Europe: A History (87 page)

This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in a silver sea,
… This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
²⁴

It was in France that the English performed those exploits which cemented the spirit of their common patriotism. Where but before Harfleur, on the eve of Agincourt, could Shakespeare have set the speech which ever since has called on the ‘noblest English’ to hold the breach?

Within England’s island kingdom, the Welsh formed the only community which could not be fully assimilated. In 1400–14, at the height of the French Wars, they staged a promising rebellion with links to the King’s other enemies in Northumbria, Ireland, Scotland, and France. Under Owain ap Gruffydd, Lord of Glyndyvrdwy (
c
.1359–1416), who was known to the English as ‘Owen Glendower’, they revived the vision of a liberated Wales, and briefly reconstituted an independent principality. In 1404–5 a sovereign Welsh parliament was summoned to Machynlleth. Within a decade, however, the enterprise was crumbling. Its fate was sealed by the English victory at Agincourt. After that, the royal castles in Wales were gradually recovered, and Glendower’s son was forced to submit. Henceforth, though culturally and linguistically impervious, Wales was to form an integral part of the English realm.

From 1450 onwards England was laid low by a fratricidal war reminiscent of that between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs. An insane king and a disputed succession set the Lancastrians and the Yorkists at each other’s throats. The Wars of the Roses did not leave England free to benefit from its growing prosperity until the rivalries of the three contenders—Edward IV, Richard III, and Henry VII—had been buried by the victorious Tudors.

Again, it was out of place for Shakespeare to describe how ‘The Blood of England shall manure the ground … the field of Golgotha and dead men’s skulls’. In reality, if recent research is to be believed, the fighting was rather gende-manly.
²⁵
Except at Tewkesbury in 1471, prisoners were not generally slaughtered. Much of the action took place on the Celtic fringe: at St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, and in Wales—at Denbigh, Harlech, Carreg Cennen, and at Pembroke,
the birthplace of Henry Tudor, who eventually triumphed. The scene at Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485—with the despairing hunchback, Richard III, crying ‘My kingdom for a horse’, as his discarded crown hung on a thorn bush—has become a cliché. But it gave a fitting end to English medieval history.

One of the by-products of the Hundred Years War was the rise of Burgundy as a quasi-independent state of great brilliance. The eclipse both of France and of the Empire created the opening for a ‘middle kingdom’, which played a powerful role in European politics but which, lacking in cohesion, was extinguished as rapidly as it had flared. Though royal status evaded the four great Valois dukes of Burgundy—Philippe le Hardi (1342–1404), Jean sans Peur (1371–1419), Philippe le Bon (1396–1467), and Charles le Téméraire (1433–77)—their wealth and prestige exceeded that of many kings. Their initial holding, the ancient Duchy of Burgundy round Dijon, was granted to Philippe le Hardi by his royal French father in 1361. From then on, it was steadily expanded by the acquisition of numerous territories on either side of the Franco-imperial border (see Appendix III, p. 1281). Philippe remained essentially one of the French ‘princes of the lilies’, together with his brothers, the Duke of Berry and the Duke of Anjou. But thanks to their English alliance his son and grandson were able to free themselves from their family ties. Philippe’s great-grandson, Charles the Rash, overstretched himself in a bid to outsmart his neighbours. Their wealth derived largely from the flourishing northern cities—Bruges, Arras, Ypres, Ghent, and Antwerp. Their court was still itinerant, but apart from the Hôtel d’Artois in Paris and the ducal palace in Dijon, they maintained important residences at Lille, at the Prinsenhof in Bruges, at the Coudenberg in Brussels, and at the castle of Hesdin in Artois (see Appendix III, p. 1260).

The Burgundian court was the focus of an extravagant cult of chivalry, manifest in the ceremonies of the Order of the Golden Fleece and the enthusiastic sponsorship of crusading. Tournaments, jousting, banquets, spectacles, processions of all sorts were the rage. The dukes were lavish patrons of the arts—of sculptors such as Claus Sluter, of artists such as Jan van Eyck and Roger van der Weyden, of poets, musicians, romanciers, and of the famous tapissiers. They bedecked themselves and their courtiers in cloth-of-gold, ermine, jewels—all designed to impress and astonish. They were masters of diplomacy and, above all, of diplomatic marriage. Philippe le Bon once offered refuge to his cousin, the future Louis XI, only to watch the one-time refugee turn bitter adversary. Duke Charles was gradually caught up in Louis’s political web, defeated by Louis’s Swiss allies at Morat, and killed fighting the Lorrainers at Nancy. The
Burgunderbeute
or ‘Booty of Burgundy’ fills Swiss museums to the present day.
²⁶
[CODPIECE]

Charles’s death in 1477 precipitated Burgundy’s downfall and partition. Louis XI recovered the original duchy; but the lion’s share fell to Mary, Charles’s daughter, and thence to her husband, Maximilian von Habsburg. Their part of the Burgundian legacy—Flanders, Brabant, Zeeland, Holland, and Guelders—formed the basis of the future Netherlands, and the fortune of their grandson, Charles V, ‘the last of the Burgundians’. Nothing remained of the Burgundian
state; not even the magnificent ducal mausoleum at the charterhouse of Champmol, near Dijon, has survived.
²⁷

Many years later, a monk showed the skull of Jean sans Peur to Francis I, King of France, and reportedly said, ‘There is the hole through which the English made their way into France.’ One could equally point to the brainless ambitions of Charles the Rash: there was the gap that brought the Habsburgs into western Europe.

For the time being, however, the Habsburgs were still on the make. Though they held the imperial title in Germany without interruption from 1438—Frederick III von Habsburg (1440–93) being the last emperor crowned in Rome—they still had not outgrown their rivals. Indeed, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there was nothing to set them above the other mighty dynasties of the region. In the end, it was only by accident that the Habsburgs succeeded where the Jagiellons failed.

For two centuries the rumbustious nobles of Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland, who held the right of confirming the royal succession in their kingdoms, danced an elaborate gavotte with the representatives of four great central European
dynasties. They resembled nothing so much as the shareholders of old-established companies who seek an association with one or more of the stronger multinational conglomerates. In this, whilst assuring a measure of continuing control over their own affairs, they supposedly obtained both experienced management and effective protection from takeovers and mergers. In all three countries, the opening was created by the extinction of the native ruling house. The Árpád line died out in Hungary in 1301, the Přemyslids in Bohemia in 1306, and the Polish Piasts in 1370. (See Appendix III, p. 1261.)

As a result, east-central Europe passed into a long period of shifting dynastic consortia involving the Habsburgs, the Luxemburgers, the Angevins, and the Jagiellons. At first it seemed that the Luxemburgers would get the upper hand. They held the Empire in 1308–13 and 1347–1437, Bohemia 1310–1437, and Hungary 1387–1437. In the mid-fifteenth century the Habsburgs amassed a similar conglomeration, only to see both Bohemia and Hungary pass back to native rulers. By 1490 the Jagiellons controlled Poland-Lithuania, Bohemia, and Hungary, but not the Empire. Imperial or national histories of the period, written without reference to these wider connections, lack an essential ingredient.

Bohemia was a special prize after its kings became hereditary Electors of the Empire. In their final phase, the Přemyslids had taken hold of Austria-Styria-Carinthia, only to lose them to the Habsburgs at the batde of Dürnkrut in 1278. Later, Vaclav II (r. 1278–1305) obtained the crowns of both Poland and Hungary. After the Přemyslids’ demise, Bohemia saw periods of Luxemburg, Habsburg, and Jagiellonian rule. In the fifteenth century, the Bohemian crown was embroiled in extended wars both with the nobles and with the Hussites. The last native King, Jiří z Poděbrad (George of Podiebrady, r. 1458–71), gave his country two decades of fragile independence.

The Hussites, who founded a national Czech Church, survived repeated attempts to suppress them. They appeared at a juncture when the Papal Schism was at its height and when Bohemia was rent by conflicts between Czechs and Germans, between kings and nobles, between the clergy and the Pope, between the University and the Archbishop of Prague. Their demands soon exceeded the theological and political propositions advanced by Hus. They were so infuriated by the news of his death, and by the excommunications hurled at the whole Czech people by the Council of Constance, that they launched what in effect was a national rising and ‘the first Reformation’. They were divided into two main groups: the Utraquists, who took over the established Church from its largely German, Catholic hierarchy, and the radical Taborites, who founded separate evangelical communities centred on their fortified camp or ‘Tábor’.

Matters came to a head in Prague on 30 July 1419. A Hussite procession was stoned in the New Town, and the German burgomaster was thrown to the crowd from the window of his Rathaus. The Pope responded by announcing a general crusade against the heretics. Thereupon the Utraquists, who held that the bread and wine of the Communion should be dispensed
sub utraque specie
, ‘in both kinds’, promptly formalized their doctrine in the Articles of Prague (1420), whilst
the Taborites took to the field under their marvellous one-eyed captain, Jan Žižka z Torncova (1376–1424). Year after year, huge invading armies of German crusaders were heavily defeated. The Hussites, who carried the struggle into Saxony, into Silesia, and into Hungary, suffered most from their own internal divisions. In 1434 a crushing Utraquist victory over the Taborites at Lipany enabled the victors to make their peace with the Catholic Church. Through the Compacts of Basle, they were able to keep an Utraquist church order in Bohemia until 1620. In the subsequent political settlement the Czech nobles attempted to run their own affairs by choosing a Habsburg infant to succeed the Luxemburgers and, twenty years later, by choosing the forceful Utraquist general, Jiří z Poděbrad. After Jiří’s death, the Diet settled for Vladislav Jagiellon (r. 1471–90) to save them from the Hungarians and the Habsburgs.

Hungarian history followed a similar pattern to that of Bohemia. In this case, after a brief interval under the Bavarian Wittelsbachs, Hungary was taken over by the Angevins of Naples. Charles Robert or Carobert (r. 1310–42) and Louis (r. 1342–82), known as Lajos the Great, established a powerful supremacy, only to yield to the Luxemburgers and the Habsburgs. The last prominent native king, Matthias Corvinus, ruled from 1458 to 1490. The first Jagiellon to be invited to rule Hungary, Ladislas of Varna (r. 1440–4), was killed fighting the Turks. The third, Louis II (r. 1516–26), died in the same way at Mohács.

Poland was heading for a grander and more independent destiny. After 182 years of feudal fragmentation, it was reunited as a viable kingdom by Władysław Łokietek (r. 1320–33) who, having visited Rome for the Jubilee, obtained a papal crown. Łokietek’s son Casimir the Great (r. 1333–70), the last of the royal Piasts, established an efficient administration, a code of laws, and a coherent foreign policy. By resigning Poland’s western provinces, notably Silesia, to the Luxemburgs, he freed himself for expansion to the East. His acquisition of Galicia and the city of Lwów in 1349 was Poland’s first major step into the east Slav lands. His reception of Jewish refugees from Germany in that same year laid the foundation of Europe’s largest Jewish community. The reign of Louis of Anjou was marked by the Statute of Koýice (1374) which gave the Polish nobles similar rights to their brothers in Hungary. Henceforth the power of the Szlachta grew inexorably. Most momentous, however, was the marriage of Louis’s daughter Jadwiga, already accepted as
rex
in Poland, to Jogaila, Grand Duke of Lithuania,
[SZLACHTA]

The union of Poland and Lithuania had wide international implications. By bringing together two large countries, both in a dynamic stage of development, it fuelled a powerful fusion, almost a new civilization. Its immediate rationale derived from the menace of the Teutonic Knights, whose activities were deplored no less in Cracow than in Vilnius. But much more was involved. Poland, which had recovered from the Mongol invasions and escaped the Black Death, was looking eagerly to the open spaces of the East. Lithuania, still ruled by a pagan élite and anxious about the rise of neighbouring Moscow, was looking for an entrée into the mainstream of Christendom. Both were looking for mutual support. Here was a marriage, therefore, that far transcended the two persons most directly involved.
Jadwiga, a twelve-year-old fatherless girl, bowed to her duty. Jogaila, a forty-year-old warrior-bachelor, whom the Poles called Jagiełło, sensed a historic opportunity, which he could not refuse.