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This Day in Alternate History Blog
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A Banker’s World Part 2 The Age of Enlightenment By Giovanni Spinella This
has been my bane of the last month of so. Although I wrote the original outline
some months ago, returning to it, I found many changes necessary. The 18th
century for me was simply the prelude to the fun bits (the American and French
Revolutions) that were intended to take up most of this second chapter. Instead,
I realised that to make those events more interesting, I had to set the stage
and the players before hand. Deepening my research on the world of the 18th
century, which I pretty much knew, and integrating it with the premise of the
first chapter of Banker’s World, lead to more and more aspects to mention,
cover or acknowledge. You can tell this from how the emphasis, which in Chapter
One was Spanish-centric, shifts across the board. Even Persia gets a page
devoted to it! A sixteen-page essay including the American Revolution and the
Napoleonic Wars, became a twenty page lead up to those worthy events. Some
overall trends remain the same, others have changed. I’ve tried to take a few
comments from friends and readers on board (which has resulted in some
back-tracking); in other cases the premise I set and the way I played it out in
the first chapter determined the path for this second part.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the second chapter. Next chapter will be the Age
of Revolution… THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
After the death of Louis 14th in 1715, Europe entered a phase
of relative calm in the west, as the European powers were taking stock of their
situations and redressing their wounds. FRANCE AFTER LOUIS THE XIVTH
France emerged from the decades of conflict as one of the strongest
nations in Europe, but the Hapsburgs’ network of alliances had managed to
successfully contain the French juggernaut.
France had adopted many of the Cazzaniga reforms in Spain but had added
her own variations to the system. Whereas the Spanish government faced a series
of internal obstacles and limitations to its power (the Church, certain sectors
of the Court and the aristocracy), forces that would constantly re-emerge and
try to hamper some of the more piercing reforms, in France the situation was
different. The Bourbons, while facing a similar coalition of opponents, had a
freer hand in overcoming their resistance. The Church of Rome and the monarchy
in France had historically a far different relationship than that in Spain or
any other Catholic nation: the French kings were able to control and subordinate
the clergy to their authority in ways no other Catholic king could. Memories of
the “Avignon Captivity”, coupled with the precedents of the religious wars
of the 16th century had lead to a situation in which the clergy,
while powerful, was politically far less influential than in Spain and more
susceptible to the will of the Louvre. As for the aristocracy, the Bourbons,
under Louis the XIVth, adopted the strategy of inducing them to settle at court,
especially at the new court of Versailles, where all their time and efforts
would be devoted to social pursuits. With the nobility concentrated at
Versailles, the monarchs could both keep the fractious counts and barons in line
and would remove them from their seats of power, which in turn would fall more
and more under the administration of the State. It was during the reign of Louis
the XIVth that the final steps were taken to exempt the nobility from the
administration of justice, for instance.
A series of valuable ministers and a mercantilist, Colbertian approach to
the economic needs of the nation, had allowed France to build up her resources
to the point that she could compete with the Spanish Empire.
Louis the XIVth was succeeded by his great-grand son, Louis the XVth who
was a minor at the time. First the Duke of Orleans until 1725 and then Andre’
de Fleury, acted as regents and first ministers in the early part of his realm.
FRANCE AND SPAIN COMPARED France
also had an additional advantage over Spain, one that would be of fundamental
importance in later years. The nascent bourgeoisie, initially of administrative
origins, was moving into the economic spheres and gaining more and more momentum
as a social force. This class in its new aspects, while revolutionary in some
cases, was still very much part of France. The bourgeoisie was French, loved her
country and loved the Crown, a relationship the monarchy did its best to sustain
and foster. This bourgeoisie would share in the fortunes and fate of the nation. Spain
on the other hand had progressed little, in Europe, to integrate the
nationalities that were part of her Empire. Her bourgeoisie was Italian,
Flemish, Portuguese, a few Arabs and Jews, a cosmopolitan amalgam that lacked a
cohesive, unifying uber-culture. Spain had been unwilling and unable to create a
synthesis of these people, give them a common sentiment. Indeed most Spanish
nobles were so obsessed with the archaic notion of “limpieza” (purity) that
they refused any intermarriage with the “thrall-nations”, an attitude that
they didn’t bother to hide. While the subject nations benefited from the
stability of the Spanish sphere, and therefore had a vested interest in
maintaining such a milieu, nevertheless this interest was no deeper then the
bottom of their purses and while such an interest is usually deep enough, with
the onslaught of the Enlightenment and French Revolution, and the new ideals
these two events would bring, this fundamental fragility of Spanish society
would stand revealed. POLITICS IN SPAIN This
nationalistic chauvinism was also at the root of the political struggle in the
court of Madrid, between the native aristocracy and the cosmopolitan
bureaucracy. Cazzaniga and Olivares had avoided most of these problems, if only
because the aristocracy had underestimated and ignored the power the central
government was building, but their later successors suddenly had to face a far
greater struggle to achieve results. This governmental “lag” would grow more
and more pronounced over the years, especially once the two “parties” of the
18th century court would form, the Trabahadores (formed of the more
progressive and liberal elements of the aristocracy, the bureaucracy and the
bourgeoisie) and the Pensadores (formed by a block comprising the vast majority
of the nobility, the totality of the Catholic clergy and a good number of the
“little people”, although few if any members of this faction were
particularly devoted to thought or intellectual endeavours).
The
commoners of Spain had in their nationalistic stature a cause of pride that put
them above the “subjects” and this would lead them to resist any attempts at
equalisation with the “lesser people”. The Pensadores were therefore able to
use the crowds and the mob of Madrid (that had evolved into almost a living
organism, not unlike the mobs of Imperial Rome and Constantinople) against the
modernizers, and this would only change in the 19th century. IN order
to keep the Madrid mob happy, a series of regular concessions of grain, wine and
meat were made to the Spanish population of the city. To feed this mass of
people, vast areas in Spain and northern Africa were given over to wheat farming
and animal raising, thus destroying large part of the commercial plantations in
these regions and condemning them to economic depression. A class of plantation
owners with a vested interest in this system formed and consolidated as a power
bloc that also gave the Pensadores more influence. The discrimination between
pampered Spaniards and other nationalities (who were forced to fend for
themselves in terms of food and work and often charged ludicrously high prices
by greedy and exploitative food distributors) heightened the hostility between
the nations. As long as Spain had her Empire, however, this system could manage. Nevertheless
Spain had achieved a success of sorts in the colonisation and integration of the
various nationalities in Latin America, where perhaps the very “uprooted”
nature of the colonies had allowed her to build a more fluid society. The ethnic
distinction was less important then the class distinction, and this would become
very important. The colonial aristocracy (of military extraction as most of the
founders of the noble houses had been officers in the earlier colonial
expeditions) was even more reactionary then the European, being more “royalist
then the king”, as if to overcompensate for the relative newness and thus
fragility of it social standing. The bourgeoisie in the colonies, while still
economically and culturally tied to Europe, was developing a flavour and an
identity of its own, which would reveal its own flaws and merits in later years. FRENCH COLONISATION As
a nation, France had a sense of being boxed in both north, south, east and, more
importantly, west: with the exception of Quebec and Louisiana, France had little
in terms of colonies. The Duke of Orleans, acting as regent for young Louis the
15th, rather then start another series of wars, chose to invest in
the slower but safer return of nation building. He increased the number of
colonists in Quebec and Louisiana, but more importantly, he encouraged the
exploration and settling of Africa. Following the Treaty of Luxembourg of 1710,
France was acknowledged rights over former Portuguese colonies in Africa (such
as Mozambique and Angola) and over most of the Cape. Louis the XIVth wasn’t
really overenthusiastic about Africa but his successors saw a potential return
for those investments. These policies were continued by ministers such as Mons.
Fleury after the Duke of Orleans died in 1725. In 1729 French settlers founded
the colony of Bourbonville on the southern-most tip of the African continent.
This area seemed relatively easy to colonise and sparse in population. The
southern African colony prospered: although the Canal of St. Catherine had
effectively ended the need for circumnavigation of Africa to reach India, the
land was still fertile enough to ensure a good future for any and all colonists.
France would begin from this date the policies that would lead her to master
most of the African continent south of the Sahara. THE ENLIGHTENMENT
France was also achieving dominance elsewhere: with the dawn of the
eighteenth century, Paris became the natural gravitation point for a new
generation of thinkers, intellectuals and rationalists, men and women dedicated
to facing the world with a new attitude, free of the superstitions of the
seventeenth century. In short, the Age of Enlightenment had begun, with men such
as Voltaire and Rousseau leading the brightest minds into newfound confidence
and growth. Such
progress in thought and science would have inevitable repercussions also on
government. As more and more thinkers began to move away from the dogma of the
Holy Texts, the founding principle of the monarchy, divine right, came into
question time and time again. At the same time, many monarchs fell under the
sway of the Enlightenment, Fredrick the Great of Prussia, Josef Constantine of
Austria-Austria, Catherine of Russia, but few wanted to take the implications of
the new goddess, Reason, to her end results. Once deprived of the religious
aura, government needed a new justification. Macchiavelli, with his realism (or
pessimism) considered the absolute monarch to be the best of possible rulers (he
had little concrete faith in republics, although plenty of intellectual
admiration for them). But without a clear basis, a raison-d’etre, the monarchy
existed by right of might, and the main problem with such a principle is that
inevitably something, or someone mightier, will eventually come along. The quest
for a new justification for government and authority would be the political
theme of the coming century. The
Enlightenment was unique to the world because it started in a Catholic country,
a nation that in the previous century had suffered the Counter-Reformation. Due
to the relatively high percentage of Protestants, the Church had never achieved
the complete control of education and consciences that she had achieved in Spain
and her Italian dependencies. A strong national government and sense of identity
protected the delicate flower of independent thought and study. The Philosophes
tackled the dogmas of religion and of the Catholic Religion in particular and
earned the accusations and hostility of the Church that saw in the thoughts of
these Frenchmen the end of the world. And in a way, she was right. The
Enlightenment would bring about different repercussions in the Spanish Empire
where a growing number of thinkers and writers began to vocally call for an
equalisation of the citizens of the Empire. Many a writer would exalt the
“Spanish Mission” as the heir to the Romans’, but then decry how this
mission was hindered by the various discriminations and the whole culture of
limpieza. A characteristic of the average Enlightened philosophe was a high
degree of cosmopolitanism: the intellectual was a citizen of the world, not tied
to any one nation. Therefore nationalism was initially alien to his thinking.
However, once the government in Madrid revealed itself to be increasingly deaf
and hostile to the calls for a new order, the Free Thinkers of the Spanish
Europe found their thoughts turning elsewhere, and a new “rational”
nationalism was born in Italy (Pietro Verri’s History of Italy became a
manifesto of nationalism) and the Flanders, that would influence the ruling
classes in Piedmont, Venice and Florence as well as the bourgeoisie in Brussels. ENGLAND AND THE TRONDHEIM-VASAS
England was undergoing her own changes as well: the Industrial Revolution
was taking place in this island. Having to make do with less had long been a
British constant, and the natural ingenuity this situation causes sparked off a
whole series of discoveries, both scientific and social which gradually brought
about the end of the agricultural society and the birth of the industrial. Politically,
England was also discovering the truth of the saying that the American writer,
Sam Clemens, would coin a century later: the only thing worse then a scoundrel
is a man of principle. Oswald of the Trondheim-Vasa had sworn an oath to respect
Parliament’s prerogatives, but he had taken such oath as part of his overall
duties as new king of England. Amongst these duties were the protection of the
Realm and defence of the (Anglican) Faith. As king of England he was therefore
head of the Anglican Church, and he revealed both the scrupulous piety and the
jealous defence of privilege that so characterised his dynasty. Oswald took his
role as religious figurehead quite seriously, upbraiding any opulent clergymen
and keeping a tight reign, both theological and organisational, on the Church of
England. He won over many enthusiasts and devout believers, who began to take
his religious role as seriously as he did. This
brought about what many would call the “Re-Awakening”, a moment of profound
religious sentiment and zeal, which would be reflected in many constructions of
the period and in an overall change in English customs and mores, emphasizing
the spiritual. This Re-Awakening lead to a resurgence of Puritanism in the
British Isles, which would greatly affect the Anglican Church. Politically, this
brought about a cross-party attitude called New Conformity, which would flavour
many a debate in the Commons. New Conformity turned into an odd blend of
communitarian solidarity and Calvinist pre-destination: solidarity towards all
sectors of society, with a “noblesse oblige” attitude from the upper classes
to the lower; pre-destination manifesting itself in a toughening of criminal
sentencing (as any who would commit a crime could only be a sinner and therefore
“lost”, undeserving of mercy). Despite
Parliament’s efforts, the Church was falling tighter and tighter into
Oswald’s hands. Considering that the Church was spread out far more
extensively than the government, Oswald became quite a powerful and influential
man. When he died in 1720, many a Member of Parliament breathed a sigh of
relief. However
his son, Harold or Henry IX proved to be no less rigorous or devout. The Stuart
loyalists still present in Britain turned to House Vasa and Parliamentarians
were faced with a difficult choice: either depose yet another king or reach some
sort of political understanding with the monarchy. The first thing they did was
repeal all acts that prohibited Catholics or other non-conformist religions,
including Jews, from serving in the government, the Integration Act of 1734.
With this, by injecting a certain number of non-Anglicans into the governmental
machine, they would lessen the danger that Anglicans might feel caught between
King and Parliament. This situation was ironic: in the previous century, England
had seen an alliance between royalists and the Catholic Church. Now the
royalists were all Anglicans. Opposition
to the Integration Act was strong in certain sectors of English society, in
particular the more devout Anglicans. The resurgence of a religious sentiment
unfortunately brought a resurgence in its all too frequent companion,
intolerance. The Parliament that repealed the discriminatory acts did so in a
situation of great duress, aware it was fighting for its life. Over the Act, the
Whigs and Tories effectively fragmented and would then reform along different
lines. Whigs and Tories, up until then relatively vague in their distinctions,
would begin to adopt clear-cut stances on many issues, starting from “New
Conformity”, which the Tories tended to adopt politically (although many a
Tory lead quite an “un-awakened life-style”) and that the Whigs tended to
reject (although many a Whig would eventually come from the middle classes and
thus was Puritan). This hypocrisy of the ruling classes would be a feature of
British society for a long time to come and many a satirist would enjoy poking
his fun: Jonathan Swift in his “Gulliver’s Travels” would describe the
land of the “Upsy-daisies” where everybody said one thing and did the other. By
repealing the acts, and thus including a larger part of the population into the
political machine, England had begun unwittingly, a path that would lead her to
reconcile with the Irish, who had remained steadfastly Catholic all along. With
more and more Irishmen serving in the British government, old wounds and
grievances could be addressed. Land reforms and social legislation were touched
upon, in very simple forms but would become an important topic in the following
decades. Ireland would be the heart of British Parliamentarianism for centuries
to come and a Whig-Liberal stronghold as well. James
of Stuart made a bid to reclaim his dynasty’s throne by landing and provoking
a revolt in Scotland in 1715. The Jacobite rebellion lasted three years but by
1718 the entirety of Scotland had been subjugated once and for all. THE AMERICAS AND THE COLONIAL WARS
The British colonies in America were flourishing. Although their
development had started a century later than that of the Spanish, and in more
difficult circumstances, the British Americas were developing their own
agricultural and proto-industrial infrastructure. As the decades progressed and
the colonies achieved not only self-sufficiency but also large surpluses,
feelings between the mother country and the colonies began to mutate. Royal
taxation, ordered by Parliament (all American colonies had fallen under
Parliamentary mandate) was gradually introduced into the system and political
protests emerged. The colonists began to put forth philosophical and political
literature of their own, centring on the nature of government. This wasn’t a
sudden thing and the whole situation had accelerated after the Colonial Wars of
the mid to late 1740s
These
wars were more in the nature of skirmishes between settlements and saw French
and English fight either directly or through intermediaries, such as the
Iroquois. However neither power took the conflict as far as they would have.
Spain was a strong and powerful presence to the Southwest and already French
Louisiana had had its share of border skirmishes with her. The French dug deep
into their colonies and fought on the defensive. The English did, however,
manage to cut a swathe of land between Quebec and Louisiana, therefore
separating the two colonies from one another and linking the eastern American
colonies with the Canadian settlements. The
Colonial Wars extended beyond the Americas. Although nominally private
companies, the East Indies Company and the Compagnie des Indes fought a war over
the Indian sub-continent that would end with a decisive British victory,
starting Britain down the road of the Raj. The
Colonial Wars then became an Anglo-Hispanic conflict with the “Florida
Rebellion” of 1749. Over the years, some British colonists, and Americans, had
settled in the peninsula and soon came to a par, almost, with the Spaniards.
During the wars, the British colonists began to demand freedom of religion and
an appeasement with England. Spanish authorities reacted with characteristic
brutality (the Incident of Puerto Escondido 1747) and this gave the colonists
the pretext to rise in arms and ask for British intervention. England hesitated
for a few weeks, as she was reluctant to engage in open warfare with Spain.
However the traditional hostility between the two nations, and the “plight of
the oppressed Englishmen” so elegantly and exaggeratedly portrayed in the
press, moved public opinion and thus many MPs to support the rebels. Finally, in
1750, a British contingent, formed in no small part by American colonists,
marched south into Florida and overwhelmed the Spanish garrison. Spain
was outraged and threatened war but in all honesty few could muster the
necessary enthusiasm: Florida was a distant colony, difficult to reach, with
most of the land in between in foreign hands and hardly as profitable as the
other colonies of the empire. At the same time, the Florida coup fell right in
the middle of the endemic Madrid court intrigues. SPANISH COURT POLITICS At
this time, in the court of king Charles VII,
the division between the Trabahadores and the Pensadores had crystallised
and almost formalised, with clubs and taverns given over to the factions. This
division was reflected to some extent in the Cortes. This assembly of nobles
wasn’t an elective body, as was the English Parliament for instance. It was a
gathering of a small number of nobles, representing an even smaller part of the
Spanish Empire. Colonial nobles were only admitted after the Act of Empire of
1721. Some of the more progressive thinkers saw in the arrival of these
colonials a potential catalyst for the transformation of the Cortes into a true
elective Parliament: the colonial nobles were delegates, elected by their
brethren in Latin America. However, for all the potential innovation the
selection method implied, the colonial nobles were perhaps even more reactionary
and conservative then most of their European counterparts. If anything the
European nobles, as exclusive masters of the military cadres, had spent a lot of
time on the field, quelling the endemic revolts of the Muslims in Northern
Africa and serving as part of the Greco-Austrian armies in the east. They were
therefore pragmatists. The colonial nobles hadn’t faced a serious war in the
Americas for decades and were therefore genuine fire-breathers. This would, of
course, change at the turn of the century with the beginning of the endemic
Spanish-American wars and border skirmishes. But at the time, the colonials were
more aggressive then their European colleagues. The
governor of Florida at the time was one Count Alvaro de Aragon y Nicaragua.
Aragon was a moderate with liberal leanings, openly a Trabahador, and had
distinguished himself for his even-handed approach to the “heretic
foreigners” in his colony, to the point that protests had been made to the
governor of Mexico (of which Florida was a part), one Don DelaCruz, who was very
much a Pensador. Aragon had received news of the arming and mobilisation of the
British settlers and had requested additional men, expecting something like what
was going to happen. What Aragon got was procrastinations and delays, to the
point that when the Incident of Puerto Escondido occurred and the British
colonists rebelled, he was hard pressed to put an army together. Nevertheless,
Aragon managed to beat the largest organised band of British colonists, which
only stiffened English resolve. Aragon was powerless to resist the
English-American contingent that swept down from the north and was forced to
retreat, even as Spanish colonists and natives, in an odd alliance, rebelled in
the Floridian hinterlands and tried to hinder the British advance. The British
response was uncharacteristically brutal, with the Slaughter of St. Joaquin (25th
June 1750). Surviving Spanish refugees and Native-Americans would hold the
memory of that day close to their hearts as much as the British would the memory
of Puerto Escondido. The tone for future relations between British and Spanish
in North America was set, and in the successive bouts of the continuous
Spanish-American Wars mutual atrocities would become the sad norm. By
the time Aragon was able to get a clear word to Mexico, the British had taken
the peninsula. At this point accusations and plots rant rampant in the Court of
Madrid. Many a voice clamoured for war against the British. Interestingly, it
was the “liberal” Trabahadores who spoke the most in favour for war, if only
to overcome the shame Aragon unwillingly wrought on their faction. The
Pensadores, in the figure of Don Luis Enrique de Galve, who would become Primado,
spoke against a major conflict and moved to keep the war contained in the
Americas, which suited king Charles very well. Nevertheless, Spanish honour had
to be avenged. The Spanish mustered a fleet, mostly Dutch, and re-took Jamaica
in 1751. INITIAL BRITISH DOMESTIC REPERCUSSIONS OF THE COLONIAL WARS The
British initially were against extending the conflict beyond the Americas. In
part because any conflict with Spain would have required an alliance with France
and the French had exhausted themselves during Louis the XIVth’s rule and were
apparently busy taking stock and rebuilding their energies and manpower. In
addition France wasn’t overly fond of Britain and was beginning her talks with
Prussia, that would lead to the Five-Year War a decade later. There
were also British domestic political considerations to be taken into account.
Henry the 9th wanted the war against Spain, both over the colonies’
issues and for the principle of it all. The mood in Parliament, both in the Tory
and Whig camps, was against the war and many other MPs were concerned that by
spearheading the “war party”, the monarchy’s hold over the nation and the
institutions would solidify. Therefore Parliament, lead by Prime Minister Henry
Pelham, was engaged in a “carpet battle” with Buckingham Palace, to the
point that many a wit would comment on the “War of the Two Henrys”.
Parliament voted for limited engagement in the Americas. The conflict between
Monarchy and Parliament, as old as the Magna Charta really, therefore took on a
new chapter and this manoeuvring would repeat itself in later years. The
war lasted another two years and by 1753 the Treaty of New Orleans, brokered by
the French, ended with ratification of the situation as it stood. The increased
expenditure to defend the colonies induced Parliament to begin a full-blown
process of taxation of the colonies, taxation without representation. This
ignited the Americans’ resentment, which would lead to the Revolution in the
mid 1770s.
The international repercussions of the Colonial Wars however would not
end in the Americas. Following what was perceived as a Spanish defeat, the
international context began to shift: alliances and talks began between France
and Prussia which would lead to the Forth Winter War, the Fourth War of the
Pyrenees and the overall conflict known as the Five-Year War. SPANISH AMERICA
Spain’s American empire was in full expansion. The GNPs of Argentina
and Brazil matched, and even surpassed those of the mother country. Standards of
living were superior to those in Europe and government was efficiently and
honestly run, with little of the corruption that was still one of the Spanish
curses. The Empire was polyglot, the Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Belgian, Arab
and Dutch colonists merging together into a single people. Two more of the
ingredients to this mix were the Indios (who were emerging from their status of
ignorant serfs thanks to the work of missionaries such as Bartolomeo de Las
Casas and demanding full “Roman” citizenship); and the Negroes who were now
a sizeable part of the population and would become a significant issue in the
years to come. Slavery
was a political topic of some volatility: many plantation owners saw any attempt
to curtail or limit the institution as a threat to their livelihood. The nobles
in Peru and Mexico resented the slaves’ competition: although free societies
produce more and better then slave economies, the Indios’ status wasn’t
effectively much different from that of slaves and the nobles weren’t
obligated to feed or clothe them. The cities were commercial and
proto-industrial and harboured the greater number of abolitionists, including
many Catholic priests, who argued that the only true servitude was to God and
any slavery was a form of domination of man over man that parodied the
relationship between man and the Lord. Tensions over slavery would rise and
fall. In 1779, King Joseph of Spain promulgated an edict that prohibited the
commerce of new slaves, leaving conveniently out of picture the slaves and their
descendants already in the Empire (and who numbered some five million by 1800).
The edict did quell the climate but this was an issue that would re-emerge,
especially in the 1870s and the Spartacus Revolts. CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE
If the western European powers were quiet at home and limited themselves
to some high sea piracy and skirmishes in the colonies, the situation in the
east was changing. One nation, up until then a bit-player in the great European
context, was emerging as a leader: Prussia. THE NORTHERN CONFEDERATION AND THE RISE OF PRUSSIA
By the end of the first half of the 18th century, the Northern
Confederation was beginning to show the strains of an organisation that was
unstable from its inception and that had in the minds of some outlived its
usefulness. It had played a central part in stabilising the northern part of
Germany and had effectively ended the Thirty Years War. However along with the
religious differences between Lutherans and Calvinists, the nationalistic
element was beginning to gain importance, and the Swedes, Danes and Germans that
made up the Confederation were finding themselves more and more at odds. The
Diet that met regularly in Hanover was an exercise in argument and suspicion. However,
the merits of the Northern Confederation could not be disputed: for one thing,
the German princes were arguing with words instead of armies. For another, the
creation of a free-trade area that went from Saxony to Karelia (with the
concurrent elimination of internal tariffs) had forced these regions to improve
their economies and their governments. Populations had grown and overall
prosperity increased, much to the marvel of French, Spanish and Greco-Austrian
neighbours. Only life in the Americas was reputed better. In the late 17th
century, numbers of French Huguenots found refuge in the Confederation and
bolstered its population.
Gustav Adolph had presided until 1668, with strong charisma and a mighty
army. His combination of guile and force managed to get the German and Danish
lords in line. His daughter Kristina was a more tormented soul (and a closet
Catholic as was later discovered) but found in the art of government an outlet
for her energy. She managed to introduce a couple of permanent institutions for
the Confederation, not least an Office of the Presidency that would be the only
bureaucracy the Confederation would ever see, and a High See, which would act as
the Confederation’s Supreme Magistracy, with very weak powers. Kristina
married a Saxon prince, Helmut and gave him three sons.
The
first-born, Lars of Vasa-Saxony, would succeed as President in 1681. By now
however, with the contempt that familiarity inevitably breeds, the various lords
of the Confederation were beginning to object to the monarchic form the
Presidency was assuming: no one wanted a Swedish Emperor in place of an Austrian
one. However, when Lars offered to surrender the seat to a non-Swede that the
Diet would indicate, the assembly fell into disarray: despite some forty years
of peace and diplomatic resolution of conflicts, the members of the Confederacy
still didn’t trust each other enough. This failure to create a spirit of unity
would be Sweden’s great limitation and doom the Northern Confederation to its
ultimate fate. Still,
the Diet voted a Bull that set a series of limits on the President’s power: if
they couldn’t find an alternative to the Vasas, even in their Saxon line, they
would limit their power. This progressive limitation of the President’s
authority, especially in the military sphere, eroded much of the prestige of the
Northern Confederation. While charismatic leaders such as Gustav Adolph or his
daughter Kristina, sat on the throne, the squabbling princelets all toed the
line. But once the Swedish monarchs began to lack the presence of their
predecessors and the extraordinary situations that had originally brought the
Confederation about came less, the organisation slowly began to lag.
Within the context of arguing and suspicious princes, the former Duchy of
Prussia became Realm and claimed the centre stage of German politics. Up
until the middle of the 17th century, Prussia, formerly under the
Teutonic Orders, had been a duchy under Polish hegemony. Ethnically and
culturally, the Prussians were a mix of Poles and Germans but the lingering
heritage of the Militant Order that had founded this state had remained in the
Prussian military organisation and in a lingering sense of superiority over the
neighbouring Poles. During the Thirty Year War, the Prussians, who had
previously converted to Lutheranism as much to underline their diversity from
Catholic Poland and their national identity, had taken advantage of the
situation to cast their lot from the Polish crown and enter the Northern
Confederation under Sweden and Gustav Adolph. Within
that framework of economic, military and political stability, Prussia was able
to grow and prosper. However the Hohenzollern chafed under the idea of being a
Vasa client and although nominally bound by the directives of the
Confederation’s Diet, they followed their own foreign policy, towards the end
of the 17th century often resulting in border skirmishes and minor
wars with Poland. This policy put strains on Sweden’s own ambitions in the
East that required a solid Poland to resist and hamper the nascent Russian
empire. However any attempt by the Swedes to take the matter before the Diet was
met with an unexpected Prussian skill at political manoeuvring and
procrastination: many members of the Confederation could hardly muster much
enthusiasm over Poland either way and the Prussians’ assurances that their
“border adjustments” were minor, made the other member-states agree to let
the matter drop. The fundamental fragility of the Northern Confederation was
thus exposed and the Prussians would make full use of it from the beginning of
the 18th century onwards.
Prussia continued to develop as a state. Poor in everything save
manpower, the Prussian state, especially under Fredrick I, began a policy of
military development, introducing a conscription army and modernising both their
tactics and their infrastructure. In many ways they were adopting Piedmontese
policies from the previous century. THE WINTER WARS
The militarisation of Prussia brought with it a desire for her to flex
her muscles. Frederick the 1st instigated a series of border clashes
with Poland that lead to the first Winter War (1739), so called because the
Prussians, against all military custom, launched their first attack in December,
occupying the city of Danzig with a lightning-fast manoeuvre that overwhelmed
the unsuspecting Poles. Before the Poles could organise an army to retaliate,
the very cold eastern winter had set in, and that froze all attempts to mount an
immediate retaliatory campaign. This allowed the Prussians to dig in the
territories they had taken and set themselves up as unassailable. The Poles were
unable to reclaim their lost territories and finally international diplomacy, in
the figure of Karl of Hapsburg, mediated a peace that was effectively Polish
surrender of the lost lands. This Treaty of Pomerania was seen as a betrayal of
the Poles by the Austrians and put a strain on the traditionally friendly
relations between the Sobiesky Ruling House in Warsaw and the courts of Vienna
and Constantinople.
The Winter Wars are as characteristic to the east as the Wars of the
Pyrenees would be between France and Spain and the Spanish-American wars would
be in the New World. Such a term is misleading because only one of these wars
was actually fought during the winter months, the first one, but this name ended
up qualifying the hostilities in the east that would see Prussia emerge as the
leading nation in east-central Europe. Following
the First Winter War, Russia decided to pounce on Poland, to take advantage of
the perceived weakness of the Poles. However the Prussians’ success had been
achieved through a clever series of tactical moves, not least of which surprise.
The Russians’ invasion occurred while the Poles still had most of their field
armies in arms. Therefore the Poles were able to meet the Russians at full
strength outside Minsk and defeat them (July 1740). The Russians withdrew and
exposed the relative disorganisation of their military, something Swedes,
Austrians and Prussians all noted with great interest. The Second Winter War
(fought entirely in the summer) ended with the Peace of Leopolis in November
1740 that ratified the Polish-Russian borders as they previously stood. The
Second Winter War did however allow the Poles to re-establish their military
reputation. Suddenly diplomats from Greco-Austria were falling over themselves
to reaffirm the traditional friendship between the Eastern Roman Empire and
their Polish neighbour. THE THIRD WINTER WAR However,
while the Hapsburgs were trying to patch things up with the Poles, another realm
made a far more interesting offer to the court of Warsaw. Sweden had been
fighting and competing with the Russians for possession of Karelia and the Gulf
of Finland for some time. In previous years, a border war between Sweden and
Russia had risked exploding into a general conflagration in the European
northeast, but the Treaty of Riga, brokered by England in 1718 had temporarily
stabilised the borders, although the Swedes lost most of their possessions in
the Ukraine. Swedes and Russians were both spoiling for another fight however,
and with the Baltic territories now taken by Prussia, Poland was looking for a
war to win and an outlet for expansion. Sweden therefore made a series of
overtures to Warsaw, and initiated a discussion that lead to an anti-Russian
alliance. In 1745, taking advantage of a border-dispute, Sweden mounted an
invasion of Karelia that then entered Arcangel. Even as the Russians mobilised
to retaliate, a Polish army marched into northern Ukraine. Beset from two sides
the Russians mounted a valiant defence to the north of St. Petersburg while
staving off the Poles with superior numbers. However the Swedes and Poles both
had learned something of Prussian tactics, and a number of Piedmontese corps had
been enlisted for the campaign. The Russians were beaten near Poltava (1746) but
rallied by the Don from which they moved in counterattack. By then however the
Swedes had forced the Russian positions north of St. Petersburg and were looming
over the Russian capital. At this point Prussia, in the figure of Fredrick II
intervened, concerned over the possibility of extensive Swedish and Polish
victories. A peace was brokered and a treaty signed in Poznan that handed the
former Swedish possessions in the Ukraine over to Poland and effectively signed
over Karelia to the Swedes. Russia received the rest of the Ukraine and a
monetary compensation from Sweden. Initial
Swedish reaction to this treaty was negative, but Fredrick II was able to obtain
a pronouncement by the Northern Confederation’s Diet that invited Sweden to
make her peace with Russia. The language of this pronouncement was vague and
generic and in no way binding. It was however enough to convince the Swedes that
something was seriously amiss in the organisation they had built. The Peace of
Poznan was ratified April the 3rd 1748. FREDRICK THE SECOND AND THE FIVE YEARS WAR
In 1740, just as the First Winter War ended, Fredrick the II passed away
and his son, Fredrick the II rose to the throne of Prussia. Fredrick was a far
different man then his father. An intellectual with a powerful mind, Fredrick
was, like Josef Constantine, a convert to the Enlightenment and to rationalism.
A cold and precise individual, Fredrick revealed from the start a political
skill quite unmatched by his predecessors. It was he who, as Prussian
representative in the Diet of the Northern Confederation, had managed to thwart
the Swedes’ attempts to interfere with Prussian foreign policy.
As the Prussians emerged as a power in the east, they began to affect the
Confederacy more and more. By the time Fredrick I had ascended the throne, the
opinion amongst the Prussian Junkers was that the Confederation had served its
time. Fredrick II, who as a youth had imagined the Diet as a Germanic version of
the English House of Lords, was probably the single monarch or crown prince who
had spent most time in the hearings and debates. He had gone in a romantic
Parliamentarian; he emerged a cold authoritarian.
After having successfully brokered the Peace of Poznan of 1748, Fredrick
saw a chance to overturn the delicate equilibrium the Hapsburgs had placed in
Europe. He was also very much aware the Northern Confederation would not be the
tool or device to accomplish this. He needed to set up a network of alliances
that would allow him to keep the Hapsburgs in check, even as he aimed for the
true intended target: Russia.
Following the Peace of Poznan, Russia was in a state of internal chaos.
Many Russian nobles saw in the poor performance of the army a sign of divine
displeasure (easier to believe then in their incompetence). The Czar was in turn
aware that the semi-medieval system under which the Empire ran was ill equipped
to provide the military materiel with which Russia could face off her aggressive
Western neighbours. A conflict between aristocracy and the Imperial government
was beginning, one that would only end after the Napoleonic Wars with the
victory of the Czars. IN the meanwhile, peasant revolts, aristocratic intrigues
and government corruption were hampering and hobbling the Russian state.
Fredrick saw this disarray and deemed the time approaching in which Prussia
could carve out her own ambitions in Russia. Still allies were needed, someone
strong and reliable. In the meanwhile Fredrick sent agents into Russia, to
maintain the situation of chaos and conflict.
Finally, an ally emerged to aid in Prussia’s designs: France. Following
the events of the Colonial Wars, many a voice in Versailles was raised, asking
for the war with Spain the French always seem to clamour for. The decades of
peace across the Pyrenees were more a necessity for a nation exhausted under the
policies of Louis XIV, rather then a conscious choice to reject war. The
presence of the Spanish Flanders to the North and Franche Comte’ to the east
were still sore spot in the French consciousness and an all-around desire for
war pervaded the aristocratic circles, and thus affected Louis XV as well.
Negotiations were initiated between Paris and Koeningsburg. Prussia
claimed to have the Northern Confederation behind her; France gave assurances
that Bavaria, currently aligned with Paris, would side with them. Both sides
were lying. The overall strategy called for a Prussian strike into Russia with a
smaller force holding the Silesian border. France would mass forces to the east
with the intent of capturing Franche Comte’ and threatening Greco-Austria to
the west. A second French army would capture and hold the Pyrenees’ passes but
not press any deeper into Spain. THE FIVE YEARS WAR
Finally in 1756, the Five Year War started.
The pact between France and Prussia took most of Europe by surprise.
Sweden demanded the Confederation Diet pass a Bull recalling Prussia to her
former borders but Prussian allies in the Hanseatic League not only blocked the
motion but also advanced another one, calling for all-out Confederation support
for Prussia. The Diet dissolved in chaos and threatened to take the
Confederation with it. As
Saxony tried to mediate and bring all the Confederation members together, the
Prussian army swept up the Baltic nations, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all
falling to Prussian muskets. At the same time, France invaded and laid siege
again to Franche Comte’. The European powers moved. Spain and Greco-Austria
massed their armies and called their allies. An Italian contingent under Victor
Amadeus moved westwards towards the Rhone. The Spanish began a siege of the
Pyrenees that would last over a year. The Greco-Austrians engaged Prussian
forces in Silesia. Britain was initially neutral, as hostility against France
and Spain were evenly matched. Prussian
forces, taking the disorganised Russian army by surprise, managed to reach St
Petersburg and besieged the city. As the Russians scrambled to gather their
forces, what could have been the deathblow for the Czar’s empire occurred:
Poland entered the war alongside Prussia and invaded the Ukraines and more of
Russia. However the Austrians managed to break out of Silesia and moved into
Brandenburg. The French continued their siege of Franche Comte’ and moved to
fight the Piedmontese. The battle at Nancy was inconclusive but did put a stop
on the Italian invasion. Meanwhile, however, the Spanish eventually forced the
passages of the Pyrenees and entered southern France. Their intent was to meet
up with the Savoys (who resumed their pressure on the French borders) and move
north. Halfway
into the war, the Poles suffered a military disaster at Kursk (September 1757)
that knocked them out of the war for over a year. The Russian army had finally
found a leader in Wartzenberg, a minor Ukrainian noble, who managed to get the
nobles in line and re-organise the troops. The Russians were able to move
through Poland and hook up with Greco-Austrian forces, renewing their siege of
Brandenburg. The Prussian forces at St Petersburg were forced to pull back and
march towards Prussia, in the hopes of lifting the siege. Spain and France
fought the massive Battle of the Garonne (August 1757), which would have broken
the Spanish army if a Piedmontese relief column that had disembarked at Port Bou
hadn’t reached the battlefield and allowed the Spanish army to withdraw in
good order. With
the tide turning against them, France and Prussia began to put out some feelers
for a negotiated peace but Spain wasn’t interested. However, even as Berlin
was under the siege of Greco-Austrian cannons, the Northern Confederation
suddenly came back to life: beating the Prussians was one thing but invading
Prussia and possibly annexing it was quite another. The Diet affirmed the
inviolability of member states’ territories and declared war on Greco-Austria
and Russia (March 1758). The German principalities massed their forces and
marched to relieve the Siege of Berlin. Sweden moved her forces once more to the
south and besieged St Petersburg again, this time finally capturing the city.
The Poles likewise were able to field an army that began to harry the Russians
and their supply lines. As the Russians were forced to withdraw from Berlin and
move to safer lines near Minsk, a convergence of five armies met at Kobryn in
June of 1758 and fought a battle: Prussians (both out of Brandenburg and,
finally, returning from the Baltic), Germans and Poles versus Russians and
Greco-Austrians. The battle lasted three days. Wartzenberg for Russia and
Pakondrahkon for Greco-Austria attempted a flanking manoeuvre that would role up
the disjointed enemy but the Prussians managed to break the two wings of their
army and keep them separated while taking heavy fire from both sides (Von
Lundenburg’s Charge). The Poles were therefore able to role up the Russians
and break them. The Greco-Austrians were forced to either try and open their way
into the melee or withdraw in good order. Pakondrahkon chose the second option,
which militarily made sense but soured the relationship with Russia forever
more. The Russian field army was broken but Wartzenberg managed to withdraw most
of the core of his forces back. Their retreat to Russian territory, harried by
Poles on every side, was excruciating and painful. The
French were performing quite well against the Spanish but were unable to place
the killing blow. IN part this was due to the numbers the Spaniards could mount
which were notably superior to the French. The French were better equipped and
fighting closer to their logistical bases and could therefore mount an effective
campaign. The Spanish, for all their traditions, chose to wear France down in
numbers. IN September of 1758, Holland agreed to side with the Spaniards and
sent a few columns of men to bolster the army in the Flanders with the intent of
invading northern France. More importantly, they used their navy to close the
French Atlantic ports and herein was their error: by doing so, they affected
British commercial interests. After a couple of incidents, Britain declared war
on Holland (December 1758). This declaration lead to an effective alliance
between Britain and France (something unheard of). A British expeditionary force
landed in northern Spain (April 1759) and this forced the Spaniards to withdraw
part of their army south of the Pyrenees. The East India Company also received a
licence to attack the Spanish possessions in Goa. The
rest of 1759 saw the war extend throughout the world. In the Americas, a Spanish
expeditionary force met with an Anglo-French army near St. Louis (in which
George Washington served). After a two day battle, the Spaniards managed to
break their opponents’ lines but were unable to press their advantage home: a
joint French-Iroquois column began successfully harrying the Spanish rear lines,
forcing them to halt their offensive. The British and the Dutch fought a large
sea battle south of Nassau Islands, with a conclusive British victory, thus
leading to the re-conquest of Jamaica. British forces also took Goa from Spain
and beat the Dutch in the Channel. At the same time, the British expeditionary
force in northern Spain was beaten quite neatly at Bilbao, but the cost to Spain
was so high it crippled any Spanish offensive campaign north of the Pyrenees.
Even the Spanish army in France was losing its steam: the Italian additions
weren’t enough to prevent France from definitely beating the Spaniards at
Navarre in November 1759 (although Victor Emanuel of Savoy did perform admirably
as a general). IN the east, the
Prussian-Polish-Swedish armies launched a large offensive aimed at Moscow. The
Siege of Moscow lasted three weeks, at the end of which the western armies
withdrew, although they weren’t beaten. A Russian counter-attack the next
spring, however, saw their army shattered, and Wartzenberg slain. It was in
these conditions that Russia would approach the treaty-table. Finally,
the war wound down in 1760, when a “peace initiative” brokered by Venice
(who had remained scrupulously neutral) got the various parties at the treaty
table. As far as diplomacy went, the peace treaty simply ratified the military
positions that had been consolidated: Prussia acquired all of the Russian Baltic
regions up to St Petersburg, while Sweden consolidated her hold in Karelia and
Arcangel. St Petersburg remained in Russian hands (although the capital was
removed to Moscow forevermore), Britain kept Jamaica and Goa. France gained
nothing for all her efforts. As a peace treaty, the Treaty of Verona of 1760 had
the merit of leaving every party dissatisfied. It did, however, end the long war
and allow the European powers to take a breather. THE
FIFTH WINTER WAR
However, for all the avowed war-weariness most European powers
proclaimed, the chancelleries were busy at work from the moment the ink of the
Treaty signatures was dry (if not sooner). Russia’s military weakness, which
rendered her the effective loser of the Five Years War, had sparked a general
interest in her neighbours. As the Czars in Moscow tried to recoup from the loss
of Wartzenberg, Greco-Austria, Poland and Sweden all agreed that their vast
eastern empire was weak, and that weakness justified any military ambitions in
that direction. Constantinople also wanted to rebuild her relationship with
Poland, who had emerged from the war as a viable power. Therefore Greco-Austria
and Poland negotiated an anti-Russian pact, to which Sweden adhered. Using a
border skirmish as a pretext, Poland, Greco-Austria and Sweden all declared war
on Russia (May 1767). With the Russian army still in disarray, their response
was weak in the extreme. The Poles, predominantly, carried the military efforts:
this war was the first campaign Josef Constantine’s new model conscription
army faced, to very poor results. However, the joint forces beat the Russians at
Poltava again (August 1767) and held onto their positions through the harsh
winter and into the next spring, wherein Russia had to sue for peace. The Treaty
of Kiev (July 1768) handed over all of the remaining Ukraine to Poland and
Austria, as well as a significant part of the Caucasus. Russia
had lost almost all of her western ports, with the exception of St Petersburg
and this would set the tone for the future of Russia, who, beaten repeatedly in
the west, would gravitate and focus more to the east, starting on a path that
would lead to the Sino-Russian Empire of the 19th century, and all
her consequences. It also gave strength to the modernising factions within the
Russian court, but we’ll devote more time to Russia in successive chapters. THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE: GRECO-AUSTRIA Austria
was undergoing some profound changes as well: integrating the dozens of
nationalities into one Empire was proving more difficult then originally
thought. Joseph
I, Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire had died in 1711 and was succeeded by
Karl. Karl’s task was to amalgamate the vast number of nationalities and
religions that his father had conquered. There were endemic flare-ups in
territories such as Serbia and Syria and even the Kurds and Armenians were being
difficult. On the other hand, the Hapsburgs were excellent administrators: after
centuries of lax and corrupt Ottoman satrapy, the populations were suddenly
coming to appreciate honest courts of law, good roads, schools and a degree of
safety never felt before (the Austrians’ campaigns against bandits in the
Balkans would be recalled for decades to come). Karl
set up the framework for the successful survival of this Greco-Austrian Empire,
as it was beginning to be called. His continuation of his father’s tolerant
religious policies managed to avoid alienating the majority of the influential
Orthodox (or former Orthodox) clergy and he admitted even a number of important
and influential imams and Muslim clergy into his councils and government. Nobles
from the Empire were summoned every three years at a Diet held alternately in
Belgrade or Budapest and assembled all the potentates of the Balkans and Central
Europe to heed the Avtokrator’s word. Immediately, is was clear the struggle
would be between the Hapsburg’s tendencies towards political and
administrative centralisation and the feudal powers and rights of the nobility.
Karl’s strategy wasn’t so much a head-long assault on these privileges but
rather a flanking manoeuvre: he set up the Imperial Bureaucracy as a “support
mechanism”, as a consultants for the local kinglets and nobles. The
Bureaucracy would exercise authority only in matters of imperial law and the
boundaries between this law and the nobles’. Indeed the Diet of Belgrade of
1718 was considered by many to be the unofficial birth of Parliamentarianism in
the Eastern Empire: every noble brought a couple of lawyers with him to argue
rights and prerogatives, limitations of the central authority and the like. It
was by no means the birth of a liberal system: the nobles simply wanted the
Imperial government out of their hair so they could continue exercising the
absolute power they had for centuries, in some cases, over their subjects. The
Diet of Belgrade didn’t produce any documents discussing the nature of
government and the state, at least not directly, and no consideration was given
to individual rights, at least not the serfs’. However the Diet, which lasted
six months, did bring about the first formalisation of the nobility’s powers
in the Empire and did allow Karl to set up a framework that would last until
after the Napoleonic Wars. Through ruthless politicking by the Hapsburgs, the
Diet gave the Imperial government extensive powers: every noble mistrusted his
neighbour, every nation mistrusted the other and only the Hapsburgs, as the
single largest noble house and as “conquerors of the Turks” were trusted
with political power. In
many cases the Hapsburgs took for themselves powers that the nobles hadn’t
even contemplated: the Imperial Government claimed exclusive jurisdiction on
matter of highways, aqueducts, dams and bridges. It created and maintained a
postal system; it took over many aspects of education, of health and sanitation.
Imperial courts also became the primary recourse for all legal disputes between
nobles, all intra-imperial commercial contracts and any contract and dispute
that involved subjects from more then one barony or nation. Imperial Law was the
writ for all such dealings and contracts and inevitably influenced and
“colonised” less advanced legal systems. Ironically
enough, Austrian law was Roman-Civil Code based and Justinian’s Corpus Iuris
was still the source text. Thus the Byzantine emperor’s ancient body of work
was renewed and restored over his old Empire. The
Hapsburgs’ work was relatively successful in Europe but encountered more
difficulties in Anatolia and Syria and the Mid-East. Here, the political
traditions of Islam and the Ottomans were profoundly different from the European
norms and the religious question was far from settled. Religious riots and
revolts were endemic and would remain so for at least two generations, before
settling into a sullen resentment that the Persians would use to their
advantage, especially in Syria. Following
Karl’s untimely death in 1740, his only legitimate successor was his daughter
Marie Therese. This caused quite some alarm in the chancelleries of Europe, as
the thought of a woman monarch, especially in a Catholic country, was hard to
accept and indeed in any other context might have lead to wars of succession.
However, the King of Spain, Philip the 8th, gave his full backing to
the Austrian branch of the Hapsburg dynasty and Marie Therese was able to ascend
to the throne with no great difficulties. In earlier years, Karl had wed her to
a Rumanian count, Krassimir of Bucharest, and from him she had nine children.
Krassimir was a dark and fiery temper (and a closet Orthodox) whose character
and personality (and numerous infidelities) lead to frequent clashes with the
motherly yet possessive Marie Therese. Loud arguments, followed by periods of
icy silence and then just as tempestuous re-conciliations, set the mood in the
court of Constantinople. Marie Therese reserved full imperial authority only to
herself, which caused Krassimir no end of rage, but it was clear from the very
marital contract Karl had prepared with Krassimir’s family, that it was the
groom marrying into the bride’s family, something of a shock to Rumanian and
Balkan mores. Marie
Therese exercised her powers with a clear eye to duty and discipline and if she
wasn’t perhaps the most enlightened of rulers, she ensured stability and
order. The Imperial Government consolidated its powers as defined in the Diet of
Belgrade and successive Diets, and indeed a jurisprudence of constitutions began
to consolidate itself, which would be of capital importance for the great
Metternich Reforms of the 19th century. Marie Therese was the first
of the Hapsburgs to be born and raised as a Princess of the Eastern Roman
Empire: she took for granted the conquests of her fathers and grandfathers, she
spoke Greek with the same fluency as she did German, French and Latin and was
used to the fast and pomp of the Court of Constantinople, which was to her more
of a home then Vienna. She had priceless advisors in Count Von Kaunitz and in
the Lebanese Greek General Nikos Pakondrakhon. The
Five Years War put a strain on the delicate framework of the new Eastern Empire,
as the various nationalities had trouble coalescing into a workable whole.
Still, under the inspired leadership of Pakondrakhon, one of the great military
minds of his age, for all that he was born the son of a shepherd, Greco-Austria
managed to win a significant numbers of battles. JOSEF CONSTANTINE Of
her various children, Josef II would succeed her as Avtokrator. Josef (or Josef
Constantine) was an odd mixture of German and Rumanian. His natural inclinations
made him very much his father’s son, fiery and prone to fits of anger and joy
with equal likelihood. However, his mother had raised him to duty and ceremony,
so at a relatively young age he mastered a degree of self-control and discipline
that ensured the Hapsburg imprint on him. Indeed his relationship with his
father had been strong as a youth but grew progressively more distant over the
years. However, almost as an inevitable result, he would suffer the odd apoplexy
fit that would in later years require him to take extended vacations, which
would lead to the entrance of his younger brother Leonidas into the
Greco-Austrian political scene. In
1766, at his majority, he ascended to the Imperial throne. Josef II was an
ideologue and a convert to Voltaire and his philosophy. As such, he believed in
the power of reason and logic. He therefore initiated a series of policies and
reforms that rocked the very stability of the Empire: a devout “centralist”,
he tackled all the nobles’ prerogatives as obstacles to be eliminated. He
imposed the codification of all local laws and customs (as the first step
towards assimilating them), removing local potentates’ arbitrariness. He
initiated the first parification of all citizens, noble and commoner alike, to
the law. He established a national conscription army, on Piedmontese and
Prussian models, thus eliminating the exclusives and prerogatives of the
aristocracy and military caste. He eliminated many privileges of the clergy and
of the Catholic clergy in particular. All these reforms were effectively earthquakes in the political framework Karl and Marie Therese had so patiently patched together. Marie Therese didn’t hesitate to tell her son so, leading to loud arguments, and finally her self-imposed exile from court (she retired to Athens in 1779 where she’d die in 1780). Even Krassimir, who hadn’t spoken to his son in over a decade, came to court to tell him in no uncertain terms what he thought of his work. The
complete revolution in the Imperial armed forces affected the quality of the
troops, as the officer class that remained after Josef’s reforms was either
untested or demoralised. This led to the dismal showing of Greco-Austrian troops
during the Fifth Winter War, at the end of which the Empire had gained more at
the treaty-table then on the battlefield, as one commentator put it. Such
was the pressure at court that Josef, who had dispensed with the tri-annual
Diets at the outset of his realm, had to summon one in Budapest in 1775. The
acts of the Diet have been “moderated” by the scribes and clerks of the
time, who applied a self-imposed form of censorship, even so we can read of loud
protests by nobles and open denunciations of many of Josef’s reforms. The
Emperor found himself assailed by complaints on all sides and was forced, for
the first time in his life, to negotiate, to bargain and cajole.
Ultimately,
a good portion of the policies he had instituted had to be shelved. He had been
an anticipator of many necessary reforms that the Empire would adopt in later
decades, but in politics, as in so much else, timing is everything and the
Eastern Roman Empire of the 1770s wasn’t ready. At this point, quite
uncharacteristically, Josef heeded the advise of his ailing father Krassimir and
summoned his younger brother Leonidas to Constantinople to act as his minister,
his Sevastos. LEONIDAS AND TUSCANY Leonidas
Leopold was a different sort of man from his elder brother Josef. A more placid
and moderate temper, Leonidas had married into the De’Medici dynasty, to
Charlotte, the daughter of the Grand Duke Francis in 1765 (he was 18 at the
time) and, as Consort, had ascended to the throne of Florence in 1771. Charlotte
gave him three sons and left many affairs of state in his capable hands. Tuscany
had been well governed in the last few decades by the De’Medici, who, as a
dynasty, had been reinvigorated by a series of marriages “outside the
blood”, during the second-half of the 17th century. The De’Medici
had been quick to adopt the Spanish administrative reforms. At the same time,
the influence of the French Enlightenment was strongly felt in Florence
(although less in Turin and Venice). The Florentine mercantile houses had
resumed much of their old activities and a certain degree of power and wealth. In
particular Florence was becoming the main exchange for Mediterranean commodities
and Italian agricultural products. Although far from the sea, and thus not a
port, Florence, through a series of fortunate deals and thanks to an overall
trust that the Grand Duchy inspired in most Mediterranean players (which the
rapacious Venetians and Genoese couldn’t match), became the crossroads for
numerous lines of commerce, especially after the opening of the Canal of St
Catherine. Many a merchant would, curiously enough, rather dock at Pisa or
Livorno and send messengers to Florence then entirely trust Genoa or Venice.
Tuscany did much to accommodate this new trade. A series of bonds were issued to
finance the construction of roads, including some strategically important passes
through the Apennines and to enlarge the ports of Pisa and Livorno both. A
further series of reforms limiting clergy power and privileges, eliminating
internal tariffs, etc., had likewise been initiated. Leonidas had taken all this
aboard and continued in a policy of reform and investment. Tuscany under his
rule flourished as he applied locally a series of policies that the Hapsburgs
had been applying throughout their Empire. He was, however, a worthy heir of his
maternal grandfather’s caution and avoided open confrontation with the local
nobility, the clergy and the Spanish. He even accepted the Italian Entete as a
guide for his foreign policy, if only because he was convinced the situation in
Italy wouldn’t change. As a result, his reputation as an administrator grew
and he became known at a European level. LEONIDAS THE SEVASTOS When
Josef summoned him to Constantinople, Leonidas gave his brother a hands-on
experience Josef had lacked. As a result, he was able to accomplish more in the
Empire then his confrontational brother. He insisted on the codification of
local laws and managed to modernise the armies while not going to full Imperial
Conscription (it would take the French Revolution to show the other European
powers the validity of that reform). He pushed forward a series of economic
reforms and eliminated the internal tariffs: however where Josef had simply
abolished them by Imperial Fiat, Leonidas created a system of compensation for
the people who had lost their stakes in the old system. This policy would have
negative repercussions on the Imperial budget and Leopold had to make a few
corrections to keep the coffers of the state active. All
together Leonidas was a capable administrator and achieved much for his brother
and his Empire. However, he had the misfortune of presiding over the Empire when
in France the Revolution would sweep the old world away and force drastic
changes to the very nature of government. He would reveal limitations in his
moderate reformism, well suited for the Enlightened Absolutist era of the 18th
century but unable to encompass the changes the post-Revolutionary world
required. Josef died in 1792 and Leonidas acted as Sevastokrator until Franz
Belisarius the 1st ascended to the throne in 1801. He died in 1805,
as much of fatigue as anything else. PERSIA Persia
was likewise changing: the Savafid dynasty had managed to keep an iron-grip on
power and with great generals such as Nader had already began to throw their
weight around in India (sacking Delhi in 1732) and in the Caucasus. Persia
was the one free Muslim state and had become the destination of immigrants from
all the former Ottoman lands, as well as the North African caliphates. This
influx of immigrants, and the expansion into Mesopotamia and other parts of the
Mid East, gave both benefits and problems: on one side, Persia had been a
relatively isolationist culture in the 17th century, caught between the Ottomans
on one side and the Indian and Chinese cultures on the other. As a result, a
certain conservative, xenophobic attitude had crept in, an attitude re-enforced
by decades of wars with central Asian nomads and with Ottoman potentates. Not
only but religiously, the Persians were Shi’ite Muslims. The Mesopotamian
Muslims were predominantly Sunni and this caused tensions between the civilian
population and the Imperial Government. Also, although they were retrograde
compared to certain parts of Europe, the Ottomans had relatively advanced social
and political institutions compared to most other Muslim political entities.
Persians on the other hand, had a tendency to interfere, to intervene in
numerous aspects of society that the Ottomans left alone. Not only, but when the
Persians did intervene, their decisions reflected the mental attitude of
mountaineer shepherds, and failed to fully comprehend the complexities of the
more advanced urban realities of Mesopotamia. Still,
the new Persian society that was recreating itself, benefited from an influx of
immigrants from more advanced parts of the world, with better technologies and
products and a more cosmopolitan attitude. Lebanese Muslims who had little
stomach for Christian rule brought a mercantile culture that Persia had lost
over the centuries. Ottomans brought military traditions and priceless
experience, as well as a tradition of government that the Persians would rely
heavily on in later decades. There was also a significant increase in the number
of Jews who settled in Mesopotamia, joining an already healthy and vibrant
community in that region. Many of these were of Palestinian origin, and found
the rule of the Papacy to be as unpleasant as Muslims did. A small number of
Jews from Europe also somehow found their way to Persia and, by maintaining
contacts with their relations in the west, would play a part in the creation of
financial ties between Persia and certain European banks and financiers. These
Jewish financiers were responsible for the birth of a curious form of banking
that had to take the Islamic prohibition of interest on loans into account. By
setting up complex but theologically valid mechanisms, they managed to create
what is referred to as Islamic banking, which would be directly responsible for
the birth of a Persian capitalism, different from the European kind but
eventually just as valid. As
Persian society changed and evolved, both with the reoccupation of Mesopotamia
and the influx of refugees, the Imperial Court established tight relations with
European powers, and foremost the French. France had begun a policy of
counter-encirclement of the Hapsburgs, establishing ties with Persia and Russia.
French military advisors began assisting the Persian army in its process of
modernisation of its small infantry and helped create artillery corps. The
merging of Ottoman, Persian and French military doctrines and the introduction
of a military organisation closer to the Piedmontese model would give Persia an
army worth noticing. EUROPEAN POSSESSIONS IN INDIA Persia’s
presence in India heightened European interest and attention for that region. By
the opening years of the 18th century, European powers had set up a
series of enclaves in the Indian subcontinent. The earliest and largest of them
had been the Portuguese enclaves. However once Portugal was annexed to Spain,
control over these enclaves, never easy, was gradually lost. Native revolts and
competition from other powers, most notably the English, had reduced the former
Portuguese enclaves to one main one in Goa. Spain had tried to recoup the lost
territories but, caught up in the various wars in Africa and in the Mid East,
she had made a strategically disastrous decision of limiting her involvement in
India until such time as it could amass the necessary forces for a full-scale
invasion. That time never came. Italian and Flemish merchants set up interests
in India but were happy at maintaining a simple economic and not political
presence, a very fine distinction at that time and age. Dutch and British
enclaves were, at that time, not yet perceived as springboards for colonial
domination. The
situation shifted dramatically after the Persian sack of Delhi in 1732 and the
opening of the Canal of St. Catherine in 1725. With the Canal, European powers
had a far quicker and more direct route to India. With the spectre of Baghdad
looming over the subcontinent, the Europeans had an incentive to solidify their
interests. The Spanish garrison in Goa was reinforced but Spain was unable to
expand and just acted as an enforcer for commercial contracts her subject
merchants established. The British, on the other hand, via the East Indies
Company, had begun a policy of exploitation and eventual colonisation that would
see them become masters of all of Hindu India (as Muslim India would fall under
the throne of Baghdad). In
the mid-1740s, the Colonial Wars first had seen the British effectively quash
the French. The Five-Years War secured to Britain the Spanish holdings in Goa.
From then on, Britain would be undisputed master of continental and Hindu India.
Venice (and later Italy) would act in concert with England, backing her
and obtaining certain concessions, not least the island of Ceylon, which Venice
ultimately conquered in 1742. ITALY
Italy was prospering and expanding at a vast rate following the opening
of the Canal of St. Catherine. Now the peninsula was once more crossroads
between east and west and Venice was extending her web of economic and political
ties throughout the Hapsburgs’ empires. As well as Ceylon, the Most Serene
Republic acquired the Azores Islands from Spain as partial repayment for some
debts and now had a stage for Atlantic commercial routes. Florence, as mentioned
earlier, was becoming the chief commodities exchange for the Mediterranean. PIEDMONT AND SWITZERLAND Piedmont
was developing a military tradition, stiffened by the addition of the manpower
by the former Swiss cantons of Valais and Ticino. The
annexation of these cantons was a textbook operation of subversion and invasion.
Tensions between the Swiss cantons, for religious reasons mostly, had always
existed. However the very nature of Swiss geography and the political structure
that had evolved had prevented this tension from erupting into out and out
hostility. However, under the cultural pressure and example of Prussia, the then
Burgmeister of Basel, one Heindrich Augenthaler, had began a movement to
“modernise the cantons”, by rationalising the political structure and
introducing some over-all authority. This movement per se might have been
isolated, had it not been taken up by the Calvinists in the German and French
cantons, who, under the militant guide of Deacon Johann Perlmutter (curiously
enough of Jewish descent although his family had converted to Calvinism), saw
this as an opportunity to eradicate the other religions, especially Catholicism,
from the Confederation. A Diet was summoned at Zurich in 1702 and the
Calvinists, outnumbering the Catholics, tried to tie the new political structure
with religious mandates. It could seem anachronistic but the religious wars of
the 16th century suddenly seemed on the verge of erupting anew in the
relatively backwater Switzerland. One of the secrets of the success of
Switzerland was its lack of internal communication: the various cantons had
lived lives of benign isolation. Whenever the Confederation did act as a
cohesive whole, it was to defend the Swiss right to be left alone. Now, the
cantons were confronting each other and certain realities for long ignored were
erupting. The
Calvinists, and Protestants in general, outnumbered the Catholics. Within the
Calvinist camp, the Germans were more numerous than the French. It was a
situation requiring delicacy and diplomacy, something Perlmutter had little of.
Still, it’s possible the Confederation might have found a balance of sorts:
the traditions of the Confederation and the pressure of the already powerful
bankers’ lobby could have forced a compromise. However foreign agents got
themselves involved: Piedmontese
and Venetians. Piedmont
had been evolving its military and Victor Amadeus was looking for a chance to
flex her muscles in the European context as well as in Africa and the Mid-East,
but the political situation at that time was such that the Court of Turin had
very few options. France to the west was a sleeping tiger, always ready to
pounce at the first sign of weakness. Spain in the east, in Lombardy was far too
formidable an adversary for Piedmont. And the Savoys were on good terms with the
Hapsburgs anyway. The situation developing in Switzerland was a sudden and
welcome opportunity and Victor Amadeus, a devout Catholic, was easily caught up
in the image of “riding to the rescue” of the oppressed Swiss Catholics.
However, the then minister of war, the Count of Carmignano, send a group of
agents into the lands as reconnaissance and they concluded that a military
invasion of that rocky, mountainous region would be ill-advised, to say the
least. Instead
Venice offered the assistance of her formidable intelligence network: the Most
Serene and Florence both looked in favour at thwarting and threatening their
Swiss banking competitors. So the “plight of the Catholics” was exaggerated
and heightened, and even the Papacy issued its condemnation of the events in
Switzerland. At another time, all this international attention would have
cemented the Confederation together. However some of the players on the stage
were the wrong people at the wrong time. Perlmutter saw in the events the clear
sign of a Catholic plot to overthrow the Confederacy and began to advocate
direct action to “secure the holy boundaries of our beloved Switzerland”.
It’s curious to note that Perlmutter was one of the first Swiss politicians to
actually use the name Switzerland in this context. Up until then, every
inhabitant of the Confederacy was a citizen of his or her canton first and only
then, maybe, a Swiss. Now Perlmutter was advocating the existence of a Swiss
nationality, one that in his mind could only be of Calvinist extraction. From
his words, actions soon followed with some of the more intransigent Calvinist
cantons arming themselves. Venetian agents managed to prevail on the local
dignitaries of Valais and Ticino and they sent an appeal to Piedmont for aid.
The other Catholic cantons wavered initially but then chose to remain within the
Confederation, although their actual military participation in the coming events
was minimal to say the least (and thus sowed the seeds of suspicion and dissent
that would bring about the end of Switzerland a century later). The
Piedmontese army entered Valais in April the 4th 1703, just as the
snows were clearing form the mountain passes and united the canton’s forces to
its own. This combined force met the attack of the Calvinists in the Sion
district June the 20th and defeated them. From there a Piedmontese
contingent entered Ticino and secured the canton. The two Cantons then declared
their formal secession from the Confederacy. However, what they failed to take
into account was that once the Swiss were gone, the Italians wouldn’t leave.
Suddenly the Ticinese and Valaisians saw their territory occupied by what was to
them a foreign army, one they had invited in. For a while, the mood in the
cantons turned sour and there were even a few timid overtures to Bern once more.
However Ludovico De’Medici of Florence suggested a solution, and had a charter
drafted that put the two cantons under the overall sovereignty of Piedmont but
ensured all the fundamental liberties of the lands and their citizens. What
resulted wasn’t so much an annexation but a Union under Piedmontese command.
This compromise was acceptable to all parties: the Savoys would be allowed to
tax the cantons, in moderation, and could count on their reserves of manpower.
However the cantons would run their internal affairs with full autonomy from
Turin. Over time, the two cantons would begin to adopt institutions and an
organisation more and more similar to the Piedmontese norm. Canton conscription
was soon instituted and the officer corps was trained in Turin anyway. The
set-up that the Piedmontese adopted with regards to Ticino and Valais (and which
reflected the status of Savoy and Monferrato at the time) would be one of the
models for the Italian Confederation that would form as a result of the
Napoleonic Wars towards the end of the century. THE LESSER ITALIAN ENTENTE As
for the rest of Italy, the lesser Italian states, Lucca, Mantova, Modena, Parma
and Piacenza were forced to adapt and modernise their economies to face the
pressure and competition of the Entente. Most states had already rationalised
their small structures with the elimination of internal tariffs and the likes
but they realised that they’d have to do more if they wanted to survive as
entities autonomous to the Entete. Already their military structures were
falling more and more in line with the Piedmontese model and the agreement
between Piedmont, Florence and Venice to share military structures and
organisations had been extended to the other states (although Genoa and Lucca
both refused the Venetian offer to integrate navies, with varying degrees of
horror). Therefore the Republic of Lucca, one of the last maritime
city-republics in Italy, promoted and organised the Lesser Entente, which
embraced the Central Italian states in a tariff-free common market that would
co-ordinate their economic resources into a coherent whole. This was a
revolution for the time. The mercantilist philosophy of the age argued for high
custom barriers and favoured exports over imports. Even the three members of the
“Greater Italian Entente” hadn’t fully dropped all their reciprocal trade
barriers (although the free passage of goods though their territories was
allowed). However the smaller states did not have the economic strength for such
a policy. For a long time their ruling elites had chosen to ignore that fact.
Now, under Lucca’s initiative, the Italian lordlets acknowledged simple
economic reality and dropped a degree of selfishness for a common interest, less
immediate but no less real. Caught between the players of the “Greater
Entete” and Spanish domination, the Lesser Entete would never challenge the
balance of the peninsula and would never go beyond the economic aspect: the
nobles of the central states had no intention of surrendering their political
power. However
the Lesser Entente did ensure that its participating members would begin to
develop and prosper economically and join the economic revival the rest of Italy
was enjoying. Lucca as a port would resume much of its importance and business,
rivalling Livorno and Genoa both. GENOA Two
Italian states still refused to participate to any of the nascent political and
economic entities emerging: Genoa and the Papacy. Of the Papacy we’ll talk
further along. Genoa on the other hand was a Spanish client and had moulded her
economy along the Spanish rule. Genoa had in previous centuries supplied many
politicians and admirals to Spain, but as the Spanish began to evolve their own
bureaucracy and administrative class, the need for Genoese experience was
greatly reduced. The Ligurian state therefore lived as a “banking and
consultancy” country. Even her maritime commerce was low: the Canal of St.
Catherine didn’t benefit Genoese trade, if only because she refused to alter
her trade tariffs to effectively compete with Livorno and Lucca. Also, a
long-kept hostility against Venice and Piedmont both, ensured that the ruling
families of Genoa were suspicious of any dealings with these states. This went
to the extent of deliberately reducing the number of passages from the Ligurian
Alps to the north, as Genoa feared they would be used as invasion routes by the
Savoys (a not unreasonable fear). The events in Valais also increased the
anti-Piedmontese sentiment. Genoa did her best to stay “a-Italian”,
codifying her dialect into a separate language. However, by cutting herself off
from the events in Italy and trying to integrate into the Spanish milieu, Genoa
was often left alone against other nations whenever Spain wasn’t there to back
her up, and this was becoming increasingly the case. Excluded
from the exploitation of Egypt and having to negotiate every year passage
through the Canal, the Republic was forced to increase its fiscal pressure,
which lead to revolts in Corsica. These revolts became all the more difficult to
put down, prompting the Genoese to open negotiations with the French for the
acquisition of the island in 1768. However, just as the deal was about to be
finalised, the Entete tried to step in and block it. A further fragmentation of
Italian lands amongst the European powers was intolerable to them and Corsica,
if properly administered, could be a profitable investment. Florence proposed a
joint administration of the island, using the formula of involvement of the
natives. However Genoa, as much to
rebuff the unwarranted interference of the Florentines and (even worse) the
Piedmontese and the Venetians, refused to consider this proposal and went ahead
with the sale of the isle to France. As a result, a certain Corsican family,
which might have continued its days as minor provincial notables, would
eventually be thrust into the centre stage of European politics. Had Genoa not
wanted to prove her independence from the rest of Italy, there might have not
been a Napoleon Bonaparte. ITALY AND THE MID-EAST The
Italian Entente was showing its benefits as Piedmontese military, Florentine
administration and Venetian economy proved a formidable combination, as the
Egyptian territories discovered. Settlement in the ancient Two Kingdoms and
development of the colony with introduction of modern agricultural methods
allowed Egypt to once more become the granary of the Mediterranean. Also
extensive cotton and sugar plantations rendered Venetian industries less
dependant on Latin American goods.
The Canal of St. Catherine would become of key importance in Mid-eastern
geopolitics. Arab pirates would prey on European vessels in the Red Sea,
prompting Venice to organise a great expedition against them in 1731. After two
years of battle, it became clear to all that simply sinking the pirates’
vessels was but a stopgap solution. Therefore in 1735, Venice, Piedmont and
Florence organised that which would later be called the Last Crusade, in which
Italian forces landed along the seaports of Arabia, captured them and began to
advance inland. At first the Arab nomads were scornful of such a manoeuvre, as
many an invader had chased them into the desert, only to perish of thirst and at
the Arabs’ superior tactics. This time, however, the Italians had come
prepared and had recruited many mercenaries in Egypt who had been through the
region before, often in pilgrimage to Al-Mecca. These mercenaries would be
recalled in popular Persian lore as the Apostates, as they were all former
Muslims who had converted to Christianity. As apostasy is punishable by death,
these mercenaries were condemned the moment they spoke the words. As a result,
the Apostates became the most ferocious enemies of the Arab warlords. They lead
the Italians deep inland and guided them to the city of Al-Mecca, which was
stormed and sacked in 1738. The Kaaba was taken as booty and ultimately brought
to Venice where it resides in Piazza San Marco to this day.
The fall of Al-Mecca, and the surrender of the Arabs in 1739 lead to
revolts in many former Muslim lands, the ones in Alexandria and Damascus the
most noticeable. Syria was a no-go area for the Austrians for almost two years,
although they managed to prevent the Persians from taking advantage of the
situation. THE PAPACY AND PALESTINE Religious
riots also swept Palestine, rendering Papal administration of the land all the
more difficult. The Papacy had achieved a delicate balance in the Holy Land,
which, although favouring Christians, didn’t do so in such a fashion as to
drive the other two faiths to violence. The Papal legates in Palestine all
revealed themselves to be moderate men, who reined in the more zealous elements
of the clergy, Jesuits first and foremost. The Papacy managed to run the land
better then the Turks but not as efficiently as Austrians and Italians or even
the Spanish in their parts of the former Ottoman Empire. Ultimately this was due
to the complete lack of preparation on behalf of the Roman clergy in governing
as complex and as different a reality as Palestine. The Papacy managed to keep a
lid on the place and allow it to integrate economically with the
Hapsburg-dominated Mediterranean. Whereas Christian immigration was freely
welcomed, Jewish and Muslim immigration was restricted, if not banned for long
periods of time and this situation would only improve (for the Jews at least) in
the nineteenth century.
The administration of Palestine, and the exposure to the source of
Christianity affected the Catholic Church in other ways as well. Just as the
advent of the Enlightenment had given new strength to the writings and
philosophy of Cornelius Jansen (whose Calvinist-tinged Catholicism seemed to
better offer a conciliation with the modern world), the rediscovery of the
“roots” of Christianity had created an opposite reaction, a return to a
deeper, more fundamentalist version of Christianity, one that in its zeal began
to question the very foundations of the Church of Rome. Lead by Antonio
Baldinucci, a former Jesuit, this movement, called Foundationism, began to sweep
through the marginally Catholic East and advance in the West. There were some
mutterings about a “Luther from the East” but the main difference with
Luther was that Baldinucci’s movement worked within the framework of the
Ecclesiastical Hierarchy and did not question the authority of the Church of
Rome and the Pope. It did however demand a more heart-felt, primitive and
intense religious spirit, and overall rejected both the Renaissance and the
Modern Age. Foundationists wanted a return to a passionate, almost hysterical
religious sentiment, and rejected the more political aspects of the Church. Even
the distinction between the monastic orders was frowned upon while many
advocated the resurrection of Militant Orders to spread the word of the Church
by force where necessary. Foundationism and renascent Jansenism attacked the
Church from the two sides and the Papacy had to find a delicate balance with the
more traditional Catholicism. One
result was the gradual insertion of laymen into the administration of the Papal
States: as more and more Foundationists decried the “pollution” of the
Church with the secular concerns of government, the Papacy gradually was forced
to call upon laymen to assist in the administration of the State of the Church.
This generated a limited reform of the decrepit and corrupt Roman bureaucracy
and opened the Papal State to some of the more innovative evolutions in the art
of government and in the management of the economy. Still, the silent passive
resistance of the Roman government machine was such that these reforms were
still insufficient to allow the Papacy to catch up with the rest of Italy. Until
the Napoleonic Wars, Rome’s main economy was still the religious pilgrimages,
and the entire series of industries built around the Papacy’s Mission. EUROPE AFTER THE FIVE YEARS WAR: THE END OF AN AGE
By 1770, the situation in Europe was in a state of impending change.
Britain was ascending to a position of world power, her position in India
rendered her domination of the subcontinent almost inevitable while her American
colonies were undergoing mounting dissatisfaction. France was chafing at the
bit, real or imagined, of Spanish domination, while in the streets and cafés of
Paris talk and thought went to change and revolution. Prussia was determined to
rid herself of Swedish over-lordship. Russia was nurturing dreams of revenge.
The Italian states were feeling a growing anti-Spanish sentiment.
Trying to keep a lid on the situation were the two great Hapsburg-Roman
Empires of Spain and Greco-Austria. Both were beset by internal concerns:
Spanish society was struggling to come to terms with imperial status and
obligations and was failing in her attempt to bring the various nationalities
together culturally as well as politically. The conflict between Kingdom and
Empire resulted in the twenty-year long rule of Don Galve, a reactionary who
almost purposely froze Spain in a feudal framework that was clearly showing its
anachronism. Greco-Austria
seemed far better equipped culturally to shift into the universal and
cosmopolitan mind-set, but was experiencing the difficulties of balancing modern
centralism and aristocratic conservatism. Both of these empires required
international stability and peace, if for opposite reasons (one to stay
immobile, one to accomplish change). Neither would get it.
What was imminent was the end of the Hapsburg Age that had so
characterised the 17th and 18th centuries. They had been,
in their way, the pinnacle of the feudal and aristocratic age and had achieved
much from that position. Enlightened government had led both empires to generate
a prosperity and security for their citizens and clients that were unmatched in
their histories. But both empires were now facing what can only be called a
paradigm shift in Europe.
A new class, the bourgeoisie was now reaching positions of strength and
would begin to knock quite firmly on the doors of government. The economies of
Europe were beginning to enter the early stages of the Industrial Revolution,
irreparably altering the social make-up of the countries as well. Forces of
conservation, the aristocracy and the Catholic Church, for different reasons,
were both fighting what some could see as the inevitable tide of change and were
determined to not go down quietly. At the same time, the thoughts and ideals of
the best European minds were moving more and more towards change and progress,
all so clearly unsatisfied with the society of old.
Ideas, ideals, demands, interests: under an apparent situation of stasis,
European society was undergoing a radical change. To quote Charles Dickens, it
was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Either way, it couldn’t
last. An explosive energy permeated Europe, one that could no longer fit in the
structures of old but would tear them down and build something new. All that was
needed was a spark.
The spark came.
Across the Atlantic, in the British American colonies so long turbulent
and dissatisfied, shots were fired, a banner of stars and stripes was raised. And
the world was changed forever. |
