Generals of southern Spain 13th-14th centuries. Spain and Portugal in the XIV-XV centuries
The Iberian Peninsula in the XIV-XV centuries. In the middle of the XIII century. The Reconquista stopped for a long time. The Mauritanian possessions - the Emirate of Granada - sought to maintain peace with their northern neighbors, especially after 1340, when the Christian troops defeated Granada and its North African allies at the Battle of Salado. This battle marked the end of Berber military aid to al-Andalus. The borders between Castile and Aragon were constantly changing during internecine wars. Aragon throughout the entire period carried out systematic expansion in the Mediterranean: he subjugated the Balearic Islands (at the end of the 13th - the first half of the 14th century there was an independent state - the kingdom of Majorca), established himself in Sicily (1282) and in the Kingdom of Naples (1442), conquered the island Sardinia. Castile, early 15th century annexed the Canary Islands, and Portugal from 1415, by capturing the city of Ceuta in North Africa, began its colonial expansion in the Atlantic. After the marriage of the heirs of the Castilian and Aragonese thrones - Infanta Isabella and Prince Ferdinand - in 1479, these kingdoms were unified. Navarre, which did not play a significant role on the peninsula, at the end of the 15th century. was divided between Aragon and France. In 1492, the troops of Castile and Aragon took Granada and thus completed the Reconquista. Thus, by the end of the century, both the conquest and the unification of the territory of Spain into a single state ended.
Socio-economic development. From the middle of the XIII century. in the economy of Spain and Portugal, the crisis phenomena associated with the solution of the main tasks of the Reconquista are intensifying. The Christian conquest caused a massive exodus of the Moorish population to Granada and North Africa; often Muslims were expelled from the country by order of the royal authority. This could not but undermine the highly developed agriculture of Andalusia, the craft of large cities. Extremely unfavorable consequences for the peninsula, as well as for the rest of Europe, had an epidemic of plague in the middle of the XIV century, which in some areas (for example, in Catalonia) killed more than half of the population. The social conditions for the development of the peasant economy and handicraft production worsened. The weakening of the colonization process allowed the feudal lords of the northern regions of the peninsula to intensify the exploitation of the peasantry. This was especially evident in Catalonia and Aragon. At the end of the 13th - the first half of the 14th century, when the process of liquidation of servage was going on in neighboring France, here, on the contrary, there was a legislative registration of personal dependence. Remens (this is the collective name of the Catalan serfs) had to pay specific servile duties, which was referred to as "bad customs"; they were subject to the court of the seigneur, who was entitled to pass even death sentences; the possibility of the peasant leaving the feudal lord was severely limited. Unfavorable changes also occurred in the position of the peasants of the Castile kingdom. In Asturias, Galicia, Leone, the duties of solaregos increased, the rights of begetrias were curtailed; in the central and southern regions of the peninsula, the rates of land payments in kind and in cash are sharply increasing. A serious danger to the peasant economy began to pose a commercial sheep breeding of large seigneurs, churches and orders. At the beginning of the XIV century. in Spain, a breed of long-haired merino sheep was bred, whose wool was in great demand in Italy, England and Flanders. This contributed to the increase in the share of cattle breeding in the country's economy, the offensive of the feudal lords on communal lands in order to expand pastures. The massive export of raw materials abroad led to their rise in prices in the domestic markets, to the weakening of the position of the local textile craft. Somewhat different conditions prevailed in Portugal, where grain farming successfully developed around port cities specializing in the export of agricultural products. At the same time, the property differentiation of the peasantry intensified, the number of small land holders who lived on feudal wages increased, and wages to hired workers in Portugal (as in Spain) were limited by law.
The attack on the rights of the peasants, of course, met with their resistance. In the XV century. there are a number of uprisings in Galicia and Old Castile. The peasant movement reached its greatest extent in the second half of the 15th century. in the Balearic Islands (uprisings of 1450 and 1463) and in Catalonia. Already in the 50s of the XV century. the Catalan Remenses demanded the right to redeem themselves from personal dependence, and from 1462 they rose to armed struggle, but the troops of the Cortes easily dispersed the peasant detachments. In 1482 the peasants rebelled again under the leadership of Pedro de la Sala. The success of the uprising was favored by the sharp political struggle between the king and the rebellious nobility. The scope of the movement forced the ruling class to make concessions. In 1486, "bad customs" were abolished and redemption of remens was allowed for a rather high fee.
The ruling class and internal political struggle. In the XIV-XV centuries. in Castile and Portugal, the opportunity to acquire the nobility to wealthy peasants and townspeople to a large extent disappears. Even earlier, at the turn of the 13th-14th centuries, the groups of rural and urban caballeros were eroded as special class groups; their impoverished part passes into the composition of the small peasantry and unprivileged townspeople, and the top joins the ranks of hidalgos and breaks with production activities. Since that time, both legislation and class morality consider labor (especially in craft and trade) to be incompatible with a noble status. At the same time, hidalgos continued to live not only in the countryside, but also in the city, forming an influential part of its population that controlled municipal institutions. Another characteristic feature of this period is the strengthening of the isolation of the upper layer of the feudal class - the aristocracy (ricosombres, grandees). This was facilitated by the introduction to Castile at the end of the 13th century. majorata, i.e., the indivisibility of the estates of noble lords during inheritance, as well as deliberately created restrictions on the acquisition of a title for hidalgos. Finally, at the end of the XIII-XV centuries. the struggle within the ruling class is markedly intensified. The suspension of the Reconquista led to a decrease in the income of the nobility; acute dissatisfaction of both the feudal lords and the cities was caused by the centralization aspirations of the kings; various factions of the nobility vied for political influence, for the right to appropriate crown lands and incomes. All this created fertile ground for a sharp and protracted internecine struggle in all the Christian states of the Iberian Peninsula. The XIV-XV centuries were a time of real feudal anarchy, when the royal power, only balancing between the warring "unies", "brotherhoods" and "leagues" of grandees with the help of bribery and terror, could maintain control over the situation. The unification of Castile and Aragon made it possible to somewhat stabilize the situation in Spain. The complexity of the alignment of political forces within the country, the presence of numerous militant nobility are among the reasons that prompted the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs in the XV-XVI centuries. to encourage external expansion, in particular colonial conquests.
Church and heresy. The role of the Catholic Church in medieval Spain was especially great, because the Reconquista was under the slogan of the struggle of Christianity against Islam. The Church not only preached the religious war, but also directly participated in it. Many bishops had their own armed formations, personally participated in battles and campaigns; spiritual and knightly orders played an important role in the Reconquista. The church also had a significant influence on the policy of royal power: the head (primate) of the Spanish church, the archbishop of Toledo, other prominent prelates (archbishops of Santiago, Cartagena, Barcelona) were influential members of the royal councils, chancellors of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon.
The Church in Spain made great efforts to convert Muslims in the conquered territories to Christianity. Religious intolerance became especially noticeable in the XIV-XV centuries. Forcibly baptized Moors (moriscos) often performed the rites of Islam in secret. The Mozarab Christian Church, which existed in al-Andalus, developed some of its own rites and features in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, which were not recognized by the papacy and the clergy of Castile and Aragon. All this gave rise to intensification in the 15th century. the fight against heresies and the establishment in 1481 of a special church tribunal - the Inquisition. In 1483, the Spanish Inquisition was headed by Torquemada, who, with the support of Ferdinand and Isabella (nicknamed the Catholic kings), carried out mass persecution of the Moors, Moriscos and heretics.
"Lion Court" in the Alhambra (Granada). 14th century
Spain and Portugal developed as a single, centralized state in the conditions of the completion of the reconquista, which affected some features of their historical development. As a result of the reconquest by the end of the XIII century. in the hands of the Arabs remained only minor possessions in southern Spain - the Emirate of Granada with the capital Granada.
The rest of the territory of the Iberian Peninsula was liberated from the Arabs.
During the 14th and most of the 15th centuries Spain was still divided into the Leono-Castile and Aragon-Catalan kingdoms, each of which, in turn, broke up into many feudal lords.
The reign of the Castilian kings Juan II (1406-1454) and Henry IV (1454-1474) was filled with endless feudal unrest, performances of large feudal lords, who significantly increased their possessions during the reconquista, against royal power.
The rebellious feudal lords plundered the royal domain, ravaged the villages that depended on the cities, and tried to damage the cities themselves, which, as a rule, were on the side of the royal power.
In the XIV-XV centuries. significant progress has been made in urban development. Crafts, which even in the XII century. engaged exclusively in the population of individual cities, such as Sant'Iago, from the XIII century. became widespread in all major cities, and especially in those that were located on the territory conquered from the Arabs, where the craft existed even under Arab domination.
The statutes of workshops and brotherhoods testified to the development in the cities of Spain of the production of woolen and silk fabrics, weapons, jewelry, etc. These crafts in the XIV century. served not only the local market.
Handicraft products were exported far beyond the borders of the country. Despite the poor communications within the country, the importance of fairs grew (in Seville, Murcia, Cuenca and other cities).
Of particular importance was the fair in Medina del Campo, which became a trading center for the northern and northwestern cities and central regions of Castile.
Crafts and trade developed in the XIV-XV centuries. also in Catalonia and Aragon, especially in cities located on the Mediterranean coast.
The largest urban center there was Barcelona. Catalan merchants competed with Italian merchants in trade with various countries of Europe, Asia and Africa, located along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
The Catalan cities had their consuls in such Italian cities as Genoa and Pisa.
Catalan merchants traded in Flanders, their ships penetrated the North Sea and the Baltic.
The commercial law of Barcelona was adopted in the cities of Southern France. The cartographers of Catalonia and the island of Mallorca created entire schools of followers of their art, which at that time was considered higher than Italian.
The kings of Aragon and feudal lords, who received considerable income from foreign trade, encouraged merchants in every possible way and gave cities various privileges and benefits.
However, the existing feudal order simultaneously created many obstacles in the form of numerous customs barriers and duties that hampered internal trade, privileges that were given to one city to the detriment of others, feudal robberies on high roads and sea routes.
During the next Visigothic palace coup, one of the groups of conspirators turned to their African neighbors for help (711), help came immediately, making tremendous changes in world history. The Mauritanian Arab-Berber corps under the command of Tariq ibn Ziyad, later called the Moors, successfully crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, put an end to the three hundred year rule of the Visigoths. Under the onslaught of the Arabs, who, without much bloodshed, occupied province after province, moving further and further deep into the Iberian Peninsula.
By the middle of the eighth century, most of modern Spain and Portugal became under the control of the Damascus Caliphate. The newly created Arab state was called Al Andalus, it was ruled by the governor of Damascus until 756, until Abdurrahman I proclaimed it a separate caliphate with a capital.
The era of Arab rule over the Spanish territories cannot be called unequivocally aggressive. During the existence of the Mauritanian state, the cultural development of medieval Spain, divided by two different religions, followed different paths. Its northern part, which remained under the control of the Visigoths, developed according to the European scenario, but the southern part, occupied by the Arabs, received a significant development impetus from the influence of advanced Eastern science, trade, crafts, and architecture.
The Moorish style of architectural structures can still be traced in the appearance of the ancient city blocks of the southern provinces. Muslims were tolerant of representatives of other religious concessions without provoking ethnic hatred, thus maintaining the state order. In a short time, the Roman irrigation systems destroyed by the barbarians were recreated, high-quality education was again developed, trade flourished, science and crafts developed.
The greatest flourishing of the Cordoba caliphate was observed during the reign of Abdurrahman III, who proclaimed himself the caliph of the new caliphate (923), opposing himself to the Damascus caliphate, its rulers, the Abbasid dynasty. The state had 12,000 settlements with the largest cities, Toledo, the capital had more than half a million inhabitants. The University of Cordoba was the finest educational institution in the then known world, with a library of 400,000 handwritten scrolls.
The time of the collapse of the Caliphate of Cordoba, the beginning of the 11th century, was marked by the reign of Hishame II, the son of the great Abdurahman III, who turned out to be a weak ruler, unable to independently maintain autocracy after the death of the vizier Mansur, who actually ruled the country. The caliphate collapsed, power was divided among many small kingdoms - taifas.
The first victory of the Moors on the Guadalete River, now the territory of the modern province of Andalusia, on July 19, 711, then two years later the death of the last Visigoth king Roderic, sealed the fate of the Visigothic kingdom.
However, the very rapid advance of the Moors, the rapid capture of almost all of Spain, the difficulties of communication between the detachments created by vast territories, internecine conflicts, political disagreements between the Arab minority and the Berbers, all these factors significantly weakened the degree of Muslim influence in the occupied lands. In fact, the unity of the caliphate has always been only the desired illusion of its rulers.
In essence, the reconquista is an ongoing 700-year struggle begun by the Visigoths with their African invaders, the beginning of which is considered the first serious defeat suffered by the Arab troops in 718 from the army of Christians led by the Visigothic commander Pelayo, in the Covadonga Valley in northern Spain. Thus, the Christians gradually occupied the lands that the Muslims could not adequately defend, as a result, the warring parties, by the end of the 8th century, formed the border region - Castile.
The initial period of the reconquista of the 10th century can be geographically identified as two centers of the liberation struggle; western from the side of the kingdom of Leon, eastern kingdoms of Navarre and Aragon. Two years later, thanks to the unification of the two kingdoms of Quistilla and Leon, a powerful western stronghold of confrontation was formed at the same time a major political force, and the united kingdom received the priority right to annex the lands conquered from the Moors. By the end of the tenth century, the troops of Castile, led by King Alfonso VI, captured Toledo, moving the border with the Caliphate to the Duero and Tagus rivers.
According to a similar scenario, military events developed from the eastern part of Christian Spain, the result of the unification of the kingdoms of Navarre, Aragon, the counties of the Catalan ethno-linguistic community was the formation of the county of Catalonia, which by the end of the 13th century liberated vast territories now belonging to modern Murcia from Arab domination, as well as the Balearic Islands.
Such major victories were due not only to the art of the weapons of the crusaders, but often as a result of the disorganization, disunity, and weakness of small Muslim taifas.
It should be noted that very often Christian mercenaries, for various reasons, more often simply for a decent reward, directed their weapons against the crusaders who brought death to Muslims.
One of these mercenaries was the national hero of Spain, sung by the folk epic, Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, better known as Cid, from the Arabic “seid” - master, the crown of his career was the post of ruler of Valencia in 1094.
Not wanting to pay tribute to the Christians, the Arab emirs asked for help from the Almoravids, who created a powerful North African state (the modern kingdom of Morocco). Thus the second wave of Muslims swept the Iberian Peninsula. The Almoravids removed the former rulers from the rule of the taifas, restoring a single power in the entire state of Al Andalus, significantly pushing the crusaders in the northeast, capturing Valencia. However, after a severe defeat from the Christian army at Las Navas de Tolosa (1212), their power was seriously weakened.
The Catholic Church also waged a powerful ideological war against Islam, strengthening the mentality of the crusaders, for example, the king of Aragon established the first spiritually knightly order of the Templars, then such orders as Alcantara, Calatrava, Santiago began their activities in other parts of Spain. These powerful spiritual organizations were of great help in the fight against the Almohads, holding strategically important points, improving life, raising the economy of the recently recaptured border regions.
The 13th century marked the end of Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula; cities such as Taragona (1110), Zaragoza (1118), Calatayud (1120), Valencia (1238), Cordoba (1238), (1247) were liberated. Only one invincible city remained, the last stronghold of the Muslims - which, under the continuous onslaught of King Ferdinand II of Castile, was left (January 1492). The result of long negotiations was an agreement according to which the troops of Emir Mohammed XII who left the city were given an unhindered retreat to the coast of North Africa.
For the most part of the former Muslim possessions, the indigenous Spanish population was loyal to the Arabs, not preventing them from remaining in their former places, retaining their faith, only in the Muslim uprising of 1264 was brutally suppressed, which resulted in the mass expulsion of the Arab population.
By the end of the reconquista, real political power in the country was divided between the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. Both kingdoms were in a fever of internecine conflicts.
The middle of the fourteenth century is marked by the confrontation between Pedro the Cruel and his half-brother Enrique of Trastamara. The British were then waging a hundred-year war with the French. Pedro the Cruel ruled the kingdom of Castile (1350 - 1369), until the exiled Enrique, with the support of the French king Charles V, seized power by proclaiming himself King Enrique II (1369), defeating Pedro's army on the plains of Montel. However, the conspiracies did not stop there, the Duke of Lancaster, having married the eldest daughter of Pedro, laid claim to the throne of Castile.
After the death of Enrique, until the age of Crown Prince Juan II, the country was actually ruled by his younger brother, Ferdinand. Aragon, led by its king Alphonse V, expanded its influence over the Mediterranean, going further after the capture of the Bolearic Islands, conquered Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, then took possession of significant lands of southern Italy (1416-1458).
As the territories increased, the kings of both states needed to change the system of government by creating supervisory bodies over numerous governors, whose number was constantly increasing. The power of monarchs and royal officials was limited by the cortes (parliaments). Delegations of cities were additionally created to oversee the activities of the Cortes.
The Cortes, being by no means democratic bodies, represented the interests of the wealthy segments of the population. If the Cortes of Castile were an obedient tool of the monarch, especially during the reign of Juan II, then Aragon and Catalonia adhered to a different concept of power. It proceeded from the fact that political power was initially established by free people by concluding an agreement between those in power and the people, which limited the rights and obligations of both parties. Accordingly, any violation of the agreement by the royal power was considered a manifestation of tyranny (1412 - 1419).
The reign of the next Castilian king, Enrique IV the "Powerless" (1454–1474), gave rise to anarchy. Under pressure from the opposition-minded nobility, he signed a declaration by which he recognized his brother Alphonse as king (1465). However, many cities supported Enrique, a civil war began, which continued after the sudden death of Alfonso (1468). As a condition for ending the rebellion, the nobility put forward the demand of Enrique to appoint her half-sister Isabella as the heir to the throne. Enrique agreed, Isabella married the Infante of Aragon, Fernando (1469) (hereinafter known as the Spanish king Ferdinand).
After the death of Enrique IV (1474), Isabella was declared queen of Castile, and Ferdinand, after the death of his father Juan II (1479), took the throne of Aragon. So the two largest kingdoms united, creating a state.
The speeches of the peasants of Catalonia were directed against the tightening of land taxes, especially intensified by the middle of the 15th century, becoming the pretext for a new civil war (1462 - 1472) between the Catalan parliamentary elite that supported the landowners and the monarchy that stood up for the peasants. Alphonse V abolished some feudal duties (1455), and after another peasant revolt, Ferdinand V signed (1486) the so-called “Guadalupe maxim”, effectively abolishing serfdom, as well as many feudal duties.
The "Catholic kings" Ferdinand and Isabella, under the influence of the clergy, approved the church court - the Inquisition (1478), designed to protect the purity of the Catholic faith. The persecution of Jews, Muslims, and later Protestants began. Anyone could be declared a heretic. Hundreds of thousands of people suspected of heresy went through torture and ended their lives at the stake. They also persecuted the Mariskas or Marans - Christians, previously converted descendants of the Moors, converted Jews. A lot of Jews migrated from Spain to the territory of the Netherlands, then belonging to the Spanish kingdom.
The administration of the higher offices became wholly the privilege of the king; the higher clergy were also subordinate to the monarch; Ferdinand was elected grand master of the three orders of chivalry, making them an effective instrument of the crown; the inquisition helped the government control the nobility at the same time effectively manage the people. The administration was reorganized, the royal revenues were increased, part of them went to encourage the development of sciences, to support the arts.
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Posted in category Tagged ,At the dawn of modern times, Spain was the strongest power in Europe. As a result of the Great Geographical Discoveries, she created the largest colonial empire in the world. The strengthening of Spain was largely facilitated by the accession in 1580 of Portugal, which occupied the second place in terms of the size of colonial possessions. The turbulent events of the Reformation practically did not affect her, and following the results of the Italian wars, Spain consolidated its dominant position in the international arena. At the same time, its main rival - France - in the second half of the XVI century. for a long time plunged into the abyss of destructive civil wars caused by the religious and political division of the country.
The history of modern Spain begins with the unification of the two largest kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula - Aragon and Castile. Initially, united Spain was a union of these two kingdoms, sealed by the marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. In 1479, the royal couple took control of both states, which continued to maintain their former internal structure. The leading role belonged to Castile, on whose territory 3/4 of the population of the united kingdom lived.
The main factor in the unity of Aragon and Castile was foreign policy. In 1492, their combined forces defeated the last Moorish state on the territory of the Iberian Peninsula - Granada - and thus completed the Reconquista. To commemorate this event, the Pope bestowed on Ferdinand and Isabella the honorary titles of "Catholic Kings". They fully justified their titles, striving to strengthen the religious unity of the country and eradicate heresies.
The political structure of Spain
The main feature of the political structure of Spain was the lack of strong centralization. Great differences persisted between the two kingdoms, and within them between the provinces. Each kingdom had its own bodies of class representation - the Cortes, however, as royal power strengthened, their role weakened. Cortes met less and less, and their functions were limited only to the approval of taxes and laws established by the king. The life of the various provinces of the state was regulated by local traditions (fueros), which they greatly valued.
An important indicator of the strengthening of royal power was the subordination of the Catholic Church in Spain to it. Beginning with Ferdinand of Aragon, the kings led influential spiritual and chivalric orders that played a large role in Spanish society. The "Catholic kings" achieved the right to appoint bishops on their own, while foreigners were not allowed to occupy the highest church positions in Spain. The appointment of the Grand Inquisitor, who headed the special ecclesiastical court, was also a royal prerogative. The Inquisition itself acquired not only religious, but also political functions, contributing to the strengthening of the Spanish state. The strengthening of the religious unity of Spain was facilitated by the forced baptism or expulsion from the borders, first of the Jews, and then of the Moriscos, who converted to Christianity.
Features of socio-economic development
Spain entered the New Age as a predominantly agrarian country with a very peculiar social structure. Nowhere in the world was there such a numerous nobility, in Spain it was almost 10% of the population. The upper layer of the nobility was represented by the grandees, the middle - by caballeros, and at the lower level of this hierarchy were ordinary nobles - hidalgos.
Hidalgos for the most part represented the service class, devoid of property and incapable of any production activity. During the Reconquista, they only learned how to fight, which subsequently ensured the success of the Spanish conquests in America and military victories in Europe.
Participation in the Reconquista was accompanied by the granting of numerous liberties to various segments of the population. This was especially true of Castile. The main part of the peasants here by the end of the XV century. enjoyed personal freedom, and the Castilian cities had various privileges. However, at the same time, the peasantry suffered from lack of land, and the townspeople did not have such opportunities for entrepreneurial activity as in other European countries.
The main branches of the Spanish economy were sheep breeding and the export of wool. The monopoly in this area has long belonged to the association of sheep breeders, which was called "Mesta". This union of nobles had exclusive rights that allowed them to drive numerous flocks of sheep across peasant lands, causing them enormous damage.
Sheep breeding flourished in the country at the expense of grain production, which often led to a shortage of bread. At the same time, the owners of sheep farms, unable to organize their own production, preferred to sell raw wool, and bought finished cloth abroad. The export of cheap raw materials and the import of expensive products from it contributed to the development of the economy not of Spain, but of its commercial competitors - England and the Netherlands.
The economic life of Spanish society was greatly affected by the consequences of the Great Geographical Discoveries and the creation of a colonial empire. The massive influx of gold and silver from America ("American Treasures") put the country's economy in new conditions. Spain was the first victim of the "price revolution" that was taking place in the European economy of that time. Countless riches, obtained without much difficulty in the colonies, depreciated money, which led to a rise in the cost of goods. Within a century, prices in Spain have risen on average four times - much more than in any other country in Europe. This led to the enrichment of some sections of the population at the expense of others. The wealth exported from the colonies deprived Spanish entrepreneurs and the state of an incentive to develop production. Ultimately, all this predetermined the general lag of Spain from other European states, which were able to use the opportunities that colonial trade opened up with greater profit.
Empire of Philip II
The first period of the existence of a united Spain is closely connected with its participation in the Italian wars, during which the country experienced its highest prosperity.
The Spanish throne almost all this time was occupied by Carlos I (1516-1556), better known as Charles V of Habsburg, Holy Roman Emperor (1519-1556). After the collapse of the empire of Charles V, his son Philip II became king of Spain.
In addition to Spain with its colonies, the Netherlands and the Italian possessions of Charles were also under his rule. Philip II was married to the English Queen Mary Tudor, in alliance with whom he victoriously ended the last of the Italian Wars. The Spanish army was recognized as the strongest in Europe.
In 1571, the allied fleet of the Catholic powers under the command of the Spanish prince won a decisive victory over the Turks in the battle of Lepanto. In 1580, Philip II managed to annex Portugal to his possessions, thus uniting not only the entire Iberian Peninsula, but also the two largest colonial empires of that time. An entire country was named after the king - the Philippines, a Spanish colony in the Pacific Ocean. Madrid, which since 1561 was the permanent residence of the king, quickly turned into a true capital of a great power. The Madrid court dictated the style of behavior and fashion throughout Europe. However, having reached the heights of foreign policy power, the Spanish monarch failed to achieve equally impressive success in the internal development of the country.
The most profitable trade for Spain with America was conducted by monopoly companies under the strict control of the royal authority, which interfered with its normal development. Agriculture gradually fell into decline in the conditions of mass impoverishment of the nobility, accustomed to fight, and not to organize agricultural labor in their possessions. The peasantry and cities were suffocated by high taxes. During the reign of Philip II, the consequences of the "revolution of prices" manifested themselves in full force. "American Treasures" enriched a few members of the privileged strata, and also went to pay for foreign goods instead of contributing to the economic development of Spain itself. Significant funds were consumed by the wars. Despite the unprecedented growth of state revenues, which during the years of the reign of Philip II increased 12 times, state spending constantly exceeded them. Thus, at the time of the highest prosperity of Spain, the first signs of its decline appeared. The uncompromising policy of Philip II led to the aggravation of all the contradictions characteristic of Spanish society, and then to the weakening of the country's international positions.
The first signal of trouble in the kingdom was the loss of the Netherlands by Spain. The richest country in the possessions of Philip II was subjected to ruthless exploitation. Already 10 years after the accession of the new king, a national liberation uprising began there, and soon Spain was drawn into a full-scale, long, and most importantly, futile war with the newborn republic. For almost twenty years, Spain also waged a difficult war with England, during which her fleet suffered a severe defeat. The death of the "Invincible Armada", sent in 1588 to conquer England, became a turning point, after which the decline of Spain's maritime power began. Intervention in the religious wars in France led at the end of the XVI century. to a clash with this power, which also did not bring glory to the Spanish weapons. Such were the results of the reign of the most powerful king in the history of Spain.
Spain in decline
The history of the reign of the last Spanish Habsburgs is a chronicle of the gradual decline of the once powerful state, before which other countries of Europe trembled. The reign of Philip III (1598-1621) was marked by the final expulsion from Spain of the Moriscos, the descendants of those Moors who were forced to accept Christianity. Since the Moriscos were the most active in entrepreneurial activities, their expulsion dealt a heavy blow to the weakening Spanish economy. Under this king, Spain ended the war with England, and in 1609 was forced to agree to a truce with the Netherlands, in fact recognizing their independence. The reconciliation of Spain with its main trading competitors caused discontent in society, since in conditions of peace, imports from these countries began to increase to the detriment of the Spanish economy.
Soon there was a return to an active foreign policy, and in alliance with the Austrian Habsburgs, Spain entered the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). Initially, success accompanied the Spaniards, their new sovereign Philip IV (1621-1665) was called the "king of the planet." However, the war in which Spain had to fight the Netherlands, France and Portugal turned out to be unbearable for her. Ultimately, Spain lost its leading position in the international arena to France, which revived its power. Now she was waiting for the role of a minor power. In the second half of the XVII century. France seized the Spanish possessions located along its northern borders, and then laid claim to Spain itself. The fate of the country was now decided by other powers during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). In Madrid, instead of the Habsburgs, the Boufbons established themselves, and Spain entered a new period in its history.
Rise of Spanish culture
The artistic ideals of the Renaissance and the ideology of humanism practically did not affect the culture of Spain, but the period of its external power was accompanied by a genuine flowering of original Spanish art. This was the golden age of Spanish literature and painting.
Signs of a cultural upsurge appeared already in the first half of the 16th century, but it reached its peak under Philip II. Great power needed great art, and the Spanish king was well aware of this. Royal power, like the once Renaissance sovereigns of Italy, acted as the patron of the fine arts. During the reign of Philip II, large-scale construction was carried out, which enriched Spain with a number of architectural monuments. Near Madrid, a new royal residence, Escorial, was built, which became the most remarkable monument of the era.
The Spanish culture of that time achieved the greatest success in the field of painting. Taking over from Italy, Spain became the country in which European painting took the next big step in its development.
The first great Spanish painter was El Greco (1541-1614). A native of the Greek island of Crete, he settled in Toledo in 1577, where he became a leading representative of the mystical trend in Spanish art. Following this, the rapid development of the national school of painting began. Artists X. Ribeira (1591-1652) and F. Zurbaran (1598-1669) displayed mainly religious and mythological subjects on their canvases.
Spain was especially glorified by its greatest artist, the court painter of Philip IV Diego Velasquez (1599-1660). Among his masterpieces are numerous portraits of the king, members of his family and associates; the famous painting "The Capture of Breda", dedicated to one of the episodes of the war with the Netherlands. Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1617-1682), the last in this brilliant galaxy, became the founder of the everyday genre in Spanish art. He became the first president of the Seville Academy of Arts.
The most notable development in the field of literature was the development of the chivalric romance, which was stimulated both by memories of the past exploits of the Spanish knights and by continuous wars in Europe and in the colonies. During this period, the great Spanish writer Miguel Cervantes (1547-1616), the author of the immortal Don Quixote, lived and created his works. This peculiar parody of the chivalric romance reflected the deep decline of the Spanish nobility and the collapse of its ideals.
Already at the end of the XV century. modern Spanish drama began to emerge, based on the original traditions of folk culture. The theater played a huge role in the cultural life of Spain during its heyday. In the first half of the XVII century. a real revolution took place in this area, Spanish drama came to the forefront in European culture. The founder of the Spanish national drama is Lope de Vega (1562-1635), whose plays have not left the theater stage to this day. He showed himself as a master of the "cloak and sword comedy." Another major Spanish playwright was Pedro Calderon (1600-1681), the founder of the "drama of honour".
The most important consequence of the development of literature was the formation of a single Spanish language, which was based on the Castilian dialect.
The achievements of the Spaniards in music were impressive. The most common musical instrument in the XVI century. became a guitar that, following the Spaniards, fell in love with many other peoples of the world and to this day has not lost its popularity. Spain became the birthplace of such a song genre as romance.
The artistic style of that time, which replaced the Renaissance, was called Baroque. He was distinguished by a freer artistic style, the rejection of rigid canons, the expansion of themes and a broad search for new subjects in art. But if the Baroque became a style common in many European countries, then the so-called Moorish style remained specifically Spanish. Having borrowed much from the artistic heritage of the Arab East, it, in combination with the traditions of the late Gothic style, gave rise to many architectural masterpieces. The Alhambra Palace in Granada can be considered the most characteristic of this style.
The development of navigation, geographical discoveries, the exploration of the New World, as well as constant wars, posed many practical problems for Spanish science, contributing to the development of natural science, economic, political and legal sciences. Spanish legal scholars of this period were among the founders of the science of international law, which originated in a sharp controversy with English and Dutch jurists who defended the positions of their countries in the fight against Spain.
From the work of the Spanish economist Don Jeronimo de Ustaritz "Theory and Practice of Trade and Navigation", first published in 1724.
“... It is clear that Spain is in decline only because she neglected trade and did not establish numerous manufactories in the vast expanses of her kingdom ... it is a firmly established principle that the more the import of foreign goods exceeds the export of ours, the sooner and more inevitable will be our ruin...
In the same way, it is clear that in order for this trade to be useful to us and bring us great benefits ... it is necessary that we use the abundance and excellent qualities of our raw materials. Finally, we must strictly apply all those means that will enable us to sell to foreigners more products of our production than they sell us of their production ...
The main thing is to remove the obstacles that we ourselves have erected in the way of the development of manufactories and the sale of their products, both outside the state and within it. These obstacles are heavy taxes on the foodstuffs that the workers consume, on the raw materials they process; in an excessive and repeated tax ... on every sale, in a tax on textiles exported from the kingdom.
References:
V.V. Noskov, T.P. Andreevskaya / History from the end of the 15th to the end of the 18th century
The Iberian Peninsula in the XIV-XV centuries. From the middle of the XIII century. The Reconquista stopped for a long time. The Mauritanian possessions - the Emirate of Granada - sought to maintain peace with their northern neighbors, especially after 1340, when the Christian troops defeated Granada and its North African allies at the Battle of Salado. This battle marked the end of Berber military aid to al-Andalus. The borders between Castile and Aragon were constantly changing during internecine wars. Aragon throughout the entire period carried out systematic expansion in the Mediterranean: he subjugated the Balearic Islands (at the end of the 13th - the first half of the 14th century there was an independent state - the kingdom of Mallorca), established himself in Sicily (1282) and in the Kingdom of Naples (1442), conquered the island Sardinia. Castile in the early 15th century annexed the Canary Islands, and Portugal from 1415, by capturing the city of Ceuta in North Africa, began its colonial expansion in the Atlantic. After the marriage of the heirs of the Castilian and Aragonese thrones - Infanta Isabella and Prince Ferdinand - in 1479, these kingdoms were unified. Navarre, which did not play a significant role on the peninsula, at the end of the 15th century. was divided between Aragon and France. In 1492, the troops of Castile and Aragon took Granada and thus completed the Reconquista. Thus, by the end of the century, both the conquest and the unification of the territory of Spain into a single state ended.
Socio-economic development. From the middle of the XIII century. in the economy of Spain and Portugal, the crisis phenomena associated with the solution of the main tasks of the Reconquista are intensifying. The Christian conquest caused a massive exodus of the Moorish population to Granada and North Africa; often Muslims were expelled from the country by order of the royal authority. This could not but undermine the highly developed agriculture of Andalusia, the craft of large cities. Extremely unfavorable consequences for the peninsula, as well as for the rest of Europe, were the plague epidemic in the middle of the 14th century, which in some areas (for example, in Catalonia) killed more than half of the population. The social conditions for the development of the peasant economy and handicraft production worsened. The weakening of the colonization process allowed the feudal lords of the northern regions of the peninsula to intensify the exploitation of the peasantry. This was especially evident in Catalonia and Aragon. At the end of the 13th - the first half of the 14th century, when the process of liquidation of servage was going on in neighboring France, here, on the contrary, there was a legislative registration of personal dependence. Remens (this is the collective name of the Catalan serfs) had to pay specific servile duties, which was referred to as "bad customs"; they were subject to the court of the seigneur, who was entitled to pass even death sentences; the possibility of the peasant leaving the feudal lord was severely limited.
Unfavorable changes also occurred in the position of the peasants of the Castile kingdom. In Asturias, Galicia, Leon, the duties of the solarium increased, the rights of the begetries were curtailed; in the central and southern regions of the peninsula, the rates of land payments in kind and in cash are sharply increasing. A serious danger to the peasant economy began to pose a commercial sheep breeding of large seigneurs, churches and orders. At the beginning of the XIV century. in Spain, a breed of long-haired merino sheep was bred, whose wool was in great demand in Italy, England and Flanders. This contributed to the increase in the share of cattle breeding in the country's economy, the offensive of the feudal lords on communal lands in order to expand pastures. The massive export of raw materials abroad led to their rise in prices in the domestic markets, to the weakening of the position of the local textile craft. Somewhat different conditions prevailed in Portugal, where grain farming successfully developed around port cities specializing in the export of agricultural products. At the same time, the property differentiation of the peasantry intensified, the number of small land holders who lived on feudal wages increased, and wages to hired workers in Portugal (as in Spain) were limited by law.
The attack on the rights of the peasants, of course, met with their resistance. In the XV century. there are a number of uprisings in Galicia and Old Castile. The peasant movement reached its greatest extent in the second half of the 15th century. in the Balearic Islands (uprisings of 1450 and 1463) and in Catalonia. Already in the 50s of the XV century. the Catalan Remenses demanded the right to redeem themselves from personal dependence, and from 1462 they rose to armed struggle, but the troops of the Cortes easily dispersed the peasant detachments. In 1482 the peasants rebelled again under the leadership of Pedro de la Sala. The success of the uprising was favored by the sharp political struggle between the king and the rebellious nobility. The scope of the movement forced the feudal lords to make concessions. In 1486, "bad customs" were abolished and the redemption of remens was allowed for a rather high fee.
Feudal lords and internal political struggle. In the XIV-XV centuries. in Castile and Portugal, the opportunity to acquire the status of a nobleman disappears to a large extent for wealthy peasants and townspeople. Even earlier, at the turn of the 13th-14th centuries, the groups of rural and urban caballeros were eroded as special class groups; their impoverished part passes into the composition of the small peasantry and unprivileged townspeople, and the top joins the ranks of the hidalgo and breaks with production activity. Since that time, both legislation and class morality consider labor (especially in craft and trade) to be incompatible with a noble status. At the same time, hidalgos continued to live not only in the countryside, but also in the city, forming an influential part of its population that controlled municipal institutions. Another characteristic feature of this period is the strengthening of the isolation of the upper layer - the aristocracy (ricos-ombres, grandees). This was facilitated by the introduction to Castile at the end of the 13th century. majorate, i.e. indivisibility of the estates of noble lords during inheritance, as well as deliberately created restrictions in acquiring a title for a hidalgo
At the end of the XIII-XV centuries. the suspension of the Reconquista led to a decrease in the income of the nobility; acute dissatisfaction of both the feudal lords and the cities was caused by the centralization aspirations of the kings; various factions of the nobility vied for political influence, for the right to appropriate crown lands and incomes. All this created the ground for a sharp and protracted internecine struggle in all the Christian states of the Iberian Peninsula. The 14th-15th centuries were a time of real feudal anarchy, when the royal power, only balancing between the warring "unions", "brotherhoods" and "leagues" of grandees with the help of bribery and terror, could maintain control over the situation. The unification of Castile and Aragon made it possible to somewhat stabilize the situation in Spain. The complexity of the alignment of political forces within the country, the presence of numerous militant nobility are among the reasons that prompted the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs in the XV-XVI centuries. to encourage external expansion, in particular colonial conquests.
Church and heresy. The role of the Catholic Church in medieval Spain was especially great, because the Reconquista was under the slogan of the struggle of Christianity against Islam. The Church not only preached the religious war, but also directly participated in it. Many bishops had their own armed formations, personally participated in battles and campaigns; spiritual and knightly orders played an important role in the Reconquista. The church also had a significant influence on the policy of royal power: the head (primate) of the Spanish church, the archbishop of Toledo, other prominent prelates (archbishops of Santiago, Cartagena, Barcelona) were influential members of the royal councils, chancellors of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon.
The Church in Spain made great efforts to convert Muslims in the conquered territories to Christianity. Religious intolerance became especially noticeable in the XIV-XV centuries. Forcibly baptized Moors (moriscos) often performed the rites of Islam in secret. The Mozarab Christian Church, which existed in al-Andalus, developed some of its rites and features in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, which were not recognized by the papacy and the clergy of Castile and Aragon. All this gave rise to intensification in the 15th century. the fight against heresies and the establishment in 1481 of a special church tribunal - the Inquisition. In 1483, the Spanish Inquisition was headed by Torquemada, who, with the support of Ferdinand and Isabella (nicknamed the Catholic kings), carried out mass persecution of the Moors, Moriscos and heretics.
Chapter 15
Scandinavian countries in the XII-XV centuries.
Formation of the feudal system. With the cessation of Viking campaigns (see Ch. 6), the former sources of wealth of the tribal nobility dried up, and their social influence weakened. The land began to be concentrated in the hands of new social elements, primarily the service nobility. The emerging layer of feudal lords included both the higher clergy and part of the old nobility. "Strong people" and "powerful bonds", which stood out from among the free population, also concentrated considerable land holdings in their hands. During the XII and XIII centuries. a significant part of the Scandinavian peasants turned from land owners into holders of allotments on the lands of large landowners.
Royal power played an important role in the development of feudal relations. The kings were the largest landowners, they seized the right of supreme ownership of communal pastures and forests. Because of this, many peasants who had farms on lands and wastelands cleared of forests turned into holders of the king. The king forced the population to keep him along with his retinue during constant travels around the country. Over time, these fees turned into a regular tax, usually paid in products. The king transferred the right to collect taxes to his servants, who were placed at the head of the regions and districts. These awards are somewhat reminiscent of fiefs (fiefs) in other European countries. However, in the Scandinavian countries, they were not formally considered the hereditary property of their owners, although in fact they often were. The castles built in Denmark and Sweden since the 13th century were not the property of the feudal lords: they occupied them as governors of the king, had to protect them, keep order in the district and collect taxes from the population.
The process of the formation of the feudal-dependent peasantry also took place in a peculiar way. Since the bond was usually not only a farmer, but also a cattle breeder, fisherman, hunter, and often lived on an isolated farm, where he led an independent economy, where agriculture was poorly developed or absent, he, in fact, was little connected or was not at all associated with a specific piece of arable land. It was not easy to drag such a person into addiction. The Scandinavian peasants stubbornly resisted the pressure of the feudal lords. Bonds possessed weapons, since they had the duty to call on the king to appear in the militia, they built and equipped warships at their own expense. Since the importance of the peasants in military affairs was great, the royal power had to reckon with them.
However, as social stratification grew, military service became burdensome for the peasants. Civil strife, wars and service in the militia largely contributed to their ruin. In an effort to get rid of royal military service and growing taxes, many bonds transferred themselves and their property under the authority and patronage of large landowners. As elsewhere in Europe in the early Middle Ages, in the countries of the Scandinavian North there was a process of social division of social functions, in which power, military affairs and administration were concentrated in the hands of the social elite, and the material maintenance of society was entrusted to dependent, subservient peasants - direct producers.
Nevertheless, due to significant economic independence and the long-term preservation of communal orders, the peasantry of Scandinavia - with the exception of Denmark, where agriculture was the leading branch of the economy - throughout the entire Middle Ages, partly retained personal legal capacity; feudal dependence was expressed here mainly in the payment of rent in products. While the bonds retained significant elements of personal freedom, the guarantee of the property rights of the feudal lords to the land was the deprivation of the holders of the legal security of holding. Therefore, although the holder usually used the site for a long time and even for life, he was not assigned the right to permanent ownership of the land, since the period for which the agreement on his land ownership was concluded did not exceed several years. The peasant was not attached to the land or to the personality of the owner, but he paid for this with the legal insecurity of holding. At the same time, at that time in the Scandinavian countries there still existed a large stratum of peasants who retained the right to own land and were only obliged to pay taxes to the state.
Norway at the end of the XII-XIII centuries. With the development of feudal relations, the social struggle intensified. It often took the form of protests against the king and the nobles who supported him. The major event was the civil wars in Norway in the last quarter of the 12th - early 13th centuries. At the first stage, it was a struggle of contenders for the throne. But soon, on the one hand, the feudalized elements of society and serving the nobility, interested in strengthening the state, and on the other hand, the disadvantaged sections of the peasants who suffered from growing exploitation, began to interfere more and more actively in it.
In 1177, the impostor Sverrir led an uprising of the Birkebeiners (“beresteniki” - the nickname is due to the fact that the defeated rebels, having worn out their shoes, began to tie their feet with birch bark) - the poor, who hoped to improve their situation with his victory. But after seizing the throne, Sverrir (1184-1202) began to pursue a policy in the interests of large landowners and service people, which included people from the Birkebeiners, who rose during the struggle. The conflict between the clergy and Sverrir, who sought to establish the supremacy of royal power over the church, reached such bitterness that the pope excommunicated the king from the church and imposed an interdict on the country. Sverrier, in turn, expelled from Norway those prelates who supported the pope and carried out propaganda against the king. The uprisings of the peasants did not stop, since during the period of civil wars state requisitions increased, which placed a heavy burden on the shoulders of the bonds, and the ruling class, which rallied around the throne, strengthened its positions. The popular movement was suppressed only after the old nobility and churchmen (who were supported by the pope and the Danish king) reconciled with the descendants of Sverrir and, together with the new feudal landowners, began to support the monarchy.
Strengthening of royal power in Norway in the XIII century. happened under King Magnus the Legislator. In 1274, he published the first general Norwegian code of law, which replaced the regional judicial codes written at the end of the 12th - beginning of the 13th centuries. At the head of the local government were the vassals of the king. Peasants were excluded from participation in political life. The ecclesiastical and secular landowners, however, failed to completely deprive the Norwegian bonds of the remnants of personal freedom. Norway did not have such institutions as seigneury, the system of vassalage and feudal hierarchy, immunity and patrimonial court. With the limited land suitable for arable land and the predominance of settlements by farms, corvée did not develop, and the domain economy was of modest size. Rent in products prevailed. Duties peasants carried mainly in favor of the state.
Feudalism in Norway was less developed than in other Scandinavian countries.
The development of feudalism in Sweden. Although in Sweden the stratum of holders who did not have their own land gradually increased, the number of peasants who retained independence from large landowners was large. In the course of the struggle to strengthen royal power, which began in the XII century. the conquest of Finland took shape the service class. The local nobility tried to maintain the isolation of the regions and the elected royal power, but was defeated. In the process of this struggle, the position of the jarl, the ruler of the kingdom and the head of the militia, was strengthened. Jarl Birger led a crusade against Finland (1249-1250) and subjugated its western regions. With the support of the church, he enthroned his son and founded a new dynasty (1250).
The strengthening of royal power in Sweden was also accompanied by the introduction of permanent taxes and the deterioration of the position of bonds. In the second half of the XIII century. Swedish feudal lords - frels (i.e. "liberated" from public duties and requisitions) finally turned into the ruling class. They carried equestrian knightly service and were exempt from paying taxes. The higher clergy also received immunity privileges. An attempt by the Swedish feudal lords to invade Russia and capture the mouth of the Neva ended in their defeat (the Battle of the Neva in 1240).
Development of feudalism in Denmark. During the XII century. internecine struggle also unfolded in Denmark, but King Valdemar I (1157-1182), having eliminated rivals, strengthened his power by an alliance with the church. The influence of the church on public affairs in Denmark was very great. The clergy received immunity privileges from the king and in many ways contributed to the triumph of feudal relations. Denmark, to a greater extent than other Scandinavian countries, was influenced by the developed feudal countries of Western Europe.
From the second half of the XII century. in Denmark, a knightly army is created from medium and small feudal landowners, who are exempt from paying taxes for military service. The serving privileged class turned into the main support of royal power, and bonds - into a layer that had to support this class with their labor. The introduction of a heavy land tax, levied on each plow, caused a peasant uprising in 1250 against King Eric IV, nicknamed "Plow Gross".
With extreme cruelty, the Danish feudal lords carried out crusades against the Slavic Pomerania. The Baltic Slavs were subjugated and forcibly baptized. The wars of Denmark against the Estonians were accompanied by the subjugation of the regions of Narva and Revel (Tallinn) (in the middle of the 14th century, these possessions were sold to the Teutonic Order). The Danish kings used the weakening of imperial power to capture northern Germany. Valdemar II (1202-1241) subjugated Holstein, Hamburg and other territories. Lübeck was under his patronage. However, almost all of these possessions were soon lost as a result of the defeat inflicted on Waldemar by the north German cities and peasants of the northwestern region of Germany Dithmarschen (1227).
The process of feudalization of society was reflected in the first records of Danish law, dating back to the beginning of the 13th century, and in the land inventory of Denmark, compiled under Valdemar II.
Cities and burghers. The slowness of economic development and the sustainability of the subsistence economy in the Scandinavian countries manifested themselves in the relative weakness of the cities. Trade centers, which played an important role during the Viking campaigns, fell into disrepair in the 10th-11th centuries. Salt making, metallurgy, weaving and other crafts remained predominantly peasant crafts. Urban artisans were few in number. Internal trade was poorly developed, money was rare in rural areas, and barter in kind was preserved for a long time. Cattle, pieces of homespun cloth and other goods served as the means of exchange.
In the second half of the XII and in the XIII century. craft and trade made some progress. Foreign trade especially expanded, the export of fish, furs and skins increased. Bergen in Norway, Visby on the island of Gotland, annual fairs in Skåne played a significant role in the trade of Northern Europe.
A number of Danish and Swedish cities received royal charters granting them partial self-government along the lines of German (Magdeburg) city law. At this time, Stockholm rises. However, the economically weak burghers did not have a significant impact on political life. In addition, from the middle of the XIII century. and in the XIV century. in Scandinavian trade, wealthy Hanseatic merchants, mainly from Lübeck and Rostock, began to occupy an increasingly prominent place. They seized the export of fish, livestock products and trades. In Sweden, where from the XIII century. intensive development of mountain deposits of iron and copper ores began, the Germans achieved a dominant position. The kings of Denmark, Norway and Sweden gave German merchants and usurers, from whom they took large sums of money, extensive privileges. The municipal councils of the largest Swedish cities consisted of half Germans, they ruled in Bergen and Danish ports.
The role of the German merchants and artisans in the economic life of Scandinavia was dual: they contributed to the development of trade and certain sectors of the economy, such as large-scale fishing, animal husbandry, and mining. But the dominance of the Germans hampered the growth of the local burghers, especially in Norway.
Political struggle at the end of the XIII and XIV centuries. The policy of centralization pursued by the royal authorities did not have lasting success. Large feudal lords opposed the king and imposed their will on him. Internal struggles were intertwined with conflicts between the Scandinavian countries, for both kings and their vassals sought support abroad.
The struggle in Denmark was extremely tense. In 1282, King Eric Clipping had to sign a charter, by which he pledged to annually convene the Danehof - the general council of the state, consisting of magnates, and to respect the rights and liberties of the feudal lords. Eric's attempt to violate this Danish "carta" ended with his assassination, after which a long conflict between the big feudal lords and the royal power began. In 1320, the royal power in Denmark finally capitulated to the nobility, who established control over state administration. The king had no right to declare war and levy taxes without her consent. The feudal lords were recognized as having judicial power over the peasants.
In Sweden, in 1284, a council of secular feudal lords and bishops, the Riksrod, also began to be convened. This strengthened the feudal nobility. In 1319, the rebellious feudal lords expelled the king from Sweden and elevated the young Norwegian king Magnus Eriksson to the throne. By the time of his reign are the first Swedish codes of laws, replacing the records of customary law. The personal union of Sweden and Norway (1319-1363) existed only as long as it was beneficial to the Swedish nobility. Magnus's attempts to limit the financial privileges of the aristocracy and the church aroused the opposition of large feudal lords. Having deposed Magnus, the Swedish feudal lords elected the German duke Albrecht of Mecklenburg as king, who was to give the obligation to rule with the consent of the Riksrod. The German influence grew even stronger.
Real power in all three Scandinavian states in the XIV century. was in the hands of large feudal lords, and many of them had possessions not only in their own country, but also in other Scandinavian countries. Their fiscal privileges expanded, and the number of peasants who fell into dependence rapidly increased.
In the first half of the XIV century. worsened the position of the peasants, who suffered from exploitation by landowners, and from state requisitions and duties, and from wars and strife. Stagnation was observed in agriculture, in some places arable land was abandoned. "Black Death" in the middle of the XIV century. deepened economic decline. The economic consequences of the plague in the Scandinavian countries, especially in Norway, were very severe. The shortage of workers led to a sharp reduction in agriculture and to a further increase in the proportion of cattle breeding. Norway was not able to get out of the state of decline and stagnation until the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th century.
War between Denmark and the Hansa. In Denmark, Voldemar IV Atterdag (1340-1375), with the support of the church and chivalry, managed to strengthen royal power. Previously lost lands, including the richest province of Skåne, were returned. But the capture by the Danish king of the island of Gotland with the city of Visby - the most important trading post on the Baltic Sea - led Denmark to a collision with the North German Hansa. In the war with her (1367-1370), Denmark suffered a heavy defeat. The Peace of Stralsund (1370) granted the Hanseatic trade privileges, in particular the reduction of customs duties and the transfer of four fortresses in Skane under their control, which confirmed their dominance on the Baltic Sea. According to the treaty, the Danish king could not be crowned without the consent of the Hansa. Norway was also forced to confirm the privileges of the German merchants, who took over almost all of its trade.
Kalmar union. Danish and Swedish possessions were in danger of being torn away by the North German princes. Despite the conflicts that repeatedly broke out between the Scandinavian states, in the face of the danger posed by the German princes and the Hansa, the feudal lords of Denmark, Sweden and Norway sought to unite. The ethnic community, the similarity of economic and cultural development facilitated the political union of these countries, which took the form of a dynastic union. Margarita, the daughter of the Danish king Valdemar IV Atterdag and the wife of the Norwegian king, elevated her son Olaf to the Danish throne, on whose behalf she ruled Denmark and Norway, and after his death she herself became the head of both states. In 1389, with the support of the Swedish feudal lords, she received power over Sweden. In June 1397, at a meeting of representatives of the three kingdoms in the Swedish city of Kalmar, Margaret's great-nephew Eric of Pomerania was proclaimed king of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. At the same time, an act was drawn up on the eternal union of the three states. From now on, they were to be headed by one king. The states were supposed to help each other in case of war, but each of them retained its own laws. The union, however, was not submitted for approval by the state councils and was of a personal nature.
In fact, the union did not equalize all three states. The most economically developed country was Denmark, with a population roughly equal to that of Sweden and Norway. She has benefited the most from the union. In the least advantageous position was Norway, which was in deep decline. The contradictions between the kingdoms that entered the union were not overcome. Margarita, in whose hands the reign of a huge power remained (until her death in 1412), appointed Danish and German feudal lords devoted to her to church and large state positions and distributed large fief awards to them in Sweden and Norway. The stratum of large landowners exempted from paying taxes expanded. The Kalmar Union thus contributed to the strengthening of large feudal lords. But at first, she strengthened the royal power. Significant lands were concentrated in the possession of the crown. King Eric managed to limit the privileges of German merchants. After the war, Sund duties were introduced, levied on ships passing through the straits from the Baltic to the North Sea. Duties were a significant source of government revenue. But the war with the Hansa caused great damage to Denmark, Norway and especially Sweden.
Deterioration of the condition of the peasants. The period of the union was a time of strengthening the feudal dependence of the peasants. In the XIV century. most of the peasants of Denmark and Norway were already sitting on the lands of the feudal lords and paying them rent. The church became the largest landowner. Corvée increased in Denmark, a large estate associated with the market grew. Similar trends were also observed in Sweden. The rights of large landowners, especially churches, expanded. Taxes increased. The poor, who did not have property from which to collect taxes, were forced to work as day laborers for rich people in the countryside and in the city, and the peasants who left for the city were forcibly returned to the countryside. The peasants responded to the strengthening of oppression with uprisings.
Rebellion of Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson (1434-1436). The infringement of the independence of Sweden and Norway by the Danish rulers affected the interests of various segments of the population in these countries. The opposition was especially strong in Sweden. The merchants of Stockholm, and especially the miners of the province of Dalecarliya, where the richest copper and iron mines in Europe were located, expressed dissatisfaction. In Dalekarliya, in 1434, an uprising began: miners and peasants demanded a reduction in taxes and opposed the dominance of the Danes and Germans in Sweden. The rebels were led by the owner of the mine, a native of the lower chivalry, Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson. Some feudal lords also joined the movement. In 1435, a class-representative assembly was convened, which, along with the clergy and secular feudal lords, was attended by elected representatives from burghers and bonds. This is how the Swedish class representation arose - the Riksdag, which finally took shape in the second half of the 15th century. But Engelbrekt, elected "leader of the state", was treacherously killed in 1436. The uprising of the peasants was suppressed, but it significantly undermined the Danish and German dominance in Sweden.
Under the influence of events in Sweden, popular movements began in Norway, Finland and Denmark. An uprising broke out in the Oslo region in 1436, and in 1441 a peasant movement engulfed North Jutland, quickly spreading to other areas. The peasants burned the royal castles and estates of the feudal lords. At the same time, the feudal lords used the popular movement in their own interests. King Eric was forced to flee Denmark; royal power was again weakened.
In Denmark, the assembly of estates began to be convened in 1468. But it (like in Sweden, unlike the large countries of Europe) did not control the financial policy of the crown and was convened very irregularly.
Scandinavian countries in the second half of the 15th century. The outcome of the struggle for and against the Kalmar Union in Sweden and Norway was not the same. The Norwegian burghers remained weak, pushed aside from entrepreneurial activity by the merchants of Lübeck and Rostock. The weak Norwegian nobility was unable to lead the liberation movement against the union. Norway lost during this period the Orkney and Shetland Islands, which came under the rule of the kings of Scotland. In Iceland, where feudalization almost did not develop at all, at the end of the 14th century. the rule of the Danes was established, replacing the power of the Norwegian king. The curtailment of navigation and trade led to the termination of communications between Norway and Greenland; Scandinavian settlements in Greenland
In Sweden, the struggle to break the union was at the same time a struggle of various social forces among themselves. Part of the nobility and higher clergy sought help in Denmark. The possession of lands in both states made many nobles adherents of the union. The union was opposed by another part of the nobility, which found support from the burghers and peasants. Relying on the liberation movement, the large Swedish feudal lord Karl Knutsson seized the throne (he ruled intermittently from 1448 to 1470). In 1471, burghers and peasants, led by a representative of the Swedish nobility, Sten Sture, defeated the troops of the Danish king at Brunkeberg. This battle served as an impetus for further patriotic upsurge. Germans were removed from city councils, the first Swedish university was founded in Uppsala.
The activities of the regents from the house of Sture (1471-1520), prudent politicians who used popular movements in the interests of the nobility, were aimed at limiting the export of precious metals from Sweden, concentrating trade and crafts in the hands of the Swedish burghers. The export of iron and copper became a state monopoly. Coinage was concentrated in the hands of the state. In the interests of the secular feudal lords, Sture limited church land ownership. The Sture did not set the goal of Sweden leaving the union with Denmark, but the tendency for Sweden to acquire complete independence became more and more irresistible.
During the XV century. an influential burghers also grew up in Denmark. Copenhagen became the residence of the king. In the last quarter of the century, a university arose there. The privileges of the Hanseatic people were destroyed. Trade in agricultural products, which passed into the hands of the Danish feudal lords, linked Denmark economically with Schleswig, Holstein and Northern Germany, which also facilitated political rapprochement. King Christian I (1448-1481) managed to achieve his election as Duke of Schleswig and Holstein (1460), thereby becoming an imperial prince. The Danish kings found support in the fight against the Hansa and Sweden from the Moscow Grand Duke Ivan III, with whom they concluded an agreement in 1493.
In the second half of the XV century. Danish peasants continued to be drawn into personal dependence. Large landowners forced to fulfill the ever-increasing corvée.
Chapter 16
Kingdom of Hungary in the X-XV centuries.
"Finding a Motherland". In 896, the Hungarian tribes, under the pressure of the Pechenegs, penetrated from the Black Sea steppes through the Carpathian passes into the Middle Danube, eventually settled there and founded the state.
Hungarians belong to the family of Finno-Ugric peoples. Presumably, their ancestral home is localized in the basin of the Middle Volga region, the Kama and Belaya rivers. Once in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e. In the Black Sea steppes, nomadic herdsmen Hungarians lived for a long time under the rule of various Turkic peoples, adopted much of their material culture, beliefs, political institutions and language. The name of one of the Turkic tribes, the Onogurs, spread to them and, having changed (lat. hungarus), was assigned to them in European languages. The self-name of the Hungarians is the Magyars.
Seven Hungarian tribes that had concluded a blood union crossed the Carpathians, three tribes of Turkic Kabars joined them. At the head of this union stood the leader Arpad. The princely, and then the first royal dynasty of Hungary, the Arpads (ruled until 1301), originated from him. The nomadic newcomers occupied, first of all, the flat and steppe regions of the Great Danube Lowland and Transylvania, which were convenient for pastures, but gradually, both peacefully and with the help of weapons, settled throughout the Carpathian basin (including part of modern Slovakia). The tribes were located separately and lived quite independently from each other. The best lands - along the Danube, south of the current capital of Hungary - went to Arpad and his family.
The population of medieval Hungary. The medieval Kingdom of Hungary was multi-ethnic. By the time the Hungarians arrived, the local Slavic tribes were at a higher level of development and subsequently had a great influence on the conquerors. This is evidenced by a number of borrowings in the Hungarian language of Slavic terms related to agriculture, crafts, everyday life, and the administrative system. During the expansion of the Hungarian kings in the XII-XIII centuries, as well as migrations, the Slavic element intensified. Under the rule of the Hungarians at different times were the ancestors of the Slovaks, Croats, Slovenes, Serbs, Rusyns.
Great is the importance of the German colonization of Hungarian lands, encouraged by the Hungarian kings, especially in the 13th-14th centuries. There were areas of compact settlement of Bavarians, Saxons, Swabians, the most numerous in Transylvania. The latter looked especially colorful in ethnic terms. In addition to the Hungarians and Germans, the Szekelys (Seklers) settled there - a people, apparently of Turkic origin, but Omagyarized. From the 12th century written sources increasingly began to mention among the inhabitants of Transylvania the ancestors of the Romanians - the Vlach shepherds, although in historiography there is an opinion that they lived there much earlier. The number of Vlachs was constantly growing. A noticeable trace in the ethnic history of Hungary was left by nomads - Polovtsy (Kuns) and Alans (Yases), settled at the beginning of the 13th century. Hungarian kings in the steppe regions of the kingdom.
The raid of the Hungarians on Western Europe. More than half a century passed between the appearance of the Hungarians beyond the Carpathians and their final settlement there, during which the Hungarian cavalry detachments incessantly carried out devastating predatory raids on Western Europe. They reached Valencia and Apulia, the mouth of the Loire and Jutland. The tactics of unexpected raids by light cavalry armed with arrows, similar to the tactics of the Arabs, for a long time caused confusion in the West and in Byzantium. Only in 955 did the German king Otto I utterly defeat the Hungarians in a battle on the Lech River near Augsburg. Thus, he put an end to their raids and forced them to gain a foothold in their new homeland.
The Hungarians finally switched to a settled way of life. Their main occupation was agriculture, although both in the economic structure and in the way of life, cattle breeding - cattle breeding and horse breeding - retained an important role. Even in the XIII-XIV centuries. in some areas of Hungary in the summer the population left their homes in the villages and moved to the steppe, in tents.
In the course of settling and settling on new lands, as well as predatory campaigns, social inequality arose, relations of power and subordination, and the state took shape. In the X century. Christianity began to spread.
The emergence of the early feudal state. Istvan I. According to tradition, the founder of the Hungarian state is Istvan I the Saint (c. 974-1038), a direct descendant of Arpad. Having suppressed the resistance of the tribal nobility and destroyed the relatives competing with him in the struggle for supreme power, Istvan managed to unite all the tribal territories into a single state. In 1000 he proclaimed himself king. Fearing to become dependent on the German emperors, who exerted strong pressure on the young state, Istvan accepted the crown from Pope Sylvester II. Subsequently, on this basis, the popes repeatedly claimed suzerainty over Hungary. At the same time, this fact served as the starting point for the later formation of the concept of the “holy crown”, which was very important in the political history of medieval Hungary. It was believed that the Roman high priest received it through angels from God. This put the kingdom in a special position - as being under heavenly protection, and the crown itself. Gradually, she began to symbolize not only the power of the king, but also the state itself. During periods of weakening royal power, this idea was used to their advantage by the Hungarian barons. A monarch not crowned with a “holy crown” (“the crown of St. Stephen”) was not considered legitimate.
Baptized in childhood, Istvan planted Catholic Christianity in the country. Under him, the church acquired organizational forms. Two archbishoprics (Esztergom and Pech), the first ten bishoprics, and monasteries were founded. Citizens were strictly charged with the obligation to build parish churches and pay tithes. Thanks to royal grants, the church became the largest landowner in the kingdom. In addition to Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity was widespread in the medieval Hungarian state, which prevailed among the non-Hungarian population.
Istvan owned more than half of the kingdom's lands. On them, he established 45 royal districts - committees, the military-administrative centers of which he made royal castles. At the head of the committees were the pitans (counts) appointed by the king, who came from both the local and the Hungarian, former tribal, nobility. The ancestral territories gradually fell under royal jurisdiction. By the middle of the XII century. the number of royal committees increased to 70.
Under Istvan, state institutions and ranks of medieval Hungary began to take shape. The supreme advisory body under the king was the Royal Council, the core of which was the ishpans, prelates, and the highest palace officials. The first official in the state was the court ishpan (nador, or palatine), a confidant of the king. Initially, his competence included the resolution of disputes at court. Over time, the nador began to replace the king in court, as well as in resolving military and other national issues. To help the nador, the post of a palace judge was established, which later turned into the chief judge of the kingdom. The second most important figure in the central government was the primate of the Hungarian church - the Archbishop of Esztergom, who from the 13th century. headed the royal chancellery as chancellor.
The most important measures related to state and church construction and guaranteeing the protection of the emerging foundations of the feudal system in the 11th - early 12th centuries. were framed by royal laws.
The social structure of the early feudal society. The process of folding the basic structures of feudal society in Hungary dragged on until the 14th century. In legal terms, the peasantry was very motley. Its status was determined by its origin, as well as by the one in whose possessions it lived. On the royal lands, the situation of the dependent population was better. But everywhere one trend was traced: the lowering of the status of the free and the raising of the status of the descendants of slaves (serfs and libertines). The main difference between the personally free and the dependent was that the former had the right to move freely and carried fixed duties. The most privileged position was occupied by hospitals - peasants who were accepted by the landowner on preferential terms. In their communities, they themselves elected judges and jointly made senior payments, which, moreover, were smaller than those of ordinary free peasants. One of the most important indicators of the conditions of free status in Hungary was the performance of military service, which could be replaced by payments.
The most privileged, as elsewhere in Europe, was the military stratum. It included free Hungarians and people from the non-Hungarian nobility who carried military service in the royal castles. At the call of the king, they went on a campaign led by royal ishpans. Another category of warriors are servants. They were directly subordinate to the king and fought under his banner. Over time, they all became part of the feudal estate. In the fight against the tribal nobility, Istvan relied on foreigners, primarily Germans. After his marriage to a Bavarian princess, a stream of knights and missionaries from the German lands poured into the country. They played a significant role in the formation of the new nobility and feudal institutions in Hungary.
Internal strife in the XI - early XIII century. During the reign of the kings from the Arpad dynasty, the throne, as a rule, was passed through the male line. At the same time, the principles of succession to the throne alternated between the eldest in the family (the brother of the king), and the eldest son of the king. This led to a fierce struggle for the throne within the ruling house. After the death of Stephen, who died childless, there were seven kings in Hungary from 1038 to 1070, and only one of them died of natural causes.
The feudal nobility (barons, or magnates) benefited from civil strife. When, with the accession to the throne of András II (1205-1235), fratricidal strife was put to an end for a while, it turned out that the royal land fund was significantly reduced and the system of royal committees created by Istvan collapsed. Entire committees fell into private hands, and in those that still remained with the king, the military and administrative organization ceased to cope with its functions. Unlike Western Europe of that time, the Arpads granted land without any conditions, forever. The most powerful of the magnates became virtually independent of the central government.
The magnates were at enmity both among themselves and with the kings. Under Andrew II, the conflict between the barons and the central government reached its climax. The situation was complicated by the fact that Andras and his wife Gertrude, who came from Bavaria, patronized foreigners. In 1213, the barons, led by Nador Bank, plotted and, in the absence of the king, during the hunt killed the queen and her most hated close associates from among the foreigners. The power of the magnates increased so much that Andras II did not dare to really crack down on the conspirators.
"Golden bull" 1222 The strengthening of the magnates and the collapse of the system of royal committees threatened the position of free small and medium landowners, who, without the protection of the king, were helpless before the power and abuses of secular and ecclesiastical magnates. The discontent of these social groups was directed both against the magnates and against the king, unable to protect his subjects. The movement was headed by representatives of that part of the aristocracy that did not have close ties with the court and was deprived of awards.
In 1222, the opposition forced Andras II to accept his main demands, formulated in the Golden Bull issued on behalf of the king. Most of the articles in this document are directed against the abuses of the king and magnates. Thus, it was forbidden to grant entire committees to private individuals and the influence of foreigners was limited. The final article of the bull stipulated the right of powerful barons and prelates to resist the king in the event of his failure to fulfill his promises - a right that the magnates later repeatedly used in the fight against the Central Power. However, the true meaning of the "Golden Bull" lies in the fact that it was the first to declare the rights and privileges of the servants and categories close to them, which formed the basis of the later Hungarian nobility. The personal freedom of the servants and subjection only to the royal court were declared; the prohibition to detain them without the lawful order of a judge; remuneration for military service to the king (except in cases where the country was attacked from outside). The possessions of the servants were exempted from taxes and duties.
Tatar invasion. The son of András Bela IV (1235-1270), with his attempts to limit the autocracy of the magnates and return the lost royal committees, turned against himself a significant part of the aristocracy. This was especially dangerous in the face of the approaching Tatar threat. In the spring of 1241, the Tatar-Mongolian troops under the leadership of Batu Khan, having met only weak resistance, invaded the country. In vain, according to the ancient custom, the royal messengers traveled around the country with a bloody sword, calling the feudal lords on a campaign. Troops gathered extremely slowly. On April 11, 1241, one of the most tragic and memorable battles in the history of medieval Hungary took place near the village of Mohi in the north of the kingdom. The Hungarians suffered a crushing defeat. Their army was completely destroyed. Nador died, both archbishops and many other representatives of the nobility. The king himself barely escaped in Dalmatia. In the XIII century. the Hungarians could no longer resist the tactics of swift nomadic raids, which they themselves had so successfully used against Western Europe three centuries ago.
Having made a devastating raid on Hungary, the Tatars in the summer of 1242 unexpectedly left the kingdom. They left behind a devastated and depopulated country. The Tatar invasion became an important milestone in the history of the Hungarian state. The failures of the Hungarians in the fight against the Tatars showed the weakness of the defense and military organization. Bela IV decided to expand the construction of stone fortresses. Since the treasury was unable to cope with this task, he returned to the distribution of land to the magnates. In the second half of the XIII century. The Hungarian kingdom, like Western Europe two centuries earlier, was covered with castles, which led to the strengthening of the private power of the magnates. This, in turn, was accompanied by the formation of a system of seigneurial-vassal relations. The institute of familiars arose: free landowning warriors, who previously depended directly on the king, were forced to enter the service of barons and prelates.
There were also changes in the position of the peasantry. The re-population of areas depopulated during the Tatar invasion led to stabilization and improvement of the conditions of its existence, approaching the status of hospitals.
In the second half of the XIII century. gave impetus to the growth of cities. Bela IV encouraged the construction of fortified cities and provided their population with wide benefits. Such settlements arose faster in the privileged communities of German hospitals (Pest, Kashsha1, Löche2), as well as on the basis of royal castles (Esztergom, Szekesfe-Hervar, Buda, Gyor, Sopron, Pozsony3). The cities that emerged had the status of "free royal cities", their self-government was limited to the royal administration. A distinctive feature of the cities was the predominance of the German ethnic element in them.
Foreign policy of the Kingdom of Hungary in the XII-XIII centuries. If in the XI century. The foreign policy of the Hungarian kings was aimed at fighting for survival against stronger neighbors, primarily the German Empire, then from the 12th century. the strengthened kingdom of Hungary itself proceeds to external expansion. At the end of the XI - beginning of the XII century. Laszlo I and Kalman I subjugated Slavonia and Croatia, which, however, retained their autonomy. At the same time, the power of the Hungarian kings extended to coastal Dalmatia with its rich trading centers. As a result, Hungary acquired a powerful rival in the face of Venice. In 1136 Bela II declared himself king of Bosnia. In its advance in the Balkans, Hungary clashed with Byzantium. The Byzantine emperor Manuel I used all possible means - from military to diplomatic, to oust Hungary from the Balkans and subjugate it. After unsuccessful attempts to enter into an alliance against Hungary with Frederick I Barbarossa, he adopted and raised the Hungarian prince Bela (the future Bela III) at his court as his heir. However, this plan for the unification of states was not implemented.
Since the 11th century Hungarian kings made claims to Galicia-Volyn Rus. At the end of the XII century. they intensified their actions in this direction by undertaking a number of campaigns. The Hungarian kings more than once declared themselves "Kings of Galich". But in the middle of the XIII century. they were forced to abandon their plans to subjugate this area.
The establishment of the Angevin dynasty. Her internal politics. In the XIV-XV centuries. Hungarian feudal society experienced the highest rise and flourishing. The kingdom began to play an important role in the international life of Central Europe.
In 1301, with the death of András III, the Arpad dynasty came to an end in Hungary. The last kings from this house were unable to cope with the baron's freemen. The country, under the nominal supremacy of the king, actually broke up into a number of almost independent possessions. Thus, Nador Mate Chak, who owned 12 counties in the north of the kingdom, had his own court, in which the highest government positions (nador, chancellor, etc.) were duplicated.
After the death of András III, the warring magnate groups chose three kings at once from foreigners who were related to the Arpads. With the support of the pope, Charles Robert (1310-1342), a representative of the Neapolitan branch of the Angevin dynasty, established himself on the Hungarian throne. He was recognized as the legitimate king only after the third coronation, when he finally managed to get the “crown of St. Istvan". Charles Robert strengthened the material and political foundations of the state and thus ensured the success of the reign of his son Lajos I the Great (1342-1382).
Charles Robert subjugated the whole country to his power. The lands of political opponents were confiscated. More than half of the royal castles and a fifth of the kingdom's lands returned to the hands of the king. Charles Robert created a new aristocracy of people loyal to him, giving away castles and estates. The peculiarity of these awards was that for the most part they were associated with the appointment to the highest government positions. In fact, it was a kind of beneficiary system, which by that time had become an anachronism in Western Europe. Later, individual spanishships became hereditary for some positions. Obedient at first to their benefactor and his strong hand, the new nobility eventually again began to oppose itself to the central government and at the end of the 14th century. prevailed over her.
The kings of the Angevin dynasty actively used the old and looked for new sources of income. The richest gold and silver mines in Europe were located on the territory of the kingdom. There was a large flow of goods in transit across the borders in both directions. To bring these riches under control, royal mining and customs regalia were established. The first regular tax was introduced in the state - from the peasant household ("from the gate"). Charles Robert carried out a monetary reform, replacing the numerous types of local seigneurial and foreign coins that were in circulation with a full-fledged royal gold florin.
Under the auspices of the royal power, more and more free royal cities arose. Yet urban development lagged behind Western Europe. There were few cities; they built their well-being not on crafts, but on trade, and mostly distant. Cities concentrated on transit trade routes near the borders of the kingdom. In the interior of the country, only Buda was an exception. It is no coincidence that in the XIV century. it turned into the economic and political center of the kingdom, where the kings moved their residence. The underdevelopment of urban life led to the weakness of the urban class that began to take shape.
In the XIV century. even greater than under Bela IV, internal colonization took place, carried out, as before, mainly due to the influx of immigrants from outside the country. In conditions when the cities could not fully coordinate internal economic relations, this task was taken over by trading villages, the so-called "agrarian cities", the number of which by the 15th century. reached 800. The peasant population of these market towns produced products for sale. The craft also developed there, although it played a secondary role. The kings granted market towns similar privileges to towns.
It should be emphasized the special role of cattle breeding and viticulture in the country's economy, already in the XIV century. acquired an export character. On the one hand, success in cattle breeding was determined by the geographical conditions of the country (steppe spaces and meadow lands in the valleys of the Danube, Tisza and their numerous tributaries). On the other hand, the development of cattle breeding and viticulture influenced the economic structure of the village and the structure of land ownership. In areas dominated by these branches of agriculture, the domain spread less. But in the grain zones in the XIV and XV centuries. domain economy was not established. This was facilitated by the abundance of land and the relatively low population density.
Changes in the social structure. By the middle of the XIV century. the peasantry acquired a single legal status. It consisted of hereditary land holders, who had personal freedom, the right to pass, who contributed money, as well as products.
In the XIV century. a typical figure was a full-fledged peasant, i.e. holding sufficient land for self-management. It is no coincidence that the allotment has become a unit of taxation. However, from the fifteenth century due to the fragmentation of peasant holdings, the number of people living by 1/2, 1/4, etc. is growing. part of the allotment, as well as landless peasants. But since duties and taxes were levied, as a rule, from arable land, most of the additional sources of peasant income related to cattle breeding, trade, crafts could remain at their disposal. In general, for the financial situation of the peasantry in the XIV - the first half of the XV century. characterized by stability.
The formation of a single status of the peasantry was reflected in the legislation. In 1351, a royal decree was issued, which for the first time regulated peasant duties in favor of the feudal lords throughout the kingdom. This law was primarily intended to help the nobility, who suffered especially from the departure of peasants to the estates of large feudal lords, where the level of exploitation was lower.
In the XIV-XV centuries. the Hungarian kings pursued a consistent policy of supporting the nobility, counting on it in the fight against the magnates. The same decree consolidated the rights and privileges of the nobility and actually drew a line under its registration in a single estate. This is evidenced by the formula of the decree, which proclaimed the equality of all previously legally diverse groups of nobility: “True nobles living within the country ... enjoy the same freedom.” Nevertheless, the top of the nobility (owners of 10-40 villages) was separated from the numerous one-door nobles by an abyss.
Having taken shape in the estate, the nobility, with the support of the royal power, was able to more effectively protect their interests in the face of the magnates. These goals were served by noble committees that arose as early as the 13th century. in place of the decaying royal ones. The kings granted the nobles the right to have their own court, administration, finances and militia within the comitats. The highest collegiate body was the comitat assembly, in which all nobles of the comitat could take part. The comitat was headed by an ishpan, who was appointed by the king from among the barons devoted to him. Ishpans were replaced by vice-ispans, often these were the families of the ispan. The apparatus of comitat self-government included regularly re-elected judges, jurors, and notaries. Noble committees, although they turned into rivals of the power of the barons in the field, could not overcome it. The continued development of the family led to the fact that the structures of magnate and comitat power were closely intertwined.
So, in the XIV century. the social structure of the Kingdom of Hungary took shape. Hungary of that time can be called a country of nobles and peasants. In this multi-ethnic state, the ranks of both the peasantry and the feudal lords were equally replenished by representatives of other nationalities, who often enjoyed privileges and some autonomy on their territories.
Administration of Transylvania. The management of the Transylvanian lands had its own characteristics. These lands fell under the rule of the Hungarians in the era of "finding a homeland." Since the time of Istvan, a comitat organization has existed there. At the head of the seven Transylvanian counties was the representative of the king - the Transylvanian governor, who had extensive judicial, financial and military powers. He was one of the highest officials of the kingdom. From the 13th century under the chairmanship of the voivode, the General Assembly acted, at which, first of all, the court cases of the region were decided. Bela IV, wishing to secure the rights to the throne for his eldest son (the future Istvan V), declared him his co-ruler and duke, and then the king of Transylvania. As a result, the status of this territory in the kingdom rose for a while. The decline of central power under the last Arpads led to the fact that the governors of Transylvania, like the magnates of other parts of the kingdom, became independent for a long time.
In addition to comitates, in multi-ethnic Transylvania in the 13th century. Szekely and Saxon (German) districts arose, which did not depend on the governor and also had great independence. They were ruled by special royal dignitaries - Ishpan of the Székelys and Ishpan of the Saxons. Sekeyi were obliged to the king only by military service. Their privileges were based on this: personal freedom, exemption from taxes and duties. Until the 15th century Székely lived in the conditions of a tribal system.
The Saxons settled Transylvania as hospitals. The privileges granted to hospital communities contributed to the emergence of cities. The Saxon cities themselves elected their own administration, priests, used royal regalia (hunting, fishing, mining), traded their goods without duty, and organized fairs. Hungarians, Vlachs and Szekelys were not allowed to settle on the lands of the Saxons. The Saxons paid the king a fixed amount and supplied a certain number of soldiers to his army.
The Vlachs of Transylvania were traditionally engaged in pastoral sheep breeding. The Hungarian kings, especially after the Tatar invasion, willingly took them to the border service. In their communities, they lived according to their own - Volosh - law. For military service, the Vlachs were granted privileges similar to those of the nobility. The Vlach nobility was related to the Hungarian. These integration processes were reflected in the decree of Lajos I in 1366: ordinary Vlachs were equated in legal status with the dependent peasantry, and privileged warriors - with the nobility.
The socio-political structures of the peoples inhabiting Transylvania interacted with each other. So, in 1437, at the height of the uprising of the Hungarian and Wallachian peasants, the Hungarian nobles, the Székelys and the patriciate of the Saxon cities concluded an alliance among themselves, the so-called "Union of the Three Nations", directed against the rebellious peasants. However, ethnically, the Vlachs did not dissolve among the Hungarians and other peoples of Transylvania. Moreover, as more and more Vlachs moved to Transylvania from the Balkans under the pressure of the Ottomans, they began to exert a significant influence on the ethnic processes of this province. The ethnic unity of the Vlachs in Transylvania was facilitated by their belonging to the Orthodox Christian Church.
External expansion. Foreign policy of the Kingdom of Hungary in the XIV century. was very active. If Charles Robert preferred peaceful activities to wars, and sought to resolve conflicts with neighbors through diplomacy, then his son Lajos I received the nickname the Great for his military enterprises, despite the fact that most of them were futile adventures. This is what his campaigns in Naples, the wars with Venice, ultimately look like. The successes of Lajos in the Balkans (the establishment of suzerainty over Serbia, Bosnia, the conquest of part of Bulgaria) generally made the conquered peoples hostile towards Hungary, which facilitated the Turkish conquests in the Balkans.
The diplomacy of the kings of the Angevin dynasty laid the foundation for the rapprochement of Hungary with the Czech Republic and Poland. It was formalized by an agreement between the three kings at their meeting in Visegrad (Hungary) in 1335. This alliance was of a military and commercial nature and was directed primarily against the Austrian duke. In 1370, Lajos I took the Polish throne, which, however, did not mean a merger of the two kingdoms. After the death of Lajos, their paths parted again.
Relations between Hungary and the Czech Republic became more complicated at a time when the Czech king Charles I of Luxembourg was elected German emperor. Lajos I opposed the emperor for a long time, repeatedly changing allies. But in the end, in 1372, the enemies reconciled and agreed on a marriage between their children: the daughter of Lajos I Maria and the son of Charles Sigismund.
The Czech-Polish-Hungarian rapprochement that began under the Angevin dynasty, despite the contradictions and discords that existed, turned out to be generally promising. A semblance of a political bloc was taking shape, which for more than two centuries seriously influenced the balance of power in Central Europe, especially during the reign of the Jagiellonian dynasty, which had established itself on the thrones of the three kingdoms.
Luxembourg in Hungary. The mistakes of the policy of the Angevin dynasty affected immediately after the death of the "great" king. In the kingdom that had lost its firm power, the barons declared themselves with renewed vigor. They created warring leagues, which, however, united in an effort to curtail royal power. The election of Sigismund (Zsigmond in the Hungarian tradition) of Luxembourg (1387-1437) as king was preceded by a bloody civil war of several baronial leagues that put forward their pretenders to the throne.
In this struggle, seemingly repeating the main collisions of the previous baronial speeches, new features clearly emerged. The barons openly strove for power and wished to legislate their superiority over the king. During the interregnum, the court baronial council invested itself with the highest authority and ruled on behalf of the "holy Hungarian crown", which, thus, finally separated from the bearer of supreme power - the king. Zsigmond was officially recognized only after the coronation with the crown of St. Istvan, presented to him by the barons. For this, he undertook to make his council exclusively from prelates, barons and their heirs, to keep the highest offices in their hands and was forced to accept the almost complete loss of the royal land fund. The attempts of the young king to free himself from the power of the barons in 1400 led to the fact that they captured him and kept him prisoner for some time.
Over time, Zsigmond managed to restore order in the country, getting along with the magnates, who for almost forty years did not start troubles. Relying on the new aristocracy and a significant part of the nobility, this king continued the policy of Charles Robert in the field of economy.
Having achieved relative calm in the country, Zsigmond directed all his forces to achieve foreign policy goals. Meanwhile, in this area at the end of the XIV - beginning of the XV century. new factors appeared that later became decisive in the history of the Kingdom of Hungary. The Turks were inevitably approaching its borders. In a number of offensive military actions, Zsigmond tried to stop them. But after the defeat of the united troops of the Western European knights under the command of Zsigmond in the battle of Nikopol in 1396, Hungary switched to a defensive policy. Zsigmond's attempts to secure suzerainty over the states of the Balkan-Danube region generally failed. However, a number of strategically important areas and fortresses fell into the hands of the Hungarians, including Belgrade.
Zsigmond concentrated the main efforts of his foreign policy on the western direction. From that time on, rapprochement with the German Empire and the Austrian Habsburgs quickly began, which determined the main contours of Hungarian policy in the future. As the son of the German emperor, Charles IV Zsigmond sought to repeat the path of his father. He succeeded. In 1411 about
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