Overseas Conquest and Religious War to 1648279Illustration 15.2
Charles V.This portrait was painted by Titian after the
battle of Mühlberg (1547) in which Charles defeated the
Protestant princes of the Schmalkaldic League. It shows the
emperor as he often was—on horseback and at war.soon restored Spanish credit. The policies of the new
king would be those of the late emperor: the contain-
ment of Islam and of Protestantism, and the neutraliza-
tion of France.
The Crisis of the Early Modern State
The wars and rebellions of the later sixteenth century
must be understood in this context. Moreover, the
cost of war had continued to grow, forcing the state to
increase its claims upon the resources of its subjects.
By midcentury, nobles, cities, and their elected repre-
sentatives had begun to resist those claims with un-
precedented vigor. Reassertions of ancient privilege
were brought forth to counter demands for more
money or for greater royal authority. This heightened
resistance was based in part upon economics. A series
of bad harvests, partially attributed to the Little Ice
Age that lasted from the 1550s to well after 1650,
worked together with monetary inflation to keep
trade and land revenues stagnant. Real wealth was not
increasing in proportion to the demands made upon
it, and though European elites continued to prosper
by comparison with the poor, they grew ever more
jealous of their prerogatives.
The controversies that arose in the wake of the
Reformation made matters worse. Outside the Iberian
Peninsula, the populations of most states were now
bitterly divided along confessional as well as eco-
nomic lines. Because nearly everyone believed that re-
ligious tolerance was incompatible with political
order, each group sought to impose its views upon the
others. This attitude was shared by many who were
not fanatics. In a society that had always expressed
political and economic grievances in religious lan-
guage, the absence of a common faith made demoniz-
ing opponents easy, and reaching compromise
difficult if not impossible.
In the light of these struggles, the evolution of
dynastic states, for all its success, apparently had not
resolved certain basic issues of sovereignty. The rela-
tionship of the crown to other elements of the govern-
ing elites was still open to question in France, England,
and the Netherlands. In the Holy Roman Empire the
role of the emperor was imperfectly defined, and many
of the empire’s constituent principalities were engaged
in internal disputes. Underlying everything was the
problem of dynastic continuity. The success of the