Early in 1649 Oliver Cromwell led the remnant of the English
House of Commons to try and execute King Charles I,
and then they abolished the House of Lords and the monarchy.
John Milton wrote the justification.
They raised taxes, and Cromwell commanded the army
that suppressed the protesting Levellers.
Parliament proclaimed England a Free Commonwealth
and repealed mandatory church attendance but required
a license for printing.
In 1650 all law courts had to use English instead of Latin.
Milton defended the new government
and supervised censorship,
and Parliament sold seventy estates confiscated from royalists.
The House of Commons blocked Leveller reforms.
Government was dominated by Puritans
and no longer supported the Anglican Church.
New religious groups included Particular and General Baptists,
Ranters, Grindletonians, Muggletonians, and Quakers.
Navigation Acts provoked a naval war against the Dutch
that began in 1652.
The English won most of the battles in 1653
and made peace in April 1654.
Cromwell and the Puritans transformed the House of Commons
in 1653, and they repealed the excise tax, abolished the
Chancery Court, and promoted primary education.
Leveller leader John Lilburne was
imprisoned for the rest of his life.
Parliament installed Cromwell as Lord Protector.
Only men with property worth £200 could vote,
and royalists and Catholics were excluded.
The English Commonwealth was extended to Scotland
and Ireland, and they made commercial treaties with
Portugal, Sweden, and Denmark.
Cromwell forced the Parliament to recognize his authority,
but Lilburnians accused him of treason and demanded elections.
In 1649 Irish Catholics and English royalists in Ireland resisted
the new government, but an English army led by Cromwell
and others defeated the rebellion by May 1652.
The English confiscated much of the Irish land and gave it
to officers, soldiers, and capitalists as compensation.
Many Irish were forced to move to Connaught,
and some refusing were transported to Barbados.
During the 1650s the population of Ireland decreased
by about 300,000, and the portion of the land
owned by Catholics was reduced to 9%.
The Parliament of Scotland declared Charles II king,
but Cromwell’s English army arrived in July 1650
and defeated the Scots by December 1651.
The English put down another rebellion in July 1654.
Scotland had 102 witchcraft cases in the late 1650s.
England’s Protectorate Parliament oppressed royalists by
suppressing a rebellion in March 1655 and by taxing them.
The army was reduced and replaced by militia to save money.
The Puritan government banned plays, gambling, and brothels,
and many alehouses were closed.
Cromwell allied with France and banned Anglican services
and the Book of Common Prayer,
but he granted rights to Jews.
In January 1657 Parliament funded war against Spain.
The East India Company began selling tea
in London with low prices.
The British took over Dunkirk.
The House of Lords was revived, but Cromwell dissolved
Parliament and died in September 1658.
He was hated by many for suppressing Catholics and Anglicans,
but the Puritans allowed individuals religious liberty
without a state Church.
The Navy added 200 ships, and the use of coal multiplied.
Roger Crab and a few others promoted a vegetarian diet.
The new Lord Protector Richard Cromwell opposed
military rule; but in April 1659 the army dissolved
the Parliament, and they recalled the Rump Parliament.
Richard Cromwell resigned.
The army led by General Lambert defeated those fighting
for Charles II in August, but General George Monck,
appointed commander in Scotland, and London’s Council
supported a free Parliament in December.
Monck’s army moved south and helped
Parliament meet in February 1660.
In March they raised taxes and dissolved.
Charles II promised liberty of conscience and Parliamentary
government, and on May 29 he reached London
where a majority now favored kingship.
In August the Act of Oblivion provided a general amnesty.
In 1660 the Convention Parliament restored King Charles II
who accepted former officers
of the Commonwealth in his Privy Council.
Parliament included Anglicans, Presbyterians,
and independents and pardoned all but 57 persons.
The army was disbanded,
and Charles sold land to reduce the debt.
Excises taxes were put on ale, beer, tea, and coffee.
The Royal Society was founded to promote science,
and Robert Boyle pioneered work in chemistry.
Burning coal was polluting the air in London,
but little was done to remedy the problem.
Charles proclaimed religious liberty for Christians.
Anglicans dominated the new Parliament in 1661,
and bishops returned to the House of Lords.
The Commons controlled expenditures.
Petitions were banned, and printing still required licenses.
The hearth tax of 1662 was unpopular.
The King relied on conservative Chancellor Edward Hyde
and made him Earl of Clarendon.
The Anglican Church was re-established;
1,300 Quakers were imprisoned,
and 1,909 dissenting clergy lost their parishes.
Charles married Portuguese princess Catarina.
Parliament passed Navigation Acts
to extend British control of trade.
A naval war against the Dutch lasted from the
summer of 1664 to July 1667 and cost England £5,367,000.
In 1665-66 the Great Plague of London took about 100,000
human lives, and the fire of September 1666
destroyed 13,200 houses, 89 churches,
and goods worth £3,500,000.
Christopher Wren directed rebuilding with bricks and stone.
The Earl of Clarendon was impeached
and fled to France in 1667.
Charles II made a secret alliance with France in 1670,
and he suspended laws against Catholics and dissenters
in March 1672; but he repealed that a year later
when Parliament made him dismiss officers in a cabal.
The third Anglo-Dutch War was waged from March 1672
to February 1674 and cost Britain £2,230,000
with £740,000 of it contributed by Louis XIV.
Treasurer Danby bribed members of Parliament,
and Charles prorogued Parliament for fifteen months.
In 1677 England allied with the Dutch against France,
and Parliament appropriated £585,000 to build thirty ships.
Willem of Orange married Mary, the niece of Charles II,
confirming the alliance with Holland.
In 1678 Britain prohibited imports from France.
Fears of a Popish conspiracy to overthrow the King led to
persecution of Catholics in England and Ireland,
and Parliament banned Catholics from both houses.
England’s ambassador Montagu in Paris exposed Louis XIV’s
secret subsidies to Charles who dissolved
the Cavalier Parliament in January 1679.
A large majority of the new Parliament in May passed a bill
to exclude the King’s Catholic brother, James of York,
from becoming king, but Charles dissolved them again.
Danby was imprisoned for five years.
Shaftesbury became president of the Privy Council,
but in October the King replaced the Country party advisors
who became the Whigs with Court party (Tory) ministers.
Millions of political pamphlets circulated.
Charles sent his brother James and his natural son James,
Duke of Monmouth, into exile.
In 1680 the House of Lords defeated the Exclusion Bill,
and that year 272 justices of peace were replaced.
Books and plays discussed and portrayed the conflicts
between the Tories and the Whigs.
Irish officers and gentry formed a parliament and proclaimed
King Charles II as the Protestants continued their domination.
Charles took land from regicides and gave it to his brother
James and others, but some land
was returned to dispossessed Catholics.
The English governed Ireland from Dublin
and banned the export of Irish wool and beef.
In 1672 William Petty estimated that Ireland had 800,000
Catholics, 200,000 English, and 100,000 Scots,
but Irish wages were half those in England.
Scots accepted the Stuart Charles II, and they organized their
Parliament that passed 393 acts that gave the King power.
The Episcopal Church was imposed,
and they prohibited Presbyterian assemblies.
Parliament was prorogued in 1673
and did not meet again until 1681.
Many worshippers were fined for violating the Conventicle Act.
After English troops withdrew, conventicles resumed.
James Scott, Duke of Monmouth,
used an army to suppress the rebels.
During this era in Scotland people were put to death
for witchcraft and religious dissent.
King James II was unpopular as a Catholic
and ruled England only from 1685 to 1688.
A Scottish rebellion was suppressed by July 1685,
and the English avoided another civil war.
James appointed many Catholics.
After Parliament approved £700,000 for the army,
James prorogued them,
and they would not meet again until 1689.
James suspended penal laws and the Test Acts
and pardoned and released religious prisoners.
He enrolled Catholics in the army, appointed
Catholics to the Irish Privy Council,
and put Jesuits in charge of schools in Ireland.
In 1687 James appointed 455 justices of the peace
and most of whom were Catholics,
and he replaced most town officials.
His daughters Mary and Anne refused to become Catholics.
James tolerated all denominations except Conventicles.
Mary’s husband Willem of Orange wrote a
Letter to the English Army warning that
England could become Catholic.
James allied with the Dutch, but in January 1688
he withdrew Scots from Willem’s army.
James arrested seven bishops for disobeying an order
to read his declaration in churches,
but a jury acquitted them in June,
the month James had a son born.
Whigs and Tories united against the Catholic King and invited
Willem who invaded England with a Dutch army in November.
John Churchill, Princess Anne,
and many soldiers joined the Dutch.
James agreed to a Parliament, but many towns
surrendered to Willem and Mary Stuart.
James fled to France in December.
A Convention Parliament met in January 1689
and proclaimed King William III and Queen Mary II.
Parliament asserted their rights and those of others in new laws.
Clergy who refused to swear allegiance were punished.
Toleration was enacted in May, though officials
still had to accept Anglican sacraments.
James II led a Catholic rebellion in Ireland in March
that was supported by the French.
William declared war in May, and Scotland and England
joined the Grand Alliance against France in September.
William’s Protestant army arrived in July 1690,
and one year later the Irish Catholics surrendered at Aughrim.
While William fought in Ireland,
the war continued at sea and in Flanders.
The war was expensive, and the Bank of England was
created in April 1694 and quickly borrowed £1,200,000.
Parliament would have elections every three years.
Scotland accepted William III and Mary II,
and Jacobite resistance was suppressed by May 1690.
Their Parliament established the Presbyterian Church;
but Episcopalian ministers in the north resisted,
and 182 lost their livings.
William III and the Junto of Whigs continued
the Nine Years War against France in the Spanish Netherlands,
and had 48,500 men were in the Navy in 1695 and more
than 68,000 soldiers in Flanders by 1696.
Expiration of the Licensing Act freed the press.
England’s capital stocks had decreased almost by half.
People clipped silver coins,
and the value of the gold guinea was reduced.
Treason was suspected, and many legislators, governors,
and judges refused to take a loyalty oath.
A Land Bank failed, and a loan from the
Dutch Estates General was used to pay soldiers.
One in four English depended on alms.
In September 1697 the Treaty of Ryswick ended the war
that cost England £40,000,000
and increased the national debt to £14,000,000.
The Treasury issued bonds to get
short-term loans from the public.
In December 1698 they held a general election,
and they reduced the standing army.
The first stock exchange began in London.
The English Parliament oppressed Irish Catholics
and criticized William III for giving land in Ireland to his friends.
Four years of crop failures caused a famine in Scotland in 1699.
The King turned to the Tories who gained seats
in the elections of early 1701.
The Earl of Marlborough (Churchill) arranged another
Grand Alliance with the Dutch Republic
and the Austrian Empire against France,
and the Commons approved raising 40,000 soldiers.
King William III died on March 9, 1702.
Queen Anne (r. 1702-14) was the last Stuart monarch
and had married George of Denmark.
She aimed to reduce France’s power
and continue the Protestant succession.
Whigs won the elections.
In May 1702 England and the Dutch
declared war against France.
Anne favored Anglicans and relied on Tories
who took over the Commons.
Yet Whigs in the Lords defeated Conformity Bills,
and Anne refused to dismiss Whigs from her Council.
England allied with Portugal and Savoy, and Marlborough
led the army to victories in Germany in 1704.
Jonathan Swift’s Tale of a Tub satirized the corruption
of modern religion, politics, literature, and education.
Marlborough won battles in the Spanish Netherlands in 1706.
Anne dismissed Tories and turned to Whigs in 1707.
The Lords wanted Spain freed of its new French king Philippe.
England and Scotland negotiated a union
as Great Britain that was approved in January 1707.
In Ireland the Protestant minority owned 86% of the land
and continued to discriminate against Catholics.
The Whigs gained a majority in May 1708,
but a bad harvest and a severe winter
raised grain prices and caused riots.
In October 1709 the British and Dutch
agreed on the Barrier Treaty.
That year England spent £9,000,000 on the war.
Whigs encouraged Protestant immigration;
but their Junto resigned in 1710 as the war dragged on.
Tories opposed the war and gained 104 seats
in the Commons in November.
They required property for membership in Parliament,
favored Anglican conformity, repealed naturalization,
and taxed pamphlets and newspapers.
Marlborough invaded France with an army of 85,000 men
in July, and a treaty was signed in September.
Whigs in the House of Lords blocked peace without Spain,
but Anne dismissed Marlborough
and added twelve Tory peers to the Lords.
St. John negotiated peace in 1712
and became Viscount Bolingbroke.
In April 1713 Britain, the Dutch,
and France agreed to the Treaty of Utrecht.
The British were given a monopoly on the slave trade.
The English economy recovered from 1711 to 1714
as interest rates were reduced to 5%.
During Anne’s reign Britain’s debt
nearly tripled to £36,200,000.
Anne died in August 1714 and was the last
English monarch to veto an act of Parliament.
Thomas Hobbes was a materialist and was most concerned
about security, and he published his Leviathan
in 1651 to justify authoritarian government.
He feared a “war of all against all”
and recommended arbitration.
He believed in the golden rule of doing to others as one
would wish to be treated but that
covenants must be secured by the sword.
Thus he favored monarchy or a group of powerful rulers
and expected subjects to obey.
Hobbes argued that rulers may go to war, force men to kill,
and punish those who refuse.
He considered the sovereign above his own laws.
James Harrington published The Commonwealth of Oceana
in 1656 and other works on popular government and lawgiving.
He favored republican ideas and criticized Hobbes.
Harrington warned that excessive wealth can destroy equality,
which is the key to democracy.
He believed that the soul can master passion with reason.
The wisdom of the virtuous can guide a commonwealth
for the benefit of all the people.
An unequal commonwealth will be divided because one party
will try to support the wealthy;
but he argued that supporting public interests is more just.
Harrington believed in education and criticized war.
His Oceana is based on a fair distribution of land
to balance political power.
He recommended frequent elections and religious tolerance.
John Milton lost his position in 1660, became blind,
and wrote his epic poem, Paradise Lost about
the Biblical story of God, angels, Satan,
and Adam and Eve in Eden.
Satan tempts Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge,
and Adam shares her fate and sin.
They have to leave Paradise,
and Michael shows Adam the future of mankind.
Milton wrote Paradise Regained to show how Jesus
would be tempted by Satan while fasting in the desert.
He also wrote Samson Agonistes about the destructive
hero who fought for the Hebrews against
the Philistines and was seduced by Dalila.
John Bunyan became a Baptist
and was arrested for preaching in 1661.
He wrote his spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding,
became a popular preacher,
and is most famous for his allegorical novel,
Pilgrim’s Progress, in which Christian goes on a
pilgrimage and meets many vices and virtues.
In 1680 Bunyan wrote Mr. Badman as a dialog
between Mr. Wiseman and Mr. Attentive.
This novel shows how evil actions
bring bad consequences in life.
Thomas Tryon became an Anabaptist and a vegetarian,
and he published 27 books promoting health.
Diarist John Evelyn had an extensive vegetable garden
and fruit trees and recommended planting trees.
Some vegetarians noted how Hindu priests
believing in reincarnation respected animals.
Platonist Henry More also opposed cruelty to animals.
Isaac Newton experimented with a vegetarian diet
and is famous for his scientific advances.
He discovered calculus and how light divides into colors.
He loved eating apples and explained the laws of gravity
that keep planets in their orbits.
In 1687 Newton published his Mathematical Principles
of Natural Philosophy in which he formulated basic laws
of physics in regard to matter and motion.
The law that every action has an equal reaction
he compared to the golden rule.
His Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended argued
that the world was created by one supreme God who governs.
George Fox studied the Bible and became a wanderer
seeking the Light of the Holy Spirit and “tender” people.
He believed the Light is more important than scriptures
and was imprisoned at Nottingham in 1649.
He referred to those who followed the inner Light
as Friends of Truth, but others called them Quakers.
Fox held that the church is the community of believers,
not the “steeple houses.”
He suggested that each person could find God and minister,
and he defended the rights of women.
Quakers were often arrested for refusing to take oaths
or for unauthorized meetings,
and Fox spent a total of seven years in jail.
He opposed all wars and the death penalty.
Friends had their first large meeting in Yorkshire in 1652.
In 1654 the Society of Friends began meeting in London.
Fox was sent to Cromwell and preached to him.
James Naylor imitated Jesus
and was punished for blasphemy in 1656.
In 1658 the Friends had their first
yearly meeting for all of England.
During the Commonwealth three thousand Quakers
were imprisoned, and 32 died in jail.
After Fox was arrested in 1660, he wrote a letter
to Charles II explaining that he was peaceful and loved
everyone and urged people to give up weapons.
He and others signed a declaration against all fighters
that described how Quakers had suffered persecution.
The King promised to free them, but during his reign
13,562 Quakers were imprisoned in England.
Margaret Fell defended female preaching, and she married
Fox who traveled and led the Quakers until his death in 1691.
His Journal was published in 1694.
William Penn became a Quaker and gave up his sword.
He was imprisoned and wrote pamphlets
and No Cross, No Crown.
In a trial a jury who refused to convict Quakers was arrested,
but the rights of juries were defended.
His pamphlets for religious tolerance helped
bring about the Tolerance Act of 1689.
A legacy from his father Admiral Penn enabled the Quakers
to get land that became a “holy experiment”
in pacifist living and the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
In 1693 while Europe was suffering from the Nine Years’ War
the son Penn wrote “An Essay towards the Present and Future
Peace of Europe” calling for justice with a Parliament
of all the European states to decide disputes.
This would prevent bloodshed and destruction of property
and let people live in friendship.
John Bellers submitted a similar peace plan to the
British Parliament in 1710 that would include disarmament.
In 1693 Penn also wrote Some Fruits of Solitude
recommending a balance of frugality
and liberality, love, friendship, and freedom.
In 1694 he described Quakers as people who love all
including enemies, tell the truth without swearing, do not fight,
reject paying for a national ministry, use plain language,
practice silence, do not drink pledges,
and look within themselves.
John Locke believed that the ability to reason enables humans
to be ethical and follow the rule of justice.
Every community needs government and contracts.
He became a physician and served Ashley Cooper
who became the Earl of Shaftesbury, and they worked
on constitutions for the Carolina colonies that included slavery.
Later Locke opposed slavery.
Locke helped Shaftesbury organize
the liberal Whig party in 1682.
He wrote A Letter Concerning Toleration in 1688
and supported the revolution in 1689 when he published
Two Treatises on Government and his
Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
Smoky London from coal damaged his lungs.
Locke advocated charity, faith, and freedom
while opposing punishment based on religion.
Force should be limited to magistrates and self-defense.
Churches are free societies that should
promote peace, equality, and friendship.
Locke based government on freedom, equality, and justice.
Reason and laws teach us not to harm humans.
Civil government restrains violence.
Locke also believed in property rights and that law
is to protect people and their possessions.
Children are to obey parents
who are responsible for their education.
Husband and wife have equal rights.
Civil society requires legislators elected by people
to make the laws by majority votes.
An executive power is needed
to administer and enforce the laws.
Unjust war is robbery and murder on a massive scale.
Locke believed that after a just war
the conquered may form a new government.
If the legislature or executive violates their trust,
the government may be dissolved.
Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding
is an empirical philosophy which derives ideas from sense
perceptions and reflections on experience using reasoning,
willing, memory, imagination, and intuition.
For Locke pleasure and pain are the basis of good and evil.
Happiness comes from loving our neighbor as ourself.
Locke wrote Some Thoughts on Education for his son’s tutor.
He believed that education is most important, promotes health,
and aims at virtue, civility, and learning.
Reason enables one to deny desires.
He considered corporal punishment harmful,
and offering rewards can promote vices.
Children respond to praise.
Children can learn through play,
and teachers should set good examples.
Explanation helps children understand.
Knowledge protects one and prepares one for living.
Kindness should be cherished.
Locke suggested learning languages
by speaking and writing and then grammar.
After arithmetic one may teach geometry.
Geography leads to history.
Locke also wrote on the value of money
and The Reasonableness of Christianity.
He influenced the education of the Third Earl of Shaftesbury
who published Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions,
Times in three volumes in 1711 emphasizing self-knowledge,
moral sense, and the public good.
George Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge
describes a spiritual philosophy based on consciousness
which perceives through senses, feels emotions,
and uses the mind, memory, imagination, and will.
The subject who perceives and knows is the mind
or spirit or soul which exist in the Eternal Spirit called God.
He urged people to understand God
whose goodness administers the world.
In sermons at Trinity College in Dublin published in 1712
Berkeley described the Christian doctrine of not resisting
or passive obedience as opposed to violent rebellion.
One may oppose unjust laws and accept the
consequences without harming anyone.
The means is as important as the end.
One should not resist evil with evil.
Puritans had closed the theatres in 1642, and the public
presentation of plays
was prohibited until 1660.
A few plays were performed privately,
and some were published.
In 1651 the anonymous Tragedy of Cicero was published,
portraying the senator trying to prevent a civil war
after the assassination of Julius Caesar.
James Shirley’s allegorical masque Cupid and Death
was performed and printed in 1653 and with music in 1659.
William Davenant produced plays in private residences.
His heroic play, The Siege of Rhodes,
started a trend taken up by John Dryden.
Davenant presented the opera,
The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, publicly in 1658,
and he was imprisoned in 1659, the year his masque
The History of Sir Francis Drake
was also performed in public.
This era saw the beginning of women
playing the female roles on the stage.
In August 1660 Charles II authorized Thomas Killigrew
and Davenant to form theatrical companies,
and in 1662 the King ordered
women’s roles to be played by females.
During the restoration era to 1714 the English saw
120 old plays and 440 new ones.
In 1668 Robert Howard’s The Great Favourite
portrayed Spain’s Felipe III and the Duke of Lerma
who uses his daughter to manipulate the King
during the decline of the Spanish empire.
In 1665 John Dryden’s Indian Emperor portrayed
the Aztec Montezuma and his family during
the Spanish conquest led by Cortez.
In 1668 Dryden was named poet laureate,
and in 1670 he became the second historiographer royal.
His two-part heroic tragedy Almanzor and Almahide
fictionalized the Spaniards’ conquest of Granada in 1491.
Heroic Almanzor loves Almahide;
but she marries King Boabdelin, and the play shows
how reason can overcome passion.
Dryden’s comedy Marriage a la Mode displayed
a libertine court as two dissatisfied couples flirt with
the idea of having affairs with each other’s partners.
Dryden was having an affair with actress Anne Reeves.
His romantic Aureng-Zebe dramatizes that prince’s love
for Indamora and his becoming the Mughal Emperor.
Dryden’s tragedy All for Love showed the last days
of Antony and Cleopatra as Octavius Caesar
is taking away their power.
Dryden’s The Spanish Friar in 1681 satirized
a fat Catholic friar while portraying
court intrigue in 15th-century Aragon.
William Wycherley wrote four comedies.
Love in a Wood is romantic as two betrothed couples
are reunited; but Alderman Gripe weds Lucy in revenge,
and Simon Addleplot and Lady Flippant
marry each other for money.
Wycherley’s farce The Gentleman Dancing-Master
was based on plays by Calderon and Moliere
and exploits the follies of love.
Wycherley’s best play, The Country Wife
is a sexual comedy that has been performed often.
Horner pretends he is impotent from venereal disease
so that women will trust him,
but he finds it a hard reputation to shake.
During his life The Plain Dealer was Wycherley’s most
popular play, and it was based on Moliere’s
The Misanthrope and Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.
The rich widow Blackacre would rather
manage her own money than marry.
Eventually young Fidelia softens Manly’s hatred of mankind.
George Etherege’s The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter
is considered a comedy of manners as Dorimant
wins the love of Harriet and renounces all other women.
Thomas Shadwell wrote about twenty plays and battled
with Dryden and succeeded him as poet laureate
and royal historiographer in 1688.
His 1675 tragedy The Libertine is a black comedy
based on the legend of Don Juan that satirized
the libertine John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester.
Shadwell considered it as wild and as extravagant as their time,
but Robert Hooke called it “atheistical” and “wicked.”
In the play Don John kills men and seduces women.
Shadwell's comedy The Virtuoso
satirized scientists of the Royal Society.
Aphra Behn had an adventurous life, wrote nineteen plays,
and a novel about colonial slavery.
The Rover, or The Banished Cavaliers opened in 1677
and is an adventurous comedy in two parts.
In her farce, The Feigned Courtesans,
English Protestants fall in love with Catholic Italians.
In The Roundheads, or The Good Old Cause,
she depicted the Commonwealth and satirized Puritans,
and The City Heiress, or Sir Timothy Treat-All
made fun of the Whig politician Shaftesbury.
The Lucky Chance, or Alderman’s Bargain
produced
in 1686 is an intriguing romantic comedy.
Her successful Emperor of the Moon was influenced
by Italian commedia dell’arte and includes Kepler and Galileo.
Aphra Behn’s best novella,
Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave: A True History,
is set in Suriname and is one of the first descriptions of slavery
in America and a “noble savage” who has been educated.
After her death in 1689 her tragicomedy
The Widow Ranter, or The History of Bacon in Virginia
was performed, depicting the rebellion in Jamestown.
Nathaniel Lee wrote historical dramas about Nero, Hannibal,
Augustus Caesar, Queens and Alexander the Great,
Mithridates, Caesar Borgia, Theodosius, Lucius Junius Brutus,
the Princess of Cleve, Constantine the Great,
and The Massacre of Paris.
His revolutionary Lucius Junius Brutus was banned in 1680.
John Banks dramatized the British queens Elizabeth,
Anne Boleyn, Mary of Scotland, and Jane Gray,
and the best is the poignant story of Elizabeth and Essex.
Thomas Otway died at 33 but wrote ten plays.
His tragedy The Orphan was produced in 1680 and set
in Bohemia about families with complicated
love affairs that result in several deaths.
His tragedy Venice Preserved, A Plot Discovered
in 1682 reflected the dangerous Catholic plots feared
because of the Duke of York’s likely succession,
and he also satirized the Earl of Shaftesbury.
Thomas Southerne lived 85 years and also wrote ten plays.
He adapted Aphra Behn’s novella, History of the Nun,
or The Fair Vow Breaker, in his tragicomedy,
The Fatal Marriage, or the Innocent Adultery,
in 1694 and added his own comic sub-plot.
Southerne also adapted Behn’s Oroonoko
as his tragicomedy Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave in 1696.
Dryden and Southerne helped Congreve on his first play,
the romantic comedy The Old Bachelor, in 1693.
Congreve’s The Double-Dealer is a romantic comedy
that exposes the manipulative Lady Touchwood
and Maskwell’s duplicity.
His Love for Love is another complicated romantic comedy
involving blackmail and inheritance.
Congreve’s last play, The Way of the World,
in 1700 displayed romantic affairs and quarreling over money.
Colley Cibber was a comical actor and a theater manager.
He also wrote 25 plays that began the trend
toward morality and sentimental comedy.
His first play, Love's Last Shift, or The Fool in Fashion,
was very successful in 1696 with Cibber playing the foppish
Sir Novelty Fashion as the characters learn the value
of “virtuous love.”
John Vanbrugh’s sequel, The Relapse, or Virtue in Danger,
was produced the same year and tested the virtue and fidelity
of Loveless and Amanda in tempting London.
In 1698 Jeremy Collier published his Short View of the
Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage,
and Vanbrugh and Congreve wrote responses arguing
that theatre showed corrupt morals so that
audiences could see and correct them.
In Cibber’s 1704 comedy, The Careless Husband,
patient Lady Easy wins back her wayward husband Charles.
George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer in 1706 describes
army officers during Queen Anne’s War
and a precocious young woman in a romantic comedy.
The Beaux’ Stratagem is also a romantic comedy set
in the country that deals with the threat of robbers.
Nicholas Rowe wrote “she-tragedies” with female protagonists.
His domestic tragedy, The Fair Penitent, adapted Massinger’s
The Fatal Dowry in 1703 and portrayed
the lovers Lothario and Calista.
Rowe’s historical Tragedy of Jane Shore is based on
Thomas Heywood’s Edward IV Part 2
and was produced in 1714, and his last play was
The Tragedy of Lady Jane Grey in 1715.
Joseph Addison co-founded The Spectator
with Richard Steele in 1711, and he wrote the tragedy Cato
in 1713 portraying his last days in 46 BC.
While the youth Louis XIV was growing up, France was
governed by his mother, Regent Queen Anne of Austria,
her prime minister Cardinal Mazarin,
the Parlement of Paris, and other institutions.
In 1648 people demanding tax reforms put up barricades
in Paris and had rock-throwing slings
called frondes which named the Fronde Revolt.
Pamphlets criticized Mazarin for being corrupt,
despotic, and at war against Spain.
Prince Louis II of Condé and Prince Gaston d’Orléans met
with delegates from Parlement, and Anne and Mazarin tried
to reduce taxes and left Paris in January 1649.
Parlement voted to banish Mazarin,
and Condé’s troops besieged Paris.
Bad weather raised food prices.
The government was broke,
and the Fronde spread to other cities.
Anne and Mazarin made concessions and arrested Condé
and other leaders in January 1650
as civil war was breaking out.
Marshal Turenne led a rebel army
but was defeated in December.
Archbishop Retz and others demanded the
dismissal of Mazarin who fled to Cologne.
In September 1651 Parlement ended the regency
as Louis XIV became old enough at 13 to rule.
Condé allied with Spain, and Parlement supported him
and declared Mazarin an enemy.
Mazarin hired 6,000 Germans,
and Louis supported him at Poitiers.
Turenne backed Louis and led the royal army in the civil war.
Condé gained power in Paris
but then fled to the Spanish Netherlands.
Louis returned to Paris in October 1652,
and Mazarin came back in February 1653.
About one million people died during the Fronde revolts.
Mazarin taught Louis XIV how to govern while Turenne led
the war effort against Spain and Condé.
Louis was crowned and declared himself the state
but avoided Paris until 1660.
Mazarin made a trade treaty with England’s Cromwell
in 1655 and then an alliance in March 1657.
Turenne’s French army defeated Condé and the Spaniards
in 1658, and tax rebellions in France were suppressed.
French diplomats and German princes
formed the League of the Rhine.
Spain and France ended their war in November 1659
with the Pyrenees as the border, and Louis married
Felipe IV’s daughter Maria Teresa in June 1660.
Mazarin and Finance Superintendent
Fouquet had become wealthy.
During these wars Vincent de Paul and the
Daughters of Charity helped feed and aid thousands of people.
After Mazarin’s death in March 1661Louis XIV began ruling
without the nobles and ended Fouquet’s corruption,
letting honest Jean-Baptiste Colbert handle finances.
Louis balanced budgets, and revenue increased.
He had a rebellion suppressed and imposed press censorship
that greatly reduced the number of pamphlets.
Colbert founded academies for literature, art, science, music,
and architecture, and he promoted trade
while protecting domestic industries.
Louis worked to make France the greatest power in Europe
by promoting justice and enlightenment.
He influenced princes, governors and aristocrats
by keeping them at his lavish court.
After Spain’s Felipe IV died in September 1665Louis XIV
claimed his wife’s territories for France, and his
War of Devolution began in May 1667 with
the French invasion of the Spanish Netherlands.
He made French parlements register
a revised ordinance of civil procedure.
In February 1668 France went to war against
the Triple Alliance of the Dutch, English, and Swedes,
but Pope Clement IX mediated a peace treaty signed in May.
In August 1669 Louis forced the Parlement of Paris
to register 25 new laws.
He formed a secret alliance with England’s Charles II
who agreed to become Catholic.
In April 1672 France declared war on the Dutch,
and the French army crossed the Rhine.
Spain declared war on France in October 1673,
and the Austrian Empire did so in May 1674.
Tax rebellions erupted in Roussillon and Brittany.
In 1676 Louis led a force of 50,000 men into the
Spanish Netherlands and sent a fleet to Sicily.
France made peace with the Dutch at Nijmegen
in August 1677, with Spain in September,
and with Emperor Leopold in February 1679.
At the French court 377 aristocrats were arrested
for poisonings and other crimes while others fled.
In 1682 France expelled some Jews,
and the court moved to Versailles.
Prostitutes and homosexuals were punished.
Huguenots were excluded from offices
and could not marry Catholics.
The government closed Protestant churches
and confiscated their endowments.
In 1683 Louis XIV started another war against Spain,
and the Dutch mediated a truce in August 1684.
In the summer of 1685 Dragonnades forced
130,000 Protestants to convert.
Louis in October ordered Protestant churches destroyed
and their ministers to leave France, and in November
all Protestants were expelled from France’s armed forces.
Thousands of Protestants were imprisoned
and died of starvation and disease.
France was spending eight million livres a year on fortifications.
In 1686 the League of Augsburg against the French included
the Dutch Republic, the Austrian Empire, German princes,
Britain, Spain, Portugal, and Sweden.
War Minister Louvois urged a war
that began in Germany in October 1688.
Louis XIV declared war on Britain in July 1689
and helped Catholic James II invade Ireland.
By 1693 the French army had more than 400,000 men.
France suffered one of its worst famines
while speculators cornered grain supplies.
Parlements sold offices to raise 16,740,000 livres.
Louis XIV made concessions to end the Nine Years War
at Ryswick in September 1697.
After the death of Spain’s Carlos II in November 1700
Louis XIV’s grandson Duke Philippe of Anjou
became King Felipe V of Spain.
The Second Grand Alliance formed against France
and Spain in September 1701, and in May 1702 Britain,
the Dutch Republic, and the Austrian Empire
declared war against France.
The French and Bavarians had 12,000 men killed and 14,000
captured at the Blenheim defeat in August 1704.
France’s deficit in 1706 was nearly 170 million livres.
In January 1712 peace talks began at Utrecht,
and by April 1713 treaties had been signed by Spain,
Britain, France, Portugal, Savoy, and the Dutch Republic.
During the reign of Louis XIV expenditures for war
were 42% of the state budget in the 1660s,
66% in the 1670s, and 78% from 1690 to 1715
when France’s debt had risen to £124,000,000.
Before his death on September 1, 1715 Louis XIV
advised his successor not to engage in wars as he had.
The Abbé deSaint-Pierre attended the peace conference
at Utrecht and devised a comprehensive peace plan,
which he first published in 1712, to unify Europe with
a senate and a combined army
to enforce laws and prevent wars.
Cornelius Jansen wrote about Augustine and the doctrine
that only God’s grace can save sinful humans,
but in 1653 Pope Innocent X condemned five of his ideas
which Jansenists denied he wrote.
Jansen’s ideas were taught at the abbey of Port-Royal.
Blaise Pascal invented a calculating machine, a syringe,
a barometer, and a hydraulic press.
He had a sudden conversion in 1654 and moved to Port Royal.
Pascal defended Jansenism and criticized Jesuits for their
politics in his Provincial Letters which were condemned
by Pope Alexander VII in December 1657.
Pasquier Quesnel was persecuted for being a Jansenist,
but he wrote about the morality of the Gospels
and became a cardinal in 1700.
Pascal died in 1662, but his writings were collected
as his Pensées (Thoughts) and have been read
by many for their perceptive wisdom.
He emphasized the experience of God in the heart
more than reason, but those who disobey reason are fools.
He was consoled more by the moral law
than by physical sciences.
He trusted God more than religions.
Failing to find justice, he noted that men
have fallen back on force, its opposite.
Madame Guyon believed in praying continually and was
called a Quietist and imprisoned for seven years.
Brother Lawrence’s writings were published as
The Practice of the Presence of God.
François Fénelon became a priest, helped the poor,
and wrote his Treatise on the Education of Girls in 1687.
He tutored sons of the royal family and wrote Fables
and Dialogues of the Dead for them.
He became Archbishop of Cambrai in 1696
and a spiritual advisor to Mme. de Maintenon,
but Louis XIV sent him to Cambrai in 1697.
The Inquisition condemned his book on the interior life,
and Fénelon submitted to the Pope in 1699, the year
he published his novel, The Adventures of Telemachus,
which exposed the corruption of luxury and imperial ambitions.
During war he helped the wounded
and sick and wrote about the suffering.
In 1711 Fénelon wrote “Questions for the Royal Conscience”
and another work on government reforms.
Pierre Bayle published his Historical and Critical Dictionary
in 1697 and 1702 using tolerance and skepticism
to promote justice and critical freedom.
Nicolas Malebranche was influenced
by Descartes, Plato, and Augustine.
His metaphysics emphasized God
and his Treatise on Ethics the virtue of love.
He advised searching for truth by meditating,
silencing the senses, imagination, and passions.
The Duc de La Rochefoucauld fought for France
and then for the aristocrats in the Fronde civil wars.
At a salon he met Mme. de Sévigné
and the novelist Mme. de Lafayette.
In a game they created maxims, and he published his
Reflections or Sentences and Moral Maxims
in 1665 and in four more editions.
He noted the power of self-love and desires
and suggested correcting our own faults.
Mme. de Lafayette was his close friend and is best known
for her popular novel, The Princess of Cleves,
which described the court of Henri II.
Mademoiselle de Chartres marries the Prince of Cleves
and then falls in love with the handsome Duke of Nemours,
but she confesses to her husband and leaves them both.
Boileau wrote satires and literary criticism in L’Art poétique.
He described a battle of books and debated the ancients
and moderns with Charles Perrault in 1687.
Corneille’s nephew Fontenelle took up this controversy
and found little improvement in poetry
but much in science and learning.
He helped popularize the heliocentric planetary system
of Copernicus and became the
secretary of the Academy of Sciences.
Jean de La Fontaine is known for having published Fables
based on the animal stories of Aesop and the Sanskrit
Panchatantra which had been translated into English
and French as well as many other stories with moral lessons.
Jean de La Bruyère is renowned for translating the character
portraits of Theophrastus and adding
many more of his own in his Characters.
He also added his own wise reflections that include admiring
both sexes and recognizing the infinity and eternity of God,
the freedom of the intelligent,
and how justice conforms to reason.
In February 1651 Pierre Corneille’s Nicomedes presented
a hero similar to the rebellious Prince of Condé,
and he lost his position as a tax collector,
though Parlement exonerated Condé in April.
In the tragicomedy Nicomedes competes with this brother
Attalus for the throne in Bithynia,
but they become friends of Rome.
In 1667 Corneille’s Attila portrayed romantic love, ambition,
survival, and honor at the end of the Hun’s life in 453.
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin lived at court as a youth but formed
a theatre company in 1643 and took the name Molière.
The company failed, and he went to prison for debt twice.
Then he toured as an actor
and theatre manager for twelve years.
Molière’s first comedy in verse was
The Blunderer, or The Counterplots performed at Lyons
in 1655 and published at Paris in 1662.
In 1658 Molière’s company gained the patronage of the
King’s brother Philippe as Les Comédiens de Monsieur.
Molière managed the company
and starred in all the plays he wrote.
In The Affected Young Ladies Mascarille poses as a marquis,
but the valets are stripped of fine clothes by their masters
to expose them as servants and humiliate the ladies.
After a failed drama Molière’s successful comedy,
The School for Husbands, in 1661 affirmed the right of
young women to choose their husbands
and satirized tyrannical older men.
The first comedy-ballet with music was his Les Fâcheux
(The Pests) which opened at Fouquet’s estate.
Molière’s most performed play was The School for Wives.
When it was criticized for immorality, he defended
the value of comedy in his play,
Critique of the School for Wives and himself in another
play requested by Louis XIV,
who danced in The Forced Marriage.
Molière’s great satire, Tartuffe or the Impostor,
was controversial and banned for nearly five years.
The hypocritical Tartuffe uses religion to deceive the master
of the house, and he tries to seduce the women.
The tragicomedy Don Juan was banned
after fifteen performances.
Don Juan has married and left many women, and he continues
seducing them and postpones repentance until it is too late.
In August 1665 Louis XIV became
the patron of Molière’s company.
In The Misanthrope frank Alceste criticizes social corruption
but falls in love with coquettish Célimène.
They quarrel, and he decides to retire from the world.
In Molière’s farce, The Doctor in Spite of Himself,
the woodcutter Sganarelle is persuaded
to use his skill as a doctor.
Molière’s Amphitryon, based on a comedy by Plautus,
involves the gods Jupiter and Mercury mistaken
for the general Amphitryon and his servant Sosia.
Georges Dandin or the Confounded Husband
showed how aristocrats discriminated against commoners
and satirized the arrogance of the nobles.
The Miser is also based on a comedy by Plautus in which
avaricious Harpagon is obsessed with a box of money he has
buried in his garden while young lovers try to get together.
The Bourgeois Gentleman satirized
middle-class social climbers.
The Learned Ladies showed women trying to educate
themselves, but they are distracted
by the efforts of the young to marry.
Molière suffered from tuberculosis
and died on February 17, 1673 after a performance
in his last play, The Hypochondriac.
Argan wants his daughter Angélique to marry his
doctor’s nephew; but he allows her to wed Cléante
if he will become a doctor.
Jean Racine was educated at the Port-Royal monastery,
but he turned to the theatre
and wrote eleven tragedies and one comedy.
Molière’s company produced his first play in 1664 about
the Theban conflict between two brothers,
but Racine’s mistress left Molière’s company to join his.
Racine hoped that Louis XIV would become a conqueror
and wrote Alexander the Great to encourage him,
though in the play the Hindu king Porus
criticizes Alexander’s invasion.
In Racine’s tragedy Andromache the French ancestors
Andromache and her son Astyanax survive;
but Orestes has his men kill Pyrrhus,
and Hermione stabs herself to death.
Racine’s only comedy Les Plaideurs (The Litigants)
satirized a judge and those involved in lawsuits.
In 1669 Racine’s tragedy Britannicus showed how Nero
began to use murder and terror to protect his power
and may have been a warning to Louis XIV.
In Bérénice the Roman Emperor Titus, Antiochus,
and Bérénice sacrifice their love for
the sake of the Emperor’s imperial power.
Racine’s Bajazet portrayed violence
in the court of Ottoman Sultan Murad IV.
Racine changed history in his romantic drama Mithridate
about a king who gives his fiancée Monime to his son
whom she loves and then kills himself
when in fact he married Monime.
In his Iphigénie, based on Iphigenia at Aulis by Euripides,
Racine also changed the story to allow his heroine to survive.
His tragedy Phèdre is based on Hippolytus by Euripides
and Plutarch’s Theseus, but he has Phaedra’s nurse,
instead of Phaedra, falsely accuse Hippolytus.
Theseus believes them and then misuses his power.
Racine hoped to show how passions can cause problems
and thus expose vice and hatred.
He wrote the religious play Esther for
Madame de Maintenon’s girls school,
and it was a plea for persecuted Jews.
Racine also wrote the tragedy Athalie about Jewish history,
but it was not performed in his lifetime.
In 1648 Spain finally recognized the independence
of the United Provinces of the Netherlands.
More than 500,000 Spaniards died of the plague in 1647-52.
Rebellions were suppressed.
Felipe IV recognized his natural son Juan José
who governed in Italy and then in Catalonia 1653-56
and the Spanish Netherlands 1656-59.
Spain was bankrupt in 1653,
and its debt increased to 120 million ducats.
War against France continued until the peace in 1659
established the Pyrenees as the border.
Felipe’s daughter married Louis XIV.
Spaniards fought the Portuguese.
Felipe IV died in 1665 and was succeeded
by his weak son Carlos II.
Debased coins caused inflation.
Maria de Guevara wrote on behalf of women
and criticized the war.
Inbred Carlos II was disabled physically
and mentally but reigned for 35 years.
Aristocrats gained power and increased in numbers.
A Junta and local aristocrats governed as the Cortes of Castile
did not meet any more in the century after 1665.
Regent and Queen Mother Mariana favored her
confessor Nithard who became Inquisitor General.
Juan José commanded in Flanders.
Spain did not pay Louis XIV the dowry,
and the French invaded Flanders.
Spain recognized Portugal’s independence in 1668.
Juan José came into conflict with Nithard and persuaded
Mariana to make some reforms,
and she appointed him to govern Aragon and Catalonia.
Miguel de Molinos wrote a popular Spiritual Guide
that promoted Quietism,
but in 1687 the Inquisition sentenced him to life in prison.
Carlos II was declared of age in 1675,
and the Junta was dissolved the next year.
Fernando de Valenzuela became prime minister;
but a new Junta ordered him arrested, and he fled.
In 1677 Juan José led an army from Aragon into Castile,
and he persuaded King Carlos to visit Zaragoza
where the Cortes funded troops.
The French had invaded Spain in 1675, and Spain
conceded losses in the Netherlands and Franche-Comté
in the Nijmegen treaty in 1678.
Poor harvests caused a food crisis, and Juan José died in 1679.
In 1680 coins were devalued again,
and Spain suffered a recession and epidemics.
The French invaded Flanders again in 1681
and gained Luxembourg in the 1684 treaty.
The King, Church, and nobles owned 95% of the land in Spain.
The Inquisition continued to suppress dissent,
and Spanish education and trade deteriorated.
Junta governors were appointed in 1693,
but they did not last long.
Mariana died in 1696.
France and Spain fought another devastating war from
1689 to 1697, though Spain regained Catalonia.
However, Louis XIV’s son Philippe of Anjou became
the heir of Carlos II, and the Council approved.
After the death of Carlos II in November 1700 Duke Philippe
of Anjou was proclaimed him King Felipe V of Spain
at the age of 17 even though he could not speak Spanish.
Archbishop Fénelon had tutored him, and his grandfather
Louis XIV and the French ambassador advised him.
In 1701 Louis XIV sent French forces to control Spanish
possessions in northern Italy, and conspirators supporting
Archduke Charles in Naples were punished.
Felipe married Maria Luisa of Savoy
who could speak Spanish,
but her father allied with Austrian Emperor Leopold.
Felipe V went to Barcelona
and granted privileges to the Catalan Cortes.
Leopold sent Prince Eugene of Savoy with an army
of 30,000 men to fight the French at Milan,
beginning the War of the Spanish Succession.
In May 1702 England, the Austrian Empire,
and the Dutch Republic declared war on France.
A convoy took Felipe V to Naples,
and he marched north to Milan.
An Anglo-Dutch fleet attacked Cadiz and destroyed
Spanish treasure ships from America.
Cardinal Portocarrero criticized
the decadent nobility and retired.
France sold weapons to Spain which conscripted
soldiers and depended on the French navy.
In 1703 Portugal’s King Pedro II joined
the Allies who gathered at Lisbon.
In 1704 French troops arrived in Spain,
and most of Spain’s revenue paid for their troops.
In 1705 Catalans got aid from England
and allied with Austria’s Archduke Charles.
Aragon and Valencia also opposed Felipe V
who relied on France and Castile.
The Allies captured Barcelona and Valencia,
but the French entered Zaragoza.
Allies marched from Portugal to Madrid
and proclaimed the archduke King Charles III.
Felipe V fled to France but came back with French troops.
They defeated the Allies at Almansa
and kept Charles in Catalonia.
In January 1709 Pope Clement XI allowed
the imperial army free passage.
A cold winter and spring flooding caused crop failures,
famine, and disease, and Louis XIV
recalled French troops from Spain.
Allies were victorious in 1710 and entered Madrid again,
but Charles retreated to Zaragoza in December.
Felipe V returned to Madrid in November 1711,
and the Cortes met in October 1712.
Peace treaties were made in 1713
and with Portugal in February 1715.
Spain had lost control over external territories,
but Felipe V was recognized in a unified Spain
and controlled the Church, limiting the Inquisition.
By 1648 Portugal had lost 220 ships to Dutch attacks,
but in June the Dutch made peace with Spain.
The Portuguese traded slaves from Angola to Brazil
and fought a war against England 1650-54.
King Joao IV died in 1656 and was succeeded by his
13-year-old son Afonso VI,
and his mother governed for six years.
Portuguese fought off attacks by the Dutch and Spaniards.
Afonso VI’s sister Catarina de Bragança
married England’s Charles II in 1662.
The priest Antonio Vieira served as a diplomat but was
imprisoned 1665-67 for criticizing the Inquisition which
Pope Clement X suspended in Portugal in 1674 for seven years.
The Portuguese defeated the Spaniards at Montes Claros
in June 1665 and gained their independence in February 1668.
Afonso’s brother Pedro became Prince Regent
as Afonso was exiled to the Azores.
After Afonso’s death in 1683 he ruled as King Pedro II.
The Cortes of Portugal did not meet 1679-97
and not at all after 1698.
In 1702 Portugal allied against Spain and France with England
and the Dutch and in 1703 with the Austrian Empire.
Spain’s King Felipe V declared war on Portugal
in April 1704 and invaded.
Pedro II died in December 1706 and was succeeded
by his 17-year-old son Joao V who married Archduchess
Maria Anna of Austria in 1708
Portugal agreed to an armistice in November 1712,
to a peace treaty with France in April 1713,
and one with Spain in February 1715.
Venice governed Crete but from 1648 spent more than
twenty years defending Candia against the Turks
with help from France as many were killed.
Venetians led by Morosini took over many places
from the Turks between 1684 and 1694.
After more battles Venice made peace with the Turks
in January 1699, and Venice remained neutral
in the War of the Spanish Succession.
An Austrian imperial army took over Milan in 1706.
Ferdinando II de’ Medici ruled Tuscany 1621-70
while the economy deteriorated.
His son Cosimo III was a religious hypocrite
and imposed harsh punishment for minor offenses.
His son Ferdinando appreciated literature and produced
operas by Scarlatti but was not allowed
to reform the government.
Spain’s Felipe V married Elizabeth Farnese
and claimed Tuscany in 1714.
Pope Innocent X revived the Castro War in 1649 increasing
the debt of the Papal States by 12 million crowns,
and he aided Venice against the Turks.
Pope Alexander VII criticized nepotism
but rewarded his brothers and nephews.
He spent money hiring architects Bernini
and Francesco Borromini to beautify Rome.
He baptized Queen Kristina of Sweden
who founded an academy to discuss ethics.
Alexander continued the policies of Innocent X by favoring
Spain against Portugal’s independence, aiding Venice
against the Turks, and opposing Jansenists in France.
Pope Clement IX also helped Venice’s war effort;
but he mediated peace between France, Spain, England,
and the Netherlands in 1668,
and he stopped the persecution of Jansenists.
Pope Clement X (1670-76) allowed nobles to be merchants,
gave alms to the poor, subsidized Poland against the Turks,
and sent nuncios to work for peace.
Pope Innocent XI was personally frugal and paid off some
of the debt but then increased it promoting
a Christian alliance against the Ottoman Empire.
He helped Jews and criticized Louis XIV’s
persecution of Huguenots.
Pope Innocent XII in 1692 prohibited popes from enriching
their relatives, and he reformed the canon laws in 1695.
Pope Clement XI recognized King Felipe V in Spain,
and his mediation efforts failed to prevent
the War of the Spanish Succession.
In 1706 Prince Eugene’s imperial army plundered
the Papal States and drove the French out of northern Italy.
Imperial troops invaded the Papal States again in 1708.
In 1709 they were allowed free passage,
and Clement XI recognized King Charles III in Spain.
As Emperor Charles VI he came to Milan in November 1711.
In the 1713 treaty the Papal States lost Parma
and Piacenza to the Austrian Empire.
Sicily was governed by ten viceroys from the Spanish
and Habsburg empires from 1648 to 1674.
That year hunger let to a revolt at Messina against
Spanish troops, and French forces arrived to help them in 1675
and destroyed the Spanish and Sicilian fleets in 1676.
The French controlled only Messina, but Viceroy
Vicente de Gonzaga restored Spanish rule there in 1678.
Under repressive government
Sicily lost half its population in the next ten years.
When Felipe V became King of Spain, Austrians were
persecuted in Sicily; but the Utrecht treaty ended Spanish rule
by giving Sicily to Duke Vittorio Amedeo II of Savoy.
Spaniards suppressed a revolt in Naples in 1648,
and in 1656 more than a million Neapolitans died in a plague.
Leonardo di Capoa advocated medical reforms.
The Austrian imperial army occupied Naples in 1708.
Giambattista Vico taught rhetoric at the University of Naples
and gave orations “On Self-Knowledge,”
“On Virtue and Wisdom,” “On True Learning,” and
“On Education for the Common Good.”
Despite the peace treaty of 1648 the Austrian Empire
under Ferdinand III closed Protestant churches and banished
500 preachers, though
he respected rights in Vienna’s Jewish district.
Ferdinand’s son Leopold became King of Hungary in 1655
and King of Bohemia in 1656.
Transylvania’s Rákóczi II invaded southern Poland
in January 1657, and Ferdinand died in April.
Leopold became King of Croatia and allied
with Poland to help them expel Rákóczi.
Electors at Frankfurt were bribed and elected 18-year-old
Leopold Emperor of the German Nation in July 1658,
and he agreed to 45 articles.
A new Federation of the Rhine included
three German archbishops, Louis XIV of France,
Karl X of Sweden, and more
than fifty German princes and cities.
More Austrian troops were sent into Hungary.
Tatars and Turks invaded Transylvania,
and their Prince Rákóczi II died in 1660.
The imperial army and the Rhenish League helped
Transylvania and Hungary when they were attacked by Turks.
Leopold increased the imperial army.
Bohemia and Moravia contributed taxes to the Austrian
Empire and regained the population
lost in the Thirty Years’ War.
The Austrians primarily exported food and raw materials
and imported manufactured goods.
In 1670 Austrian troops invaded Hungary to squelch
a conspiracy and drive out Protestants.
Leopold expelled all Jews from Vienna and sold the Jewish
quarter to the city, though Samuel Oppenheimer
remained to loan money to the Emperor.
Emperor Leopold suspended Hungary’s constitution in 1672,
and imperial soldiers persecuted Protestants
during Hungary’s “ten dark years.”
The Empire allied with Brandenburg, the Dutch, Spain,
and Saxony against France,
and the war lasted from 1673 to February 1679.
A plague started in 1678 and spread from Hungary to Austria
and in 1680 to Bohemia where a revolt was suppressed.
Protestants found refuge in northeastern Hungary,
and 25,000 Kuruc fighters led by Imri Thököly
with invading Turks attacked Austrian soldiers in 1678.
The rebels moved into Slovakia and western Hungary
and raided Silesia and Moravia.
Leopold offered concessions to Protestants.
Thököly demanded an independent Hungary and allied
with Transylvania’s Prince Apafi and the Turkish pasha
of Buda, and after fighting in 1682 Leopold
recognized Thököly in eastern Hungary.
Austria in March 1683 allied with
Poland’s King Jan III Sobieski.
An Ottoman army of 100,000 men aided
by Transylvanians and Kurucs invaded Hungary.
Pope Innocent XI promoted the Christian alliance
with Venice and Germans.
The Turks besieged Vienna for two months before they were
defeated by the Christian armies on September 12.
Leopold decreed pardons, and by 1687 the Turks were
driven out of Hungary which became a Habsburg kingdom.
In May 1688 the Diet of Transylvania also joined the Empire,
and Bavaria’s army captured Belgrade in September.
In 1688 Emperor Leopold joined the Grand Alliance
against France in the Nine Years War.
Imperial forces invaded Albania and Macedonia
but had to retreat from the Turks.
Thököly’s rebels defeated an imperial army in August 1690,
and he was elected Prince of Transylvania.
In 1691 a German army defeated the Ottoman army,
and Leopold proclaimed religious freedom
for Christians in Transylvania.
In 1697 a peasant rebellion in Upper Hungary was suppressed.
Prince Eugene of Savoy commanded the imperial army
and defeated the Turks at Zenta in September.
In January 1699 the Holy League and the Turks
agreed to a peace treaty at Karlowitz.
In 1700 Eugene’s imperial army invaded Italy.
The Empire opposed France again
in the War of the Spanish Succession.
In 1703 the Imperial Treasury was bankrupt
but got loans from English and Dutch allies.
Leopold proclaimed his son Charles king of Spain
and sent him to Portugal.
After the allied victory at Blenheim in August 1704,
Bavaria came under imperial administration.
Ferenc II Rákóczi led a rebellion in Hungary,
and the Diet of Transylvania elected him their prince
in July 1704; but the Austrian army
defeated the Kurucs in November 1706.
Leopold died in 1705,
and his oldest son became Emperor Joseph I.
Eugene’s imperial army aided by Savoy drove the French
out of Italy in 1707 and occupied Naples.
Ferenc II Rákóczi claimed the Transylvanian throne,
but an Austrian force defeated the Kurucs in August 1708.
The imperial army invaded the Papal States and persuaded
Pope Clement XI to recognize
Archduke Charles as king of Spain.
Peace came to Austria just before Emperor Joseph’s death
in April 1711, and Emperor Charles VI
made peace with Hungary.
The treaty of Rastatt in 1714 gave Naples, Milan, Sardinia,
and the southern Netherlands to the Habsburg Empire.
Comenius created The Visible World in Pictures for children
and in 1657 published his writings on education designed
to help all people gain knowledge, virtue, and piety.
He urged all boys and girls to go to school,
and he advised beginning early
and teaching them gently and pleasantly.
Language is learned by practice.
He opposed corporal punishment.
In The Way of Light he recommended a
“parliament of the whole world” so that wars shall cease.
His pansophy sought all wisdom
to learn good means to good ends.
Comenius aided Protestants exiled by the Catholic empire.
In his Pampaedia he argued that force is not needed
because wise guidance is sufficient.
He suggested a College of Light to teach humanity,
a Dicastery of Peace for justice with government and laws
to achieve public equity and security,
and a Religious Consistory with sacred gatherings,
sacred books, acts of charity,
and the Holy Spirit as the inner teacher.
German nations had been devastated in the Thirty Years’ War,
and it took more than fifteen years to recover.
Foreign armies (mostly Swedes) did not leave until 1654.
The Brandenburg estates called for
elementary schools for all Germans.
Rhenish circles formed.
Brandenburg’s Elector Friedrich Wilhelm annexed
East Pomerania and allied with Sweden in 1656,
gaining sovereignty in Prussia.
In 1657 he cooperated with Poland
and the Empire against Sweden.
The peace of Oliva in May 1660 ended the Northern War.
In 1661 Brandenburg made a commercial treaty with England.
The French invasion of 1670 gained some German support.
In May 1672 Brandenburg formed an alliance with the Dutch,
but a year later Friedrich Wilhelm
made a separate peace with France.
In 1674 many Germans including Brandenburg joined with
the Austrian Empire against the French
and the invading Swedes in 1675.
The imperial army had 74,100 German auxiliaries by 1678.
Treaties ended the war in 1679,
and Brandenburg allied with Louis XIV.
In 1681 Friedrich Wilhelm switched
his alliance from France to England.
In 1683 Germans helped defeat the Turks’ siege of Vienna.
In 1685 Brandenburg allied with the Dutch and welcomed
Protestants from France seeking refuge.
Friedrich Wilhelm used income tax to support his military.
In 1686 the League of Augsburg (Austria, Germans, Dutch
England, Sweden and Spain) opposed French aggression.
The Nine Years’ War between France and this
Grand Alliance began in September 1688,
and invading French crossed the Rhine.
In 1689 Germans drove the French to the Upper Rhine.
In 1692 Hanover became an imperial electorate.
Max Emanuel of Bavaria governed the Spanish Netherlands.
Brandenburg Elector Friedrich III (r. 1688-1713) had
palaces built in Berlin and founded
the University of Halle in 1694.
The treaty of Ryswick ended the war in October 1697.
When the Bourbon Felipe V claimed
the throne of Spain
in 1700, France aided him against the renewed
Grand Alliance of Austria, Germans (except Bavaria),
England, and the Dutch that formed by 1702.
Germans conscripted soldiers, and the Allies
defeated the French in August 1704.
A peasant revolt was suppressed in 1705.
German military strength increased to 343,300 men
with 156,700 of them fighting for the Empire by 1710.
The treaty at Baden ended the
War of the Spanish Succession in 1714.
In 1648 the treaty of Westphalia confirmed that the thirteen
cantons of the Swiss Confederation and their allies
would not be under imperial jurisdiction.
After the war food prices came down,
and Swiss farmers revolted.
The peasants formed an alliance and an army of 16,000
in 1653, but mediation led to a truce.
Some rebels fought and were defeated.
One reform ended selling convicts to Venice to be galley slaves.
Swiss mediated conflict between
the English and the Dutch in 1654.
Catholic cantons revived the Golden Borromaic League in 1655
while Protestant cantons allied with England’s Cromwell.
A war broke out between the Catholic and Protestant cantons,
but it ended in February 1656.
A treaty set up a court to arbitrate future conflicts.
The Swiss Confederation still claimed Franche Comté,
and the Swiss provided mercenaries to France for privileges.
When the French seized Franche Comté in 1668,
the Confederation sent an army and got it back.
In 1672 Swiss mercenaries helped the French invade Holland.
In 1674 the Swiss Diet declared
the Swiss Confederation a neutral state.
In 1685 many Huguenots found refuge in Switzerland.
In 1687 Waldenses fled from Savoy to Geneva,
but 3,000 returned in 1689.
That year France paid for more Swiss mercenaries.
The Swiss insisted that their troops be used only for defense,
but 9,000 fought for the Dutch
against the French who had 29,000 Swiss.
Swiss guards worked for monarchs.
About 50,000 Swiss mercenaries were hired by both sides
in the Spanish War of Succession.
In 1713 the treaty at Utrecht recognized Swiss neutrality.
Another battle between the Catholic and Protestant cantons
occurred in the Toggenberg war of 1712.
Samuel Pufendorf became the first professor
of international law at Heidelberg University.
In 1667 he criticized the Holy Roman Empire
and then taught for twenty years at the new University of Lund
in Sweden, publishing his
Law of Nature and of Nations in 1672.
He taught that natural law by reason gives humans duties
and that civil government is best at restraining abusive behavior.
He argued that war must be justified by self-defense,
assertion of rights, or satisfaction for damages.
Philipp Jakob Spener was
a Lutheran preacher who founded Pietism.
Christian Thomasius taught in German and published
Doctrine of Morals in 1692
and Natural and International Law in 1705.
He opposed persecuting and torturing suspected witches.
Gottfried Leibniz taught himself Latin and Greek
and read great books.
He earned a doctorate in law and advised
the Elector of Mainz on a new legal code.
He traveled and met Malebranche, Arnauld,
Boyle, and Spinoza.
In 1682 he founded the first German scientific journal,
Acta Eruditorum, and he influenced the founding of scientific
academies in Vienna, Amsterdam, and Moscow.
He worked on Protestant and Christian reunification.
He believed in a united Europe and approved
of Saint-Pierre’s peace plan.
Leibniz studied Chinese philosophy and believed
deeply in God and universal harmony.
He invented calculus and developed
the principle of sufficient reasoning.
He wrote about wisdom as the science of happiness that
guides virtue and the importance of justice and charity.
In 1710 Leibniz published his Theodicy explaining
the goodness of God, human freedom,
and the origin of evil as a deficiency.
Suffering helps humans move toward perfection.
Humans are free to choose between good and bad.
Relative evils are lesser goods that are temporal.
God is wise and just, and humans can relate to God.
His Monadology is about souls
as active centers of divine energy.
He understood God as the creator and the final goal.
Grimmelshausen experienced the Thirty Years’ War
and wrote about it in his best-selling novel Simplicissimus.
Soldiers ravage a farm, and the orphan taught by a hermit
is named Simplicissimus who has many
adventures in the suffering of the war.
He becomes a governor’s page, serves the Swedish army
as a fool, is abducted, and joins thieves.
He escapes disguised as a girl, is imprisoned and freed.
He becomes a musketeer and steals from the rich.
He marries, has love affairs, becomes a mountebank
and a soldier again.
After the war he marries again, but she dies.
He visits Russia, is captured by Tatars
and returns to Germany to become a hermit.
Other Germans also wrote about war such as
Andreas Gryphius who wrote five tragedies
including Horribilicribrifax.
Seckendorf and Nicola Avancini wrote about Christian ethics.
Austrian Archduke Leopold Wilhelm governed
the Spanish Netherlands 1647-56.
Although eighty years of war between the Dutch and Spain
ended in January 1648, France and Spain were still
at war over the southern Netherlands.
Swedes helped the French defeat Leopold’s army in August.
Antwerp had lost half its population.
The States of Holland wanted to disband most army units.
The Dutch Stadtholder Willem II opposed that,
but he died in November 1650.
Holland promoted elections,
and the Great Assembly met in 1651.
The United Provinces banned Catholicism, and Johan de Witt
persuaded the Great Assembly to grant amnesty.
The Dutch increased their trade,
and the English attacked their ships.
In 1653 De Witt became Grand Pensionary of Holland
and urged republican government.
The Dutch lost 1,200 ships; but Denmark helped the Dutch
regain control of the Baltic Sea,
and England agreed to peace in 1654.
Plague spread from Leyden in 1655 to Amsterdam in 1656
while Dutch trade increased.
The States General promoted De Witt and restrained
the power of provincial Stadtholder Willem Frederik.
In 1657 the Dutch went to war against Portugal over
Brazil and Ceylon, and they aided Denmark against Sweden.
Juan José governed the Spanish Netherlands 1656-59.
Cromwell’s England supported France against the Spanish,
taking Dunkirk; but after the war between France and Spain
ended in 1659, the army in Flanders
was reduced by more than half.
Books by Descartes were translated,
and his philosophy became controversial.
In 1660 Holland repealed the Exclusion Act and supported
the education of Prince Willem III of Orange.
Spain conceded some territory
in the southern Netherlands to the Dutch.
In 1662 the Dutch formed an alliance with England
and ratified peace with Portugal.
The Dutch debated the republican States General
versus a monarchical stadtholder.
The Prince-Bishop of Münster led a rebellion and was
supported by the English who went to war
against the Dutch again in 1664.
The English won a major naval battle in June 1665, but
the Dutch fought back and made peace with Münster in 1666.
Danes once again backed the Dutch whose navy went up
the Thames, and they made peace at Breda in July 1667.
Yet that year the French invaded Belgian territory.
De Witt allied with England and Sweden to mediate between
Spain and France, but in 1669 the English joined the French
in an attack on the United Provinces to punish the Dutch.
Valckenier, De La Court, and Spinoza
argued for republics and religious toleration.
In February 1672 the States General appointed
Prince Willem III of Orange commander,
and England declared war on the Dutch
in March, followed in April by Louis XIV
who allied with Sweden and Münster.
The Dutch flooded the land to save Amsterdam,
but French troops entered Utrecht.
Peasants were angry, and riots spread.
Johan de Witt was blamed and wounded in June.
Zeeland and Holland proclaimed
Prince Willem Stadtholder in July.
Pamphlets condemned De Witt, and his brother Cornelis
was arrested for conspiracy, tortured, and banished.
Johan de Witt resigned on August 4,
and a mob murdered the two brothers on the 20th.
Holland authorized Stadtholder Willem III to change
town councils, and he was made captain-general for life.
French and Münster soldiers occupied
most of the Dutch Republic.
The States General allied with Emperor Leopold
and Brandenburg, and they forced
the French army toward the south.
Holland raised taxes, and the Dutch navy
defeated the French three times in 1673.
Denmark and Spain supported the Dutch.
England made peace with the Dutch in 1674,
and the French retreated from Gelderland and Overijssel
where Prince Willem gained power in 1675.
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek improved the use of the
microscope and in 1676 discovered single-celled organisms
which opened the field of microbiology.
In 1677 the French invaded the Spanish Netherlands,
and Willem III married England’s Princess Mary in November.
The English and Dutch signed a treaty in January 1678,
and France and the Dutch Republic made peace
at Nijmegen in August.
In late 1679 French forces entered the Southern Netherlands,
Lorraine, and Alsace,
and the Dutch allied with Sweden in 1681.
In 1683 the French besieged Luxemburg,
and peace came in 1684.
Willem secretly allied with the Habsburg Empire in 1688
and hired German mercenaries,
and the French occupied Cologne.
Willem led an army that invaded England, and he replaced
the hated Catholic James II as King William III of England.
Louis XIV declared war on the Dutch,
and in 1689 the English went to war against France.
In 1691 Willem visited The Hague, and his policy of religious
toleration was popular in England and the United Provinces.
In 1692 he replaced seven republican
regents with his supporters.
During the Nine Years War (1688-97) France fought
the Dutch and their allies over trade, and in the treaty
at Ryswick the Dutch gained fortresses
in the Southern Netherlands.
The death of Stadtholder Willem III in March 1702
left behind no sons, and the republicans
struggled for power against the Orangists.
In the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14)
French forces invaded the Spanish Netherlands again.
The Dutch joined another Grand Alliance
against France and Spain.
The Dutch army increased to more than 100,000 men.
The allies defeated the French at Blenheim in 1704,
at Ramillies in 1706, at Oudenaarde in 1708,
and at Malplaquet in 1709.
The Dutch Republic and Britain agreed on three Barrier treaties,
and negotiations at Utrecht led to peace treaties in 1713.
In 1715 the Dutch and the Austrian Empire agreed
to share the defense of the Southern Netherlands.
Baruch Spinoza was born in Amsterdam into a family
of Sephardic Jews and studied in a Talmudic school
and a Yeshivah, but the Jewish community
expelled him for heresy in 1656.
He was interested in science and wrote a book
critical of Descartes’ philosophy.
Spinoza published his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
anonymously in 1669 examining the Bible critically
and arguing that religious freedom
is necessary for piety and public peace.
He had advised Jan de Witt and was upset by his assassination.
In 1674 the States-General banned the
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.
Spinoza ground lenses for a living, suffered from the glass dust,
and died of tuberculosis in 1677.
That year his unfinished Treatise on the Correction
of the Understanding was published.
In that work he rejected wealth, honor, and sensual pleasure
in order to love the eternal and infinite which brings
pure joy and to seek the good
that unites the mind with all of Nature.
He focused on moral philosophy and instructing children.
He worked on purifying the intellect.
Spinoza’s Ethics using geometric methods was also
published in 1677 and was his major work.
He defined God as “Being absolutely infinite.”
He believed that God determines all and that
human free will is illusory because they are ignorant
of the causes of their motives.
Yet he considered the human mind part of the
infinite intellect of God, and he valued reason
and intuition over opinion and imagination.
By perfecting our actions we understand God,
enabling individuals to freely choose what is best.
A mind not using reason suffers.
In his Ethics he also analyzed emotions.
Governing one’s tongue and appetites is difficult.
Love is caused by joy for another,
and hatred is caused by pain.
Desire causes coveting, ambition, and anger.
He taught that hatred, anger, and envy should be avoided,
but the first task is to remove sorrow.
Not governing emotions is bondage.
Only a stronger emotion can restrain an emotion.
Reason demands loving oneself and seeking
what is beneficial for all.
Those who know God follow virtue
guided by reason and harm no one.
A state uses laws to protect citizens with justice.
A free person never deceives.
Peace of mind comes from knowing God.
Minds are not conquered by arms but by love.
Emotions can be clearly understood and controlled,
but negative emotions may hinder understanding.
Love conquers hatred,
and the intellectual love of God decreases suffering.
Spinoza in his Theological-Political Treatise admired the
teachings of Christianity but criticized
its current condition of mutual hatred.
He was also critical of Judaism but explored the divine mind
revealed to the prophets and Christ,
focusing on what is right and good.
He believed that all nations have prophets,
that all people benefit from laws,
and that election depends upon virtue.
He noted violent regimes do not last long.
He valued common consent, human equality, justice, love,
and democracy, and he encouraged
individuals to think for themselves.
Frederik III ruled Denmark according to the Haandfæstning
Charter from 1648 until his monarchy became absolute in 1660.
Denmark went to war against Sweden in 1657
and made concessions in the treaty of 1658.
Denmark was supported by allies,
and Frederik renounced the treaty in 1660.
Danes had suffered, and a new treaty was negotiated.
Half of Denmark was owned by 150 nobles.
The clergy and burghers accepted a hereditary monarchy,
and the militia persuaded the nobles to agree.
A supreme court was established,
but the King could overrule it.
Nobles retained seigneurial rights but were taxed.
Treasurer Hannibal Sehested arranged a treaty with England,
and in 1663 Denmark joined the Rhenish alliance.
Frederik III used harsh methods to collect taxes
from the poor while the court enjoyed luxurious carnivals.
In the Second Anglo-Dutch War the Danes backed England
in 1665 but the Dutch in 1666.
That year the first Danish newspaper began.
Frederik III died and was succeeded
by his son Kristian V (r. 1670-99).
He created new nobles who did not pay taxes but were
responsible for collecting them from their farmers.
Denmark also ruled Norway, Iceland, and Greenland
and expanded its trade and industries.
Count Griffenfeldt became chancellor in 1673.
Denmark allied with Brandenburg in the Scanian War in 1675.
Griffenfeldt opposed the war, tried to ally with France,
and was banished for corruption.
Danes were victorious at first, especially in naval battles;
but then Swedes led by Karl XI defeated them several times,
and they agreed to a treaty in September 1679
that included trade and a common coinage.
Peasants suffered from heavy taxes and harsh laws,
and the King controlled what was printed.
Danes invaded Holstein-Gottorp in 1682,
and Denmark formed an offensive alliance
with France and Brandenburg in 1683,
taking Schleswig in 1684.
After Chancellor Ahlefeldt died in 1686,
Kristian V ruled without a chancellor.
In 1689 Denmark restored the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp
and made a peace treaty with Sweden.
Taxes were reformed, adding tax on interest
and lowering taxes on farmers.
Kristian V was succeeded by his son Frederik IV
who had many mistresses.
He freed children of serfs on islands born during his reign.
The Great Northern War began in 1700,
and Denmark made a treaty with Sweden in August.
After Sweden’s defeat at Poltava in 1709
Denmark declared war and invaded Scania again.
In 1711 a plague spread,
and Copenhagen lost one-third of its people.
Danes fought the Swedes and allied with England,
Prussia, Saxony, and Poland in 1715.
Hannibal Sehested governed Norway for Denmark from 1642,
but in 1651 he was prosecuted and gave his property
in Norway to King Frederik III.
Norwegians fought against Swedes 1658-60.
Denmark’s rule over increased, and crown land
was sold to rich burghers to pay for the war.
Governor Gyldenlöve helped peasants and prepared for war,
and in 1676 he led the Norwegian army
during the Scanian War.
Norwegian laws were codified by 1687
and were based on equality.
Criminal laws also were reformed in Iceland.
Norway’s trade increased to 568 ships by 1707,
but in Iceland inflation of shipping fees rose sharply.
Many Swedes fought for the Protestant cause in the
Thirty Years’ War, and the treaty in 1648 recognized
Sweden’s control of Pomerania, Bremen, Verden, and Wismar,
and Sweden’s position in the Imperial Diet.
Queen Kristina put her cousin Karl Gustav in command
of the Swedish army and made him her heir.
She invited prominent scholars and studied the work of
Grotius, Heinsius, Milton, Pascal, Comenius,
Descartes, and others.
Kristina became a Roman Catholic and abdicated in favor
of Karl X Gustav in 1654 and went to Rome.
In 1655 the Riksdag gave Karl X the authority to go to war,
and Swedish armies invaded Poland-Lithuania,
taking Warsaw, Krakow, Lithuania, and Prussia.
In 1656 Karl’s army suffered defeats in Poland,
and he allied with Brandenburg.
Russia declared war on Sweden and invaded Livonia.
Karl gave Prussia back to Brandenburg
and Poland-Lithuania to György Rákóczi II for an alliance.
In 1657 Danes and the Dutch forced Swedes
to abandon Danzig (Gdansk).
Denmark declared war on Sweden,
and Swedes took over provinces in Denmark and Norway.
In 1658 Sweden and Russia agreed to a truce,
and in 1659 Danes and the Dutch
broke the Swedish siege of Copenhagen.
The Swedish navy defeated the Danes and Dutch,
but Karl X died in February 1660.
Karl XI was only four years old, and his relatives were to be
regents; but the Council of nobles and the Riksdag
used their power to make peace with Poland-Lithuania,
the Habsburg Empire, Brandenburg-Prussia,
Denmark-Norway, and Russia.
Sweden was neutral during the Second Anglo-Dutch War.
Lund University was founded in 1668.
Swedish shipping expanded.
In 1672 Sweden’s Chancellor de la Gardie made a treaty
with France, and Karl XI began to govern with him.
Swedes fought Danes in Scania
but were defeated by Brandenburgers in 1675.
Denmark-Norway regained territory from Swedes;
but Karl XI took command and won some battles,
and in the 1679 treaty Sweden got much of it back.
In 1680 Karl XI married Denmark’s
Princess Ulrika Eleonora as the two powers allied.
Karl took power from the Council and built up the military.
Sweden developed manufacturing and a mercantile policy
with protective tariffs and more taxes.
Sweden established Lutheran uniformity in 1687
under the King with the Swedish language.
In 1693 Karl XI was given absolute power.
Crop failures caused malnutrition and disease
which killed a third of those in Finland.
Large land reductions from nobles helped Karl XI
reduce the debt from 44 million daler in 1681
to 11.5 million in 1697, the year he died.
King Karl XII was well educated and began ruling
Sweden’s empire at the age of 15.
In the Great Northern War that began in 1700
Sweden was allied with the Dutch, Hanover, and Brandenburg
against Denmark, Saxony, Lithuania, and Russia,
but Sweden made a treaty with Denmark in August.
Russia declared war against Sweden and invaded Ingria.
Sweden led by Karl XII defeated them at Narva
and invaded Saxony in 1701 and Poland in 1702.
In 1704 Swedes deposed August II and replaced him
with Stanislaw Leszczynski as King of Poland.
Sweden and Poland made a treaty in 1705.
Karl XII marched his army back to Saxony in 1706
and had 120,000 soldiers by 1707.
They invaded Russia in 1708
and found it devastated by Russians.
Many Swedes suffered from the cold winter,
and their dwindling army was defeated at Poltava in July 1709.
Karl XII retreated with a small force to Bessarabia
and stayed there for four years as Russians occupied Poland
and Sweden’s Baltic provinces.
In 1710 the Danes went to war against Sweden.
A Swedish army led by Stenbock was eventually
defeated in 1713 by Saxons, Danes, and Russians.
Karl was captured by Turks and Tatars but made it back
to Stralsund in November 1714.
Brandenburg and its allies besieged Stralsund in 1715,
and Karl XII returned to Sweden in December.
Jan II Kazimierz Waza had been a military officer
and a cardinal in Rome, but in 1648 the Polish Sejm (Diet)
elected him king to succeed his half-brother Władysław IV Waza,
and he married his brother’s French widow in 1649.
The Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth already had
250,000 Jews who spoke Yiddish, and Hetman Khmelnytsky’s
pogroms drove many Polish Jews to western Poland.
King Jan II led the fight against Cossacks and Tatars
and then increased the registered Cossacks to 40,000.
Opaliński’s Satires criticized the szlachta (gentry)
for exploiting the peasants, and in 1651 the peasants’ revolt
in Greater Poland and the Cossack-Tatar rebellion in Ukraine
were crushed by the Polish army,
reducing registered Cossacks to 20,000
and grain exports from Danzig.
In 1652 a Lithuanian deputy first used the liberum (free) veto
to block legislation and delay taxes.
In 1654 Khmelnytsky’s Cossacks allied with Muscovite
Tsar Aleksei to protect Ukraine,
but Tatars helped Poland fight them.
By 1656 about 100,000 Jews had died or migrated,
and Poland’s cities suffered epidemics
between 1652 and 1679.
In 1655 Sweden’s Karl X invaded Poland
which allied with Russians.
Swedes took over Warsaw and Krakow.
Karl claimed Lithuania and Poland as Jan II fled to Silesia
but returned in 1656 and promised to help the serfs.
Poles and Lithuanians joined, fought Swedes
and Brandenburgers, and made treaties
with Russia and the Austrian Empire.
In 1657 Transylvanians invaded Poland
but were defeated and withdrew.
Jan II made peace with Denmark and allied with Brandenburg.
Wars in the 1650s devastated crops and reduced the
population of Poland-Lithuania by a quarter.
In 1658 the Sejm banished Arians.
In 1659 Cossacks of Ruthenia united with Poland-Lithuania,
and peace with Sweden came in 1660.
Russians invaded Ukraine but agreed on a treaty in 1667.
Jan Sobieski led the army against the Tatars.
Jan II Kazimierz abdicated in 1668 and became an abbot.
The szlachta elected Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki
king in 1669, but he was weak and died in 1673.
Jan Sobieski led attacks against the Turks
and was elected King Jan III in 1674.
He continued to fight them but made peace with them
in 1677 and with Sweden and Brandenburg.
During his reign the veto ended half the Sejm sessions,
and it was used more after his death.
Sobieski negotiated a treaty with Emperor Leopold
and led the Christian allies who defeated
the Turks besieging Vienna in 1683.
In 1686 his army invaded Moldavia, and he made a treaty
with Russia in December that upset Lithuanians.
Another invasion of Moldavia failed again in 1691,
but they defeated Tatar attacks.
King Jan III Sobieski died in 1696.
Saxony’s Elector Friedrich August Wettin won a struggl
for power and became King August II of Poland-Lithuania,
though he did not know their languages and used French.
Persecution increased as he tried to rule Lutherans
in Saxony and Catholics in Poland.
He aimed to reform Poland-Lithuania and expand trade.
In 1699 the Christian coalition made peace with the Turks,
but August II allied with Russia’s Tsar Petr against Swede
in the Great Northern War that began in 1700.
In 1702 Sweden’s invading army led by Karl XII forced
August to retreat to Pomerania
as Russian troops attacked Lithuania.
In 1703 the Sejm declared war on Sweden,
and the next year Poland and Lithuania allied with Russia.
Karl XII replaced August II with Stanisław Leszczyński in 1704.
August’s forces recaptured Warsaw briefly;
but in 1705 he returned to Saxony as Stanisław
was crowned in Warsaw allied with Sweden.
In 1706 Sweden’s army defeated Saxons and Russians
in Poland, and August II renounced the Polish throne;
but in October with Russian and Polish allies
he defeated the Swedes at Kalisz.
Karl XII allied with Cossacks and invaded Russia in 1708,
but they were defeated at Poltava in 1709.
August and Tsar Petr agreed to a treaty that
put August II back on the Polish throne in 1710.
Poland-Lithuania was devastated by the war
and lost a quarter of their people.
In 1648 efforts to collect the hated salt tax provoked
a rebellion in Moscow that burned 20,000 houses
and killed 2,000 people.
Tsar Aleksei (r. 1645-76) appointed a commission that
revised Russia’s law code but tied serfs to private holdings.
He expelled foreigners
and banned them from trading in Moscow.
In two years Cossacks and peasants killed 200,000 Jews.
Aleksei made his friend Nikon church Patriarch in 1652,
and he imposed puritan laws in Moscow.
In 1654 Muscovite jurisdiction was extended to Ukraine.
Archpriest Avvakum opposed Nikon
who deported him and others to Siberia.
Aleksei was away during the Polish war (1654-56) in which
500,000 Ukrainians were killed or captured
while Nikon governed; but the Tsar dismissed him in 1658.
Muscovy declared war on Sweden in 1656,
and Aleksei led the invasion of Livonia but agreed to a truce
with Sweden in December 1658.
That year the government began arresting fugitive peasants.
After a battle in 1659 Ukraine’s autonomy was reduced.
In a 1661 treaty Russia gave back territory
in Livonia and Ingria to Sweden.
By 1663 foreigners were 79% of Russia’s army.
Russia minted copper coins that multiplied inflation,
and thousands of protestors were executed
or mutilated and banished without their property.
In 1667 Russia made a treaty with Poland-Lithuania.
Nikon’s reforms were accepted, and in the Great Schism
the Russians persecuted the Old Believers
who were inspired by Avvakum.
A new commercial code favored mercantile policies
and restricted trade with foreigners.
In 1668 Hetman Doroshenko allied with Tatars and Turks
in a revolt, and in 1669 Stenka Razin
led 2,000 Cossacks raiding.
In 1672 Doroshenko and Turks invaded
Ukraine and massacred civilians.
The rebellion was crushed after
about 100,000 people had died.
During Aleksei’s reign Russia’s territory
increased to more than three million square miles.
Aleksei was succeeded by 14-year-old Fyodor III.
Doroshenko’s rebels surrendered in December 1676,
and the Turks claimed western Ukraine and besieged
the Cossack capital in June 1677;
but a Russian army defeated them in August.
In 1678 an Ottoman army of 70,000 attacked again;
but in 1680 Russians brought an army as large,
and the Turks withdrew and accepted a truce in January 1681.
Russia had 164,000 men in the armed forces
with 22,000 in Moscow.
Fyodor III died in 1682, and the Boyar Duma chose
10-year-old Petr over his disabled older brother Ivan,
but in the dispute about seventy people were killed.
Tsarina Sophia took power as
Ivan and Petr sat on a double throne.
She and Prince Vasilii Golitsyn governed Russia
for the next seven years making reforms.
Petr liked practical activities and playing with soldiers.
In 1684 Russia joined the Holy League against the
Ottoman Empire and made a treaty
with Poland-Lithuania in 1686.
In 1687 and 1689 Golitsyn led failed expeditions
against Tatars, and he persecuted Old Believers.
In September 1689 Petr took over the government,
as Sofia entered a convent, and Vasilii Golitsyn was banished.
Young Tsar Petr was at first influenced by his mother Natalia
and her brother Lev Naryshkin, and Patriarch Ioakim
persuaded him to expel the Jesuits from Russia.
He conducted military exercises, sailed,
and spent time with his German mistress.
He visited Archangel twice during the summer.
In 1695 he led a Russian army on a disastrous expedition
to the Sea of Azov while a larger army
attacked Turkish forts on the Dnieper River.
Petr then ordered the building of a navy.
His brother Ivan died, and but Petr had a son Aleksei.
In 1696 ships helped his army capture Azov.
In 1697 Petr asked for a divorce and traveled with
270 people to Riga and Königsberg;
he built ships in Amsterdam and learned many things.
In 1698 he visited William III in London and bought
new flintlock muskets with bayonets.
He talked with William Penn
and approved importation of tobacco.
He studied the mint and moved through Germany to Prague
and Vienna where he conversed with Emperor Leopold.
Informed that Streltsy musketeers were rebelling,
Petr met with Poland’s King August II in Galicia
and returned to Moscow in August
after recruiting 750 foreigners.
He shaved beards off boyars
and ordered men to shave or pay a tax.
He had the military investigated, a thousand rebels executed,
and disbanded the Streltsy regiments.
He confined Sofia and his wife in a convent.
In 1699 Petr reformed the government and allied
with Poland’s August II and Denmark.
He sent his fleet to Azov, and Russia adopted
the Julian calendar in 1700.
All Russians with property were to dress like Europeans.
Russia made peace with the Ottoman Empire in July 1700.
Swedes invaded Estonia and defeated
the Russians at Narva in November.
In 1701 Petr had church bells melted to make cannons.
He started the School of Mathematical and Naval Sciences
and an artillery school.
In 1702 he led an army that captured Nöteborg.
Russia got a newspaper in 1703.
Petr began building a port city by the Neva River
(St. Petersburg), and about 30,000 workers
and Swedish prisoners died of diseases.
Russians occupied Ingria, and in 1704 they regained
Dorpat and Narva;
but Swedes defeated them at Gemauerthof in 1705.
Four regiments suppressed a revolt in Astrakhan,
and Petr decreed greater recruitment for the army.
Defeated by Swedes at Fraustadt in February 1706,
the Russian army retreated to Kiev;
but Saxons and Poles helped Russians
beat the Swedes at Kalisz in October.
Russia was turning out 30,000 flintlocks a year.
A Cossack rebellion was defeated in 1708.
Petr had Russia organized with governors into the nine
provinces of Moscow, Ingria, Archangel, Smolensk,
Kazan, Kiev, Voronezh, Azov, and Siberia.
Sweden’s Karl XII moved his army east,
but Russians burned the land to deny them food.
In 1709 Petr’s army quelled
rebelling Zaporozhian Cossacks.
In June the Russian army decisively
defeated the Swedes at Poltava.
In 1710 they invaded Poland to help August II regain his throne,
and they took over Swedish provinces in the Baltic region.
In 1711 Petr’s niece Anna became Duchess of Courland.
He created a Senate to help him govern
and appointed nine senators.
Governors needed Senate approval to impose taxes.
Petr led the campaign against the Turks and made
a treaty with the Prince of Moldavia.
In another treaty he gave Azov back to the Ottoman Empire.
Prince Aleksei married a princess in Saxony,
and Petr formally married his mistress Ekaterina in 1712.
He founded hospitals that accepted children of unwed mothers.
He reclaimed Azov and required
Muslim nobles to convert to Christianity.
In 1713 Russians invaded Finland,
and they drove out the Swedes in 1714.
Petr had corrupt officials investigated and punished.
The English Civil War between the Parliamentarians
and the royalists ended with the execution of King Charles I
and abolishing the House of Lords in early 1649.
The Parliament gave power to the successful general
Oliver Cromwell, and his armies suppressed
the royalist uprisings in Ireland and Scotland.
The English took most of the land away from
the Catholics in Ireland and governed Scotland.
The Puritans wanted religious freedom for dissenters,
but Catholics and the Anglican Church were oppressed.
John Milton, who had championed free expression,
supervised the censorship the Puritans imposed.
Those who took power were not ready for radical ways
of the Levellers and persecuted them.
Commercial conflict led to a naval war between
the English and Dutch for ocean trade in the north,
and England managed to make treaties
with Portugal, Sweden, and Denmark.
After the death of Cromwell in 1658 the royalists
and the army allied and brought about the restoration
by inviting Charles II to take the throne in 1660.
Thomas Hobbes and his Leviathan reflected the violent times
of the 17th century with his philosophy emphasizing fear
and the need for security along with a materialistic view of life.
However, James Harrington’s Commonwealth of Oceana
favored republican government so that there could be more
political and economic equality for the benefit of all.
He opposed wars and encouraged education.
When King Charles II was restored in 1660 by the army,
he revived royalists and Anglicans; but he had learned
from his father’s mistakes, pardoned most of his enemies,
and respected the Parliament.
The Royal Society promoted science to improve medical care
and develop technology, though burning coal
would cause many lung diseases in London.
Charles promised religious tolerance, but the re-establishment
of the Church of England led to
the persecution of Quakers and other dissenters.
The English and the Dutch fought two more costly wars
over maritime control of trade.
After a terrible plague and fire London learned how to build
with bricks and stone and keep the streets cleaner.
Charles II had no children by his queen,
and his brother James became a Catholic.
Only 1% of Protestant England were Catholics,
and many feared the growing power of Catholic France.
The Court party became the conservative Tories,
and the Country party the liberal Whigs.
Under Charles II the English continued
to rule Ireland and Scotland.
John Milton elaborated on the mythical story of Adam and Eve
in his Paradise Lost and portrayed Satan’s temptations
of Jesus in Paradise Regained.
These legendary stories encouraged fundamental interpretations
of scripture but also contained spiritual lessons.
John Bunyan was imprisoned for preaching as a Baptist
and wrote the allegorical Pilgrim’s Progress
that is filled with the moral lessons of Christian ethics.
He also showed the negative side
when vice dominates in his novel Mr. Badman.
Vegetarians such as Thomas Tryon taught its health benefits.
Isaac Newton explained the laws of gravity and motion
and applied his magnificent physical discoveries
to spiritual principles such as the golden rule.
James II (r. 1685-88) failed to increase the power of Catholics
because the English Protestants could turn to his daughter Mary
and her husband Willem of Orange
who was given support when his Dutch army invaded.
The Parliament accepted them as sovereigns
and asserted their rights and toleration.
However, they suppressed the Catholics in Ireland
while fighting against the French with the Dutch in Flanders.
To finance these wars the Bank of England
was founded to borrow money.
The Nine Years War against France cost England
£40,000,000 and countless lives.
Queen Anne got involved in another war against France
from 1702 to 1713
as the elected Parliament gained more power.
England united with Scotland, and Britain’s debt
increased to £36,200,000.
The Stuart dynasty and royal veto of the Parliament
ended with the death of Anne in 1714.
George Fox and his Friends (Quakers) developed a spiritual
religion based on each individual seeking the Light of God
within and a peaceful way of living without violence.
They were often imprisoned for their unusual beliefs,
but William Penn worked for tolerance and managed
to found the commonwealth of Pennsylvania
so that Quakers could live in peace.
Penn devised a peace plan for Europe to use justice
by a European Parliament and friendship to prevent wars,
and the Quakers lived honestly seeking inner guidance.
John Locke wrote empirical philosophy, encouraged
democratic government using reason and laws
for equal justice, and promoted tolerance and education.
George Berkeley expressed a spiritual philosophy
based on the Spirit of God as the ultimate reality,
and he recommended not resisting evil with evil
but acting by conscience without using violence.
The Puritans had the theaters closed in 1642,
and only private performances were allowed
until the restoration in 1660,
though a few plays reflected the turbulent times.
Allowing women to play the female roles in plays liberated
many women, though some feared this led to
the immoral comedies of the restoration era.
John Dryden made heroic dramas popular to show
how reason can overcome passion,
and his plays and Otway’s tragedies described other nations.
Comedies by Dryden, Wycherley, Etherege, Shadwell,
Congreve, Cibber, and Farquhar made people laugh
and get a perspective on the follies of romantic love.
Aphra Behn proved that a woman could write great plays
and novellas as her story of the slave Oroonoko showed.
Nathaniel Lee and Addison brought history to life in dramas,
and John Banks and Nicholas Rowe
portrayed influential women.
Gradually libertine comedies gave way
to sentimental comedies with bourgeois values.
Discontent over taxes in France led to a civil war
led by aristocrats against the regency of Queen Anne
and her prime minister Cardinal Mazarin
which lasted five years and took a million lives.
Young Louis XIV learned from this, and in 1661
he took control himself
and neutralized the aristocrats at his court.
He arrested the corrupt Fouquet and worked for justice.
Colbert helped by founding academies to develop
arts and sciences, and France became
the greatest power in Europe.
Unfortunately Louis XIV’s ambition wanted to extend
his territory, and he fomented a series of wars against
other nations that hurt the economy
and took lives from France and others.
Louis also persecuted minorities and expelled large numbers
of Protestants, weakening his army and the nation.
Yet Louis XIV learned the most important lesson
when he left behind the advice for his great grandson
and successor Louis XV to avoid making war.
The Abbé de Saint-Pierre proposed a fairly practical
peace plan for Europe,
but it was generally ignored.
Though Jansenists were persecuted, Pascal left behind his
inventions and heartfelt wisdom and experience with God.
Spiritual endeavor also characterized Madame Guyon’s praying
and Fénelon’s efforts to educate and reform French society
that was corrupted by power and luxury.
Bayle was tolerant and skeptical but also sought justice.
Malebranche too found value in meditating on God.
La Rochefoucauld was a cynical aristocrat who exposed
the prevalence of self-love while advising self-criticism.
Critics compared the ancient classics to modern writing
and found literature great in both,
but Fontenelle showed how science was progressing.
La Fontaine delighted children and adults by collecting
diverse fables that entertain and contain wise lessons.
La Bruyère began with the ancient characters
but also revealed contemporary persons with wit and wisdom.
Molière’s popular comedies not only entertained but exposed
the moral faults of France’s social classes,
particularly the aristocrats and the growing middle class.
The absurdity of parents trying to tell their children
who to marry was exposed.
Religious hypocrisy was shown to be the opposite
of what it professes, and a social critic discovers that
blunt honesty makes him incapable of getting along with people.
As men get older they become more concerned
with money and doctors.
Racine’s tragedies brought realism to the French theatre
and women as leading characters in dramas
to show how uncontrolled passions and vices can be deadly.
Spain suffered from epidemics and wars with France,
and its decline continued during the reign
of disabled Carlos II (1665-1700).
The Inquisition persecuted dissent,
and few people were being educated.
Coins were debased as the government’s debt increased.
Almost all of Spain was owned by the King, the Church,
and the nobles, and most trade was controlled by foreigners.
Louis XIV sent his grandson Philippe of Anjou to become
Felipe V, and France and Spain fought the War of the
Spanish Succession against England, the Dutch,
the Austrian Empire, and Portugal,
establishing the Bourbon dynasty in a unified Spain.
Portugal battled the Dutch and English
and finally won its independence from Spain in 1668.
The Portuguese joined the Allies against Spain and France
in the War of the Spanish Succession.
The empires of Spain and Portugal declined in this era.
Venice fought the Turks over Candia for twenty years
but stayed out of wars against France.
Some popes financed lavish building in Rome
while others gave alms to the poor.
Innocent XI promoted the Christian alliance
against the Ottoman Empire.
Nepotism flourished until Innocent XII
prohibited enriching their relatives in 1692.
Austrian imperial forces devastated the Papal States in 1706
and gained Parma and Piacenza in the Utrecht treaty.
Sicily and Naples suffered under Spanish imperialism.
The Austrian Empire was mostly Catholic
and took over Protestant churches and banished preachers.
Emperor Leopold battled for control over Hungary
and Transylvania, and his empire fought with allies
in three major wars against Louis XIV’s France.
Other Christian nations helped Austria defeat
the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683,
and they drove the Ottomans out of Hungary by 1687
and made peace with the Turks in 1699.
The Habsburgs failed to take control of Spain again
but managed to replace Spanish imperialism in Italy.
The great Comenius applied wisdom and love to education
so that humans could learn justice and peace
and be more like God.
Germans recovered from the Thirty Years’ War,
but Brandenburg and other German states participated
in more wars and increased their military forces.
Yet they were able to join with allies and stop the aggression
of France’s Louis XIV in those wars.
Pufendorf helped develop international law,
and Christian Thomasius taught in German
and helped to stop persecution for witchcraft.
Leibniz promoted science and developed logic.
His moral philosophy explained the relations of humans
to God and the freedom that chooses between good and evil.
Grimmelshausen’s novel Simplicissimus portrayed
the chaos of society during war in an entertaining work.
The Swiss Confederation worked on resolving conflicts
between the Catholic and Protestant cantons and continued
to be a neutral nation while offering mercenaries during wars.
The Dutch finally made peace with Spain in 1648,
but the French fought the Spaniards
in the Southern Netherlands until 1659.
Dutch trade expanded greatly during this era,
and they came into conflict with England
in three short wars in the 1650s, 1660s, and 1670s.
Johan de Witt became a republican leader
as Grand Pensionary of Holland.
The reasoning philosophy of Descartes
became influential but irritated theologians.
Prince Willem III of Orange became the military leader in 1672,
and that year during a difficult war against several allies
Johan de Witt was murdered.
Willem was made Stadtholder with monarchical power.
He married an English princess and in 1688 was welcomed
by English Protestants who wanted to remove Catholic James II.
As William III he ruled Britain until his death in 1702
while his surrogates governed
the United Provinces in the Netherlands.
Dutch prosperity and progress continued and survived
as their allies helped them defeat
the invading French in the war for the Bourbon King of Spain.
Baruch Spinoza was a Sephardic Jew born in Amsterdam
but was expelled by the Jewish community.
He rejected wealth, honor, and sensual pleasure to seek God
and write on ethics, religion, and politics.
He emphasized loving God and seeking the good with reason
and intuition to experience joy and remove sorrow.
He explained how to govern emotions with love.
He valued religious freedom, equal justice, and democracy
but criticized how religion was practiced in his time.
Denmark followed the pattern of France by shifting
to more absolute rule about 1660,
and this affected their rule over Norway and Iceland.
Denmark-Norway came into conflict
with Sweden in devastating wars.
Mercantilism increased commerce
while peasants suffered high taxes.
Law codes were completed in Denmark and Norway.
Sweden had gained territory during the Thirty Years’ War.
Queen Kristina had intellectual interests and abdicated to
Karl X who went to war against Poland-Lithuania and Prussia.
After Russians invaded Livonia, Karl X sought alliances
and fought against Denmark and Norway.
Thus his short reign was devoted to these destructive wars.
In 1660 the Council of nobles made peace with their
former enemies, and they kept Sweden
out of the Anglo-Dutch War, allowing prosperity.
After Karl XI began to govern in 1672,
war broke out against Denmark-Norway.
Sweden’s mercantile policy with tariffs and taxes reduced
the national debt; but the Lutheran religion
and Swedish language were imposed on
the Swedish empire as Karl’s power increased.
In 1700 Karl XII led Sweden against Denmark, Saxony,
Lithuania, and Russia in the Great Northern War
that would last 21 years.
Jan II Kazimierz was a general and a cardinal before he ruled
the Catholic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 1648-68.
In the 1650s wars between Poles and Cossacks and Tatars
and then against Swedes and Brandenburgers
increased suffering, especially for peasants and Jews.
Then Russians invaded Ukraine.
Jan Sobieski became King Jan III in 1674
and made peace with Sweden and Brandenburg.
He helped defend Vienna and defeat the Turks.
Saxony’s August II ruled Poland-Lithuania
using French and with Russia’s Tsar Petr
stumbled into another devastating war against Sweden.
Tsar Aleksei faced a rebellion in Moscow over the salt tax,
led the Russian army in the Polish war that killed or captured
a half-million Ukrainians, and his invasion of Livonia
led to war against Sweden.
His choice of Patriarch Nikon caused religious conflicts.
Foreigners were excluded from trade but became
most of the Russian army.
Copper coins caused immense inflation,
and protestors were treated brutally.
Rebellion in Ukraine resulted in about 100,000 lives lost.
Young Fyodor III also had problems in Ukraine,
but a large Russian army discouraged Ottoman advances.
After his early death Tsarina Sofia governed,
but Prince Vasilii Golitsyn led two disastrous
military adventures against Tatars.
Tsar Petr took control when he was 17
and studied how to improve the military.
He visited European cities and learned about shipbuilding
and many other things and purchased flintlocks.
He punished rebellion severely, made peace with the Turks,
and fought against the aggressive Swedish empire.
He had the port city of St. Petersburg built and organized
Russia into nine provinces with governors.
Russians burned their own land to defeat the invading Swedes.
Petr created a Senate but appointed the senators.
The Russian Empire expanded,
and they took Finland from the Swedes.
This era of Louis XIV suffered much from wars as well as
famines and plagues, but the many peace treaties including
with the Ottoman Empire showed that perhaps
they were beginning to learn how to end
and prevent catastrophic wars.
Progress was made in philosophy especially by
Comenius, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Berkeley.
The field of science was opening up, and scientific societies
in several nations were exploring how to
share their knowledge to improve their lives.
Especially significant was the work in chemistry by Boyle,
in microbiology by Leeuwenhoek,
and in physics by Newton.
He and a few others were even
experimenting with vegetarianism.
In the theater women were included,
and the comedies of Molière excelled.
In England the comedies were often
frank about sexual relations,
but a trend toward sentimental morality began.
Although the Great Northern War would continue,
many nations had found some peace by 1715.