Conclusion
Condition of Europe at the Peace of Vervins.
The Treaty of Vervins scarcely made any alteration in the political geography of Europe. Its importance lies rather in the changed conditions which accompanied it, and followed it. A few months after the signing of that treaty, Philip II. died (September 12, 1598) in his seventy-second year, at the Escurial—that magnificent though somewhat strange mixture of ‘a palace, a monastery, and a tomb,’ which is the chief architectural monument of his reign. Had Philip been a wiser man, he might have retained the obedience of the Netherlands, and profited by their industry and their colonies. He might have developed the resources and the constitutional liberties of his country, and enriched her by commerce with America. He might have turned her arms against the Turk, made himself master of the Mediterranean, and left Spain consolidated and prosperous.Decline of Spain. Intent, however, on more magnificent schemes, he had failed disastrously. His attempt to lead the Catholic reaction, and to re-establish the unity of the Church on the basis of Spanish supremacy, had ended in disaster. The defeat of the Armada had saved England from both Spain and Rome. The United Provinces had virtually won their religious and political freedom, and Henry IV. had bowed the Spaniard from his doors. Meanwhile Spain, exhausted by the constant drain which the vast attempts involved, and ruined by the disastrous policy pursued at home (cf. ch. vii.), was fast declining. After Philip’s death her royal race degenerated rapidly; and with a shrinking population, paralysed industries, and attenuated resources, she was forced to step aside and leave the struggle for supremacy to others.
Successes of the Catholic Reaction.
And yet the Catholic reaction, of which Philip had been the leading spirit, had not been without its successes. If England, the United Netherlands, and the Scandinavian kingdoms had decisively broken away from Rome, Protestantism had been completely crushed out in Spain and in Italy, and in 1587, Catholicism was finally restored in Poland by Sigismund. In France, if the Huguenots had secured toleration, that toleration was not to last; and Catholicism had not only captured the King, but had again been recognised as the religion of the State. In Germany, too, the advance of Protestantism had, since the middle of the century, been arrested. The Jesuits had by this time made their influence felt, not only by their missionary and educational work among the people, but also on the policy of the Princes. In Bavaria, Albert III. (1550–1579) drove out the Protestants, and made his Duchy a stronghold of Catholicism. In 1576, Rudolf II. succeeded his father, Maximilian II., in the most important of the Austrian dominions,85 and was elected Emperor. Maximilian had been half-inclined towards Lutheranism. Rudolf, educated under the influence of his mother, the daughter of Charles V., and subsequently at the Spanish Court, was strongly Catholic. He dismissed the Protestant preachers from Vienna, and supported a Catholic policy in the Empire. The advance of Catholicism was also favoured by the dissensions between the Lutherans and the Calvinists, who were respectively headed by the Electors of Saxony and of the Palatinate. Under these circumstances, quarrels over the controverted clauses of the Peace of Augsburg were inevitable (cf. pp. 248–9). The Catholics questioned the right of the Bishop of Magdeburg to a seat in the Diet, and, in 1581, had driven Gebhard Truchsess from his Electoral See of Cologne, because these two prelates had embraced Protestantism.
Disorganised condition of Germany.
Day by day the relations between the adherents of the two creeds became more strained. Already the Thirty Years’ War was looming in the distance—a war in which Protestantism was indeed to hold her own, but at the price of the destruction of German nationality and unity, almost of German independence, and of the crippling of national prosperity and intellectual growth for more than a century.
Revival of the Royal authority.
France, it is true, had suffered severely from her civil war of thirty-six years. Trade and industry had been ruined, and her finances heavily strained.Condition of France. The venality of her administrative system had been increased. The Estates-General and the ‘Parlements,’ the representatives of constitutional life, had been discredited; the former by the extreme views it had at times adopted, both by their subservience to the League. The power and self-importance of the nobles had been increased during the civil wars, and by the system adopted by Henry IV. of buying off their opposition. The desire for federative republicanism had grown with the growth of Calvinism. All these things had been the results of the religious wars. Yet after all, it was the royal power and prestige which in the end had benefited most from the internal discords. It was Henry who had given his country peace at last, and thereby earned the gratitude of his people; he it was who chiefly gained by the discredit into which the organs of constitutional life had fallen, and by the divisions and dissensions of his subjects. The nobles, indeed, were dangerous, but Henry IV. was successful in defeating their intrigues. His able, though self-sufficient and egotistical minister, Sully, reorganised the finances, and did something to check the venality and corruption which existed. The marvellous recuperative powers of the country came to his assistance; and France under the clever, though somewhat cynical, rule of her great King became once more a first-rate Power. Had Henry lived longer, or had he been succeeded by a capable son, the Thirty Years’ War would probably not have occurred, or would have been ended sooner. The House of Hapsburg might have been humbled to the dust, and France might have established a dangerous supremacy in Europe. The assassination of Henry IV. in 1610 prevented this; France, on his death, became the victim of a weak minority, and a troubled regency; and Europe was not threatened with a French supremacy until the reign of Louis XIV.
Notes
80 Probably a corruption of the German word ‘Eidgenossen’ (confederates), first applied to the Protestant party in Geneva.
81 Cf. Appendix I. for meaning of this.
82 Henry held Lower Navarre and the Principality of Béarn in his own right, and, as fiefs, the Duchies of Vendôme, Beaumont, and Albret; the Counties of Bigorre, Armagnac, Rouergue, Perigord, and Marle; the Viscounties of Limoges, and other lordships. See Map of France.
83 While Sully had been doing something to replenish the exchequer of King Henry, his antagonist, Philip, attempted a more summary method. On November 20, 1596, he publicly revoked all assignments, or mortgages by which the taxes on the royal domain had been pledged for money advanced to him. The pretext for this wholesale repudiation was that his exertions for Christianity had reduced him to beggary, while the money-lenders had been growing rich at his expense. The deed, however, produced a panic. The chief merchants and bankers suspended payment, and the credit of Spain received a shock from which it did not easily recover.
84 The Marquisate of Saluzzo in Piedmont had been ceded to France by the Treaty of Cateau Cambrésis, cf. p. 257. Henry IV. in 1601 exchanged it with the Duke of Savoy for Bresse, Bugey, and Gex.
85 His brothers, Ferdinand and Charles, received Tyrol and Styria. These were reunited to Austria proper under Ferdinand II., and the Austrian dominions were declared indivisible, 1621.