290Chapter 15Philip III (ruled 1598–1621) and his minister, the
shrewd but lethargic duke of Lerma, tried to provide
Spain with a much-needed respite from war but were
unable to restrain the aggressive tendencies of their
viceroys. When Philip IV’s chief minister, the energetic
count-duke of Olivares (1587–1645), tried to spread
the burdens of taxation and recruitment to other Span-
ish realms, he faced rebellion. Portugal, which had
been annexed by Philip II in 1580 after its king died
without heirs, declared independence in 1640.
Cataluña, on the other side of the peninsula, rebelled in
the same year. The government of Olivares lacked the
resources to stop them, and Portugal remains free to
this day. Cataluña returned to the fold in 1652 after
France emerged as a greater threat to its liberties than
Castile.
Spain was in some respects a special case, but the
condition of Europe as a whole after a century of war
and rebellion was grim. Most of the German states
were a shambles, while the emperor’s role was much di-
minished outside his hereditary lands. Russia was still
emerging from its “Time of Troubles,” the period of an-
archy that followed the death of Ivan the Terrible. The
Romanov dynasty, established in 1613, had difficulty
dealing with a series of Cossack rebellions and with the
heresy of the Old Believers, a movement that rejected
all innovation in the Russian church. Though Crom-
wellian England had briefly tapped the country’s wealth
in the service of the state, the restoration of Charles II
revived many of the old conflicts between crown and
Parliament and the king’s wealth was once again se-
verely limited. France with its enormous wealth was
more resilient, but when the four-year-old Louis XIV
ascended the throne under a regency, a series of aristo-
cratic rebellions known as the Fronde (1648–52) re-
vealed that the foundations of the monarchy were by
no means fully secure. At midcentury only the Dutch
Republic appeared strong and stable, and for Europe’s
monarchies the years of turmoil clearly had done little
to resolve the problem of sovereignty.