Absolutism 6

1. Serfdom reemerged in east Bohemia, Silesia, Hungary, eastern Germany, Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. In both east and west Europe after the Black Death, a many-sided landlord reaction occurred as they tried to solve their tough economic problems by more heavily exploiting the peasantry. This failed in the west, and by 1500, almost all of the peasants were either free or had lost many of their serf obligations. The opposite occurred east of the Elbe River, as the landlords won and by 1500, eastern peasants were on their way to becoming serfs again. During the High Middle Ages, economic expansion from the clearing of forests and colonization of the frontier had brought the growth of trade, towns, and population. They had obtained land on favorable terms and had greater personal freedom. The nobility reduced the importance of towns and the middle classes.

2. On both sides of Europe, the drop in population and prices caused severe labor shortages and hard times for nobles. Eastern landlords used political and police power to force peasants into serfs. They made their kings and princes issue laws restricting or eliminating the peasants’ free movement, causing them to be bound to the land. In Prussia by 1500, runaway peasants were hunted down, returned to their lords, and forced to cut off their ear. Lords steadily took more of their peasants’ land and imposed heavier labor obli-gations. Lord manipulated the legal system because they were also the local prosecutor, judge, and jailor. Nobles were allowed to in 1574 in Poland to kill anyone anytime they liked. Peasants were hereditary. The noble landlord class greatly increased its political power against the monarchs. Weak kings could not resist the demands of lords regarding peasants.

3. Monarchs gained absolute power by using the war and the threat of it to build absolute monarchies. Mo-narchs reduced the political power of the landlord nobility. They gained and monopolized political power by imposing and collecting permanent taxes without consent, maintaining permanent standing armies that policed the country in addition to fighting abroad, and conducting relations with other states as they wanted. Austria emerged from the Thirty Years’ Way. It was lead by the Habsburgs and after suffering de-feats in central Europe had expanded east. After 1650, a large portion of the Bohemian nobility owed eve-rything to the Habsburgs, and with the help of this new nobility, the Habsburgs established strong direct rule over reconquered Bohemia. With the nobility, they oppressed the peasantry and collected their taxes, strengthening their relationship. Ferdinand III (r. 1637–1657) centralized the government by creating a permanent standing army and set his sights on Hungary.

4. The system of government the Ottoman Empire was built on was a conception of state and society where there was no privately owned property. All the agricultural land of the empire was the personal hereditary property of the sultan who exploited the land as he saw fit. There was no security of landholding and no hereditary nobility. Every year the sultan levied a tax of one to three thousand male children on the con-quered Christian populations in the Balkans where they and other slaves were raised in Turkey as Muslims and trained to fight and administer. The most talented rose to the top of the bureaucracy whereas the other formed the sultan’s army, the janissary corps. This continued to work as long as the empire was ex-panding, but after 1570, the Turks’ western advance was stopped and weakened the state’s power.

5. The enemy of the Ottoman Empire was the Habsburgs because the Turks had cut into the Habsburg terri-tory and had almost captured Vienna in 1529. They were Muslim and the Habsburgs were Catholic. The Siege of Vienna was when a huge Turkish army surrounded Vienna in 1683 with the support from the Protestant nobles in Hungary and Louis XIV of France. The city survived two months, and with the help of a mixed force of Habsburg, Saxon, Bavarian, and Polish troops, the Ottomans were forced to retreat. They were pushed back even further, and as Russian and Venetian allies attacked on other fronts, the Habsburgs conquered almost all of Hungary and Transylvania by 1699.

6. The three distinct territories that made up the Habsburg state were the old hereditary provinces of Aus-tria, the kingdom of Bohemia, and the kingdom of Hungary. The Hungarian nobility thwarted the full de-velopment of Habsburg absolutism, and through revolts against Vienna was able to never completely win or completely lose. They resisted because many of them were Protestants and hated the Habsburgs’ at-tempts to re-Catholicize everyone. Until 1683, the lords of Hungary had the powerful Turkish ally. The Hungarians had developed a sense of nationalism, and in the midst of War of the Spanish Succession in 1703, the Hungarians rose up under Prince Francis Rákóczy. Though they were defeated, Charles VI res-tored many of the traditional privileges of the Hungarian aristocracy in return for the Hungarians to accept the hereditary Habsburg rule. Thus, Hungary was never fully integrated into Habsburg rule.

7. The Hohenzollern family ruled through its senior and junior branches as the imperial electors of Branden-burg and the dukes of Prussia. In 1618, the junior branch of the Hohenzollern family died out, and Prussia reverted to the elector of Brandenburg. The elector could not do anything in the Thirty Years’ War and he saw his territories ravaged by Swedish and Habsburg armies. Population fell, many villages disappeared, and the Hohenzollern power was at its lowest. However, the devastation allowed for Hohenzollern abso-lutism because foreign armies had reduced the power of the Estates. Frederick William the Great Elector (r. 1640–1688) overstepped traditional representative rights and established royal absolutism. The Great Elector was determined to unify Brandenburg, Prussia (inherited 1618), and the separate, scattered hold-ings along the Rhine in western Germany (inherited 1614). All of the provinces were inhabited by Ger-mans, but each had its own Estates. The Estates held power and were responsible for taxes. The Estates of Brandenburg and Prussia were dominated by the nobility and the landowning classes, known as the Junk-ers.

8. The struggle between the Great Elector and the Estates was long, complicated, and intense. The nobility reasserted the right of the Estates to vote taxes, but the Great Elector eventually had his way. The Great Elector forced the Estates to accept the introduction of permanent taxation without consent to fund the standing army. The soldiers were also tax collectors and policemen and became the core of the state bu-reaucracy. With the Great elector holding both financial independence and superior force, the power of the Estates declined rapidly. He raised taxes and boasted an army tenfold. He welcomed in French Hugue-nots because of their talent and hard work. The Great Elector was able to call for more taxes due to the Tartar invasion on 1656 and 1657. Prussian nobles were unable to join towns against the royal forces.

9. Frederick William I (r. 1713–1740) was the Soldiers’ King was crude, dangerous, psychoneurotic, and a great reformer. He truly established Prussian absolutism and gave it a unique character. He created the best army in Europe for its size and infused strict military values into a whole society. He had a love for tall soldiers. He always wore an army uniform and lived a highly disciplined life. He had a violent temper. He created a strong centralized bureaucracy that allowed for commoners to become government officials. Early in his reign, he had threatened to destroy the Junkers, but he changed his mind and enlisted them in the army where they were able to command the peasantry. He built a first-rate army with only third-rate sources and became the fourth largest army in Europe with the twelfth biggest population by 1740. The Prussian army became the best in Europe with its precision, skill, and discipline. He built an exceptionally honest and conscientious bureaucracy that administered the country and developed the country economi-cally. Ironically, Frederick was almost always at peace. Prussian society became rigid and highly disciplined, and with the policies of Frederick combined with the harsh peasants bondage and Junker tyranny, Prussia became the most militaristic country of modern times.