Global Crisis
Page 11
Most Christian rulers admitted only one restraint on their absolute power: like their Ottoman contemporaries, they consulted spiritual experts before taking controversial decisions. Thus in Russia, ‘when discord and warfare break out with neighbouring powers, the tsar at that time consults with the patriarch, metropolitans, archbishops, bishops and with other hierarchs of the prominent monasteries'; while many Catholic rulers routinely asked their confessors to certify that they might ‘in conscience’ adopt a controversial policy. In addition, the kings of France and Portugal created a ‘council of conscience’ to advise them on more complex issues; while other Catholic monarchs periodically consulted theologians. Thus in the 1620s Philip IV asked a ‘committee of theologians’ to decide whether his sister should marry the Protestant Charles Stuart; whether he could send assistance to the French Protestants; whether he might intervene in the Mantuan succession; whether he should send troops into the Valtelline; whether he needed to honour concessions made to rebels; and so on.43 Later in his reign, Philip even convened a ‘summit’ of men and women from his European dominions credited with prophetic powers, and asked them for advice on policy. Although he never repeated this experiment, for the next 25 years the king wrote a letter once every two weeks seeking advice and prayers from one of the spirit mediums at the ‘summit’, Sor María de Ágreda, who thus became the most influential woman in Spain.
Secular ministers, too, might try to convince their masters that even the most costly and destructive policies enjoyed divine favour. In a memorial of 1626 that listed the various successes of his ministry, Philip IV's chief adviser the count-duke of Olivares assured his master triumphantly: ‘Sire, God has placed the armed forces of Your Majesty in this situation, with no other assistance or ally. I would be lying to Your Majesty, and a traitor to you, if I claimed that all this stemmed from human provision. No: God alone has done it, and only God could have done it.’ A quarter of a century later, Philip himself attributed his ability ‘to overcome not only my enemies but also storms at sea, epidemics on land and the domestic unrest of the towns of Andalusia’ to the support of ‘God's most mighty hand’.44
Pride and Prejudice
It is, of course, possible that early modern rulers used such rhetoric and imagery as propaganda without actually believing it. Queen Christina of Sweden asserted as much in 1649, when she debated with her council whether or not to support English royalists after Charles I's execution. Marshal Jakob de la Gardie argued that, since ‘such a giddy spirit has arisen’ in Europe, rulers of the same faith should support one other; but Christina (still officially a Lutheran) disagreed. ‘People use religion as a pretext,’ she replied, ‘and it is used by us against Calvinists and Catholics alike.’ ‘The Pope, the Spaniards and the rest of the House of Austria have always sought to make use of religion,’ de la Gardie reminded her. ‘Like a raincoat when it's wet,’ the queen quipped. In similar vein, three decades later (and now a Catholic), Christina noted that although princes should allow their confessors ‘to speak freely to us, we must not blindly obey all that they tell us. We must be well aware that it is not always God who speaks to us through them.‘45
Such overt cynicism was extremely rare in the seventeenth century. More typical was the providential vision of Philip IV of Spain, who in 1629 told a senior minister that ‘I seek salvation, and want to placate God by obeying His laws and by making sure that others obey them, without exception’ because then, ‘even if misfortunes rain upon us, you need have no fear that they will harm us.’ Therefore, the king explained, ‘I desire the fear of God and executing his commands and doing Justice to be my guiding principle’. He still felt the same three decades later. Upon hearing in 1656 that Britain had joined France, Portugal and the Catalans in making war on him, Philip confided to Sor María de Ágreda that, although ‘The risk is apparent and the distress is greater than any that this Monarchy has ever seen, particularly since we lack the means to withstand even one part of such a great storm’, he intended to keep on fighting because ‘I have firm faith that, unless our sins make us unworthy, Our Lord will deliver us from this great storm without allowing these kingdoms, so loyal to the Catholic Church, to be brought down by heretics.‘46
Naturally, a providential vision did not preclude secular motives for waging war. Many seventeenth-century rulers, like their medieval predecessors, saw waging war as a rite of passage to be performed at the outset of every reign. Thus, three months after his accession, when Charles I asked the English Parliament to vote funds for war with Spain, he said ‘I pray you remember that this being my first action’ as king ‘what a great dishonor it were both to you and to me’ if it ‘should fail for [lack of] that assistance you are able to give me’. A few years later, when Philip IV heard that Louis XIII had just invaded Italy, he scribbled on a ministerial memorandum that ‘My intention is to get my revenge on France for its recent behaviour’, and to that end ‘I shall be there in person. Fame, after all, cannot be gained without taking personal part in some great enterprise. This one will enhance my reputation, and I gather it should not be too difficult.‘47 All three kings – just like their contemporaries Gustavus Adolphus and Charles X of Sweden, Christian IV and Frederick III of Denmark, Emperor Ferdinand III and Tsar Alexei – not only commanded their armies in person but also claimed to relish military life. The same was true of their children. Louis XIV personally participated in over 20 sieges, starting in 1650 when he was 12, and ending in 1692, when he ceded the role to his heir, noting that ‘If my son does not go on campaign every year, he will be totally despised and will lose all respect’. His cousin, the future James II, started the second Anglo-Dutch war in 1664 almost single-handed because, according to his secretary, ‘Having been bred to arms’ he sought ‘an occasion to show his courage on sea as on land’. James eventually ‘broke the measure of those ministers who should otherwise have preserved the peace at any price’.48
Several seventeenth-century rulers also advanced strategic arguments to justify starting (or prolonging) their wars. Thus in 1642 the French Court watched a ‘heroic comedy’ in five acts commissioned by Cardinal Richelieu in which ‘Ibère’ (Iberia: Spain) tries to win the love of ‘Europe’ but then, having failed, starts to place shackles on her until ‘Francion’ rushes in, exclaiming
Europe, it is better to perish than be enslaved.
Liberty must be bought with blood.
Francion warns Ibère to ‘keep within your just boundaries'; and when Ibère pays no attention, Francion declares
In the end we must have war, and I am driven to it
Not by ambition but by necessity.49
‘Necessity’ served to justify many foreign wars. Thus, in 1624, despite much public rhetoric about Britain's dedication to upholding ‘the Protestant cause’ in Germany, a diplomat coldly informed his Palatine counterpart that ‘England has no other interest in Germany apart from the Palatinate; it does not matter to them whether all Germany is set in flames, provided they might have the Palatinate.’ The diplomat justified this with a ‘domino theory’: ‘if we lose the Palatinate first, next we lose the Low Countries, then Ireland, and finally ourselves’.50 Spanish ministers constructed a similar ‘domino theory’ to justify their numerous wars. For example, in 1629 they warned Philip IV that ‘once the Netherlands are lost, America and other kingdoms of Your Majesty will also immediately be lost with no hope of recovering them'; a point repeated four years later by a Spanish official in Brussels: ‘If we lose the Netherlands, we will not be able to defend America, Spain or Italy’. A few years later a veteran diplomat extended the argument yet further: ‘We cannot defend the Netherlands if we lose Germany’.51 Spanish troops therefore continued to fight on all fronts until 1648. Sweden's leaders likewise claimed that (initially) invading Germany and (later) occupying large parts of it were essential to Swedish security. ‘Pomerania and the Baltic Coast are like an outwork of the Swedish crown; our security against the Emperor depends on them,’ wrote Chancellor Axel Oxe
nstierna; Sweden was a fortress ‘whose walls are its cliffs, whose ditch is the Baltic, and whose counterscarp is Pomerania,’ echoed Ambassador Johan Adler Salvius.52 Failure to retain any territorial gains would imperil national security – so Sweden, too, continued to fight until 1648.
These various factors threatened to eternalize many conflicts. Ending the Thirty Years War required sixty months of negotiations, with scarcely a break; talks to end the Eighty Years War between Spain and the Dutch took twenty months; those to end the Thirteen Years War between Russia and Poland required 31 sessions over the course of a year – and even then ended only in a truce. Such longevity also reflected other factors that tend to prolong all conflicts. First, it is always easier to start than to finish a war. The nobles of Russia made this point in 1652, when Tsar Alexei sought their approval to attack the Ottoman sultan: 'It is indeed easy to pull the sword from the scabbard, but not so easy to put it back when you want, since the outcome of war is uncertain.’ Second, objectives changed. As the clergyman and cryptologist John Wallis observed when he looked back on the English Civil War, its ultimate objectives ‘proved very different from what was said to be at first intended. As is usual in such cases; the power of the sword frequently passing from hand to hand, and those who begin a War, not being able to foresee where it wil end.’ A generation later, another English clergyman noted that ‘the ends that those who begin a war designe to themselves are seldome obtained, but oftentimes that which is contrary thereunto and dreaded by them is brought to pass’.53
Finally, in the seventeenth century as today, the more resources invested, and the more lives sacrificed, the more total victory seems the only acceptable outcome. As Arthur Hopton, Britain's ambassador in Madrid, observed in 1638 concerning Spain's struggle against France:
The end of all these troubles (unless they outlast Time) must be peace, which nevertheless comes on so slowly as I cannot say appearances thereof are visible. That which I can discover is that on both sides they have reason to be weary of the war, and … they would be glad of any good occasion to treat of a peace; but they are so entangled on both sides, partly out of jealousy and partly out of avarice, being unwilling to forgo what they have gotten (and indeed have dearly enough paid for) as I find the way to begin a treaty to be very difficult.
At this point, the war was only three years old. Eight years later, when France's diplomatic delegation in Westphalia asked permission to conclude a settlement, Cardinal Mazarin made much the same point as Hopton. ‘After all the many expenditures that the war has cost’, he insisted that his diplomats must ‘find pretexts for delaying the signature of a peace treaty’ in order to ‘profit from the remainder of the campaigning season’.54
In addition, according to another British ambassador in Madrid, the Spaniards ‘are not frendes to part with any thinge they have once gott'; and their rhetoric to postpone peace invoked reputation as often as religion.55 A notorious example occurred in 1656 when secret talks with France took place. After three months of hard bargaining, the parties agreed that France would end all assistance to Portugal and in return would retain all its remaining conquests in Catalonia and the Netherlands; but Spain would not abandon the prince of Condé, Louis XIV's cousin, who had defied Mazarin and entered Spanish service (see page 285 below). Philip IV's chief minister, Don Luis de Haro, refused to countenance any peace that failed to restore Condé ‘to the rank, dignities and positions’ that he had previously held. ‘We have considered first the question of honour,’ Haro told a French envoy grandiloquently, ‘and only in second place the conservation of the state, because without honour every state will eventually collapse.’ The war continued for three more years.56
Finally, negotiating while hostilities continued made peace more elusive because, as Cardinal Mazarin put it in April 1647, each state's demands reflected ‘how much the military situation has changed in our favour recently’. The count of Peñaranda, the chief Spanish negotiator at the Westphalian peace congress, agreed. In June of that year, he informed a colleague: ‘You believe that the war will last many years, but you are entirely mistaken … My lord, the vassals of both kings (of France and Spain) find themselves so exhausted that asking them for more could lead either monarch to complete ruin … Whether we win or lose, we both must have peace.’ News of the revolt of Naples deepened Peñaranda's pessimism yet further: ‘The Naples rising has been widespread. For God's sake, Sir, we have to settle in some way’ with France. Yet one month later, Peñaranda hailed news that the French siege of Lleida had failed as ‘the most important and pleasing news I have ever had in my life because it shows that Our Lord in his mercy smiles upon us and wishes to remove the scourge from us’. He therefore urged the king to fight on. Philip duly obliged.57
Minorities and Tanistry
Succession struggles also increased the frequency of civil wars. Early modern states often experienced anarchy whenever a ruler died leaving no capable and universally recognized successor – and minorities proved unusually common in the seventeenth century. France experienced civil war soon after the accession of Louis XIII at the age of nine in 1610, and again after his death in 1643 when he left an heir aged only five. Civil War also broke out in Russia when Tsar Alexei died in 1676 leaving three young sons. On the death of Charles IX (1611), Gustavus Adolphus (1632) and Charles X (1660) of Sweden, each of whom left a minor to succeed them, their nobles swiftly reduced the powers of the crown; while those of Denmark did the same in 1648 when Christian IV died before he could secure parliamentary acceptance for his heir (see chapter 8).
Instability was also endemic in elective Monarchies. Although the House of Habsburg retained the title of Holy Roman Emperor throughout the seventeenth century, the Electoral College only chose Ferdinand II in 1619 after a bitter contest that unleashed the Thirty Years War; and only voted for his grandson Leopold in 1658 after a year of intrigue and bargaining for concessions. Likewise, although Sigismund Vasa and his two sons occupied the Polish throne for almost a century, the death of each monarch gave rise to an interregnum while the federal Diet bargained for concessions before choosing a successor. The Dutch Republic suffered a constitutional crisis in 1650 when, on the death of William II of Orange, the States-General denied the title of Stadholder to his posthumous son; while in Japan the following year, the death of the autocratic Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu, leaving only a child to succeed him, unleashed plots to overthrow the dynasty. China's Ming dynasty also experienced succession difficulties in the first half of the seventeenth century. The Wanli emperor (1573–1620) refused to recognize his eldest son as his heir, instead intriguing to gain recognition for the claims of another of his offspring; and although the eldest son eventually succeeded, he died shortly afterwards, leaving a young heir who suffered from what today would be called ‘Attention Deficit Disorder’.
This instability paled in comparison with the succession disputes that characterized some other Asian dynasties. The distinguished historian Joseph Fletcher observed that nomadic peoples such as the Mongols, as well as dynasties like the Qing, the Mughals and the Ottomans who claimed descent from Mongolian forebears, determined each transition of power through a practice he called ‘bloody tanistry’, after the Celtic practice in which each ruler had a recognized heir (the Táinste), who nonetheless had to prove himself by defeating, and often killing, all challengers before assuming the full powers of his predecessor. Tanistry created serious political instability, because everyone took part in succession disputes (there were no ‘civilians’ in nomad societies, only warriors) and so everyone had to guess which of the various potential successors would emerge victorious in the next generation and position themselves accordingly – knowing that those who had supported the victor would monopolize the spoils.
Perhaps tanistry made sense on the steppes of Central Asia – because the principal requirement of each clan leader was military talent, Fletcher observed, ‘what better way for a nomadic nation to choose the best qualified scion of their royal cla
n than to see which son, brother, uncle, grandson, or nephew of the deceased ruler would win the grand khanship in an internal war?’ – but the practice often brought more complex states to the brink of extinction.58 On the death in 1626 of Nurhaci, ‘great ancestor’ of the Qing, his relatives fought among themselves for several years before a clear successor emerged: his eighth son, Hong Taiji. When he died in 1643, another bitter struggle broke out between his brothers and uncles until the survivors agreed to recognize the late emperor's ninth son, who became the Shunzhi emperor. In the end, half of the sons of Nurhaci who survived to adulthood were executed, forced to commit suicide or posthumously disgraced. When the Shunzhi emperor died in 1661, his only stipulation was that his successor should have already contracted and survived smallpox (the disease that killed him) and for this reason the throne passed to his third son, the Kangxi emperor, although he was only eight years old. For the next decade his ambitious relatives struggled to dominate the regency government.