Europe at war, 1689-1713

William of Orange’s primary motive for invading England had been to draw the nation into the European coalition against France, and his arrival produced a dramatic transformation of British foreign policy. From 1689 to 1714 it was at war for all but five of these years. These wars demolished the order Louis had constructed in the first thirty-five years of his reign.

The Glorious Revolution (1688-89): why it matters

1. The Revolution did not bring about democracy. After 1688-9 the crown still retained considerable prerogative power.

2. However, the Revolution and the Act of Settlement (1701) and the Act of Union (1707) established a Protestant succession to the crown. From this time onwards monarchs and their spouses had to follow the religion of the people. The Toleration Act of 1689 allowed Dissenters (not Catholics) freedom of worship. Although Dissenters were still deprived of public office by the Test Act, the practice of Occasional Conformity allowed many of them to sit on corporations and to vote.

The Siege of Vienna

Go here to listen to the discussion on the Siege of Vienna in Melvyn Bragg's 'In Our Time'.

Three wars and an invasion

The War of the Reunions
In 1683-4 Louis XIV fought his third war, the War of the Reunions. In many respects it was a continuation of the two previous wars and was part of the ongoing struggle between France and Spain for the mastery of Europe.

In 1670 he had set up several Chambers of Reunion to investigate whether France had been given all the territories to which it was legally entitled following the Thirty Years’ War and the War of Devolution. The Chambers resolved that more areas, mainly small towns and villages surrounding the cities that had been ceded by treaty, should be awarded to Louis and when French troops were sent to these areas they were generally unopposed. In effect, the reunions were a legal veneer for annexations.

In 1680-1 the French attacked Orange, where the Dutch Stadhouder William’s family had its hereditary estates. In August 1681 they occupied the town, pulled down its walls and let loose the dragonnades. This was a final insult to William as a sovereign prince. For a while though he was helpless, as the States General would not allow him to increase the number of armed forces. In September 1681 the Protestant city of Strassburg was taken from the Empire and renamed Strasbourg, giving the French control of much of the lower Rhine. The barrier town of Luxembourg was then besieged (it fell in June 1684).

Louis XIV and religion

During the reign of Louis XIV religion was still a vital issue. The king had been granted the title of ‘most Christian King’ by the pope. Though he could not define doctrine, it was the king’s right to direct affairs of religion in France and therefore to govern relations between church and state. The church was the strongest moral and ideological support for the monarchy. The crown made use of priests and bishops to inform the population of laws and victories and bishops often played an important role in local government. The Church formed the First Estate. Although it was exempt from the taille, the Assembly of Clergy which met every year was obliged to grant a free gift of several million livres to the monarchy.

Louis XIV: the early wars

[This painting by Pierre Mignard represents Lous'' capture of of Maastricht in 1673.]

France: the international situation
In 1661 France had just emerged from 25 years of foreign war against the Habsburgs of the Spanish and Austrian empires. Since her entry into the Thirty Years’ War in 1635 French foreign policy had aimed at breaking the potential stranglehold on France occasioned by the rise of Spanish power and Spain’s possession of territories round the borders. The costs of the war were such that in 1648 both France and Spain went bankrupt - but France slightly less so than Spain.

One of the ‘big stories’ of the late 17th century is the transformation of the military and financial institutions of the state to enable it to fight large-scale wars in Europe and beyond.

Louis XIV and absolute monarchy

‘For monarchists everywhere, the turbulent 1640s proved to be the darkest decade before the dawn of a new era of authoritarian government often characterized by historians as “the age of absolutism”. Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory (Penguin, 2007, 207).

The inheritance of Louis XIV
Louis was born 5 September 1638, the ‘God-given’, ‘miraculous’ child of Louis XIII and his Habsburg wife, Anne of Austria, after twenty-two years of marriage; he was baptised Louis-Dieudonné. He succeeded his father in May1643 aged four. From the start he was treated as a king.  He was taught that if he ruled in accordance with the will of God, his reign would be numbered as one of the most glorious in the history of France.

Throughout his reign he was acutely aware of his inheritance. French jurists had defined that the line of kings had followed each other in legitimate succession from Hugh Capet (987-96). This succession had to be male. The Salic law had the advantage of keeping foreigners off the throne but it created problems if there was no male heir. Before Louis’ birth the Bourbon line had come uncomfortably close to extinction. Louis himself only raised one legitimate child and was succeeded by his great-grandson (his son, grandson and one great-grandson predeceased him).

In his Memoirs, begun in 1661 for his son, the Dauphin. Louis set out a view of himself as a wise ruler, appointed by God, a glorious prince, dedicated to the pursuit of la gloire (glory, reputation). His reign coincided with the greatest period of French cultural and political dominance – le grand siècle.

Poor relief in ancient Rome: a comparison

If you want to make a comparison between poor relief in Christian Europe before the welfare state and provisions for the poor in the classical world, then this site provides fascinating information. As you will see, the bread dole in ancient Rome, doesn't have much resemblance to the concept of charity.

Thanks, Caryl.

The problem of poverty

[This is a picture of the Corsham almshouses in Wiltshire, founded by Lady Margaret Hungerford.]]

A widespread fear of the disorderly poor meant that the early-modern state was preoccupied with the question of poverty.

The largest group of people classed as paupers were the elderly. Widows and abandoned wives could account for a third or more of the recipients of poor relief. However, their best support remained their relatives. In eastern and southern Europe older people often lived in three-generational multiple family households, or moved from the household of one married child to another. But in Italy and Spain those without relatives could be abandoned. The poor relief records of Seville and Barcelona show that the poverty of a widowed mother and her daughter could turn the daughter into a prostitute and the mother into a procuress.

Old Age

William Harvey

This post is heavily biased to English history and is indebted to Pat Thane's Old Age in English History (Oxford University Press, 2000).

According to Psalm 90, the human life-span was 70. But in the early modern period some people lived beyond that age:Titian 1488/90-1576; William Harvey 1578–1657; Thomas Hobbes 1588-1679. The average age of death of the nine 17th century archbishops of Canterbury was 73 and the average age of appointment 60. In 1635 there was immense excitement over the death of Thomas Parr (‘Old Parr’) who died in London allegedly at the age of 153, having boasted that he had committed adultery at the age of 105. He was dissected by William Harvey who attributed his death to the sulphurous air and rich living of London. Perhaps significantly, he did not question his longevity and it was not until the 19th century that such claims were disbelieved.

The Invention of Germany

Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, 1740-86

Click here for the second of Misha Glenny's programmes on Germany. This deals with the rise of Prussia to great power status in the eighteenth century and is very relevant to next term's programme.

Galileo and his daughters: a case study

This post is taken from Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter: A Drama of Science, Faith and Love (London: Fourth Estate, 1999).

Galileo Galileo had three children, a boy and two girls, Virginia and Livia, the result of his long liaison with Marina Gamba of Venice. Virginia was born in August 1600, Livia a year later. Because the girls were illegitimate they were deemed unmarrigeable and soon after Virginia’s thirteenth birthday she was placed at the Poor Clare convent of San Matteo in Arcetri, where she lived out her life in poverty and seclusion.  She took the name of Suor Maria Celeste and Livia became Suor Arcangela.

The seventeenth-century family

In the seventeenth century the family was the basic unit of society. It was the place of residence and of the pooling and distribution of resources for consumption. For many a small farmer and craftsman it was also the basic unit of production. For most people the place of work was also the place of residence.

More on the bibliothèque bleue

One of the productions of the Bibliothèque bleue, published at Troyes

Martine, from the Poverest class, has sent this link for finding out more about the bibliothèque bleue. Click on 'Patrimoine' at the top of the page and go to 'livres de colportages'. Then click on 'tout voir'. Enjoy!

The invention of Germany

Listen here for the first of Misha Glenny's fascinating programmes on German history. It deals with the Thirty Years' War so it should be familiar to you!

The crisis of the seventeenth century

The middle years of the seventeenth century saw a scale of disruption, social as well as political, that has caused some historians to write about a ‘seventeenth-century crisis’. It was a period of poor climate, bad harvests and food shortages but can these alone account for the widespread disorder?

From around 1640 major upheavals occurred in Scotland, Ireland, England, Catalonia and Portugal; in 1647 in Naples and Sicily; in 1648 and 1660 in Denmark; from 1648 to the early 1650s in France; from 1648 in Poland and Muscovy; from 1652 in Sweden.

It wasn't Galileo, it was Thomas Harriott

All these years I've been teaching people wrong! On 26 July 1609 the English polymath Thomas Harriot became the first person to look at a celestial object through a telescope. Harriot pointed his simple ‘Dutch trunke’ telescope at the Moon on 26th July 1609, making simple drawings of our nearest astronomical neighbour from his house in Syon Park in what is now West London. He made his pioneering drawings several months before Galileo

Literacy and education

A hornbook was a primer  for children consisting of a sheet containing the letters of the alphabet, mounted on wood, bone, leather or stone and protected by a thin sheet of transparent horn or mica.ption

This post owes a great deal to David Cressy, ‘Literacy in context: meaning and measurement in early modern England’ in John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds), Consumption and the World of Goods (Routledge, 1993), 306) and to Margaret Spufford's famous and ground-breaking, Small Books and Pleasant Histories (Methuen 1981).

The Princess and the Philosopher

You can find more information about Princess Elizabeth of the Palatinate (1618-80)  and her correspondence with René Descartes on Wikipedia - also  here. and here.

Some scholars think she was in love with Descartes. Philosophers admire her for the way she criticised his philosophy of dualism.

The Scientific Revolution

[Above is a depiction of Louis XIV visiting the French Academy of Sciences in 1671.]

‘Religion provided a universal mode of thinking and of expression which pervaded all aspects of life in seventeenth-century Europe…For the great majority, strict conformity was both natural and unquestioned. Yet historians agree that this period also marked a crucial stage in the emancipation of the human mind from the blindly accepted dogma and intellectual traditions of the past.’ Thomas Munck, Seventeenth-Century Europe (Palgrave, 2005), 287.

The decline of the devil
The middle decades of the century saw a subtle yet significant shift as the primary source of danger came to be seen not as the devil but as human sin and weakness. Stories about divine judgement did not go away but they became marginalized. There was a growing scepticism about hell and eternal torments. This does not mean that religion was less important and it is misleading to see the period as witnessing a growing secularism.