Transcription
Hello, welcome back to our lecture series for Western Civilization 102. We have discussed in past lectures, the last few lectures, um, absolutism and, of course, the 30 Years' War that took place during this time period. And now, of course, we're going to turn our attention to, uh, the Catalan Revolt, the English Civil War, and the Fronde. So we're dealing with different countries now.
With the English Civil War, Dr. Robinson will kind of continue on with English history. I know that Dr. Robinson has mentioned in the past, Queen Elizabeth the First, and, uh, she was the daughter, one of the daughters, I should say, of King Henry VII of England, and she will die in office in the early 17th century without an heir. I know Dr. Robinson mentioned in a previous lecture that she was unmarried and she had no kids during her, quite, she reigned quite a long time in English history. So we'll basically take off after Elizabeth the First. Of course, since she has no heir herself, the throne will pass to a cousin who was the King of Scotland. And, uh, just to remind you, or let you know, you've heard about Mary, Queen of Scots, in past lectures. Mary, Queen of Scots, of course, had ties to the royal family in France, and she also, of course, was the queen that will be executed under Elizabeth the First because she was involved in some of the plots that were discovered against Elizabeth the First, trying to, of course, assassinate or kill her. Mary, Queen of Scots, had to leave Scotland. It didn't look too healthy for her and her homeland. She seeks refuge, as we've learned in a previous lecture. Mary, Queen of Scots, will seek refuge in England under Elizabeth the First, where she will be placed under kind of like a house arrest. Eventually, of course, Elizabeth the First decides that it's best if she is executed. Not right away, it takes a little while for that to happen. So, you know, ironically, this is so much, um, it's just so ironic with royalty in Europe, but Mary, Queen of Scots' son, who is James VI of Scotland, will become King of England. And when he is King of England, he is known as James the First. When you look at the names for royalty in Europe, it sometimes, it gets confusing because why would he be James the Sixth of Scotland, but yet he's James the First of England? Well, it depends on the names, and as you go up in each country, they've already had a James one, two, three, four, and five in Scotland. Okay, so he had to be James the Sixth. Well, he's the first James that will become King of England, hence that's why he's James the First. Sometimes it's helpful to, to understand that when you're talking about royalty in Europe.
Now, James the First, you know, we've talked about absolutism. There are actually different types of absolutism during this time period. James the First is known as a divine right absolutist. Um, divine right, of course, meaning that he feels that he is God's lieutenant on Earth, and he is only subject to God, which is a very dangerous concept for a government that has a representative body. Of course, in England, it's known as Parliament. You have a House of Lords, a common, a House of Commons, and if, if you have a king that feels he is divine right absolutist, then, of course, you have to come to the conclusion that he's not going to be very respectful to Parliament. And that is what we'll see with this new dynasty in place called the Stuart Dynasty. We have a new dynasty started in English history. They're known as the Stuarts, and James the First will not be the only one who feels this way. Of course, James the First manages, we'll find out more, of course, but he manages to live a natural life, natural death. He dies peacefully around 1625 in his bed. Um, and of course, we have, and the next of the Stuart kings, his name is Charles the First. Now, Charles the First, uh, also felt that he was a divine right absolutist. Um, and he felt he didn't really need Parliament. Problem is, England, again, I'm very general here, but England gets involved in different wars, and Charles needs money. Um, and we're going to see problems developing between Charles the First of the Stuart Dynasty and the English Parliament during the 1620s, 30s, around that time frame, early 17th century. It gets to the point where Charles the First will actually dismiss Parliament and tell them, you know, I don't need you anymore. When he's finally forced to call it back, Parliament basically tells him that you can't do that again, that we, you know, they start passing laws to make sure that they cannot simply be dismissed. We'll find out, of course, some of the measures that Parliament will take in order to keep their existence in English history. And so England will experience a civil war, um, in the early 17th century, and not only do they experience a civil war, but Charles the First will be executed, beheaded, which is a very dangerous concept, of course, to actually kill your king, but that is what they decided to do in the long run. And of course, England goes through a period under a man named Oliver Cromwell. Eventually, of course, the Stuarts come back into power later in the 17th century. So the Stuart Dynasty does not end with Charles the First, but the English Civil War was very important to the development of future governments and even to the development of our government, the United States, because Parliament will pass, pass many measures to make sure that England becomes more of a, more of a republic. They still have a king, but they're more of a republic and not an absolute monarchy, and that happens throughout this English Civil War.
Another country that will be discussed, one of the others that will be discussed in Dr. Robinson's lecture, is France, and what's happening in France during this time period. Um, you know, maybe early 17th century is the time frame for this. And we've left France in a previous lecture discussing Henry IV, the Bourbon King that just takes power in France and, uh, issues the Edict of Nantes and grants toleration to Protestants or Huguenots. France settles down, the religious wars end with Henry IV. Eventually, he is assassinated, of course, himself. And so Dr. Robinson will take off after that and talk about what happens in France. France will also experience a little bit of turmoil with their government. They have what's called the Fronde, which is a rebellion that takes place against the monarchy, and this rebellion will definitely shape a very famous French king that many of you may know, Louis XIV, who will be also a topic of a future lecture. So let's find out about the Catalan Revolt, the English Civil War, and the Fronde.
The 30 Years' War, about which you learned in the previous lecture, was part of a much wider pattern of conflict in Europe in the mid-17th century that some historians refer to as a general crisis. At issue were religion, politics, questions of who would control government, even the quest for independence in some cases. But besides the 30 Years' War, which lasted from 1618 to 1648, there was also the resumption of the Dutch Revolt, which culminated in 1648, the Anglo-Spanish War from 1625 to 30, the Anglo-French War from 1627 to 29, the Franco-Spanish War from 1635 to 39, the Catalan Revolt from 1640 to 59, the Portuguese Rebellion from 1640 to 68, the English Civil War from 1642 to 48, the Naples Revolt from 1647 to 48, and the Fronde in France from 1648 to 53. If this did not constitute a general crisis, it was certainly close.
Today, we'll look at three aspects of this crisis: a series of revolts directed against the government of Spain, a civil war in England, and a civil war in France. Begin with Spain, where Philip II, the most powerful ruler in the second half of the 16th century and the Catholic champion in the wars of religion during that time, was succeeded on the throne in Spain in 1598 by his son, Philip III. Philip III fairly quickly ended his war with England, which was proving fruitless for both sides, and five years later, in 1609, he also made a truce called the Twelve Years' Truce with the Dutch rebels. That same year, he expelled from Spain the remaining Moors or Muslims in Spain, following in the footsteps of his ancestors, Ferdinand and Isabella, who had ejected the Jews from Spain in 1492. Philip III was quickly caught up in the 30 Years' War in 1618 on the side of his cousin, Ferdinand, and in 1621, he was himself the target of the renewed Dutch Revolt. However, he died that same year, and power passed to his son, Philip IV, who would rule from 1621 to 1665. Philip was in many ways a more able ruler than his father, but he also faced a problem of declining resources. One thing he did have going for him was a very able minister in the person of the Count of Olivares, a man who is in many ways the parallel to Cardinal Richelieu in Louis XIII's France. It was Olivares who had to deal with that series of conflicts that I just described, almost all of which involved Spain in one way or another, and he was quite successful down until 1643, when a series of events led to his fall from power.
But first, let's look at some of what was going on during this period. There's first of all the Franco-Spanish War, a sort of side conflict to the 30 Years' War, and in fact, one that erupts in 1635 during the last phase of the 30 Years' War, but continues well on beyond it down until 1659. Olivares assumed the direction of Spanish policy in this war, just as Cardinal Richelieu did in the early phases of the French part. Largely, this is a war that went in the favor of the French. In 1643, at the Battle of Rocroi, the French ended Spanish infantry supremacy on the continent. They were interrupted temporarily by the outbreak of civil war in France with the Fronde between 1648 to 53, but after the resumption of warfare, the French consolidated victories with the Battle of the Dunes in 1658, and finally made peace in the Peace of the Pyrenees in 1659. But this, of course, is a war that occupies France and Spain for some 25 years, nearly.
In the same period, beginning in 1640, and as another offshoot of both the 30 Years' War and the Franco-Spanish War, a revolt erupted in northeastern Spain known as the Catalan Revolt, a reference to the ethnicity or the ethnic group known as Catalans, who live in the area that now is known as Barcelona. Part of the reason for the war there was resistance to the to the larger war and to the policies being implemented by Count Olivares. Olivares wanted to raise both funds and soldiers in the Catalan region, and the Catalans, by 1640, had had quite enough of that. The fighting erupted on Corpus Christi Day in 1640 in what is often referred to as Bloody Corpus Christi, led by a man named Pau Claris, who was killed the following year, but in fact, the revolt continued. The revolt was wholeheartedly encouraged by the French, who benefited from anything that distracted Spain from fighting effectively against them, and in fact, the Catalans at one point proclaimed Louis XIII as their new ruler as the Count of Barcelona. This revolt too continued until the end of the Franco-Spanish War, at which time the Catalans were finally subdued, but not without some losses to Spain. Spain was forced to turn over two regions along the border with France to the French, specifically Cerdanya and Roussillon, both of which had been sources of conflict between the two kingdoms for quite some time.
A second revolt also broke out against Spain in 1640, this one with more serious long-term consequences. This revolt began in Portugal. Portugal had been an independent kingdom for most of its existence. It had only become part of the Spanish regime in 1580 when taken over by Philip II, but in 1640, it too revolted, and it succeeded in gaining permanent independence. The individual responsible for this, or at least leading this effort, was João, or John IV of Portugal, who is also sometimes referred to as John the Restorer. In 1630, he had become the Duke of Braganza, which gave him a hereditary claim to the throne, even if he had no actual throne to go with it at the time, and in 1640, he sparked rebellion. This provoked a prolonged war known as the Portuguese Restoration War, which lasted from 1640 to 68. In this war, the Portuguese allied with the French, not surprisingly, since France was at war with Spain, and they also allied with Sweden, which gave them the advantage of additional naval might. By 1654, they had recovered the possession of most of Brazil, which historically had been one of Portugal's most important colonies, and in 1659, France pulled out of the war, making separate peace with Spain. But the Portuguese continued to fight, and in 1668, finally, the Spanish gave up, recognized that Portugal would remain permanently independent, and that was the end of that. It has remained independent with only the very briefest of interruptions since then.
Spain faced yet a third revolt in 1647 in Naples. Naples, of course, is the kingdom that occupies the southern portion of the peninsula of Italy, but it was in Spanish hands in the 1640s, and there a revolt broke out in 1647, led by initially a commoner by the name of Masaniello, who is still something of a local hero among the Neapolitans. However, Masaniello was killed in 1647, and things in Naples took a very peculiar turn. Henri, the Duke of Guise, a descendant of that same Guise family who were involved in the French religious wars of the 16th century and who had been squabbling with Cardinal Richelieu in France for years, declared himself the King of Naples on the very thinnest of grounds and joined the revolt. He was not to have very much luck with this. The Spanish captured him in 1648. He managed to escape, started another revolt in 1654, and was captured a second time. But this certainly was distracting. So the Spanish found themselves fighting in the 30 Years' War, facing a war with the French on top of that, finding themselves faced with the revolt from the Catalans, from the Portuguese, and ultimately from Naples. The upshot of all of this is that Spain was weakened at the end of all these conflicts. And to make matters even worse, the heir to Philip IV, Charles II, or Carlos II of Spain, who took the throne in 1665, was incapable, both mentally and physically, to do the job of king.
Now we turn to the British Isles, specifically to England, where in 1603, the Protestant champion Queen Elizabeth the First finally died. She was succeeded on the throne of England by the King of Scotland, just to the north, where he was known as James the Sixth. In England, he would take the title of James the First, being the first English king by that name. So beginning in 1603, James rules both the kingdom of Scotland and the kingdom of England, and by virtue of ruling England, he also rules over Ireland. So all of the British Isles are at least nominally under his power. Now, it might seem logical that the three would have been united into a single kingdom, and indeed James wanted that. He proposed that to the English Parliament, and it was debated for a number of years, but ultimately both the English and, to a lesser extent, the Scots were reluctant to go along with this because of the hostility between the two groups. So in fact, no union was produced. Scotland remained a separate kingdom from England. The only thing that they had in common was the same king. Otherwise, their parliaments, their churches, their systems of law remained separate. The only thing to come out of this discussion of union was a proposed flag, a flag the design for which was kept around and used later in 1707 when the union finally did take place, in a flag that we still know today as the Union Jack, combining the cross of St. George, the patron saint of England, and the cross of St. Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland.
James was to have more serious troubles, though, than an inability to combine his two kingdoms. One is that he had a very different idea of political theory than many of his new English subjects. James believed very strongly in absolutism. He took the word sovereign in its most literal way, and he expected the English, including the English Parliament, to do exactly what he wanted. This was not, however, the way that the English Parliament saw things. They were used to sharing authority with the monarch, even if it meant as junior partners. They were used to having authority, particularly over taxation and over the making of new law. And right away, there was conflict over these rival views of how government should work between absolutism on the one hand and a parliamentary system on the other.
Another problem was that James continued and in fact enhanced some questionable ways of raising revenue that had originally been developed by Queen Elizabeth. One of these was the sale of monopolies, that is, selling a license to a particular merchant which allowed him to be the sole importer of some product. Now, if you're the sole importer of a product, you are the sole supplier, and you can set the price however you want. It. Another thing that was done was the use of a new tax, not passed by Parliament, called the imposition, which was a kind of surtax on top of existing customs duties. And what Parliament objected to about this was really two things: one, it drove up prices, which nobody particularly liked, and second, if the king could raise revenue without going to Parliament, Parliament lost its leverage with the king.
Yet another source of trouble was religion. By the time that Elizabeth died, England was split over religious matters, roughly speaking, into a group of Anglicans who supported the existing establishment, a group of Catholic recusants who wanted to go back to the old church, and a group of Puritans who believed that the English church was still too much like the old church and needed to be further purified. James himself was like the Anglicans and the Puritans, a Calvinist in terms of his theology, but he disliked the Puritans immediately. He mistook them for being like the Scottish Presbyterians back home in his first kingdom, a group with whom he had feuded for most of his adult life, and so they got off to a very bad start and never really recovered.
Early on, James's reign was marked by a series of plots against his life, usually involving a handful of Catholic fanatics determined to restore Catholicism. And the most spectacular of these occurred in November of 1605, was discovered on November the 5th. This is the plot known as the Gunpowder Plot, involving Guy Fawkes and various other individuals who had planned to blow up the English Houses of Parliament with the king, the nobility, the bishops, and so on, inside. This convinced most English Puritans that Catholics could not be trusted, and they expected James to take their side against the Catholics. But he remained staunchly middle of the road, antagonizing both Catholics on one hand and Puritans on the other side.
Another decision he made that was quite unpopular in England at the time was to pursue a marriage for his heir with one of the Spanish princesses. This actually went on for a number of years, off and on, first with his older son, Henry, who died prematurely, and later on with his son Charles, who eventually succeeded him. He attempted in both cases to marry them to members of the Spanish royal household, and this push for what the English called the Spanish match was immensely unpopular with many Englishmen, both because Spain had been the enemy in recent years and also because the Spanish monarchy was staunchly Catholic.
Yet another unpopular aspect of James's reign was that he refused to intervene on the side of the Protestants in the 30 Years' War, even though one of the main antagonists in the 30 Years' War, Frederick of the Palatinate of the Rhine, was his son-in-law, married to his own daughter, Elizabeth. Puritans, therefore, became convinced that James was not sufficiently tough on Catholicism and not sufficiently committed to what they saw as true religion.
Yet another problem was James's fondness for favorites. During his reign in Scotland, this was a problem. During his reign in England, it became an even greater problem, the tendency to surround himself with young men to whom he gave an enormous amount of influence. And the most striking example of this was a young man named George Villiers, or the Duke of Buckingham, who practically ended up running the government during the last years of James's reign. Buckingham was seen as an upstart, as corrupt. There were even rumors to the fact, to the effect that he and James were lovers, despite the fact that Buckingham had a wife and children and James did as well. And all of this contributed to a very negative image of James by the time that he died.
If James had been unpopular, however, he soon was looking good after his son took over in 1625. Charles the First almost immediately got off on the wrong foot with his subjects when he took the throne. He, of course, is king in both England and in Scotland. He is Charles the First in both. He got off on the wrong foot with the Scots by simply ignoring them. He only went to Scotland once. He waited 12 years before he did so, and after he had been there, he never went back. In England, once again, he antagonized a great many Puritans and even mainline Anglican Protestants by marrying a French princess, Henrietta Maria, in 1625. She was, in fact, the sister of the French King. She brought with her a French entourage that included priests, and this was seen by many people to be making inroads into Protestant England on behalf of continental Catholics.
With the encouragement of Buckingham, a rather reckless individual when it came to foreign policy, Charles allowed himself to do something that his father had always been too smart to do, and that was to be drawn into two wars on the continent. The first of these was the Anglo-Spanish War, which broke out in 1625 and lasted till 1630. While fighting that war, Charles also violated one of the cardinal rules of English diplomacy by getting into a war with France at the same time, something that English monarchs always strive to avoid. You'd never want to be in a war with both the Habsburgs in Spain and the Bourbons in France simultaneously, but that's exactly what happened. As a result, Charles was constantly asking Parliament for money, and Parliament was none too interested in giving him money for what they regarded as a bad policy being pursued by a corrupt favorite, Buckingham, now having switched his allegiance to Charles. On top of that, they were also furious at Charles's religious policy, which seemed to favor a much more Catholic-leaning form of worship and Catholic-leaning form of theology than that of his father.
Things came to a head several times, actually. But first, in 1627, when Charles, unable to get Parliament to give him sufficient revenue to wage two wars simultaneously, resorted to something called the forced loan. And that's exactly what it sounds like. He forced many of his subjects to loan him money, only it wasn't all that much of a loan since some of it never got paid back. Again, if the king could do this, if he could force his own people to loan him money rather than going to Parliament for taxes, this would take away Parliament's leverage. So Parliament was furious. When he called them again in 1628, still needing money, Parliament's response was not to vote the king the taxes he asked for until he had agreed to a petition, a petition known as the Petition of Right, which specifically condemned the sorts of practices in which Charles had been indulging in recent years. Charles ultimately agreed. He ultimately agreed to the terms of the Petition of Right. He got the revenue he was asking for, and then he reneged on the whole deal. But unfortunately for him, he soon found himself needing money again, and in 1629, he had to call Parliament once more. A Parliament this time resulted in a sharp confrontation between king and the House of Commons, with the House of Commons growing increasingly critical of the king's policy. He decided to disband Parliament by sending his official, who is known as the Black Rod because he carries a black rod as the symbol of his office, to disband Parliament. In order for this to happen, when the Black Rod showed up, he gave the word to the Speaker of the House of Commons to dismiss the Parliament, and that was that. Only there were several individuals, led by a man named Sir John Eliot, who held the Speaker down on his seat until they had voted for a series of three resolutions, once again condemning the king's policy. Several of them were subsequently arrested, bringing up the whole question of whether or not the queen, the king, had the right to arrest anyone for what was said in Parliament.
Whatever the case might be, Charles the First decided in 1629 that he would never call Parliament again, that he would rule on his own, and that he would find ways of making that pay for itself. And so there began an 11-year period in his reign that is often referred to as the personal rule, because he ruled without Parliament. In doing so, he was assisted by a number of individuals, but in particular by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, and by a man named Thomas Wentworth, whom he later made the Earl of Strafford. William Laud was like Charles, an advocate of a theological system known as Arminianism. Now, to cut it in its simplest terms, Arminianism is very different from the predestination that Calvinists believe in. Calvinists believed that man is predestined to salvation or not, that it's already been determined, that it's already foreordained. Arminians, on the other hand, believe in free will, that is, that individuals have the freedom to choose good or evil, and therefore to choose salvation or not. Now, who else believes in free will? Well, Roman Catholics. And therefore, any Arminians in England were immediately suspected of being closet Catholics. Furthermore, Laud favored a form of liturgy and worship that involved what he called the "beauty of holiness," which used lots of candles, lots of ritual, lots of lots of vestments and music and what have you, which again looked to the Puritans very, very Catholic. So there's going to be a huge dispute during the personal rule over religion between Calvinist Puritans and even many Calvinist Anglicans and these Arminians.
Another problem was that Wentworth and Laud came up with a system of raising revenue, sometimes referred to as the policy of Thorough, or the Thorough policy, and and it certainly was thorough when it came to getting money out of the king's subjects. There are a whole bunch of ways that they did this, but there are three that are particularly noteworthy. One of these involves something called Knights' Fees. People who had reached a certain level of wealth and status in English society were expected at some point to accept the title of Knight, and the customary time for doing this was when a new king was crowned, as Charles recently had been. A number of people, however, had chosen not to do that, chosen not to incur the expense of becoming knights. So what Charles did during the personal rule was to force them to do so or else pay fines. So he got their money either way, either as Knights' Fees or as fines for refusing.
A second thing that the policy of Thorough entailed was abuse of the forest laws. Now, as anybody who's ever watched a Robin Hood movie knows, uh, you know, you're not supposed to poach the king's deer in the king's forest. Well, where exactly are the king's forests? Virtually any forest is the king's. But by the, the middle of the 17th century, there were vast sections of England that had once been forested, but that no longer were, that were now pasture land or farmland or what have you. And what the king and his ministers began to do was to enforce the forest laws not where there was actually forest, but everywhere that there had ever been forest. And so people found themselves being arrested and having fines collected for them from them for committing crimes that had not been treated as crimes in some cases for hundreds of years, and they deeply resented this.
Perhaps the biggest issue had to do with something called ship money. For hundreds of years, cities on the coast had paid a tax to the government, which they were very happy to pay to build ships. They were happy to do this because those ships protected them, protected their trade, protected them from pirates and so on. No controversy. But during the personal rule, Charles began collecting ship money from other towns that were nowhere near the sea, and this was deeply, deeply resented.
Now, to make matters worse, he is raising money without Parliament, he is implementing a religious policy that is unpopular, and who is enforcing all of this? Well, in the local government, local counties, the sheriff and the justices of the peace, the same social class that provides members of members of Parliament, were having to enforce these unpopular laws on their own neighbors, which meant that either they did a poor job and were in trouble with the king themselves, or they did a good job and lost the favor of their neighbors. On top of this, there were some pretty grotesque examples of religious persecution, uh, including a case in 1637 where three Puritan writers named Burton, Bastwick, and Prynne had their ears cut off for opposing royal policy. Therefore, by 1637, there was widespread discontent with the king and his ministers in England.
But what actually triggered warfare was the king's decision that same year to force the Scots to adopt the English form of worship. What he tried to do was to force the Scottish Church, which was Presbyterian in nature, to adopt the English Book of Common Prayer and all of the theology and practice that went with it. The Scots responded to this with a resounding no. In 1638, many of the leading Scotsmen in the country formed something called the National Covenant. In 1639, they actually went to war with England to defend their right to worship as they pleased in what is sometimes called the First Bishops' War, and they went back to war again in 1640 in what is called the Second Bishops' War. These weren't much as wars go. They were basically raids across the border into England, but they posed a sufficient threat that Charles needed to send troops to the north, and he lacked the money to do so. And so in 1640, he was forced to do what he had sworn he would never do again: he called Parliament.
The Parliament that convened in 1640 was, of course, interested in talking about a lot of things before they granted him any revenue. And in fact, things got so hot between the king and the leaders of Parliament, the most prominent of whom was a man named John Pym, that Charles actually dismissed the Parliament after just three weeks, leading to it becoming known as the Short Parliament. But in fact, the fighting up north continued. Charles found himself having to call Parliament into existence again, and the Parliament that convened later in 1640 was to remain in existence, in one form or another, down until 1653, and then be reconvened at the end of that decade, and thus is known as the Long Parliament. Rather than coming in and immediately acquiescing in the king's demands, what they instead did was to attack his policy and his policymakers. They impeached both Archbishop Laud and Sir William Wentworth, the Earl of Strafford. They also passed something called the Root and Branch Petition, which called for root and branch reform of the church, that is, reforming all the way down to the deepest level.
In 1641, the revolutionary activities of the Long Parliament continued. They passed something called the Triennial Act, which would require Parliament to meet at least every three years, whether the king called it or not. They abolished the Court of Star Chamber, which Charles had used to enforce many of his unpopular measures, and they abolished the Court of High Commission, a church court which he had used to try to enforce religious uniformity. They also passed something called the Grand Remonstrance, which listed a whole catalog of grievances against the king and demanded change.
Complicating matters further, if it wasn't enough that the Scots were already hostile, in 1641, a rebellion against England broke out in Ireland, led by Irish Catholics, doubly horrifying the Puritans in England, who believed that the Catholics there were in a league with the king.
In 1642, trouble continued. Early in the year, Charles made a failed attempt to arrest five members of Parliament who were giving him grief. Later in the year, both Parliament and the king began to raise troops, Parliament doing so under something called the Militia Ordinance, and the king under something known as the Commission of Array. Also that year, Parliament issued something known as the Nineteen Propositions, yet another call for reform, like the Petition of Right and the Grand Remonstrance. And by August, the two sides were at war. Charles raising his standard in Nottingham and going to war with his own parliamentary people. Parliament responded by closing the theaters in London that year and also by suspending the operation of episcopacy, that is, the system of bishops, again, something they regarded as too much like the Catholics.
In the civil war that ensued, one of the leaders on the Royalist side, or Cavalier side as they were known, was Charles's nephew, Prince Rupert of the Rhine. One of the leading figures on the Parliamentary side, or Roundhead side as they were called, was a hitherto obscure figure named Oliver Cromwell, who was about to become the great military hero of the war. In addition to the outbreak of hostilities, a number of Puritans called together a religious assembly called the Westminster Assembly, that set out to implement wide-ranging reforms in the church. In 1643, the Scots, who remember had revolted against the Prayer Book, entered into an agreement with the Parliamentary forces in England called the Solemn League and Covenant. So the Scottish rebels now become the allies of the Parliamentary rebels against the king. And indeed, in 1644, the Scots invaded England on the side of Parliament, and leaders of the Scots and of Parliament ended up establishing something called the Committee of the Two Kingdoms, or the Committee of Both Kingdoms, to to form a sort of prototype for, uh, post-war government.
The tide of the war turned in 1645. In that year, Parliament abolished the use of the Prayer Book in England. That same year, they executed Archbishop Laud for treason. But more important is that they created a new form of military organization called the New Model Army, in which actual ability became the main reason for being made an officer or given a promotion. Cromwell played a major role in the New Model Army, as did a number of other figures. And to ensure that the Army and Parliament kept their motives clean, so to speak, Parliament passed something called the Self-Denying Ordinance, which said that no Member of Parliament could be an officer in the army or vice versa. In the long run, though, they would make one exception. The one exception to the Self-Denying Ordinance would be Oliver Cromwell, and it was under his leadership that the Parliamentary forces won a great victory over Charles in the summer of 1645 at the Battle of Naseby, which proved to be the turning point of the war.
By May of the following year, 1646, Charles had surrendered. The question now became, what to do next? Most people at this point were still monarchists. There were a handful of Republicans with a little "r" in Parliament who wanted to do away with the monarchy completely, but not very many yet. Parliament was divided up into four groups that subsequent historians have labeled political Presbyterians, political Independents, religious Presbyterians, and religious Independents. The political Presbyterians were those who favored taking it easy on Charles the First, who wanted to continue to have a national church, and who were central to the alliance with Scotland. The political Independents, uh, distrusted Charles the First. They favored religious toleration as opposed to a national church, and their main power base was in the New Model Army. The so-called religious Presbyterians, who overlapped but not completely with the political Presbyterians, were orthodox Calvinists who favored a Presbyterian form of government but were not particularly radical in any other way. The so-called religious Independents overlapped to some extent with the political Independents, but not completely. They too were orthodox Calvinists, but they favored a system where every congregation was independent, and they came to be those who favored a full-blown revolution in 1648 and 49, a revolution that would lead to the overthrow of the monarchy.
Meanwhile, besides conflict in Parliament, there was conflict elsewhere. The Army had moved into London and began to play an increasingly political role as time went on. There also emerged a movement in the Army and in the population generally among a group of people called Levellers, who were actually calling for democracy, an extraordinarily radical idea at the time. Before any of this could be settled, Charles escaped, entered into an agreement with the Scots known as the Engagement. The Scots now turning their coats, and in 1648, there erupted what is known as the Second Civil War, essentially a series of Royalist uprisings, a new Scottish invasion that ultimately culminated in another victory for the Parliamentary forces led by Oliver Cromwell.
Towards the end of this second Civil War, a group of soldiers led by a colonel named Colonel Pride went to Parliament and purged Parliament of all of the Presbyterians, leaving the more radical Independents as the only people remaining in Parliament, or what now came to be known as the Rump Parliament. Early in 1649, this Rump Parliament took the radical decision of declaring England a republic and executing Charles the First, who died on the scaffold on January 30th, 1649. For the next 11 years, England would have no king, a period known as the Interregnum, or the Republic, a period which would see parliamentary power gradually give way to dictatorship, as Oliver Cromwell, riding a series of victories both at home and abroad, would become a full-fledged military dictator.
That brings us to the Civil War in France. Louis XIII had inherited the throne from his father, Henry IV, in 1610 at the age of only 10 years old, which meant that he had a long minority in which his mother, Marie de' Medici, was his regent. He also during that period married Anne of Austria, a Spanish woman, in spite of the opposition. And this meant that for much of the rest of his life, he had two women in his family, neither of whom he got along with. He and his mother did not see eye to eye, neither did he and his wife. The result of this was short-term conflict with his mother, and also it was a long, long time before he and his wife produced an heir. During his reign, religious conflict erupted again. Religious wars broke out in 1614 and continued on down until 1629. The key figure in helping him deal with this was Cardinal Richelieu, who became his chief minister by 1624 and remained so until his death in 1642. Richelieu, more than Louis XIII, helped to keep alive the absolutism that Henry IV had established. After becoming king himself, even though he was a cardinal in the Catholic Church, his guiding principle for everything was raison d'état, reason of state, and that trumped everything else. He helped to revive absolutism even at the expense of the church. He created a system of officials known as the intendants, who were sent out into the countryside to keep an eye on things for the central government, to enforce the law, to enforce the collection of taxation, and so on. He also recognized that to compete with the Dutch and the English and the Spanish, that the French must have a better navy, and so Richelieu, in fact, created not one fleet, but two: a Mediterranean fleet, since France is a Mediterranean state, and an Atlantic fleet, since France is also an Atlantic state. He also managed to double the revenue coming into the government by more efficient collection. So in fact, he did make the monarchy much more powerful. He also was successful in the religious wars. He personally participated in the siege of La Rochelle that led to the defeat of French Huguenots by the Catholic government, and in 15, rather 1629, he issued something called the Edict of Alès, which had the effect of restricting Huguenot rights. It did not do away with Huguenot rights, but it did significantly restrict them. Also deserves a lot of the credit for French success in foreign policy. He subsidized the enemies of the Habsburgs in the 30 Years' War, even though many of them were Protestants, until France entered the war itself in 1635. Thereafter, many of the French victories which occurred owe their foundation to Cardinal Richelieu.
However, towards the end of that conflict, there was to be a major shake-up in the French government. In 1642, Cardinal Richelieu died, and the following year, Louis XIII died as well. Because he and his wife Anne of Austria had rarely seen eye to eye, they had spent much of their time apart and had only gotten around to producing an heir a few years earlier. And therefore, the king who replaced Louis XIII, a man who we are much more familiar with as an older person, was a five-year-old boy who took the throne as Louis XIV. Therefore, France was to face another long minority, and that was to bring trouble.
Louis XIV's regent during his minority was his mother, Anne of Austria, who was doubly unpopular in that role because, first of all, she was a foreigner, and secondly, she was a Habsburg, and by now the Habsburgs were the enemy again. In addition to that, Richelieu had been replaced as chief minister by Cardinal Mazarin, a man that Richelieu had groomed himself for the job, but there was one major difference between Richelieu and Mazarin. Richelieu had been a Frenchman. Mazarin was Italian, and therefore many of the French disliked him as a foreigner as well. Furthermore, they disliked him as a foreign churchman, and so as a pair, Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin were both seen as outsiders, both seen as enemies, and both regarded in a very unfavorable light. And they did a number of things to make this worse. They, of course, inherited the later phases of the 30 Years' War and the ongoing war with Spain. In order to raise money, like Charles the First had done over in England, Mazarin resorted to some questionable means. One of these was simply creating new government offices and selling them, which of course had the effect of wasting money, but also of diminishing the influence of those who already held office and who deeply resented this. The second thing that he did, again much like Charles the First, was trumping up fines for old laws that had long been forgotten and gathering money in this fashion. He also took the funds that he raised in this way and invested them in ways that were considered to be risky and unsavory at the time. To make matters worse, there was a widespread rumor, probably not true, but with the same vigorous life that rumors often have, that Cardinal Mazarin and Anne of Austria were lovers, something which, if it were true, would be inappropriate for all sorts of reasons, and whether it was true or not, many people believed it was true.
Well, Mazarin got away with this for as long as the 30 Years' War continued, but of course, that came to a close in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia, and French troops began coming home, led by French noblemen who regarded Mazarin and Anne as usurpers, as interlopers, as troublemakers, and who had soldiers at their backs and who were willing to use them. They arrived in the midst of something of a crisis. In the 1640s, in France, there had been a series of harvest failures, and there was a food shortage. There was also a severe economic downturn, and you can almost make book on it that where economic trouble comes, political trouble will follow. In 1648, the Parlement of Paris, the highest court in the land, began to challenge Mazarin's methods of governing. They actually went so far as to demand that he roll back all of the absolutist innovations of the last 50 years, which he was determined not to do. This situation quickly got out of hand, however. In Paris, the enthusiasm of the Parisian people was raised by this opposition of the Parlement to Mazarin, and they began rioting. The rioting spread into the countryside among the peasants, and pretty soon there was a massive popular uprising against Mazarin's government. This panicked the Parlement, which quickly backed down and tried to restore order, but by the time they had done that, many of the nobility were arriving home. This uprising, led by Parliament and then spreading to the the population, is often referred to as the Fronde Parlementaire, and it lasts from 1648 to 49.
Beginning in 1650, we have the Fronde des Nobles, or the Fronde of the Nobility, in which nobles actually took up arms against their own government, sometimes acting in conjunction with Spain, with whom France was still at war. At one point during this conflict, little Louis XIV was caught in his bedroom, uh, by a group of noblemen. Thought certainly that he was about to be killed and was in blind panic, although they left him alone when he pretended to be asleep. He never forgot this, and he determined that someday, when the opportunity presented itself, he would get even, and he did. In the meantime, Mazarin was run out of the country. Louis and Anne were run out of the city of Paris, and they spent much of the time between 1650 and 53 back and forth from Paris to other parts of the kingdom because they were peripatetic so much of the time. Louis frequently had little access to his income, he often found himself dressed in rags, and it was an entirely miserable experience for him. Eventually, the whole thing just sort of petered out. Many of the nobility lost interest, many of the French were eager to return to peace, to have a real king govern them, and in 1652, Louis XIV came back to Paris, where he was welcomed enthusiastically. Shortly thereafter, Mazarin joined him as well. The upshot is that Louis and Mazarin would gradually restore order, and by the time that Mazarin died in 1661, Louis, by then a young adult, would be firmly in charge.
The results then of all of this are very different. In Spain, the results of the revolutions were to weaken the government, which was further weakened by the death of Philip IV and the inheritance of his disabled son, Charles II. In England, the ultimate upshot of the Civil War and revolution would be the return of monarchy in 1661 in the form of Charles II. In France, of course, the result would be the age of Louis XIV. Yep.
So just when you think we're finished discussing and lecturing about warfare, of course, we start seeing civil war and rebellion taking place. Even though the 30 Years' War was the last of the really religious wars in Europe, warfare obviously is not over. When we come back for our next lecture, we'll kind of continue on with French history, and Dr. Elliott will talk about the reign of Louis XIV, or the Age of Louis XIV. Of course, Louis XIV being very important to Louisiana history as well, so you may have heard of him in your Louisiana history class. So we'll find out during the next lecture about the Age of Louis XIV. Until next time.