Global Crisis

by Parker, Geoffrey

  ‘Connectors’ also spread sedition in other composite states. In Sicily, news of the revolt that began in Palermo on 20 May 1647 triggered not only urban uprisings elsewhere in the island – Trapani on the 25th, Cefalù and Marsala on the 27th, Castronuovo and Sanfilippo on the 29th, and so on – but a veteran of the Palermo revolt who happened to be in Naples on 7 July 1647 led the uprising in the Piazza del Mercato; and after his death other Sicilians helped to radicalize the angry crowds. Their achievements inspired popular revolts throughout the kingdom of Naples (see Fig. 41). On 15 August, in Palermo, a recently returned eyewitness of Masaniello's revolution started a new revolt explicitly to secure the same concessions.9 In Russia, the petitioners from provincial towns who had been in the capital in June 1648 likewise served as highly effective connectors in spreading revolution: as soon as they returned home with news of the Muscovites’ defiance of the tsar, local uprisings followed. A generation later, supporters of Stenka Razin conducted an epistolary offensive that won him supporters in areas far from his Cossack base (see chapter 6 above). The peasants of Entlebuch who began the ‘Swiss revolution’ in 1653 sent envoys to mobilize support elsewhere in Canton Luzern and in adjacent cantons (see chapter 8 above). Finally, when James Howell sought to know ‘upon whom to lay the blame’ for the outbreak of the English Civil War, he argued (with his usual audacious mixture of metaphors), that the fire

  Was first kindled in Scotland. The Puritans there were the womb of it; though I must tell you withall, the loins that begot this centaur were the Puritans here in England. If the flint and steel had not struck fire in England, the tinder had never took fire in Scotland, nor had the flame ever gone over into Ireland.10

  Nevertheless, discontented subjects did not always require human ‘connectors’ to ‘kindle’ their grievances: they could do it themselves. Thus Philip IV's Italian subjects carefully monitored the progress of the Catalan revolt through letters, pamphlets and books. In Naples, in 1646 (the year before Masaniello's uprising), Alexandre de Ros published his history of the Catalan revolt: although Catalonia deceived condemned the rebels, it provided a useful blueprint of how rebellions gathered momentum. Meanwhile, in Palermo, Vincenzo Auria (lawyer, poet and historian) reconstructed from the history books in his own library a full account of the earlier career of the unfortunate viceroy of Sicily, the marquis of Los Vélez, as viceroy of Navarre and Catalonia and ambassador in Rome, searching for a pattern of behaviour.11 In the Stuart Monarchy, an Anglican bishop in Ireland complained in 1638 about the ‘desperate example the contumacious Nonconformists [the Scottish Covenanters] have given both to England and to Ireland’, and lamented that ‘this contagion’ had already begun to spread to Ulster. The following year, in the words of a professional ‘letter-writer’ (forerunner of newspaper reporters), ‘The theatre for these kingdoms has now for a good while been chiefly placed at Edinburgh’, so that others elsewhere would take ‘what should be acted there’ to ‘frame the scene of their own interests accordingly’.12

  No one watched Scottish events with greater attention than the Irish Catholics, who saw how ‘the Scots, by pretending grievances and taking up arms to get them redressed, had not only gained divers privileges and immunities, but got £300,000 for their visit’. One Irish insurgent wanted to ‘imitat Scotland, who gott a privilege by that course’, in order to end ‘the tyrannicall governement that was over them’; another boasted that ‘The Scotts had theire willes by the force of armes and so would they heere in this kingdome’; while a third opined that ‘if the Castle of Dublin hadd beene taken by the Lord Maguire, noe blowd had beene spilt, for they would only have held it till they hadd obteined their owne endes from his Majesty – which they thought was as reasonable to obteine as for the Scotts in England to obteine their desires’. Even more revealing was the response of a leading Irish confederate when his Protestant prisoner asked him: ‘What? [Have you] made a Covenant amongst yow as the Scotts did?’ ‘“Yea”, said hee, “The Scotts have taught us our A.B.C.”’13

  The spread of the ‘contagion’ of revolution was not limited to composite states. In 1654 Birago Avogadro noted how an uprising against one ruler sometimes encouraged uprisings against another, because ‘the example provided by the first suffices to provoke others in other states because the power of example in the mind of men is truly remarkable. We see that people are not only urged but expected and goaded into doing what they see others doing.’14 The various rebellions against Charles I thus attracted much attention in continental Europe. In 1648 one-third of the ‘extraordinary issues’ of the French Gazette focused exclusively on British affairs, and almost half of all the documents and pronouncements it published came from the rebels. Germany, too, seemed fascinated by events across the Channel: between 1640 and 1660 some 50 German newspapers contained over 2,000 pages about events in Britain and Ireland, while German authors published more than 600 works on the subject. Likewise, in the Dutch Republic, one-third of all pamphlets published between 1640 and 1648 concerned English affairs; while the Catalan insurgents published not only pamphlets with news of the parallel revolts against Charles I, but also Irish Catholic manifestos in Catalan translation.15

  The initial success of the ‘revolution of Naples’ against Philip IV similarly inspired sedition against other rulers. According to an ambassador, most Parisians believed ‘that the Neapolitans have acted intelligently, and that in order to shake off oppression, their example should be followed’; and the crowds protesting against tax increases shouted ‘Naples! Naples!’ – a pointed reminder of the consequences of imposing unpopular taxes on a metropolis. In the Papal States, when insurrection broke out in Fermo in 1648, the first anniversary of Masaniello's revolt, many assumed that those who ‘sacked and burned’ the mansions of the wealthy merely imitated the ‘example of the uprising of Naples’; and indeed several groups of revolutionaries crossed the border, encouraging insurgents in at least six other communities. They found their task eased by the disastrous harvest. A papal official reported that ‘in all the places I visited, I found the spirits of vassals greatly agitated on account of the famine’, so that if ‘all the country people join together and form a union, a major conflagration may arise’ (Fig 50).16

  All over Europe, letters, newspapers, pamphlets, books and even plays provided details and drew conclusions about the events in Naples. One play printed in London in 1649, and entitled The rebellion of Naples or the tragedy of Massenello, concluded with a minatory Epilogue spoken by ‘Masaniello’ himself that began:

  Let kings beware how they provoke

  Their subjects with too hard a yoke,

  For when all's done, it will not do:

  You see, they break the yoke in two.

  Two years later, in the Dutch Republic, rioters in Dordrecht hailed Masaniello as their hero.17 Masaniello and his followers, in turn, drew inspiration from the Dutch. The ‘Manifesto of the Most Faithful People of Naples’, which declared that Philip IV was no longer their sovereign, resembled the document of 1581 by which the States-General of the Netherlands declared Philip II deposed; the duke of Guise took an oath as Protector ‘with the same powers as those with which the Most Serene Prince of Orange defends the Republic and free states of Holland’; and a pamphlet reminded readers that the Spaniards had ‘allowed themselves to be expelled from the seven provinces of Flanders by Dutch fishermen … What, then, can they do … against you?’18

  50. Revolts in the Papal States in 1648.

  Although the revolt of Fermo against papal authority received most attention, both from contemporaries and from historians, at least six other towns – Viterbo, Todi, Perugia, Ascoli, Pontecorvo and Terracina – also rebelled. In each case, the arrival of insurgents from Naples triggered the outbreak.

  The Neapolitans were not alone in drawing this conclusion. Earlier in the century, in his influential treatise on politics, Johannes Althusius claimed that the Dutch Republic's success in resisting Spain ‘is so abundant that it overflows into neig
hbouring countries’ and offered, ‘for the imitation of others, those virtues’ that had ‘defended your commonwealth from tyranny and disaster’. A French writer made the same point: the Dutch had given ‘warning to all rulers what duties they owe their peoples, and provide all peoples with a memorable example of what they can do against their rulers’. In Spain itself, Quevedo attributed the revolt of the Catalans to ‘the example of Holland’; while in England, many blamed the rebellions against Charles I on the example set by the Dutch of how subjects who ‘have revolted from their master’ could ‘yet prosper and flourish beyond all in Europe’. In 1641 an ambassador in London detected ‘a secret intention to approach the Dutch form of government, for which the people here show far too much inclination’; and ten years later, Thomas Hobbes asserted that ‘the late troubles in England [came] out of an imitation of the Low Countries’.19

  The spate of rebellions in Europe also inspired malcontents in overseas colonies. The ‘Declaration of Independence’ prepared in Mexico by Don Guillén Lompart in 1642 cited the examples of others who ‘have rebelled with good cause, having deliberated that it is better to die once for their restitution and liberty, than to live oppressed, tyrannized and violently subjected, as has been seen in the kingdoms of Portugal, Catalonia, Navarre and Biscay’ – adding that ‘in such remote and usurped kingdoms’ as New Spain, abuses were ‘far more widespread and grievous than over there’ in Europe. The Native Americans oppressed by Philip IV, he reasoned, ‘not only can, but should rise up’ against him.20 A decade later, when a group of frustrated Portuguese colonists in Goa deposed the viceroy, they ‘gave as justification that Portugal had done the same, and so had the people of England – while, near at hand’, they added, ‘Ceylon had done it’. Meanwhile, in Anglo-America, in 1643 the colonists in New England noted how the Native Americans took comfort from ‘those sad distractions in England, which they have heard of, and by which they know we are hindered’ from receiving protection; while in 1676 the government in London learned with alarm that Nathaniel Bacon, leader of the rebellious planters of Virginia, ‘had applied to the New England governments for assistance’.21

  Exporting Revolution

  Many rebel leaders besides Nathaniel Bacon appealed for outside aid. Thus in 1619–20 Frederick, the ‘winter king’ of Bohemia, vainly requested military assistance from his fellow Protestants in Scandinavia, Britain and the Dutch Republic, as well as from the Ottoman sultan and his vassal the prince of Transylvania (only the last obliged); while in 1626 the rebels of Upper Austria asked Christian IV of Denmark, who had just invaded Germany, to send assistance (it never materialized).22 A decade later, the Scottish opponents of Charles I mounted a successful diplomatic offensive to secure munitions from Denmark, the Dutch Republic and above all Sweden (although their appeals to both the Catholic Louis XIII and the Protestant Swiss failed). The Portuguese also received favourable responses to their requests for aid: France, the Dutch Republic and eventually Britain all recognized the new regime and sent the money, troops and warships that prevented Spain from using its superior resources to reconquer its western neighbour.23 The Irish Catholic Confederation likewise gained diplomatic recognition (as well as munitions and funds) from Spain, France and the Papacy until, for the first and last time before the twentieth century, Ireland boasted a corps diplomatique, headed by a papal nuncio. This was indeed a remarkable achievement because, as the representative of the Confederate government in the Dutch Republic reminded the States-General, previously ‘we were naked men, destitute of arms, ammunition and experienced commanders’, but ‘with God's assistance we have provided ourselves of arms and ammunition and called home our experienced commanders and martial [men] from foreign services, and furnished ourselves with a considerable number of frigates and ships of war’. So now, friends and enemies alike ‘look upon us as a considerable party, and parley with us, and give us leave to talk to them upon equal terms’.24

  Some states offered assistance even before rebels elsewhere requested it. In 1637 Louis XIII made a secret offer to Duke John of Bragança to send 10,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry if he decided to claim the Portuguese throne; and three years later, albeit with grave initial misgivings, he sent troops, treasure and advisers to the Catalans. Philip IV, for his part, signed a treaty of alliance with both the prince of Condé and the rebellious city of Bordeaux in 1651–2. These, however, were merely opportunistic and reactive efforts to sustain rebellions that had already started. The Dutch Republic sought to foment and support rebellions elsewhere more systematically.

  According to Lieuwe van Aitzema, the official historian of the Dutch Republic, since ‘the preservation of this state depended on the jealousy of its neighbours’, its leaders always made haste to declare a common interest [gemeyn interesse] with any group around the world that shared its ‘powerful enmity towards Spain’. They therefore signed alliances ‘with all the princes and potentates who opposed the tyranny and pretended Universal Monarchy of the Spanish Monarchy’: Catholic France and Venice, Protestant Denmark and Sweden, Orthodox Russia, Muslim Algiers and Tunis, and the Buddhist rulers of Sri Lanka. In 1638 Dutch Calvinist ministers attended the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland that abolished bishops, and Leiden University expressed support for the Scots’ defence of their liberties. The Dutch authorities also allowed the Covenanters to come over and print pamphlets and purchase large quantities of arms and munitions; and they released numerous veterans from their army to serve against Charles I. A few months after the outbreak of civil war in England, a Dutch author argued that ‘us Netherlanders’ must not ‘contribute to the suppressing of the Parliament’ because ‘if those that are on the king's side, together with him, get the upper hand’ in England and Scotland, ‘then shall they enter their action against us’.25 Likewise, as soon as news of the ‘revolution in Catalonia’ in 1640 arrived in the Dutch Republic, the States-General established a special committee to coordinate support for their fellow rebels against Philip IV, and they asked Cardinal Richelieu to facilitate contact between The Hague and Barcelona. The following year they also accepted the credentials presented by an ambassador sent by John IV of Portugal – thus recognizing the legitimacy of the ‘Restoration’ – and sent a fleet of 12 warships to protect Lisbon against the threat of a Spanish seaborne attack.26

  Charles I's opponents also sought to foment and support rebellions elsewhere. In 1642 the London preacher John Goodwin assured his compatriots that successful opposition to the king would be ‘cheering and refreshing’ to ‘your brethren in their several plantations in far countries [America]’; while its ‘heat and warmth’ would ‘pierce through many kingdoms great and large, as France, Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, Sweden and many others’. Three years later, the Scots Parliament invited ‘all Protestant potentates and republics to enter or join in the same or suchlike Solemn Covenant with the kingdoms of Great Britain, and so go on unanimously against the[ir] common enemy’. Most outspoken of all, in 1648 Hugh Peter delivered a sermon that claimed ‘This army [the New Model] must root out monarchy, not only here but in France and other kingdoms round about.’27 For a time, such views attracted some foreign support. Dutch printers published over 300 pamphlets on English affairs between 1640 and 1648, many of them directly commissioned by the English protagonists. In France, some speculated that ‘the example of the neighbouring kingdom [England] would incite’ Cardinal Mazarin's opponents to impose similar terms on the regency government, because ‘Paris thinks itself no less than London’, while others asserted that ‘They speak openly in Paris of nothing but republics and liberties, and they say that the Monarchy is too old, and it was high time for it to end’.28

  The execution of Charles I in January 1649 changed everything. Admittedly, the prolific French autodidact François Davant praised the regicides for reminding kings of the dangers of ‘abusing their subjects’, musing that ‘troubled Monarchies may give birth to republics’ as he considered Old Testament examples of kings wh
om God deposed, and he predicted that France would be next; while another radical pamphlet, The divine nature of the disease of state, also proclaimed that France was not alone in its struggle for liberty, since Naples and Catalonia as well as England had spearheaded a great movement of liberation from tyranny. But few other Europeans agreed. Instead, in France, a spate of pamphlets denounced ‘the most horrible and detestable parricide ever committed by Christians’; Pierre Corneille wrote a sympathetic play; and four different French translations appeared almost immediately of the late monarch's apology, Eikon Basilike (‘The king's image’: see Plate 3).29 Even those who had previously sided overwhelmingly with Parliament roundly condemned the regicide. The Dutch clergy excoriated it in their sermons, while as soon as news of the regicide arrived in Sweden, Marshal Jakob de la Gardie lamented that, because ‘such a giddy spirit [spiritus vertiginis] has arisen’ in Europe, no established government could feel safe (another minister hastened to publish a tract that denounced the execution).30 In Germany, governments condemned all their critics as contaminated by England's ‘Puritan principles’, and dramatists (as in France) composed sympathetic plays. In the Polish capital, the nobleman Albrycht Stanisław Radziwiłł included a detailed account of Charles's last hours in his memoirs, adding fervently ‘let there be no similar examples’ in Poland. Most extreme of all, as soon as he received news of the regicide, Tsar Alexei expelled all English merchants from Russia.31 The hostility continued. In 1651 Jakob de la Gardie warned the Swedish Council of State that some of his compatriots ‘want to arrange things as they were in England some time past, making us all into pig's trotters’; while Queen Christina complained that ‘neither king nor Parliament have their proper power, but the common man, the canaille, rules according to his fancy’. Three years later, on hearing that Cromwell had become Lord Protector, Christina also asserted that Axel Oxenstierna had wanted to do the same during her minority.32