AP European History
AP European History
After 1450, monarchs tried to strengthen their national power. The rulers of England France, Spain, and Portugal were most successful, though the task was difficult. The economic stagnation of the late Middle Ages added to the rising costs of mercenary armies to force monarchs to seek new taxes. a matter traditionally requiring the consent of the nobles.
In addition, nobles, long the chief problem for kings, faced declining incomes and rising desires to control the government of their king. If not fighting external foes, they engaged in civil war at home with fellow nobles and the royal family. One of the consequences of the Black Death was a severe shortage of peasant labor and urban workers for more than thirty years, a fact that hurt the incomes of noble landlords and city employers alike. When princes and nobles sought to impose new taxes on peasants and new work conditions along with lower wages on urban workers, they faced massive peasant revolts (called jacqueries in France) and urban revolts of skilled laborers. especially in Flanders and north Italy (for example, the Ciompi revolt in Florence in 1378). In western Europe, nobles had to deal with free peasants, whom they sought to make bear the brunt of economic reversals through taxes and dues. In eastern Europe, the trend toward greater freedom reversed itself: in Brandenburg, Prussia, Poland Austria, and especially Russia, serfdom was either reintroduced or drastically strengthened.
Nobles claimed levels of independence under feudal traditions, which from Muscovy to Portugal allowed nobles to meet in a more or less representative forum in order to advise (and in some places, check) the prince. Furthermore, the core of royal armies consisted of nobles: only the appearance of mercenary armies of pikemen saved monarchs from total reliance on noble knights. Many of the higher clergy were noble born. and thus could be enlisted in conflicts with the prince. Facing opposition from the most powerful social groups, the upper clergy. and titled nobles, kings often sought alliances with the bourgeoisie of the towns to counteract the pretended powers of the noble assemblies – for example, the Cortes in Spanish lands, the Estates-General in France, Parliament in England, the Diet in the Holy Roman Empire, the Rijksdag in Sweden, the Sejm in Poland and the zemskii sobor in Muscovy.
The defeat of the English in the Hundred Years’ War removed the external threat to France. Within France. Louis XI (1461-1483) dealt ruthlessly with nobles who opposed him, whether they acted individually or collectively in the Estates-General. He wanted to aggrandize his lands at the expense of his neighbors, so he could allow no noble dissent. The death of the Duke of Burgundy in 1477 removed the military power holding parts of eastern France, whose heiress. Mary of Burgundy, was unable to hold onto the duchy of Burgundy. Franche-Comte, or Artois. all of which fell to the French king. To the west. Louis maneuvered to force another heiress, Anne of Brittany, to marry him or his after a decade of wrangling, deaths. and intrigues, Brittany fen to the greedy French crown. The kingdom of France, in two hundred years, had expanded to nearly its present size, thanks to successful wars and clever, ruthless kings.
The marriage of Isabella of Castile (1474-1504) and Ferdinand of Aragon (1478-1516) created a nearly united Spain, whose boundaries were rounded out when Navarre was conquered in 1512, and the Muslims defeated at Granada in 1492. Lands absorbed retained many provincial rights under the new Spanish crown. To afford the luxury of a larger kingdom, Ferdinand and Isabella. even before the Age of Exploration (discussed later in the chapter), sought to enrich the country and pay for a larger army by encouraging local economic interests, such as sheep farming, which profited from a royally sponsored league, the Mesta. (Spanish merino wool became a prized commodity everywhere.) Cities and towns formed an alliance, the Hermandad, to oppose the old nobility. Finally, the church’s authority within Spain and the queen’s religious beliefs enabled the Inquisition (1479). Believing in limpieza de sangre (purity of blood). Isabella sought to root out an Jewish and Moorish influences from Spain. even among converts, whose sincerity she and the Grand Inquisitor doubted.
The strengthening of nearby Portugal’s monarchy is discussed in “The Age of Exploration” section of this chapter.