238 Chapter 13
from the peninsula. Spain added the kingdoms of Sicily
and Naples to its growing empire and became the dom-
inant power in Italian affairs at the expense of Italy’s
independence.
Isabella died in 1504; Ferdinand in 1516. So firm
were the foundations they had built that the two
crowns were able to survive the unpopular regency of
Cardinal Francisco Jiménez (or Ximénez) de Cisneros
in Castile. The cardinal not only preserved the author-
ity of the crown, but also made substantial progress in
reforming abuses in the Spanish church and in improv-
ing the education of the clergy. When the grandson of
the Catholic kings, the emperor Charles V, ascended
the two thrones and unified them in 1522, he inherited
a realm that stretched from Italy to Mexico, the finest
army in Europe, and a regular income from taxes that
rested firmly on the shoulders of Castilian taxpayers.
France: Charles VII and Louis XI
France, too, emerged from the Hundred Years’ War
with perpetual taxes that freed its monarchs from their
dependence on representative institutions. The most
important of these was the taille,a direct tax of feudal
origin that was assigned exclusively to the crown in- In a series of ordinances passed between 1445
and 1459, Charles VII made it perpetual and extended
it throughout his realm. The taillebecame the largest
and most predictable source of crown revenue and vir-
tually eliminated the need for the Estates General,
which met only once between 1484 and 1789. The
meetings of the Estates General at Tours in 1484 redou-
bled the royal desire to avoid future meetings by pro-
ducing loud complaints about the impoverishment of
the people by royal taxes (see document 13.1). Charles
also laid the goundwork for a professional army, a na-
tional administration, and a diplomatic corps.
His son, Louis XI (ruled 1461–83), went further.
Most of Louis’s reign was consumed by a bitter feud
with the dukes of Burgundy, who had established a for-
midable, multilingual state along his eastern borders.
Including Burgundy, the Franche-Comté, Artois, Pi-
cardy, the Boulonnais, and most of what is now Belgium
and the Netherlands, it was almost certainly the
wealthiest principality in Europe. Under Duke Philip
“the Good” (d. 1467), it surpassed most kingdoms in
courtly magnificence and in the richness of its musical
and artistic life, but it was not a kingdom. Most of its
territories were held in fief either from the Holy Roman
DOCUMENT 13.1
Complaints of the French Estates General, 1484
When the French Estates General brought together representatives of the
clergy, the nobility, and the commons (or third estate), these representa-
tives produced pamphlets known as cahiers,describing their griev-
ances. The following excerpt from a cahierof 1484 gives a vivid
complaint of the third estate against royal taxation.
One cannot imagine the persecution, poverty, and misery
that the little people have suffered, and still suffer in many
ways.
First of all, no region has been safe from the continual
coming and going of armies, living off the poor.... One
should note with pity the injustice, the iniquity, suffered
by the poor: the armies are hired to defend them, yet
these armies oppress them the most. The poor laborer
must hire the soldiers who beat him, evict him from his
house, make him sleep on the ground, and consume his
substance.... When the poor laborer has worked long,
weary, sweaty days, when he has harvested those fruits of
his labor from which he expects to live, they come to take
a share of it from him, to pay the armed men who may
come to beat him soon.... If God did not speak to the
poor and give them patience, they would succumb in
despair.
For the intolerable burden of the taille,and the
taxes—which the poor people of this kingdom have not
carried alone, to be sure, because that is impossible—the
burden under which they have died from hunger and
poverty, the mere description of these taxes would cause
infinite sadness and woe, tears of woe and pity, great sighs
and groans from sorrowful hearts. And that is not men-
tioning the enormous evils that followed, the injustice, the
violence, and the extortion whereby these taxes were im-
posed and seized.
Bernier, A., ed. Journal des êtats généraux de France tenus à Tours en
1484, Paris: 1835. trans. Steven C. Hause.