The Growth of Absolutism in
Europe (1500-1700)
Austria, France, Spain and England
Divine Right
• “It is God who establishes
kings. They thus act as the
ministers of God and his
lieutenants on Earth. It is
through them that he rules.” –
Jacques Bossuet, a 17th century French bishop, on the
belief of divine right monarchies.
How Absolute Monarchies Developed
• In the Middle Ages, the king was seen as being put in
place through a feudal contract between him and his
vassals.
• An absolute monarch is a king who strictly controls
the government and the lives of the people of
his/her country.
Austria – The Austrian Hapsburgs.
• The Hapsburgs had ruled the Holy Roman
Empire before the Thirty Years’ War. Since
they lost their German Empire in Central
Europe, they created an empire in
Southeastern Europe.
• The core of the Austrian Empire was present
day Austria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.
Austria – The Austrian Hapsburgs.
• The Austrians defeated the Ottoman Turks in
1687 and took Hungary, Transylvania
(western Romania), Croatia, and Slavonia
(Serbia and northern Bosnia).
• The Austrian Empire was never a nationstate. It had many different ethnic groups.
France Absolute Monarchy: Henry IV
 Religious wars break out between Catholics
and Huguenots.
 The French Wars of Religion
 Nobles took advantage of the religious strife
and tried to take power from the king.
 Henry, a Huguenot, converted to Catholicism
bringing peace and unity to the country.
France Under Henry IV (continued)
▫ Henry made the Protestants happy by
guaranteeing them peace and equality in the Edict
of Nantes, which guaranteed the freedom of
religion and the people’s right to worship how they
believed.
▫ Henry made financial, agricultural and commercial
reforms including the building of roads and canals.
▫ Henry was killed by a religious fanatic.
Louis XIII
Henry IV
France Under Louis XIII
• Henry was succeeded by
his nine year-old son,
Louis (“famous warrior”),
who became Louis XIII.
• Since Louis was so young,
his mother ruled for him.
• Louis was a weak king
who had to rely on his
chief advisor, Cardinal
Richelieu, for help to rule.
France Under Louis XIII 1610-1643
 Richelieu reduced the power of the Huguenots.
 He took away their political and military rights,
but preserved their religious rights.
 Richelieu kept the nobles from taking power
from the king by setting up a network of spies
and crushing any conspiracy.
 Richelieu and Louis XIII made France into an
absolute monarchy.
Louis XIV (1643-1715)
• Louis XIV became king when
he was 5 years old.
• Until he came of age, his
mother and regent, Cardinal
Mazarin ruled.
• Mazarin put down a revolt by
the nobles who feared the
growing power of the
monarch.
Louis XIV (1643-1715)
• When Mazarin died in 1661, Louis became
the king of France.
• Louis XIV is seen by historians as the best
example of an absolute king.
• He has been called “The Great Monarch,”
“Louis the Great,” and “The Sun King.”
Louis XIV (1643-1715) (continued)
• Louis ruled for 72 years, longer than any
other European monarch.
• Louis based his rule on divine right.
• France became the strongest country in
Europe as a result of the Thirty Years’
War (1618-1648), and Louis the most
powerful king..
Louis XIV (1643-1715) (continued)
• Louis opposed the Huguenots because he
feared a large religious minority could lead to a
civil war.
• Louis saw France as a nation-state and saw
being Catholic as part of being French.
• He ended the Edict of Nantes.
• Protestants were persecuted and 200,000 fled
the country.
Louis XIV (1643-1715)
• Louis built the Palace at Versailles outside of
Paris.
• The palace cost over $100,000,000.
• The building was ½ mile long, with a Hall of
Mirrors, and fountains on acres of landscaped
grounds.
• He kept the French nobles from challenging
him by giving them government positions and
letting them live at Versailles.
Louis XIV (1643-1715) (continued)
• Nobles enjoyed hunting, bowling, ballet,
sporting events, horse shows, and good food
and drink.
• Louis was always surrounded by crowds of
people wherever he went at Versailles.
• Other kings and nobles throughout Europe
tried to copy Versailles and the lifestyle of the
court there.
Louis XIV (1643-1715) (continued)
• While the nobles lived a life of luxury, the peasants lived
a dreary and hopeless existence.
• Louis plunged France into a number of expensive wars.
Louis built an army of 400,000.
• The other countries of Europe formed alliances to
prevent the French from dominating the continent.
• Louis died in 1715.
• He was succeeded by Louis XV, who became king 5 yearsold.
Spanish Absolute Monarchy: Charles V
• Charles V ruled the Hapsburg Empire in the
1500s.
• The Hapsburg Empire included Spain, Spanish
colonies in the Americas, Austria, The
Netherlands, and the German kingdoms that
made up the Holy Roman Empire.
• Charles developed an absolute monarchy.
Spanish Absolute Monarchy: Charles V
• Hernan Cortes, Francisco Pizarro, and the conquistadors
had given Charles a vast empire in the Americas and riches
in gold and silver, but Charles spent the money on costly
wars in France, Italy, and Germany.
• Under Charles, Spain competed with France and England
for power.
• After 40 years as a strong and respected ruler, Charles
decided to step down.
• His son Phillip became king of Spain. Charles retired to a
monastery.
Phillip II
Charles V
Phillip II
• Phillip ruled Spain for 42 years as an absolute monarch.
Phillip felt his rule was given to him by God (Divine Right).
• Under Phillip Spain became the most powerful country in
the world. His mighty army and navy were paid for by
gold and silver from the colonies in America. It is
estimated that between 1581 and 1600, 10,000,000
pounds of gold and silver went to Spain from Mexico and
Peru.
• Phillip became the leader of the Catholic Reformation in
Europe. He also sent Jesuit priests across Europe to
persuade Protestants to become Catholic again.
• Missionaries were sent to the Americas to convert the
Indians to Christianity.
Phillip II (continued)
• Much of Spain’s wealth was spent on foreign wars.
Even with all of the gold from the Americas, Spain had
to borrow from Italy and Germany to pay for wars.
• To pay its debts, Spain began to produce large
amounts of gold coins. Putting all of this money in
circulation led to inflation, the rise of prices.
• The Dutch Netherlands, a Spanish colony, turned to
Protestantism and rebelled against Catholic Spain.
After gaining independence, the Dutch Netherlands
became one of the world’s leading trading nations.
The Spanish Armada
▫ By the late 1500s, relations between Spain and England
deteriorated.
 Spain was Catholic, England was Protestant.
 Phillip was a cousin of Catherine of Aragon, who
Henry VIII started the Church of England to divorce.
 Phillip married Catherine’s daughter Mary, who
became England’s Queen Mary (Bloody Mary).
 When Mary died, Phillip felt he had a right to the
throne of England.
▫ Sir Francis Drake and other English pirates attacked
Spanish ports in America and seized Spanish ships. The
English pirates were called “Sea Dogs.”
The Spanish Armada (continued)
• In 1588, Phillip ordered a huge fleet called the Spanish
Armada to carry his army to England. But, the English won
a decisive victory in one of the greatest naval battles of all
time. The English won because they had smaller and
faster ships.
• The Spanish ships which survived the battle retreated to
the North Sea. There a violent storm sank many of them
and the rest limped back to Spain. The English called the
storm the “Protestant Wind.”
• The defeat of the Spanish led to the decline of Spanish
power. It opened the way for England to start colonies in
North America.
Key
Players
Decline of Spanish Power
• After the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Phillip go
involved in several wars, including one against
Huguenots in France. These wars depleted
Spain’s treasury.
• After the death of Phillip in 1598, Spain found it
more and more difficult to rule its vast empire in
the Americas.
Revolutions in England
• The 17th century saw England’s civil war, the
English Revolution between the king and
parliament.
• The Tudor dynasty ended with Queen
Elizabeth’s death in 1603.
• The Stuart king of Scotland, James I
ascended to the throne.
• James would take England down the path of
Civil War.
Age of Absolutism: Conclusion
• The Ages of Exploration, Renaissance, and
Reformation were ended by a period of crisis
and war. This Crisis gave way for Absolutism.
• As the old order of the Middle Ages disappeared,
kings became more powerful filling the void left
by the weakened aristocracy.
Prussian and Austrian Absolute Monarchies
•
•
After the end of the Thirty Years’ War, there
was no one German state, but over 300
German countries.
The two strongest of these were Prussia and
Austria.
Prussia - Frederick William the Great Elector.
• Frederick William knew Prussia was small and had no
natural barriers to invasion, so he built a large
standing army of 40,000 men.
• Prussian society became very militaristic.
• Frederick William set up the General War
Commissariat to collect taxes for the army.
• Both the leaders of the commissariat and the army
officers were Junkers, Prussian landed aristocrats.
• In 1701, Frederick William’s son Frederick became
king Frederick I.
Russia develops an Absolute Monarchy: Early
years
 Around 1500 BC Slavs began settling in the
western plains of Russia.
 In the early years of its history, Russia was
conquered and re-conquered many times by
people from Asia and Europe.
 For nearly 2,000 years, control of the country
changed hands among such groups as the
Cimmerians, Scythians, Goths, and Huns.
Russia: Early Middle Ages
 By 800, many towns had appeared. One
of them was Kiev.
 This was a principality ruled by a prince.
 In time, the prince of Kiev became
known as a “Grand Prince”, a prince
over other princes and the area he ruled
was called a “Rus.”
Russia: Early Middle Ages
 In the 800s, Vikings move into the North European
Plain along the Volga River from the northeast.
 These Vikings (called Varangians) took over and
ruled over the Slavic people and over time
intermarried with them.
 In 988, Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity and
brought Eastern Orthodox Christianity and the
Cyrillic alphabet to the Rus.
 The Russians had previously worshipped idols.
Russia: The Golden Horde

In the 1200s, wars broke out between rival princes.
This weakened Russia and allowed the Mongols
(called Tatars) overran the Kiev and the other Russian
kingdoms.
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Batu, a descendant of Genghis Khan, swept int Russia
with an army of 200,000 soldiers and established “The
Khanate of the Golden Horde”.
Russian princes had to pay heavy taxes and were forced
to serve in the Mongol armies. People who were not
loyal to the Mongols were slaughtered.
As the Renaissance was bringing great changes in
Europe, Russia remained cut off from the rest of the
world by Mongol control.
Muscovy (Moscow)

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Moscow was forested and isolated from the Mongols.
So, as Mongol control increased in the south, the
center of the Russian Christian faith moved to
Moscow (Fortress).
Grand Prince Ivan III (the Great) married Sophe
Paleologue, niece of the Byzantine emperor. When
the Byzantine Empire fell in 1453 the leadership of
the Eastern Orthodox religion moved to Moscow –
“The Third Rome”.
1480 – Grand Prince Ivan III grew powerful enough to
refuse to pay tribute to the Mongols gaining
independence.
Ivan the
Terrible
Ivan IV (the Terrible) adopts the title czar
(“Caesar”) and became the supreme ruler of
Russia.
 Ivan organized a secret police force and had it
arrest and kill princes and wealthy landowners
(boyars) he thought might overthrow him. This
crushes the power of the boyars, and Ivan
becomes an absolute monarch.
 Ivan even stabbed his own son to death in an
argument.
 Under Ivan, peasants were forced to work the land
under slave-like conditions.
TheRussian
Empire
After Ivan’s
death in 1584, Russia suffered through a
time of civil war called the “Time of Troubles.”
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Ivan’ son Feodor, was mentally handicapped, so his
brother-in-law, Boris Godunov served as regent (one
who rules for a king).
After Feodor’s death in 1598, Godunov became Czar.
There was a famine and the Cossacks, people living on
the frontier, began to battle the aristocrats of Russia for
land.
Poland invaded Russia from the east led by a man who
claimed to be Ivan IV’s som Dimitri (who had died,
possibly murdered earlier). The Poles took over and
tried to convert Russia to Catholicism leading to more
war.
The Russian people united and drive the Polish army
out.
Michael Romanov
•
In 1613, Mikhail (Michael) Romanov became czar..
He brought peace with both Poland and Sweden
which had invaded. The Romanov family would
rule Russia until the Revolution of 1917 when the
communists took over Russia.
Peter the Great (1682-1725)
 Peter had visited western Europe and
wanted to modernize Russia along
European lines.
 He built a 210,000 man army and a navy.
He had both Russian and European
leadership to modernize the army.
Peasants had to serve a 25-year stints in
the army.
Peter the Great
 Peter expanded Russia’s territory through wars
with Turkey, Sweden and Persia.
 He expanded Russia to the Baltic Sea building the
new capital of St. Petersburg – “The Window to
the West.”
 Peter established trade with China, opened doors
to western ways, and put down rebellions by serfs.
Catherine
the Great (1762-1796)
 In 1762, Catherine overthrew her husband Peter III,


who had angered many of the boyars by signing a
treaty giving land to Prussia.
Catherine added more territory to Russia, built schools
and hospitals, increased religious freedom, improved
education among women, and encouraged talented
people from other lands to come to Russia.
Most of Catherine’s reforms only benefited the upper
classes. The majority of the people remained very poor,
Serfs continued to live a dreary life of long working
hours and miserable living conditions. Peasant revolts
were quickly crushed. Little evidence of freedom could
be found anywhere.
Russia - conclusion
•
Compared with Spain, France, and England, Russia
did not develop into a unified nation-state. The
rich and westernized upper classes lived a life far
different from the masses of poor. A large number
of ethnic groups spoke different languages and had
different customs. Russian is a second language to
over ½ of the people of Russia still today. Religious
belief divided the people. The only real force
holding the country together was the strong-armed
rule of the czar.