APEURO Lecture 1F Mrs. Kray

 Manual for a realistic ruler  Considered first work of political science  Some say “The Prince” was Ferdinand of Aragon  Good government provided justice, law, and order  The ends justify the means  Patriotic appeal for a free & united Italy “It is much more safe to be feared than to be loved, when you have to choose between the two.”

 Taming the aristocracy (nobles of the sword)  Offered the institution of monarchy as a guarantee to law and order  Develop a consistent stream of revenue through taxation  Break down the mass of feudal, inherited, customary, or “common” law in which the rights of the feudal classes were entrenched.  The kings would MAKE law, enact it by his own authority, regardless of previous custom or historic liberties  What pleases the prince has the force of law!  Make armies and war the sole preserve of the state  No more private armies  Develop bureaucracies to enforce royal authority  Staffed with members of the middle class (nobles of the robe) – did not happen in Eastern Europe  Maintain religious control over clergy and the functions of religion within their national boundaries

 Hundred Years’ War  Severe financial burden  Nobles had built up private armies  War of the Roses  Civil war between two factions of nobles  Devastated England Many people were killed; food wasn’t grown; the wealthy spent money on weapons & soldiers  House of Lancaster (Red Rose)  House of York (White Rose)  Richard III

 First Tudor King  Tamed the nobles  reduced the number of dukes from 9 to 2  Ended livery and maintenance – no private army  Established Star Chamber  New system of courts to deal with property disputes and infractions of public peace  Operated without a jury  Built England’s first navy

 The Hundred Years’ War had left France devastated  Experienced 100 years of warfare on its soil  Burgundy aimed to replace French leadership on the continent  Feared encirclement by Habsburgs

 Louis XI “The Spider” ( )  Built up royal army, suppressed brigands, and subdued rebellious nobles  Added new territory to the royal domain through strategic marriages & by conquering part of Burgundy  Francis I ( )  Concordat of Bologna gave king control of French clergy through an agreement with the pope  Established taxation with taille (direct tax) and gabelle (salt tax)  Claimed lands in Italy

 There was no Spain  Complete the Reconquista of the Moors who occupied the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula  Establish a national identity in a diverse kingdom

 Their marriage united the 2 largest provinces in Spain (Aragon & Castile)  Made alliances with towns (hermandades) to establish law and order  Completed the reconquista  Established strict religious orthodoxy  Spanishness linked to sense of Catholicity  Spanish Inquisition  Jews expelled 1492  Sponsored voyages of exploration  Spain emerged as the strongest nation in Europe  Charles V inherited the Spanish throne, became the most powerful monarch in Europe

 3 kinds of states  Princely states each one had a little hereditary dynastic monarchy Saxony, Brandenburg, Bavaria, Bohemia, Palatine, etc.  Ecclesiastical states run by a bishop or abbot Large portion of the Empire consisted of these church states  Imperial free cities Approximately 50 Not large but dominated commercial and financial life  Emperorship was an elective office  7 electors: 4 princely lords, 3 ecclesiastical lords (Palatine, Saxony, Brandenburg, Bohemia, Mainz, Trier, Cologne)  1452 electors chose Archduke of Austria as emperor, he was a Habsburg – Habsburgs consistently get selves re-elected

 1519 – Elected Holy Roman Emperor and became symbolic head of Germany  Most powerful ruler of his day  Contemporaries feared that Europe was threatened with “universal monarchy”  A kind of imperial system in which no people could preserve independence from Habsburgs  This is France’s great fear

 Because emperorship was an elected office German states over the centuries had prevented the emperor from infringing upon their local liberties  Extracted concessions before election  Made centralizing gov’t power almost impossible  Fears of a universal Habsburg monarchy encouraged countries like France to interfere in German affairs to keep the area politically divided  Charles V battled numerous enemies during the course of his reign  Ottoman Turks’ siege of Vienna, Habsburg-Valois Wars, Algerian pirates, German Lutherans