Manifestations
of General Crisis in the Seventheenth Century
Giuseppe Archimboldo, (1530-1593), Vertemnus
(1591), Oil on panel, 70,5 x 57,5 cm. Skoklosters Slott, Bålsta (Stockholm).
Image source: Web Gallery of Art, http://www.kfki.hu.
There are many different explanations for the
political and social causes of this “General Crisis” in the seventeenth century;
one of them suggests some of the ways in which the relationship between state
and society in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe contributed to the
notorious instability of that period. It goes something like this:
1) As we have already seen, the monarchs of
Renaissance Europe were powerful and getting stronger throughout the sixteenth
century.
- In England, the confiscation of monasteries
under Henry VIII, for example, left the English monarchy wealthy beyond all
precedent.
- In Spain, the flood of American silver into
the treasury of under king Philip II gave the Spanish monarchy seemingly endless
financial resources.
- Even in France, where the power of monarchy
had been severely compromised by religious civil war, kings could still draw
on incomparable supplies of money from the Taille and the Gabelle.
The princes of Renaissance Europe built their power
at the expense, largely, of urban communities: Machiavelli’s lament about Italy’s
enslavement by king François I of France was symptomatic of a much broader
trend: as one historian put it, “how can we think of the late Middle Ages without
thinking of the cities, and yet who thinks of them after 1500? In the Middle Ages,
the free communes of Flanders and Italy had been the founders of Europe’s trade
and wealth…” But by 1600, princes had eclipsed the power of city-states.
2) How did they do it? As we have seen, one way was to create a machinery of
power and authority, governed from central places such as Paris, London, Vienna,
Copenhagen, Madrid—Court cities, with their great populations of courtiers,
their “contemptuous magnificence”
- The “New Monarchies” had created a royal
demand for officials to man the new royal bureaucracies; but they also created
new demand for more royal offices.
The power of the Renaissance state was not simply the power of princes; it was
also the power of thousands of royal officers.
3) But the new monarchies had a great weakness:
the size of royal government was considerably larger than the Crown’s ability
to pay—in fact, only a fraction of the whole cost of state fell directly on the
Crown:
- The salaries that officials were paid out
of royal funds were perhaps no more than a quarter of all officer’s incomes;
three quarters came from “private opportunities” for enrichment “to which
public office merely opened the door.”
Salaries were by no means the only, or even the
largest portion of royal spending. The cost of pursuing political, dynastic, and
imperial ambitions ate up an ever greater chunk of the king’s treasury: consider
the royal budget of Spain in 1608:
- Total outlay in 1608 was 7,000,000 Ducats;
- 1.5 million went to interest payments
on state loans (ironically, many of them to Dutch lenders );
- Another 1.5 million went to salaries;
- The lion’s share—approximately 4,000,000
Ducats—were spent on ships and armies (in peacetime)!
- In 1621, the Atlantic fleet alone cost 1,000,000
ducats!
4) To pay for its personnel and ambitions, the monarchies of western Europe
adopted the simple expedient of giving office-holders the right to exploit their
fellow subjects. But this solution created problems of its own—specifically,
a greater demand for office.
- The age-old practice of selling public offices
to the highest bidder encouraged their proliferation: this practice is referred
to as the venality of office in early modern Europe.
All this was well and good as long as the European
economy continued to expand—as it did through most of the sixteenth century; but
when growth slowed and then stopped in the 1590s and the first decades of the
seventeenth century, a heavy bill came due.
5) Everywhere one turns in seventeenth-century Europe, it seems, we encounter
struggles between Court and Country, struggles provoked by a top-heavy court
and lead by over-burdened subjects. These struggles were exacerbated by the
fact that after 1600, the pie was suddenly much smaller than it had been before.
- In England, the Civil War grew partly out
of resentment especially among the lower nobility—or “gentry”—who paid a disproportionate
share of the costs of the Renaissance state; opposition to the Stuart monarchy
was also strong among the frugal, austere Puritans, who objected to the lavish
court of King Charles I and Archbishop Laud.
- In France, where the nobility was largely
exempt from taxation, the burden fell heaviest on the peasantry—and it was
the peasantry that rose most energetically in rebellion against the Crown.
- But in France the Renaissance state also
diminished the local power of provincial nobles—hence we often encounter
the curious spectacle of local nobles allying themselves with peasants
in rebellion against the King’s “Wicked Ministers.”
- In the lands of Austria, religious differences
compounded resentment against the high-handedness of imperial officials.