Abstract
The Thirty Years War has to be regarded as a composite European conflict (see ch. 1), and although much of the worst fighting was on German soil, the direct repercussions in northern Italy, France, part of the Netherlands and Denmark were very serious. Military and fiscal burdens caused devastating local or provincial revolts in Spain and France, and contributed to irreversible social and political change in the Scandinavian monarchies. Sweden and Poland linked east and west, even if the Baltic conflicts and the upheavals in Russia and the Ukraine sprang from tensions unconnected with the German conflict. The Stuart monarchy, initially implicated in various ways in the continental struggles, later became totally absorbed in its own troubles — yet parallels between English and continental experiences at least at the general level remain discernible until the 1640s, and some contemporaries were keenly conscious of the implications for other monarchies of the English civil war.
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Notes
R.J. Bonney, ‘The failure of the French revenue farms, 1600–60’, EcHR, 32 (1979), 11–32, and his The King’s Debts: Finance and Politics in France 1589–1661 (Oxford, 1981), passim. The indirect farmed taxes accounted for usually under one-quarter of total crown revenue in the early seventeenth century; the direct taxes, including the tailles which gave between a third and a half of the total revenue, were collected by office-holders in the pays d’élection, and by agents of the provincial estates in the pays d’état.
I. A. A. Thompson, War and Government in Habsburg Spain 1560–1620 (London, 1976), p. 73.
G. Parker, ‘Mutiny and discontent in the Spanish Army of Flanders’, PP, 58 (1977), 38–52
M. Duffy (ed.), The Military Revolution and the State 1500–1800 (Exeter, 1980), introd.
G. Parker, The Army of Flanders (Cambridge, 1972), passim, esp. pp. 264f; and his The Military Revolution (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 24–81
see also C. Jones, ‘The welfare of the French foot-soldier’, H, 65 (1980), pp. 193–213.
Y.-M. Bercé, Histoire des Croquants (Geneva, 1974), vol. 2, pp. 736f, concerning the Croquants in Saintonge.
For a discussion of the precariousness of the power of local office-holders, and their rivalry for power amongst themselves, see W. Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-century France (Cambridge, 1985), ch. 8.
The short-term irregularity and long-term fall in silver imports is clear for the period 1615–20, but the trend for the later seventeenth century has not yet been fully investigated. For references to the work of E.J. Hamilton and the Chaunus, see J. Lynch, Spain under the Habsburgs, vol. 2: Spain and America (2nd edn, Oxford, 1981) pp. 203–11
H. Kamen, Spain in the Later Seventeenth Century (London, 1980), pp. 135–40.
See P. Brightwell, cited in note 4 to ch. 1; see also J. Israel, The Dutch Republic and the Hispanic World 1606–1661 (Oxford, 1982).
J.H. Elliott, The Count Duke of Olivares (New Haven, 1986), p. 293; see also his Richelieu and Olivares (Cambridge, 1984).
For a recent more positive analysis of Philip’s role in government, see R. A. Stradling, Philip IV and the Government of Spain, 1621–65 (Cambridge, 1988).
M. Roberts, The Early Vasas (Cambridge, 1968), p. 388.
I. Montgomery, ‘Gustav Adolf och religionen’, Gustav II Adolf (Stockholm, 1982), pp. 61–77.
Gustav may have used this tactic to weaken the aristocratic council after 1628, since their debate was only pro forma. G. Barudio’s thesis in his Gustav Adolf (Wiesbaden, 1982), that the king was a protagonist of libertarian constitutionalism, may need some qualification in this context.
M. Roberts, ‘Oxenstierna in Germany, 1633–36’, Scandia, 48 (1982), 61–105.
F. P. Jensen, ‘Peder Vinstrups tale ved Christian 4s kroning: et teokratisk indlæg’, HTK, 12/2 (1966–7), 375–92.
R. Thomsen, ‘Den jydske borgerbevægelse 1629’, HTK, 11/1 (1944–6), 602–54.
S. Heiberg, ‘De ti tønder guld: rigsråd, kongemagt og statsfinanser i 1630’ erne’, HTK, 76 (1976), 25–57
H. B. Madsen, Det danske skattevœsen 1530–1660 (Copenhagen, 1978), pp. 227–39; and E.L. Petersen, as cited in note 12 to ch. 1.
See also Magtstaten in Norden i 1600-tallet og de sociale konsekvenser, ed. E. L. Petersen (Odense, 1984), esp. the comments on Denmark by Leon Jespersen, pp. 9–40, which are available in an English version in ScJH, 10 (1985), 271–304.
J. Engberg, ‘Det 17. århundredes generelle politiske krise og striden mellem det danske rigsråd og landkommissærerne 1647–49’, Fortid & Nutid, 24 (1969–71), 388–411, and his Dansk finanshistorie i 1640erne (Aarhus, 1972)
L. Jespersen, ‘Landkommisærinstitutionen i Christian IVs tid’ HTK, 81 (1981), 69–99. Within the extensive writings of ‘revisionist’ historians, see notably C. Russell, ‘Parliamentary history in perspective’, H, 61 (1976), which includes references to the work of Koenigsberger and others
C. Russell, Parliaments and English Politics (Oxford, 1979)
see also K. Sharpe, Faction and Parliament (Oxford, 1978)
J. Morrill (ed.), Reactions to the English Civil War 1642–49 (London, 1982).
D. Hirst, The Representative of the People? (Cambridge, 1975).
The crown never tampered as blatantly with elections as did, for example, the French crown before the Estates General of 1614: J.M. Hayden, France and the Estates General of 1614 (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 77–86. And whereas the French Estates General did not have the unchallenged right to verify its own elections, the English Commons showed that it did, notably over the Buckinghamshire election of 1604.
But see M. A. Kishlansky, Parliamentary Selection (Cambridge, 1986), arguing that most English MPs were not elected at all in the modern sense of that word, rather selected through the local patronage network, so that contests were rare before the Restoration.
The French Estates General had never met sufficiently often to establish regular procedures or institutional identity; and since its decisions were not binding on the constituencies until ratified locally, it was never regarded by the crown as a fully integrated part of government. In Sweden, the Estates were also quite dependent on the crown, at least when there was a strong adult king: see M. Roberts, Sweden as a Great Power (London, 1968), pp. 7–92.
J. P. Kenyon, The Stuart Constitution (Cambridge, 1966), p. 13: king’s speech to parliament, 21 March 1610.
J. Wormald, ‘James VI and I: two kings or one?’, H, 68 (1983), 187–209.
See notably the papers of T. K. Rabb and D. Hirst, presented under a joint title of ‘Revisionism revised’, in PP, 92 (1981), 55–99, with references to seminal papers in other journals.
R. Ashton, The English Civil War (London, 1978), pp. 85–97; also his The City and the Court 1603–43 (London, 1979), passim.
That the crown’s religious policy, and especially Charles’s attempt forcibly to remove the three-way religious divide between England, Scotland and Ireland, was an issue of fundamental significance in making compromise impossible has been cogently argued by C. Russell, ‘The British problem and the English Civil War’, H, 72 (1987), 395–415.
For Puritanism and the Calvinist church as a whole, see P. Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: the Church in English Society 1559–1625 (Oxford, 1982).
For the formation of public opinion, see also R. Cust, ‘News and politics in early seventeenth-century England’, PP, 112 (1986), 60–90.
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© 1990 Thomas Munck
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Munck, T. (1990). Government in wartime Europe. In: Seventeenth Century Europe. History of Europe. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20626-1_2
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