Justifying Disobedience I: Back to the Past
The commonest justification for disobedience in the seventeenth century was the deployment of religious, legal and historical texts that evoked a real or imagined ‘Golden Age’. Thus in the Ottoman empire, while insurgents demanded that the sultan abolish all taxes imposed since the reign of Suleiman the Lawgiver, the Kadizadeli clerics cited the Qur'an and the Hadiths of the Prophet Mohammed to demand the abolition of all novelties, and the Sufi Sheikh Niyāzī-i Mīşri cited ancient history, such as the deeds of Alexander the Great and his ‘sheikh’ Aristotle.50 In China, too, rioters often demanded a return to a ‘Golden Age’. Thus in the 1640s, dissidents invoked the memory of a rebel hero from Fujian two centuries before, popularly known as the ‘Pare-equal king’ who had ‘pared down master and serf, noble and menial, poor and rich, to make them equal’. In many areas ‘The tenants put on their masters' clothing, entered by the main gate, seized and divided their houses, handed out the storage grain, tied the masters to posts and whipped them’, claiming that everyone was born equal and boasting that ‘From now on, it's going to be turned upside down.’51
Egalitarian ideas abounded in the popular culture of Ming China – both oral (local opera performances, stories, poems and songs) and written (above all the historical novels, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin, both proscribed by the government). The Romance, which featured the evil power of eunuchs and their role in the downfall of the Han dynasty in the third century BC (an obvious parallel to the hated eunuchs of the Ming), became ‘a veritable textbook on how regional militarists might bring the [ruling] dynasty to an end’.52 Water Margin, set in the mountains of Shandong in the early twelfth century, portrayed a Chinese ‘Sherwood Forest’ peopled not only by heroic and selfless outlaws but also by itinerant monks, beggars, tricksters and experts in the martial arts. All of them opposed the corrupt and brutal government officials. During the late Ming period at least 30 editions of Romance appeared, half of them in the form of abridged texts written in simplified characters with pictures that took up the top third of each folio, while paintings and even printed playing cards popularized images of the protagonists. In the 1620s a prominent rebel adopted the name of a general from the Romance, and many of Li Zicheng's lieutenants adopted the names of the heroes of Water Margin. Nurhaci later claimed that he had learned about Chinese politics and military strategy from reading the Romance, and his grandson ordered the book to be translated into Manchu and required all his followers to read it.53
The Manchus also ransacked Chinese history for precedents to justify attacking the Ming, and studied chronicles that described the rise and fall of earlier dynasties. In a letter written in 1621 to his Chinese neighbours, Nurhaci provided a list of unworthy rulers (going back to the eleventh century BC) who ‘immersed themselves in liquor, women, and wealth and no longer troubled themselves about the country’, and asserted that ‘The [current] emperor of you Chinese does not rule fairly’, because apart from allowing ‘the eunuchs to take property’ he persecuted ‘those with property who are upright and honest’. The conclusion was obvious: ‘[Heaven] has given me the emperor's lands … Heaven favours me.’ His son Dorgon used similar rhetoric when he arrived in Beijing in 1644. His first proclamation contained the declaration: ‘The empire is not an individual's private empire. Whosoever possesses virtue holds it. The army and people are not an individual's private army and people. Whosoever possesses virtue commands them. We now hold it.’54 Nurhaci and Dorgon thus sought to justify their assault on the Ming with the concept of the ‘Mandate of Heaven’, found in both the Classic of History and the Classic of Songs – texts by then 2,000 years old, with a status in East Asia equivalent to the Bible among Christians.55
In Christian states, too, historical precedents served to justify popular rebellions. During the Irish rebellion of 1641, a priest in County Tyrone read from ‘Hanmer's “Chronicles”, out of which [he] animated the rebels with the story of the Danes [in the eleventh century] who were discomfited by the Irish, though for the most part unarmed, and they paralleled that history with these times’; while in Donegal, some of ‘the Rebells nowe expected the fulfilling of Columkill's Prophecie: which (as they did construe it to be) was that the Irish should conquer Ireland againe’.56 Meanwhile Charles I's Scottish opponents drew strength both from documents such as the Declaration of Arbroath of 1320 that empowered the nobles of Scotland to protect their ‘fundamental laws’ against wayward kings, as well as from the Gaelic tradition of deposing unsatisfactory leaders, running back through Mary Stuart (Charles's grandmother) to Fergus, Scotland's legendary first king. Charles's English opponents also sometimes cited the tumultuous history of their northern neighbour. Three days before his execution in January 1649, the High Court of Justice tactlessly reminded Charles of ‘several instances of kings being deposed and imprisoned by their subjects, especially in his own native kingdom of Scotland, where of 109 kings, most were deposed, imprisoned, or proceeded against for misgovernment; and his own grandmother removed’.57 Other opponents harped on the fact that England possessed its own distinctive laws and customs. Some went back to 1066, when foreign invaders imposed a ‘Norman Yoke’, and urged ‘true Englishmen’ to regain their ‘Ancient Constitution’. Others still demanded the abolition of any law or custom ‘contrary to the Great Charter of England’ (the Magna Carta of 1215); and when the gentlemen of Kent discussed the legality of Ship Money in 1637, they took comfort from the fact that ‘the whole discourse of Fortescue’ (written in the 1460s) clearly showed that in England ‘the king had not an absolute power’.58
In Spain, Catalan scholars found and published privileges by Carolingian emperors in the ninth century that granted Barcelona and its hinterland the right to self-government under loose Frankish protection, guaranteed the use of its own Visigothic Laws and promised exemption from all future taxes. They therefore demanded that Philip IV do the same. In 1634, during its revolt against the salt monopoly, Guipúzcoa demanded that the central government respect ‘the measures and arrangements that were in force when the region was incorporated into the kingdom of Castile’ (in 1200).59 Likewise, in France, the rebels of Périgord in the 1630s demanded a return to ‘the same state we enjoyed during the reign of Louis XII’ (d. 1515), while those of Normandy demanded respect for the charter granted to the duchy in 1315. In Italy in 1647–8 the rebels of Palermo insisted on a return to the ‘days of King Peter of Aragon’ (d. 1285); those of Naples wanted a restoration of the laws of Joan I (d. 1382), Joan II (d. 1435) and Charles V (d. 1558); most rebellious cities sought to recover their medieval status as independent communes. In Switzerland, finally, the rebels of 1653 drew strength from the legendary resistance of William Tell three hundred years before.60
Apologists for rebellion also regularly equated their leaders with biblical heroes and their opponents with biblical villains. Among Catholic rebels, Portuguese preachers compared Philip IV with Saul or Herod and equated John IV with David or Christ; they also likened John IV's acclamation as king with that of King David and compared the 60 years of rule from Madrid with the ‘Babylonish captivity’ of the Jews. In Naples, sermons by preachers sympathetic to the revolt hailed the insurgent leaders as Daniel, David and Moses while comparing Viceroy Arcos with Nebuchadnezzar, Goliath and Pharaoh; while royalists saw Viceroy Oñate (who restored order) as Gideon. Catalan pamphlets drew similarly invidious comparisons between Philip IV and those destroyed by God in the Old Testament.61 On the Protestant side, some in England compared John Felton (the discontented veteran who murdered the duke of Buckingham) with Phineas and Ehud; as Felton went to his execution, a bystander cried ‘God bless thee, little David’; and one of the score of poems composed to celebrate the duke's murder ended:
Stout Machabee … thy most mightie arme,
With zeale and justice arm'd, hath in truth wonne
The prize of patriott to a British sonne.
A generation later some compared the earl of E
ssex, commander of the parliamentary army, with John the Baptist, and many saw Oliver Cromwell as Gideon. Dutch Calvinists regularly likened the kings of Spain to Pharaoh and equated the princes of Orange with Moses, Gideon, David and the Maccabees.62
Some Protestant apologists went further. In the Netherlands, Joost van den Vondel's epic poem of 1612, Passcha (Passover), included a specific ‘Comparison between the deliverance of the children of Israel from Egypt and the liberation of the United Provinces of the Netherlands from Spain’; while a poem in praise of his native land written by a Dutch pastor declared simply:
But most of all I give thanks to Him
For making Holland Jerusalem.
In Scotland, the whole concept of a ‘National Covenant’ as the foundation of resistance came directly from the Old Testament. As Archibald Johnston of Wariston watched his compatriots ‘subscribing’ the parchment copy of the document in 1638, he discerned ‘a very near parallel betwixt Israel and this church, the only two sworn nations to the Lord’. Many other Scots saw themselves as God's Chosen People fighting Pharaoh.63
All over Europe, dissidents embraced not only the texts but also the tone of Old Testament prophets to justify their resistance. At regular intervals the English Parliament heard sermons that claimed scriptural warrant for extreme measures against the king and his supporters, on texts such as ‘Thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them’ (Deuteronomy 7: 2); ‘I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies’ (Isaiah 1: 24); and ‘Slay utterly old and young’ (Ezekiel 9: 6). During the trial of the earl of Strafford in 1641, a preacher reminded Parliament (which served as the earl's judge and jury) about the fate of Achan and Achitophel, those ‘troublers of Israel’ who had rightly been punished by death for giving their ruler false council. In other parts of the Protestant world, preachers threatened (like Jeremiah) eternal damnation for rulers who deviated from God's commandments; and insisted (like Haggai) that since the end of the world was imminent, if rulers refused to impose the necessary reforms then their subjects must take over.64
Catholic propagandists also used Scripture to justify extreme violence. The name ‘Fronde’, used by the opponents of Cardinal Mazarin, meant ‘slingshot’ and so possessed biblical overtones: both pamphlets and pictures compared the cardinal with Goliath and his enemies with David. Others compared France under Mazarin with the lot of the Israelites under Pharaoh.65 After rebellion broke out in Ireland, a Franciscan exhorted his compatriots to ‘fight to the end for our altars and hearths. We have no choice but to conquer or be conquered and either drive our enemies out of this land or be driven out ourselves. The country is too small for the English and the Irish.’ A few years later, a Catholic commander informed his troops that ‘You are the flower of Ulster … Maccabbeans fighting against their enemy’; while, writing from the safety of Portugal, Conor O'Mahony, S.J., justified violent action against all non-Catholics in Ireland largely on the basis of Exodus 32: 27, wherein Moses ordered the destruction of thousands of idolaters.66
Finally, in looking to the past for subversive precedents, European dissidents scoured Roman and Greek texts as well as Scripture. Scholars in Naples published Classical texts with commentaries that unfavourably contrasted Spanish government by a viceroy with the parity between the nobles and the ‘people’ that had prevailed in the city's ‘republican’ past; while in England, according to Thomas Hobbes, ‘As to rebellion, in particular against monarchy, one of the most frequent causes of it, is the reading of the books of policy, and histories, of the ancient Greeks and Romans’. He continued: ‘From the reading, I say, of such books men have undertaken to kill their kings, because the Greek and Latin writers, in their books and discourses of policy, make it lawful and laudable for any man so to do – provided, before he do it, he call him a tyrant.’ ‘I cannot imagine how anything can be more prejudicial to a Monarchy,’ he concluded, ‘than the allowing of such books to be publicly read.’67
Justifying Disobedience II: Looking to the Future
Many rebels looked to the future as well as to the past, using prophecy, divination and portent to convince themselves and others of a favourable outcome to their resistance. In China, members of a popular religious sect known as the White Lotus Society had long predicted that a man named Li would one day be emperor, and as he strove to make this prediction come true, Li Zicheng consulted a medium. When the prophet unwisely stated that ‘Zicheng is not a true Son of Heaven’ and foretold the imminent demise of his power, Li executed him. Notwithstanding this disappointment, as he prepared to assault Beijing, Li turned to another seer to ascertain how best to achieve his goal. Perhaps learning from the fate of his predecessor, this prophet advised Li to place children in the vanguard of his forces (which he did, entering the capital virtually without a blow). Like most other Chinese, Li also placed great importance on portents. When a dust storm and yellow fog engulfed his temporary capital just after he proclaimed himself ‘prince of Shun’, Li panicked until his sycophantic seers assured him that it was an auspicious sign because, when a new Chinese dynasty arose, the sun and moon temporarily lacked light.68
In Europe, too, rebels turned readily for both illumination and support to those who claimed a hotline to heaven. Catholics had always recognized the spiritual authority of ‘lowly personages’, as Alexandra Walsham put it, ‘set apart from his or her peers by virtue of a sacred commission’. Thus early in 1641, as the army of Philip IV suppressed the revolt of the Catalans, Sor Eufràsia Berenguer, a noblewoman who had taken the veil almost 30 years before, experienced visions of Christ, the Virgin Mary and Saint Eulàlia, the patron saint of Barcelona, all protecting the city. Her visions helped to embolden the city's defenders: the last one ‘occurred on the 22nd [of January 1641] and on the 26th came the victory on the hill of Montjuich’.69 Non-Catholics also sometimes consulted prophets. In 1638 many of Charles I's Scottish opponents drew comfort from ‘the admirable speeches, exhortations prayers [and] praises out of the mouth of a poor demoiselle, Margaret Mitchelson, who was transported in heavenly raptures and spoke strange things for the happy success of God's cause and Christ's crown in this kingdom, which was already enacted in heaven’. Margaret's ecstatic prophecies excited ‘the astonishment of many thousand’; and some people who had previously harboured doubts ‘were strongly confirmed and encouraged to add hand to this great work of God’.70
Some of the revolutionary prophets distributed their forecasts in print. William Lilly's Prophecy of the White King of 1644, which predicted the defeat and downfall of Charles I, sold 1,800 copies in the first three days. Lilly repeated his prediction in another pamphlet published on the very day of the king's defeat at the battle of Naseby in June 1645, which both cemented his reputation for accuracy and earned him an annual pension of £100 from the victors. ‘His writings have kept up the spirits of the soldiers, the honest people of this realm, and many of us parliament men,’ an MP later claimed.71 In 1650 George Foster, a former officer of the New Model Army, published his visions that God had chosen Sir Thomas Fairfax as his ‘instrument’ to destroy Parliament and cut down ‘all men and women, that he met with, that were higher than the middle sort, and raised up those that were lower than the middle sort and made them all equal’. Later, George changed his name to ‘Jacob Israel Foster’, and printed a prophecy that God would destroy the Pope in five years' time and the Ottoman sultan the year after that, which would usher in an age of abundance for all.72
Several Muslim, Jewish and Christian writers in the mid-seventeenth century prophesied the imminent end of the world, and some rebel leaders exploited the prevailing millenarian climate to claim Messianic powers for themselves. In Iran, in 1629, many Shi'ite Muslims hailed a rebellious provincial governor of Gilan as the Redeemer; while in the Sunni Ottoman empire, both Abaza Hasan (also a rebellious provincial governor) in 1658 and the son of a Kurdish Sufi in 1667 claimed to be the Mahdi (see chapter 7 above). In the
1670s the charismatic Muslim sheikh, Nasir al-Din, ‘claimed that he was sent by God’ and ‘preached penitence’ and ‘spoke only of the law of God and of welfare and freedom’ in Senegal (see chapter 15 above).
In Europe, Martin Laimbauer, a Protestant farmer who led a peasant revolt in Austria in 1635, sustained his cause for almost a year with his twin claims that the Apocalypse was imminent and that he was the Messiah. Many Englishmen claimed to be the Messiah during the 1640s and 1650s: James Nayler, who wore his hair and beard suggestively long, gained such a following that at Bristol, England's second city, on Palm Sunday 1656 – a year in which many prophets predicted the world would end – he imitated Christ and made a triumphal entry on a donkey while the people strewed palms before him. Most spectacular of all, in 1665 many Jews hailed Shabbatai Zvi as both king of the world and Messiah.73
Spanish America also produced Messianic rebel leaders. In 1647 in Santiago de Chile, an African slave proclaimed himself ‘king of Guinea’ and called for vengeance on the settlers; while a few years later Pedro Bohorques claimed to be descended from the Inca emperors and therefore the true ruler of Peru. In 1650 Don Guillén Lombardo (see page 462 above) escaped from the cells of the Mexican Inquisition and distributed ‘infamous libels against the Inquisitors and the archbishop’, including one (of which he had prepared many copies by hand) entitled Proclamation of the just judgments of God. Don Guillén composed Messianic poetry in between his interrogations by the Inquisitors until in 1659 they decided he was too dangerous to live and burnt him at the stake. Posthumously, his remarkable exploits apparently engendered the legend of Zorro.74
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