemia only appeared for an imperial election. The second was the
House of Princes, the third that of the free Imperial Cities, but
it was considered so inferior to the other houses that it was only
permitted to discuss matters which had already received their assent.
It is obvious that in an assembly so constituted the only interest
powerfully represented was that of the princes, and the only influence
likely to be exercised by it was in favour of that desire for complete
independence, which was natural to a body of rulers who already enjoyed
most of the prerogatives of sovereignty. [Sidenote: =German desire for
unity.=] For there had ever been two divergent streams of tendency
in German politics. Deep in the German heart lay a vague sense of
nationality and patriotism, a dim desire that Germany should be one.
This sentiment naturally centred round the Emperor as the visible
head of German unity. If Germans ever were to be politically one, it
could only be under the Emperor. There was no other possible head
among the seething mass of jarring interests known geographically as
Germany. The other tendency had sprung from the strong love of local
independence characteristic of the Teutonic race. [Sidenote: =Desire
for sovereignty among the Princes.=] Naturally each petty duke or
prince tried to become as independent of outside authority as he could,
and in the pursuit of this policy he found himself greatly aided by
that spirit of local seclusion, which ever seeks to find its centre
of patriotism in the side eddies of provincial life, rather than in
the broad stream of the national existence. The Emperors of the House
of Habsburg had fully recognised these facts, and, since the days of
Maximilian I., had set themselves resolutely to the task of rebuilding
the imperial authority, and making the imperial institutions the true
and only centre of German unity. They might have succeeded, had it not
been for two events, the concurrent effect of which was completely to
shatter the half begun work. [Sidenote: =Effect of the Reformation.=]
The first was the Reformation, the second was the long rivalry with
France. The Reformation cut Germany rudely at first into two afterwards
into three pieces. Lutheranism, which absorbed nearly all northern
Germany between the Main and the Baltic, drew its strength especially
from the support of the north German princes. Luther himself effected
a closer alliance with the princes and the nobles than he did with the
people. It was to them he appealed for protection in the days of his
earlier struggles, on them that he trustfully leaned in the later days
of his power. Naturally, therefore, Lutheranism gave a strong impulse
and sanction to the desire, which the northern princes uniformly
felt, to assert their independence of a Catholic emperor. Calvinism,
spreading from republican Switzerland down the upper valley of the
Rhine into the heart of Germany, had a no less fatal influence upon the
centralising policy of the Emperors. Subversive in its tendencies and
impatient of recognised authority, it intensified the spirit of dislike
to autocratic institutions. [Sidenote: =Effect of the rivalry with
France.=] Still, in spite of the terrible disruption of Germany caused
by the Reformation, a sovereign so powerful and so cautious as Charles
V. might have been able to weather the storm, without suffering any
loss of prerogative or influence, had it not been for the constant and
paramount necessity laid upon him of counteracting the machinations of
an enemy ever wakeful and absolutely unscrupulous. As long as Francis
I. lived Charles V. was never able seriously to apply himself to German
affairs. When he was dead it was too late. The religious divisions
of Germany had taken definite political shape, and were inspired
with definite political ambitions. The Emperor had ceased to be the
acknowledged political head of Germany. He had sunk into the inferior
position of becoming merely the chief of one political and religious
party.
[Sidenote: =Consequent disunion of Germany.=]
In this way the desire for political independence from the authority
of the Emperor went hand in hand with the achievement of religious
independence from the authority of the Church. The Emperors who
followed Charles V. in the latter years of the sixteenth century,
Ferdinand I., Maximilian II., and Rudolf II., so far from being able
in the least to extend their prerogative in Germany, were barely able
to retain what shreds of it yet remained. But towards the close of
the century the onward and destructive march of Lutheranism and of
Calvinism stopped. The Reformation spent itself as a living force. It
had reached its utmost limits and slowly the tide began to turn. The
Counter-Reformation, with the spiritual exercises of S. Ignatius in one
hand and the sword in the other, went forth to win back half Germany
to the faith. When the peace of Vervins set France free, Germany was
at her weakest. Jarring interests, political dissensions, religious
hatreds were rife through the length and breadth of that unhappy land.
The Lutheran princes of the north had succeeded in throwing off the
leadership of the Emperor without themselves producing either a leader
or a policy. The Calvinist princes of the Rhineland, exasperated
by the advance of the Counter-Reformation, were ready to throw all
Germany into the crucible and rashly strike for a supremacy which
they had not strength to win. In Bohemia men remembered with fierce
glee the stubborn waggon fortresses of the unconquerable Ziska, and
the concessions wrung from reluctant Pope and Emperor by the success
of a rebellion. Meanwhile in Bavaria and the hereditary dominions
of the House of Austria, by steady governmental pressure backed by
the devotion and talent of the Society of Jesus, Protestantism was
being gradually rooted out and swept away by the advancing tide of
the Counter-Reformation. Yet the Emperor himself was incapable of
directing the policy of his own party. A melancholy recluse given to
astrology and fond of morbid religious exercises, Rudolf II. was the
last man fitted to lead a crusade. He could not even inspire respect,
much less command allegiance. Never certainly was a country in a more
pitiable plight. Torn from end to end by religious dissension, pierced
through and through by personal and provincial rivalries, without a
single public man on either side sufficiently respected to command
obedience, without unity of political or religious ideal even among the
Protestants, without that last hope of expiring patriotism, the power
of union in the face of the foreign aggressor, Germany at the close of
the sixteenth century lay extended at the feet of her jealous rival, a
helpless prey, whenever it pleased him to spring and put an end to her
miseries.
[Sidenote: =England.=]
England, unlike France and Germany, had as yet escaped the necessity
of making the sword the arbiter of religion, but she had not wholly
settled her religious difficulties. Elizabeth, masterful in all things,
had imposed upon the Church and the nation a solution of the religious
question which was still upon its trial. The experiment of a Church,
historically organised and doctrinally Catholic, but in hostility to
the Pope, was hitherto unknown in the West, though common enough in
the East; and it is not surprising that it soon found itself attacked
from both sides by Roman Catholics and Protestants at once. During
the reign of Elizabeth the personality of the Queen and the success
of her policy, especially as the champion and leader of the national
opposition to Spain which culminated in the defeat of the Armada in
1588, kept the disturbing elements in check. On the accession in
1603 of a prince who with some insight into statesmanship was wholly
deficient in the faculty of governing, those elements rapidly gathered
strength. When serious constitutional questions between the king and
the Parliament were added to the religious complications, England soon
became too much absorbed in her own internal affairs to be able to
speak with authority in European politics. For fifty years after the
accession of the House of Stuart, England became merely a diplomatic
voice in Europe to which nations courteously listened but paid no
attention.
[Sidenote: =Spain.=]
While England was failing to secure her newly won honours, Spain
was trading upon a past reputation. Never was the retribution of an
impossible policy so quick in coming. The transition from Philip II. to
Philip III. is the transition from a first-rate to a third-rate power,
and that without the shock of a great defeat. Enervated by a proud
laziness, drained by a world-wide ambition, ruined by a false economy,
depleted by a fatal fanaticism, Spain was already falling fast into the
slough from which she is only just beginning now to emerge. Yet she was
still a great power, great in her traditions, great in her well-trained
infantry, great through her monopoly of the American trade. Had she
but produced men instead of puppets for kings, and statesmen instead of
favourites for ministers, she would quickly have recovered something
of her ancient glory. Even under Philip III. she was always a power
with which men had to reckon, and in strict family alliance with the
House of Habsburg formed the kernel of the Catholic interest in Europe.
By her possessions in the Netherlands, in Franche Comté and in the
Pyrenees, she presented the most serious obstacle to the territorial
aggrandisement of France.
[Sidenote: =Italy.=]
Patriotism was the very air the Spaniard breathed. In Italy it was a
vice, for an Italian had no country for which to live or to die. Italy,
since France and Spain had quarrelled over the division of its carcase,
had ceased to be anything but a name. In the south, the Spanish House
had made good its hold on Naples, in central Italy the States of the
Church were thrust in like a great wedge to separate north and south.
The north was still the battle-field between the rival powers. Venice
lay entrenched along the eastern coast and commanded the mouth of the
Brenner Pass, too formidable as yet to be attacked, too independent to
be won, by either side. In the middle of the rich plain of Lombardy
was the Milanese, which belonged to Spain, and was held by Austrian or
Spanish troops, who kept up a precarious communication with Austria
through the Valtelline and Tirol, or with Spain through the friendly
republic of Genoa. To the west of the Milanese came Piedmont and
Savoy, the duke of which from his geographical position was usually
obliged to be on good terms with France, but respected the obligation
no longer than necessary. Italy thus torn and divided was always ready
to produce, whenever it was wanted, a crop of international questions
of the greatest nicety for her neighbours to quarrel over, and, as the
century advanced, she seemed more and more to find her appropriate
function to lie in providing the necessary pawns for the game of
diplomatic chess characteristic of the new European states’ system.