A Political and Social History of Modern Europe Part 2

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 n.o.bles of western Europe had never recognized it, and the national monarchs, though they might occasionally sport with its honors and t.i.tles, 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 Wurttemberg; 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 circ.u.mstances 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 t.i.tle, 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 t.i.tle 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 const.i.tute 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 G.o.d 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 partic.i.p.ated 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing 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 p.r.o.ne to regard themselves as Italian princes who might normally employ their states as so many p.a.w.ns 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 gla.s.s, 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 p.r.o.nounce 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 pa.s.sed 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 amba.s.sadors, 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, pa.s.sed 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 inst.i.tutions.

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 inst.i.tutions 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 n.o.blemen, 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 munic.i.p.alities--practically self- governing republics--semi-independent va.s.sals of feudal n.o.bles; and in many cases the early oligarchic systems of munic.i.p.al government speedily gave way to more democratic inst.i.tutions. 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 va.s.sals 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 n.o.bility and clergy and opposed by the cities. In 1465 a common parliament, called the States General, was const.i.tuted 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 pa.s.sed 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 surpa.s.sed that of any contemporary sovereign. A permanent memorial of it remains in the celebrated Order of the Golden Fleece, which was inst.i.tuted 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.