Download Religious Wars

Religious Wars
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The religious wars began with overt hostilities in 1562
and lasted until the Edict of Nantes in 1598.
The First War (1562-1563)
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Provoked by the Massacre at Vassy in 1562.
◦ Duc de Guise men fired ont eh unarmed hugeunots
◦ Set the Church on Fire
◦ Killed a number of the congregation
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Leadership of the Huguenots moves away from the pastors towards the
noble “protectors.”
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Royal forces of England and Germany are slow to respond.
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Catherine de’ medici turns to the Guise faction
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Guise seeks help from the Pope and Phillip II of Spain.
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At Orleans, the Duc de Guise was killed by an assassin.
Result – Edict of Amboise 1563
◦ Eliminated the first generation of Catholic
leadership
◦ The Huguenot heartland in the south virtually
untouched
◦ The royal treasury hemorrhaging
◦ The crown’s position was weak.
◦ Catherine bent her efforts towards a
settlement.
◦ Restricted Protestant freedoms
The Second War (1567-1568)

Catherine begana two year tour – to establish unity
between the nobility
Huguenots attempt a coup at Meaux
This plan failed and provoked the the second war
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Result
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◦ Montmorency was dead, the crown was more in debt, and
the Peace of Longjumeau was pretty much the same as the
Peace of Amboise.
The Third War (1568-1570)
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The Cardinal de Lorraine hatched a plot to overturn
the peace and capture Conde and Coligny.
The Cardinal also saw Mary Stuart, Queenof Scots, as a
tool for unseating Elizabeth and putting a Catholic
monarch on theat throne as well.
The third war was more protracted, and brought the
war to the rural areas in central and southern France,
spreading the suffering to the pop. And raising the
cultural tension between Catholics and Protestants.
Peace at St. Germain ended the war.
The St. Bartholomew’s Day
Massacre (1572)
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Catherine exerts more effort to create harmony
between Catholic and Protestant leadership.
Tension between the two groups grows until August 23,
1573.
An attempt on Admiral de Coligny life is taken on the
22nd – Huguenots are outraged.
King Charles IX decides to kill Coligny and all
Huguenot leadership around him.
The Massacre lasted 3 days – stories of atrocities,
courage, and compassion were rampant.
Result
Experience radicalised many of the
survivors
 A distrust of the king
 Upsurge in the political rhetoric of
resistance.
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Churches organized themselves into an
efficient hierarchy for communications
and self-protection.
The Fourth through the Seventh

Four more wars took place between 1572 and 1580.

The War of the Three Henries (1584-1589)
◦ Henry III (King of England)
◦ Henri de Navarre (Presumptive heir to the throne of France) and his cousin Henri Prince de
Condé - excommunicated.
◦ The royalist, Protestant, and Leaguer forces, all led by men named Henri, were to engage in
the bloodiest and longest of the civil wars.

The Wars of the League (1589-1598)
◦ A fight with Spain over the capital of Paris.

1598 saw the publication of the Edict of Nantes, which granted Huguenots freedom
of worship and civil rights for nearly a century, until Henri IV's descendent Louis
XIV revoked it in 1685. It is not the end of the Huguenot story in France, but it
closes this chapter of the Wars of Religion.
The Age of Absolutism
1550-1800
Setting the Stage for Revolution & Enlightenment
What is Absolutism

Absolutism means that the ultimate
authority in the state is rested in the
hands of a king who claims to rule by
divine right.

Under absolutism the king has the power
to make laws, administer justice, control
the state’s administrative system, and
determine foreign policy.
Imperial Spain and Philip II
Charles V

Charles V was king of Spain and
ruler of the Holy Roman
Empire. He became embroiled
in wars with the Ottoman
empire as it advanced on central
Europe and also in religious
conflicts with the Protestants in
the German states. He
abdicated both thrones and split
them between his brother,
Ferdinand, and son, Philip.
The Wars of Philip II, 1571–1588
How Did Spanish Power Increase Under
Charles V and Philip II?
Charles V
•In 1519, Charles V inherited a huge
empire. He became king of Spain and was
also the heir to the Hapsburg empire.
•Ruling two empires involved Charles in
constant warfare.
•Eventually, Charles gave up his titles and
divided his empire.
Philip II
•During his 42-year reign, Philip worked to
expand Spanish influence, strengthen the
Catholic Church, and make his own power
absolute.
•Philip reigned as an absolute monarch –
a ruler with complete authority over the
government and lives of the people.
•He asserted that he ruled by divine right –
belief that authority to rule comes directly
from God.
•Philip saw himself as guardian of the
Roman Catholic Church.
•Philip fought many wars as he attempted
to advance Spanish Catholic power.
The Thirty Years War 1618-1648
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Preconditions
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Religious Division
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Calvinism and the Palatinate
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Maximilian of Bavaria and the Catholic
League
Four Periods of War
The Bohemian Period
 The Danish Period
 The Swedish Period
 The Swedish-French Period
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The Treaty of Westphalia

a collective name given to the two treaties concluded on the 24th
of October 1648 by the empire with France at Munster and with
Sweden and the Protestant estates of the empire at Osnabruck, by
which the Thirty years’ War was brought to an end.

The treaties resulted from the first modern diplomatic congress,
thereby initiating a new political order in central Europe, based
upon the concept of a sovereign state governed by a sovereign. In
the event, the treaties’ regulations became integral to the
constitutional law of the Holy Roman Empire.

The treaties did not restore the peace throughout Europe,
however. France and Spain remained at war for the next eleven
years, making peace only in the Treaty of Pyrenees of 1659.
Some Background about France
• From the 1560s to the 1590s, religious wars between Huguenots
(French Protestants) and the Catholic majority tore France apart.
• To protect Protestants, Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes, which
granted Huguenots religious toleration and let them fortify their own
towns and cities.
• Henry then set out to heal the shattered land. Under Henry, the
government reached into every aspect of French life.
• By building the royal bureaucracy and reducing the power of the
nobility, Henry laid the foundations for royal absolutism. He reduced
the power of the nobles and strengthened the monarchy.
• After his death, Cardinal Richelieu served as chief minister to Louis
XIII. Richelieu held great influence and orchestrated the further
decline of the powers of nobles and Protestants.
France under
“The Sun King”
• Louis XIV ruled with absolute power and
took the sun as a symbol. An army of
300,000 soldiers stood ready to
enforce his will. His finance minister,
Jean Baptiste Colbert, instituted
mercantilist policies, which helped
France to become the richest
European state.
• Louis XIV lived a lavish lifestyle at the
Palace of Versailles, which was a symbol
of France’s wealth. There, nobles
became courtiers who posed no threat
to the monarchy. The arts flourished
with the support of Louis XIV..
• Louis expanded the bureaucracy and appointed intendants, royal officials who collected taxes,
recruited soldiers, and carried out Louis’s policies in the provinces.
• Louis created the strongest army in Europe, which he used to enforce his
policies at home and abroad.
“L’etat, c’est moi”—“I am the state.”
Successes and Failures of
Louis XIV
Success
•Louis greatly strengthened royal power.
•The French army became the strongest in
Europe.
•France became the wealthiest state in
Europe.
•French culture, manners, and customs
became the European standard.
•The arts flourished in France.
Failures
•Louis engaged in costly wars that had
disastrous results.
•Rival rulers joined forces to check French
ambitions.
•Louis persecuted the Huguenots, causing
many to flee France. Their departure was
a huge blow to the French economy.
• European alliances were formed to keep French expansion in
check. The War of the Spanish Succession ended with France
agreeing not to unite with Spain. The flight of the Huguenots
from France when the Edict of Nantes was revoked left the state
without many of its best and brightest.
England
• Tudor monarchs Henry VIII and Elizabeth I sought the approval of Parliament on important
matters. Parliament tended to vote as the monarchs wished.
• After the Tudors, the Stuarts came to rule England. James I tried to claim absolute power,
and dissolved Parliament. Charles I followed in his father’s footsteps, but had to summon
Parliament to raise taxes. Parliament forced him to sign the Petition of Right. He then
dissolved Parliament and didn’t summon them for 11 years, until he needed funds to put
down a rebellion in Scotland. Parliament and Charles I then went to war with each other.
England under Charles I
• Absolute monarch – had no
problem with putting his
enemies in prison without trial
• Ran up a huge debt
• Dissolved Parliament in 1629
• Touched off massive English Civil
War between his supporters
(“cavaliers”) and supporters of
Parliament (“roundheads”) led
by Oliver Cromwell.
• Parliament put Charles on trial
and condemned him to death as
“a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and
public enemy.” Charles I was
beheaded in 1649.
Absolute Monarchs in Russia
Peter the Great Modernizes & Expands Russia
• Peter
the Great traveled through
W. Europe and brought technical
experts, teachers, and soldiers
back to Russia. He forcefully
pushed Russians to adopt
Western ideas, technology and
culture.
• He made himself the head of the
Russian Orthodox Church and
gave the landowning nobles
(boyars) jobs working for the
state. He adopted mercantilist
economic policies to pay for his
reforms and he ruled in a very
autocratic manner.
• Peter tried to defeat the
Ottomans to gain a warm-water
port, but was unsuccessful. He
was able to win the Great
Northern War and take Swedish
territory on the Baltic Sea,
where he built his magnificent
capital city of St. Petersburg.
Absolute Monarchs in Russia
Catherine the Great follows Peter’s Lead
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Catherine the Great also
embraced Western ideas
and
allowed the boyars to
impose serfdom on the
peasants.
She won a warm-water
port in the Russo-Turkish
war and
also seized territory from
Poland.
Mercantilism
• Defined – An economic philosophy that
international commerce should primarily serve
to increase a country's financial wealth; using
the economy to enrich the state, mercantilism
encouraged exports and discouraged imports
(unless they lead to even greater exports) to
amass a surplus of gold and foreign currency.
• Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was written as
an anti-mercantilist argument.