Chapter VII.

The Rise of Modern Nations

How the peasants looked upon war.—War the opportunity of the fighting men.—The decreasing power of barons.—The growth of royal power.—How four little kingdoms became Spain.—Other kingdoms of Europe.—The rise of Russia.—The Holy Roman Empire.—The electors.—The rise of Brandenburg.—The elector of Brandenburg becomes King of Prussia.—Frederick the Great.—The seizure of Silesia and the consequent wars.

You have already been shown how in the early days of the feudal system, the lords, with their squires, knights, and fighting men made up a class of the population whose only trade was war, and how the poor peasants were compelled to raise crops and live stock enough to feed both themselves and the fighting men. These peasants had no love for war, as war resulted only in their losing their possessions in case their country was invaded by the enemy. The fighting men, on the other hand, had nothing to do unless war was going on, and as those who were not killed returned from a war with rich plunder in case they were victorious, they were always looking for a chance to start trouble with some neighboring country.

In those days, kings cared little what their nobles did, so long as the nobles furnished them with fighting men in times of war. As a result, one county in a certain kingdom would often be at war with a neighboring county. The fighting man either was killed in battle or he came out of it with increased glory and plunder, but the peasants and the common people had nothing to gain by war and everything to lose. As we have seen, force ruled the world, and the common people had no voice in their government. The workers were looked down upon by the members of the fighting class, who never did a stroke of work themselves and considered honest toil as degrading. In fact, as one writer has said, the only respectable trade in Europe in those days was what we today would call highway robbery.

France and England in the 15th Century

Gradually in most of the European countries the king was able to put down the power of his nobles and make himself master over the whole nation. In this way a strong central power grew up in France. After the death of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, in 1477, no noble dared to question the leadership of the king of France. The same thing was true in England after the battle of Bosworth in 1485, which resulted in the death of King Richard III and the setting of the Tudor family on the throne.

Spain and Other Kingdoms

Spain had been divided into four little kingdoms: Leon, Castile, Aragon, and Granada, the latter ruled by the Moors. The nation marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon to Isabella of Castile and Leon joined the three Christian kingdoms into one, and after 1492, when the Moors were defeated and Granada annexed to the realm of Ferdinand and Isabella, Spain became one kingdom. About this time, also, there had grown up a strong kingdom of Hungary, a kingdom of Portugal, a kingdom of Poland, and one of Denmark. Norway was ruled by the Danes, but Sweden was a separate kingdom. In Russia, Czar Ivan the Terrible (1533-84) had built up a strong power which was still further strengthened by Czar Peter the Great (1690-1725).

The Holy Roman Empire

The rest of the continent of Europe, with the exception of the Turkish Empire, formed what was called the Holy Roman Empire, a rule which had been founded by Charlemagne (A.D. 800), the great Frankish monarch, who had been crowned in Rome by the pope as ruler of the western world. (The name “Holy Roman Empire” was not used by Charlemagne. We first hear of it under Otto I, the Saxon emperor, who was crowned in 962.)

This Holy Roman Empire included all of what is now Germany (except the eastern third of Prussia), all of what is now Bohemia, Austria (but not Hungary), and all of Italy except the part south of Naples. There were times when part of France and all of the low countries (now Belgium and Holland) also belonged to the Empire. (The mountaineers of Switzerland won their independence from the Empire in the fourteenth century, and formed a little republic.) See map “Europe in 1540.”

In the Holy Roman Empire, the son of the emperor did not necessarily succeed his father as ruler. There were seven (afterwards nine) “electors” who, at the death of the ruling monarch, met to elect his successor. Three of these electors were archbishops, one was king of Bohemia, and the others were counts of large counties in Germany like Hanover and Brandenburg. It frequently happened that the candidate chosen was a member of the family of the dead emperor, and there were three or four families which had many rulers chosen from among their number. The most famous of these families was that of the Counts of Hapsburg, from whom the present emperor of Austria is descended.

This Holy Roman Empire was not a strong government, as the kingdoms of England and France grew to be. The kings of Bohemia, Saxony, and Bavaria all were subjects of the emperor, as were many powerful counts. These men were jealous of the emperor’s power, and he did not dare govern them as strictly as the king of France ruled his nobles.

France in the 18th Century

During the 18th century, there were many wars in Europe caused by the ambition of various kings to make their domains larger and to increase their own incomes. King Louis XIV of France had built up a very powerful kingdom. Brave soldiers and skillful generals spread his rule over a great part of what is Belgium and Luxemburg, and annexed to the French kingdom the part of Germany between the Rhine River and the Vosges (Vōzh) Mountains. Finally, the English joined with the troops of the Holy Roman Empire to curb the further growth of the French kingdom, and at the battle of Blenheim (1704), the English Duke of Marlborough, aided by the emperor’s army, put an end to the further expansion of the French.

Prussia

The 18th century also saw the rise of a new kingdom in Europe. You will recall that there was a county in Germany named Brandenburg, whose count was one of the seven electors who chose the emperor. The capital of this county was Berlin. It so happened that a number of Counts of Brandenburg, of the family of Hohenzollern, had been men of ambition and ability. The little county had grown by adding small territories around it. One of these counts, called “the Great Elector,” had added to Brandenburg the greater part of the neighboring county of Pomerania. His son did not have the ability of his father, but was a very proud and vain man. He happened to visit King William III of England, and was very much offended because during the interview, the king occupied a comfortable arm chair, while the elector, being simply a count, was given a chair to sit in which was straight-backed and had no arms. Brooding over this insult, as it seemed to him, he went home and decided that he too should be called a king. The question was, what should his title be. He could not call himself “King of Brandenburg,” for Brandenburg was part of the Empire, and the emperor would not allow it. It had happened some one hundred years before, that, through his marriage with the daughter of the Duke of Prussia, a Count of Brandenburg had come into possession of the district known as East Prussia, at the extreme southeastern corner of the Baltic Sea. Between this and the territory of Brandenburg lay the district known as West Prussia, which was part of the Kingdom of Poland. However, Prussia lay outside the boundaries of the Empire, and the emperor had nothing to say about what went on there. Therefore, the elector sent notice to all the kings and princes of Europe that after this he was to be known as the “King of Prussia.” It was a situation somewhat like the one we have already referred to, when the kings of England were independent monarchs and yet subjects of the kings of France because they were also dukes of Normandy.

The son of this elector who first called himself king had more energy and more character than his father. He ruled his country with a rod of iron, and built up a strong, well-drilled army. He was especially fond of tall soldiers, and had agents out all over Europe, kidnapping men who were over six feet tall to serve in his famous regiment of Guards. He further increased the size of the Prussian kingdom.

His son was the famous Frederick the Great, one of the most remarkable fighters that the world has ever seen. This prince had been brought up under strict discipline by his father. The old king had been insistent that his son should be no weakling. It is told that one day, finding Frederick playing upon a flute, he seized the instrument and snapped it in twain over his son’s shoulder. The young Frederick, under this harsh training, became a fit leader of a military nation. When his father died and left him a well-filled treasury and a wonderfully drilled army, he was fired with the ambition to spread his kingdom wider. Germany, as has been said, was made up of a great many little counties, each ruled by its petty prince or duke, all owing homage, in a general way, to the ruler of Austria, who still was supposed to be the head of the Holy Roman Empire.

This empire was not a real nation, but a collection of many different nationalities which had little sympathy with each other. The ruler of Austria was also king of Bohemia and of Hungary, but neither country was happy at being governed by a German ruler. Then, too, the Croatians, Serbs, Slovenes, and Slovaks were unhappy at being ruled, first by the Hungarians and then by the emperor, as they were Slavic peoples who wished their independence. It so happened that about the time that Frederick became king of Prussia in place of his father, the head of the House of Austria died, leaving his only child, a daughter, Maria Theresa, to rule the big empire. Frederick decided that he could easily defeat the disorganized armies of Austria, so he announced to the world that the rich province of Silesia was henceforth to be his and that he proposed to take it by force of arms. Naturally, this brought on a fierce war with Austria, but in the end, Frederick’s well-trained troops, his store of money, and above all, his expert military ability made the Prussians victorious, and at the close of the fighting, almost all of Silesia remained a part of the kingdom of Prussia. The Austrians, however, were not satisfied, and two more wars were fought before they finally gave up trying to recover the stolen state. Frederick remained stronger than ever as a result of his victories.

Questions for Review

Why were the fighting men of the Middle Ages a source of loss to a nation in general?

How was it that Spain became one nation?

What did Peter the Great do for Russia?

Why did the Emperor have less power than many kings?

What was the ambition of Louis XIV of France?

What effect had the training of his father upon the character of Frederick the Great?

Had Frederick the Great any right to Silesia?