2. Thirty Years’ War
• Lasts from 1618 to 1648 (Thirty years! How ‘bout
that?)
• The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 was the agreement that
each ruler could decide if his realm was going to be
Catholic or Lutheran.
• There’s still conflict between the two religions and
neither of them like those crazy pre-destination
Calvinists.
• Things break loose when Ferdinand II, who was
Catholic and head of the powerful Hapsburg family,
conflicts with the Protestants in Bohemia.
3. • The Hapsburgs kick protestant keister the first 12 years
and brutally treated the protestants by burning villages
and plundering property.
4. • In 1630, the Lutheran king of Sweden gets involved.
• Yes, Sweden was once a military power.
• The king, Gustavus Adolphus was also a military
innovator.
• Up to this point, armies relied on massed infantry
formation that emphasized pikemen with
musketeers to drive off skirmishers. Artillery was
large and immobile.
• Adolphus switched things around. He armed
most of his forces with firearms and used small,
mobile, mass-produced cannons. The big massed
formations became big targets.
5.
6.
7.
8. • The French, under Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin, also
side with the protestants despite the fact they were
Catholic.
• They disliked the power of the Hapsburgs more than
the competing religion of Lutheranism.
• It’s finally ended by the Peace of Westphalia.
• Sweden gets control of the Baltic, France gets some
German land and a firm frontier on the Rhine, the
Netherlands are solidly freed from Spain, the
Calvinists get some recognition, and the concept of
the modern nation-state was born.
9.
10. • The war devastated the German economy and
landscape, helping to keep it from uniting into a single
country.
• It didn’t help that it’s population dropped from 20
million to 16 million due to death or people escaping
the destruction.
11. Russia
Czar Ivan IV (the Terrible)
• Formally became czar at age three and others ruled in
his place as regents. He disliked the boyars because of
their neglect of him and the power struggles.
• He was also known to throw cats and dogs out of the
Kremlin windows.
• He expands Russia’s borders by conquering Mongol
territory.
12. • On the downside, he helps convert peasants into serfs,
forms a secret police force, and starts going crazy.
• He even kills his own son in a rage after his son
confronted him about Ivan beating his son’s
pregnant wife into a miscarriage because he thought
her clothing was immodest.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17. Peter the Great
• Becomes czar in 1682.
• Was 6 feet 8 inches tall, but oddly proportioned with a
small head and small feet and hands.
• Apparently had some facial tics as well. Some
speculate he may have suffered from petit mal
epilepsy or stress-induced Tourette’s syndrome.
18. • Peter recognized that Russia was backwards, especially
compared to the quickly developing and expanding
European empires.
• He hung out with the Euro folks in Moscow’s foreign
quarter (where they were required by law to live).
• He then went on the “Grand Embassy” to western
Europe to get diplomatic support against the
Ottomans. Failing that, he worked incognito and
learned Western ways.
19. • When he returned to
Russia, he immediately
started implementing
Western reforms.
• He adopted a Western-
style court, wore
Western clothes (note
the threads to the
right), and even taxed
people for wearing
beards. Well, the men,
anyway.
• He also built St.
Petersburg, his new
capital, during which up
to 100,000 workers
died.
20. • Peter also had a grumpy side. He distrusted his son,
Alexei, and, after promising him clemency to lure him
back to Moscow, arrested him and tried for treason.
• Alexei confessed under torture and was sentenced to
death. He “accidentally” died two days later after
receiving 40 lashes over two days as more torture.
21.
22. England
England develops a little differently and doesn’t get those
absolute monarchs.
• Remember that it had that testy Parliament.
• While Elizabeth was nearly absolute, this was because
she was tactful in dealing with Parliament, which at this
point was limited to its duty of collecting taxes and
providing funds for the monarchy. Her successors,
James I and then Charles I, weren’t quite so good at
the political game.
23. • Charles, seen here, needed
cash at one point, but
Parliament refused until he
agreed to the Petition of Right.
• Among the petition’s
measures were that it
ensured habeas corpus and
no billeting of soldiers in
private homes.
• These sound awfully
similar to the 5th and 3rd
amendments,
respectively, in the U.S.
Bill of Rights.
24. • Charles ignored the agreement, annoys some
protestants, and gets aggressive towards the Scots.
• Parliament gets aggressive with Charles, passes laws
limiting his power and Charles tries arresting
Parliament’s leaders.
• War starts between the royalists, the Cavaliers, and the
Parliamentarian rebels, the Roundheads.
• It goes back and forth, but eh Roundheads finally
get the upper hand with the help of Oliver Cromwell.
• Charles is captured, tried for treason and executed.
• This was big. The English people had just
committed regicide. The rest of Europe,
especially its royal families were shocked.
25.
26. • Cromwell, ironically, ruled
like a king and in fact had
more power than Charles
did. He also imposed
puritan rules and ethics on
the English, but was
religiously tolerant.
• Cromwell was a man of
contradictions and is
still a controversial
figure.
27. • Cromwell dies in 1658, the government collapses and
Parliament asks Charles’s son, Charles II to come back
and become king, with some conditions.
• Cromwell’s body was subsequently exhumed, tried
for treason and symbolically beheaded.
Cromwell’s death
mask
28. • Charles II dies without an
heir and his brother James
II becomes but he’s too
Catholic for the protestant
English folks.
• A few members of
Parliament ask one of
James II’s other
daughters, Mary who’s
married Dutch prince
William (and is
protestant), to come
rule.
• William and Mary invade,
James II flees to France,
and the bloodless coup is
called the Glorious
Revolution.
