EUROPE 



The accident of marriages con- 

 veyed to one man, Charles V, the 

 entire Spanish inheritance, includ- 

 ing Sicily, S. Italy or Naples, the 

 Netherlands, and the whole Haps- 

 burg territorial inheritance in Ger- 

 many, while he also succeeded his 

 grandfather as emperor in 1519. 

 A year later the floodgates of the 

 Reformation were opened by 

 Luther's defiance of the papacy. 

 The German inheritance of the 

 Haps burgs was transferred to 

 Charles's brother Ferdinand, who 

 acquired for his own house the 

 crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, 

 and the Hapsburg monarchies be- 

 came the barrier between Europe 

 and the Turks. During Charles's 

 reign Protestantism was estab- 

 lished in Scandinavia, over the N. 

 half of Germany, and hi the N. 

 half of the Netherlands ; while it 

 was planted as yet insecurely in 

 England, Scotland, and France. 



Religion and Politics 

 When Charles died in 1558 his 

 son Philip II was ruling over the 

 Spanish dominions and the Nether- 

 lands, Ferdinand was emperor, and 

 a truce had been confirmed be- 

 tween the Protestant and Catholic 

 states of the empire. By the end 

 of the century Philip had virtually 

 lost the N. Netherlands, which 

 became the United Provinces of 

 the Dutch Republic, while the 

 Catholic S. still remained the 

 Spanish Netherlands. England 

 and Scotland had both become 

 definitely Protestant, soon to be 

 united under one crown ; while 

 France remained Catholic, with 

 freedom of worship secured to the 

 Protestants, and her foreign policy 

 directed by purely political con- 

 siderations irrespective of religion. 

 Maritime ascendancy, once en- 

 joyed by Italian city states ; had 

 first passed from them to Portugal 

 and Spain, but was now decisively 

 transferred to England and the 

 Dutch states. 



The struggle of the religions was 

 fought out in the Thirty Years' 

 War (1618-48), the emperor 

 himself championing the Catho- 

 lics, while Gustavus Adolphus of 

 Sweden intervened on behalf of 

 Protestantism. Its outcome left 

 the division between Catholic and 

 Protestant states in Germany very 

 much where it had been at the 

 beginning. It also broke the last 

 I attempt to establish an effective 

 j central control of the empire in 

 ! the hands of the emperor. And 

 meanwhile Spain had become 

 j practically a secondary power, 

 while France, by Richelieu's policy, 

 had developed a strong central 

 government. 



In the next phase, Louis XIV 

 of France, a monarch whose abso- 



3019 



lutism in his own country was 

 almost unqualified, sought through 

 a long series of wars, 1667-1713, 

 to enlarge the borders of France 

 and to make her the dictator of 

 Europe. For 40 years the main 

 resistance came from Spain and 

 Austria, and from the little Dutch 

 state under William of Orange, 

 whose accession to the thrones of 

 England and Scotland brought 

 Great Britain into the European 

 struggle, of which the last phase 

 at this stage was the War of 

 the Spanish Succession (1702-13) 

 That war gave Spain herself to a 

 Bourbon, Philip, a grandson of 

 Louis, who was himself succeeded 

 on the throne of France by his 

 great-grandson Louis XV. It also 

 transferred the Spanish Nether- 

 lands to Austria, together with the 

 Two Sicilies. 



Meanwhile within Germany the 

 electorate of Brandenburg had 

 been erected into the kingdom of 

 Prussia (1701); and outside, Eng- 

 land and Scotland had been incor- 

 porated in the kingdom of Great 

 Britain (1707), while in the E. 

 Russia had at last been organized 

 into a consolidated dominion by 

 Peter the Great, and Sweden, 

 under Charles XII, had made her 

 last effort to retain among the 

 European powers the position won 

 for her by Gustavus Adolphus. 

 Britain had now emerged as the 

 supreme maritime power, and es- 

 tablished naval bases at Gibraltar 

 and Minorca. The reign of Louis 

 XV in France (1713-74) covers an 

 era of protracted European strug- 

 gles. The last aggressive effort of 

 Turkey was crushed in 1718 ; 

 Russia established herself on the 

 Baltic and the Black Sea, and ex- 

 tended her boundaries eastwards. 

 Prussia and Silesia 



The War of the Polish Succes- 

 sion (1733-38) set up a Bourbon 

 dynasty in the Sicilies. The War 

 of the Austrian Succession (1740- 

 48) saved the Austrian dominion 

 from disintegration, except for the 

 annexation of Silesia by Frederick 

 II of Prussia a robbery which led 

 the way to a regrouping of the 

 powers in the Seven Years' War 

 (1756-63). Great Britain, the 

 former ally of Austria, now sup- 

 ported Prussia, which had to de- 

 fend itself against the French on 

 the W., the Austrians on the S., 

 and the Russians on the E. Great 

 Britain's part in the war was 

 mainly on the seas and beyond 

 them, where she fought the French 

 in America and in India, and in 

 effect turned them out of both. In 

 Europe, the war confirmed Prussia 

 as a first-class power, still in posses- 

 sion of Silesia ; but no fighting was 

 needed when, in 1772, the tsarina 



EUROPE 



Catherine arranged with Frederick 

 of Prussia and with Austria the 

 first partition of Poland, a partition 

 carried farther in 1793 and 1795, 

 when the whole of Poland was ab- 

 sorbed by one or other of the three. 



The development of the last 300 

 years had established despotic 

 governments in every state in the 

 European continent, large or small, 

 with the exception of Switzerland 

 and Holland. The despots were 

 generally well disposed towards 

 their subjects. Many tried to im- 

 prove the conditions of their people, 

 and some succeeded. But, broadly 

 speaking, most of the populations 

 lived actually or approximately in 

 serfdom. Political Liberty was non- 

 existent, and between the classes 

 there was an almost impenetrable 

 social barrier, while the burdens of 

 taxation and service pressed most 

 heavily upon those least capable of 

 supporting them. 



The French Revolution 



The summoning of a popular 

 assembly in France the states- 

 general of 1789 in the hope of 

 discovering a panacea for the 

 imminent financial ruin of the 

 country, proved to be the first 

 step in a wide revolution. Succes- 

 sive assemblies passed from advo- 

 cating the abolition of privileges 

 to demanding the abolition of the 

 privileged. The extremists cap- 

 tured the control of the govern- 

 ment, first emasculated and then 

 wiped out the monarchy, and went 

 on to proclaim themselves the libe- 

 rators of Europe from the tyranny 

 of monarchs and aristocrats. 



Great Britain, whose constitu- 

 tionalism had been the model of the 

 reformers before they were swept 

 away by the revolutionary tide, 

 was swung into the vortex when 

 the new republic tore up treaties, 

 and set about annexing the Aus- 

 trian Netherlands in 1793. Long 

 before the terrors of the revolution 

 within France had exhausted 

 themselves, the armies of the 

 republic, reckless of established 

 methods, were facing and routing 

 the orthodox armies of the mon- 

 archies. Prussia and Spain soon 

 retired from the struggle ; Bona- 

 parte's Italian campaigns broke 

 Austria. Bonaparte betook him- 

 self to Egypt ; Britain, fighting on 

 alone, won the mastery of the 

 Mediterranean ; Austria returned 

 to the attack, supported by Russia. 

 The return of Bonaparte and his 

 establishment as First Consul of 

 France was followed by the shat- 

 tering of the new coalition, and even 

 by the accession of Great Britain 

 to the peace of Amiens, 1802. 



In 1803 the Franco-British duel 

 was renewed ; two years later a 

 new coalition was formed. Nelsn 



