Union of the Crowns +
the Gunpowder Plot
(1604 1625 )
This episode covers the rule of the James I and the Union of the Crowns which saw both England and Scotland ruled by the same monarch. It covers James' early rule which saw the Gunpowder Plot and the attempts to create a religious consensus in England. James managed to keep England out of war but after his death in 1625 his son, Charles I saw to war with Spain and intervention in the Thirty Years' War. Charles was an abrasive king and his heavy handed rule and corruption led to opposition which culminated in the Bishops' Wars and set the stage for the English Civil War.
The Thirty Years' War 1618-48
The Thirty Years War was the most bloody and destructive war ever fought in Europe until the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century. It was not as the name suggests one single war lasting 30 years, but rather a series of related wars fought over that period. The War began in Germany (Holy Roman Empire) and gradually spread to much of the rest of Europe.
The English Civil War 1640-1660
Ten Minute History
Covers the late reign of Charles I and his problems with the Bishops' War and the conflict with parliament. It wasn't long before Charles' duplicity and method of rule saw the outbreak of war between Parliament and the king's forces. The civil wars spanned about a decade and eventually saw the execution of Charles I and the ascendancy of Oliver Cromwell as the Lord Protector of the English Commonwealth (a republic).
The Glorious Revolution 1688
Ten Minute History
The Glorious Revolution was an event in the history of England and Scotland in 1688. The people of England and Scotland did not like the Catholic King James II because he would not let them vote or practice the religion of their choice. They invited the Protestant William III of Orange-Nassau to take over as king. William was King James II's nephew and Mary's first cousin.
The horrific series of conflicts tore the heart out of Europe, killing perhaps a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to whole areas of Central Europe to such a degree that many towns and regions never recovered
English Bill of Rights 1689
The Bill of Rights is an Act of the Parliament of England passed on 16 December 1689. It was a restatement in statutory form of the Declaration of Right presented by the Convention Parliament to William and Mary in March 1689 (or 1688 by Old Style dating), inviting them to become joint sovereigns of England.
It lays down limits on the powers of the crown and sets out the rights of Parliament and rules for freedom of speech in Parliament, the requirement for regular elections to Parliament and the right to petition the monarch without fear of retribution. It reestablished the liberty of Protestants to have arms for their defence within the rule of law, and condemned James II of England for "causing several good subjects being Protestants to be disarmed at the same time when papists were both armed and employed contrary to law".
These ideas about rights reflected those of the political thinker John Locke and they quickly became popular in England. It also sets out—or, in the view of its drafters, restates—certain constitutional requirements of the Crown to seek the consent of the people, as represented in Parliament.
Scotsman William Patterson Founder of
The Bank of England
The Bank of England
1694
He raised £1.2m for the govt by selling shares in the bank” of England. So it was privately owned and the special interests became directors.
The 30 Years' War (1618-48) and the Second Defenestration of Prague
- Professor Peter Wilson
Professor Wilson will examine the causes, conduct and consequences of the Thirty Years War, Europe's most destructive conflict prior to the two 20th-century world wars. The talk takes place on the 400th anniversary of the defenestration of three Habsburg officials by Bohemian malcontents in Prague. This violent act triggered a crisis which expanded into general war despite the best efforts of most of those involved to contain it. Why it took so long to make peace, and what extent the conflict can be considered a religious war will also be discussed.
THIRTY YEARS WARS
2014 marked one hundred years since the outbreak of the Great War, which was itself the beginning of a conflagration which some historians have referred to as the Second Thirty Years War (1914-1945).
Yet while the Second Thirty Years War
continues to transfix our collective consciousness, hardly any of our
contemporary political discourse in the West reflects on the original
Thirty Years War, or even seems to acknowledge the fact that the horrors
Europe experienced in the twentieth century represented merely the
latest European "general war" in a tradition of such periodic calamities
stretching back through the centuries:
The Napoleonic Wars, the Seven
Years War, and the Thirty Years War are but the most prominent examples.
But what could we in the West stand to learn from studying a conflict
which began nearly four hundred years ago? Quite a lot, it seems to me.
The Thirty Years War is often dismissed as the grotesque death rattle
of European medievalsim; a struggle between culturally and
intellectually backward religious fanatics in an exotic historical
setting quite removed from our own time, in which we have learned the
values of liberty, justice, toleration, empathy, and self-restraint. Yet
while reading through Peter Wilson's account, I found myself more often
struck by the continuities between Early Modern Man and his
twenty-first century evolutionary descendant, Millennial Man.
The European princes who plunged into war in the first half of the
seventeenth century were certainly religious men - some of them even to
the point of zealotry - but oftentimes their religious persuasions were
bound up with political ambitions, tribal animosities, and moral
questions of freedom, autonomy, political representation,
self-determination, and redress of grievances which are perfectly
intelligible to our postmodern universe.
This realization may be cause for discomfort; if such a calamity
could fall upon largely reasonable people living centuries ago, despite
the best efforts of a large body of moderate statesmen genuinely
interested in peace, then who is to say that such a crisis could not
confound us in our own time, despite the elegant liberal
internationalist structures we have built for ourselves; the
"partnerships for peace"? Is it possible that the cultural and political
archetypes which gave birth to the hellish monster of continental war
in the seventeenth century are still active, like a volcanic magma
chamber covered by earth, ready to burst forth at some future time of
seismic activity?
At a time in which entire Palestinian families are killed by Israeli
airstrikes in Gaza and Israeli families are terrorized by Hamas rockets;
in which Vladimir Putin and pro-Russian partisans dismember the
sovereign state of Ukraine in the name of ethnic kinship; in which the
religious zealots of ISIS battle to create an Islamic state in Iraq and
Syria; in which the extreme right rears its head in European politics
for the first time in decades; in which the United States casually
expands its Afghan War into Pakistan, patrolling the skies and killing
innocents with robotic drones; in which political repression persists
and perpetuates itself in all its overt and covert forms; we must pause
to reflect on the past and the future.
We must not allow the superficial answers to satisfy us. And we must
be very, very careful. THE WAR The Thirty Years War was precipitated by a
long political crisis within the Holy Roman Empire, which was
exacerbated to the point of open warfare by relatively small factions of
religious extremists on all sides who were driven by a dangerous
single-mindedness and sense of divine purpose. The 1555 Peace of
Augsburg represented a truce between the Catholic and Lutheran princes
of the empire, and a recognition on the part of the Catholic emperors
that total religious conformity could not be enforced at swordpoint and
the Protestant Reformation could not simply be undone - at least not
overnight. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,
however, the Augsburg order became strained, as devout Calvinist
principalities like Palatine, Hessen-Kassel, and Brandenburg, excluded
from the political concessions given to the Lutherans, began to take
extra-constitutional measures to increase their influence within the
empire. Frederick V of Palatine headed a Union of protestant princes,
while Maximilian of Bavaria led the Catholic Liga in response, as the
Emperor himself and moderate Protestant princes like those in Saxony,
the birthplace of the Reformation, sought to avoid allowing the Empire
to become divided on religious grounds.
This buildup culminated in the famous Defenestration of Prague in
1618, in which the Emperor's envoys, sent to negotiate with protestant
statesmen in the Prague Castle, were seized and hurled from the castle
windows, marking the beginning of the Bohemian Revolt. Frederick V of
Palatine was subsequently crowned King of Bohemia, as anti-Habsburg
rebels overran the countryside. Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, relied
on the Liga forces to crush the revolt, furthering the conflict's
sectarian character. The enterprising Liga general, Count Tilly, scores a
decisive victory against the rebels at the Battle of White Mountain,
and by the year 1623, the rebels have been thoroughly trounced and
Frederick has fled to the Netherlands.
It is here that the conflict
begins to take on an even more tragic character, because though the war
could have ended here, the structural weakness of the Holy Roman Empire
and the sense of religious mission so pervasive among European rulers
invited outside iintervention on behalf of the beleaguered protestant
princes of the Empire, continuously stoking the fires of blood lust,
ambition, and religious passion which fed the carnage and contributed to
the brutal character of the war. In the latter 1620s, King Christian IV
of Denmark, which has a seat on the Reichstag thanks to its holdings in
Holstein, tries to salvage the protestant cause by intervening in
northern Germany in 1625, partially out of religious sympathy, and
partly to secure his dynastic holdings near the river systems of the
region and contribute to the maritime tributary system which financed
the Danish monarchy and made the Danish oyals some of the richest
people in Europe.
Christian is comprehensively defeated by Tilly's forces, and the
imperialists advance all the way to the Baltic, alarming Sweden and
prompting its king, Gustav II Adolf, wrapping up a war with the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, to contemplate his own intervention in
the Empire. Gustav lands in Pomerania in 1630, opening a bloody new
chapter in the war and extending it by another eighteen years. He is
lionized in protestant propaganda as a messianic figure of sorts, sent
from the heavens to liberate the German protestants from the satanic
tyranny of the Habsburgs. Tilly's run comes to an end, as his army is
smashed at the Battle of Breitenfeld (1631), and Gustav secures the
support of Brandenburg, Hessen-Kassel, and Saxony. The war becomes a
massive and convoluted struggle between the German princes, as foreign
powers like Sweden, France, and Spain feed in troops on either side,
each finding a cause to support - or at least an enemy to thwart -
in the Empire. Gustav's luck runs out at Lutzen, where he is killed in
battle against Wallenstein's imperial army in 1632, leaving the Swedes
rudderless and causing the war to become even more universal, localized, convoluted, and directionless, and subsequently adding to the plight of
civilians throughout the empire. For them, a nominally friendly army is
as dangerous as a hostile one, as the underdeveloped military-financial
system of Europe compels armies to make war at the enemy's expense;
plundering cities and villages for supplies, billeting in private homes,
extorting money and information from the local people, and generally
making life miserable for the European peasantry.
Armies become criminal gangs, as rape, murder, arson, and highway
robbery become a ways of life for the still semi-mercenary European
soldiery. Peasants take matters into their own hands, resisting armies
on all sides in the pursuit of perhaps the most noble cause of the war:
that of not allowing their communities to be ravaged by private warfare
between the European princes. Isolated soldiers are ambushed, robbed,
and killed by peasant guerillas. Armies carry not only weapons with
which to murder and terrorize, but infectious diseases which decimate
populations. Having plundered the countryside and run out of food, none
of the belligerents in Germany are able to field large armies for the
final decade of the war.
Most of the fighting is between small, mobile
forces of cavalry which are unable to conduct seiges or garrison
captured fortifications without adequate infantry contingents. After
Gustav II Adolf's death at Lutzen, Wallenstein inexplicably withdraws
from the battlefield. He mystifies Ferdinand II by refusing to press his
advantage against the now leaderless Swedes. He conducts unilateral
negotiations with the Pro-Swedish princes, in direct defiance of the
Emperor.
With his loyalty to the Habsburgs cast into doubt, the emperor
quietly issues a statement stripping him of command. On February 25,
1634, a group of Irish and Scottish (!) officers burst into his bedroom
and run him through with a halberd.
The war becomes increasingly internationalized as the Swedish
presence weakens in Germany. France and Spain become proactive
belligerents, in pursuit of their wider European objectives. Spain,
under the Count-Duke Olivares, seeks Habsburg support against the
ongoing Dutch Revolt, as its ongoing war in the Spanish Netherlands
(modern Belgium) is the theatre of massive, grinding engagements that
would later become typical of the First World War. Spain's problems are
further exacerbated by open war with France, and revolts in Portugal and Catalonia in 1640. Olivares hopes to stabilize the
Empire by helping the Emperor win the war; thereby freeing Imperial
troops to join the battle against France and the Dutch. France, under
the feckless Louis XIII and the hardnosed realist Cardinal Richelieu,
seeks to stave off encirclement by the Habsburgs.
Despite the
Catholicism of the French monarchy, Richelieu supports the Dutch Revolt
to drive the Spanish off France's northern border, stirs up trouble in
Italy to threaten Spain's duchy in Milan, and finally sends military
expeditions into Germany to support the anti-Habsburg forces, hoping to
create a neutral protestant power bloc that will neutralize the Austrian
wing of the Habsburg monarchy. By the mid 1640s, it is apparent that
the disaster is only going to end through a widespread negotiated
settlement.
After confusion and controversy on all sides during the Congress of
Westphalia from 1646-48, the catastrophe finally ends in 1648, as Spain
makes peace with the Dutch with the treaty of Munster, and the Empire is
pacified by the Peace of Westphalia. Though stemming from the pragmatic
needs of the belligerents, Westphalia was a milestone in the history of
European statecraft. It created a paradigm in European politics in
which interventions in the sovereign territory of another state or
principality were stripped of much of their legitimacy. It was also
among the first truly secular political conferences in European history;
although the stated goal of the Congress was to forge a lasting
"Christian peace".
The Emperor's power was significantly weakened, inaugurating a new
era in which Austria largely disengaged from German affairs, instead
expanding the Austrian state through conquests in Eastern Europe and the
Balkans until challenged by Frederick II in 1740, and eventually
ejected from Germany by Bismarck in 1866-71. Religious and political
toleration was extended to Calvinists in the Empire.
The Peace was a foundational event for modern internationalism, as
the representatives of the various European powers present at the
Congress were addressed largely on equal terms, undermining the
traditionally hierarchical structure of European politics in which the
Emperor was taken to be higher in status than the mere kings who ruled
the rest of Europe.
THOUGHTS AND REACTIONS
Reading about the Thirty
Years War, one can't help but wonder: how is it that any of the millions
of people who were victimized by the war were able to hold on to their
religious faith, when so many people, with genuine religious convictions
similar to their own, were doing such horrible things to one another?
Having one's home plundered and family murdered on multiple occasions by
multiple armies under leaders of different, yet equally heartfelt,
religious persuasions must have caused a great deal of cynicism. Why
would God allow such a thing to happen? Wilson points out a common
refrain from all sides of the war: everyone acknowledged that the
Christians of Europe were treating one another with far more cruelty,
barbarity, and pure, unadulterated malice than was ever perpetrated
against them by the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire.
The Turks could never dream of doing as much damage to Christendom as
Christians themselves did during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. The paradox surrounding the ferocity of conflicts within
Christianity, among zealous followers of a faith which implores us to
turn the other cheek, remains to me one of the great enigmas of the
Christian faith. It seems to me that what happened politically in the
Thirty Years War is somewhat analogous to the crisis in Syria over the
last few years - just on a much larger scale. In both cases, the
governing regime suffered a partial breakdown, as dissenting factions
took up arms. Then ambitious foreign powers began to project their
idological projects onto the internal war. In Syria, the Americans saw a
chance to support freedom fighters rebelling against a tyrannical
government, while Russia saw a conservative, sovereign state under
attack from an international gang of radicals. Weakness within a state
is a siren's song which invites aggression from other, stronger powers.
The Thirty Years War was a much deadlier conflagration than that in
Syria simply because the Holy Roman Empire was, comparatively speaking, a
much larger, more populous, and more strategically important entity
encompassing the heart of Europe. It was this slippery-sloped logic of
intervention that drove the Thirty Years War from a revolt in Bohemia to
a major European war which deprived Germany of perhaps one quarter of
its population and permanently set back its political development. For
my part, I remain intimidated that in many quarters, the most important
lessons of the war have still not been learned.
Against all who would take up arms to fulfill their ambitions through
the fires of war, let our refrain be thus: remember Westphalia!
Comments
Post a Comment