Chapter 2 The ‘General Crisis’
1. Doglio, Lettere di Fulvio Testi, III, 204: to Francesco Montecuccoli, Jan. 1641; Hobbes, On the citizen, 29 (a view reiterated ten years later in Leviathan, 88); Lind, ‘Syndens’, 342 (500 out of 4,500 items).
2. Brecke, ‘Violent conflicts 1400 AD to the Present’, Fig. 11, reproduced in Parker, ‘Crisis and catastrophe’, 1,057; Levy, War, 139–41; Aho, Religious mythology, 195.
3. Gough, The history of Myddle, 71–2 (Braddick, God's Fury, 389, provides an estimate of Myddle's population in 1640).
4. Carlton, Going to the wars, ch. 9; Gordon, Diary, I, 170, entry for 1656 but written about a decade later. Gordon served in the Swedish, Polish and Russian armies from 1655 until his death in Moscow in 1699.
5. Heberle, Zeytregister, 148, 225 (‘Dan wir seyen gejagt worden wie das gewildt in wälden’) and 158. The war forced Heberle and his family to abandon their home no less than 30 times.
6. Hobbes, Leviathan, 88–9; Scott, England's troubles, 410, quoting Charles II's communications to the two Houses of the Convention Parliament in June–July 1660; Gryphius, Horribilicribrifax Teutsch, Act I, scene 1; Rodén, ‘The crisis’, 100, quoting Christina's ‘Ouvrage de loisir’. Monod, The power, 193–5, provides some similar quotations.
7. Struve, Voices, 2.
8. Chang and Chang, Crisis and transformation, 216, quoting The miraculous reunion by the Chinese scholar, writer and publisher Li Yu (1611–80); Struve, Voices, 48, from ‘Ten days in Yangzhou’ by Wang Xiuchu.
9. Struve, Voices, 48; Meyer-Fong, Building culture, 11–12 (‘Weed-covered city’), 150–2 (later memories by survivors) and 261–2 (assessment of Wang's account).
10. Lahne, Magdeburgs Zerstörung, and Medick, ‘Historisches Ereignis’. Hahn, Zeitgeschehen, 83, notes the later sermons. Further details in chs 4 and 8 above.
11. Struve, Voices, 47 (see also another rape described on p. 37). For suicide by Chinese women after they had been raped, see chs 4 and 5 above.
12. Helfferich, The Thirty Years War, 110, quoting Von Guericke, Die Belagerung, Eroberung und Zerstörung der Stadt Magdeburg (though he also noted that some ‘honourable soldiers’ showed respect for the women they captured and ‘simply let them free or even married them’).
13. Peters, Ein Söldnerleben, 144–5 (at Landshut ‘habe ich als meine Beute ein hübscher Mädelein bekommen’) and 147 (at Pforzheim ‘habe ich auch ein junges Mädchen herausgeführt’). Ebermeier, Landshut im Dreissigjährigen Krieg, documents the scale of the city's destruction during and after the 1634 sack.
14. Parker, Thirty Years War, 187 (the ordeal of Frau Rörsch, from Linden near Rothenburg ob der Tauber, described by Christopher Friedrichs); TCD Ms 836/76, depositions of Christian Stanhawe and Owen Frankland, Armagh, 23 July 1642; Gordon, Diary, II, 10. Gordon reported many other rapes or attempted rapes by soldiers: see, e.g, I, 213–15 (a ‘very beautifull virgin’ whom Gordon saved from being gang-raped by Finnish soldiers).
15. Sreenivasan, The peasants of Ottobeuren, 286; TCD Ms 830/172, deposition of Christopher Cooe, Tuam, 21 Oct. 1645; Struve, Voices, 47.
16. Quoted by Zysberg, ‘Galley and hard labor convicts’, 96.
17. Boyle, A treatise, I, 15; Behr, Der Verschantzte Turenne, ‘To the Reader’. Both authors published in 1677.
18. Elliott and La Peña, Memoriales y cartas, I, 244, ‘Resumen que hizo el rey don Felipe IV’ (1627), discussed in Parker, Military revolution, 193 n. 3; Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle, ch. 2, on French army size.
19. Botero, Relatione, fo. 19v; BNE Ms 2362/61–2, marquis of Aytona to Philip IV, 28 Dec. 1630, copy; Davenant, Essay, 26–7.
20. Estimates from Bonney, The European dynastic states, 383; Mantran, Istanbul, 253; and Hellie, ‘Costs’.
21. Further details in ch. 5. The consequences were intensified because until the late nineteenth century the Chinese government never raised loans, and so had to fund its wars from current resources.
22. Wheeler, The making of a world power, 208–10; Ashley, Financial and commercial policy, 45, 104–7.
23. Strańský, Respublica Bohemiae, 495–6. On the revolts, see chs 6, 8 and 9 above.
24. Glete, War and the state, 215.
25. Krüger, ‘Dänische und schwedische Kriegsfinanzierung’, 291, based on Oxenstierna's ‘alternative’ computation of the cost of the coming campaign, 8 Mar. 1633.
26. Salm, Armeefinanzierung, 163 (quoting Hauptmann Holl in 1650).
27. Di Cosmo, The diary, 48, 55.
28. Kishimoto-Nakayama, ‘The Kangxi depression’, 229, quotation from Wei Jirui, secretary to the governor of Zhejiang, c. 1672; Mut, El principe en la guerra, 104 (part of a sustained, unfavourable comparison between Philip IV and Justinian); Seco Serrano, Cartas, I, 277–8, Sor María to Philip IV and reply, 1/12 June 1652.
29. Dardess, ‘Monarchy in action’, 20. I thank Professor Dardess for permission to cite his unpublished paper.
30. Haboush, ‘Constructing the center’, 81–2, quoting a memorial by Hŏ Mok, government inspector, in 1660.
31. Details from Roy, Symbol of substance, 191–7.
32. Foster, The voyage of Thomas Best, 176 (from the ‘Journal’ kept by Ralph Croft, who met the sultan in 1613); Reid, Southeast Asia, II, 257–8 (quoting Augustin de Beaulieu's account of his visit in 1619–22).
33. Fleischer, ‘Royal authority’, 49, cites this formulation of the ‘Circle of Justice’ from a sixteenth-century Ottoman writer, adapted via a Persian work from the Arab writer Ibn Khaldûn. See also Darling, ‘“Do justice”’.
34. On the Risâle of Koçi Beg, see Fodor, ‘State and society’, 231–2; Murphey, ‘The Verliyüddin Telhis’; and EI, II, ‘Koçi Beg’ (online); on how Murad acted on this advice, see ch. 7 above; on the fatwās (always very short, frequently just a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ rather like the similar opinions voiced by the confessors of the Spanish Habsburgs, noted below), see Imber, Ebu's-su'ud, 7, 29, 55; and EI, s.v. ‘Fatwā’.
35. Brown, ‘Tsar Aleksei’, 140, quoting Gregorii Karpovich Kotoshikin, a clerk of the foreign affairs chancery who defected in 1664 and wrote a memoir about Russian government; other details from Rowland, ‘Moscow’, 603–9, and Baehr, The paradise myth, 25–33.
36. McIlwain, The political works of James I, 307–8, speech to Parliament, 31 Mar. 1609; Forster, The temper, 9: funeral sermon for George of Hessen-Darmstadt in 1661; Cardin Le Bret, De la souveraineté du roy, 1, and 193–5; Christina, Apologies, 320 (from ‘Les sentiments’).
37. Mormiche, Devenir prince, 232 (on the Rhineland) and 231 (on reading Commynes's Mémoires of the reign of Louis XI). Mormiche studied the education of some 40 members of the French royal family. See also Hoffman, Raised to rule, on the education of a dozen Spanish Habsburgs.
38. Mormiche, Devenir prince, 278, 290–1, and 472 (noting that Louis's grandson, the future Philip V of Spain, composed a booklet entitled Don Quixote of La Mancha, volume V).
39. Ibid., 213, quoting the preceptor of Louis XIV's heir, and 215 on scrofula. Only English monarchs also publicly ‘touched’ those afflicted by ‘the King's Evil’.
40. Ibid., 427, quoting the duke of Montausier, best known for purging over 60 books of passages deemed inappropriate for the prince and then marked Ad usum delphini (‘To be used by the Dauphin’: a phrase still used pejoratively in France to indicate something unnecessarily censored); and 242 (the Dauphin's history of the 1672 campaign). See also pp. 241–2, on the educational programmes submitted to Louis by Bossuet in 1679 and by Fénelon in 1695.
41. Weiss, ‘Die Vorgeschichte’, 468: Frederick to Elizabeth, his wife, 19 Aug. 1619; Green, The letters, 70, Henrietta Maria to Charles, 11 May 1642 NS; Burnet, Memoirs, 203, Charles to Hamilton, Dec. 1642; Halliwell, Letters, II, 383–4, Charles I to Prince Rupert, Frederick and Elizabeth's son, 31 July 1645.
42. Examples from Polleross, Das sakrale Identifikationsporträt, II, #420–#502, and especially plates 25, 66, 103 and 158.
43. Brow
n, ‘Tsar Aleksei’, 140, quoting Kotoshikin. On confessors, see García García, ‘El confesor fray Luis de Aliaga’; on the Juntas de Teólogos, see AGS Estado 8341/70–1 (the Spanish Match); Straub, Pax et Imperium, 212–13 n. 11 (French Protestants); Elliott, Count-duke, 340–1, 366, 416–18 (Mantua); Maffi, ‘Confesionalismo’, 479–90 (Valtelline); and Hugon, Naples, 238–9, Philip IV to Oñate, 6 Apr. 1648. Ch. 8 above provides examples of Ferdinand II and Maximilian of Bavaria consulting theologians on policy. Beik, Louis XIV and absolutism, 170–1, prints a remarkable letter of 1675 in which Bishop Bossuet warned the king that unless he ceased his sexual infidelity ‘there is no hope of salvation’.
44. Elliott and de la Peña, Memoriales y cartas, I, 155, Memorial of 26 July 1626; Berwick y Alba, Documentos escogidos, 486, Philip IV to Haro, 21 Oct. 1652 (the day he heard of the surrender of Barcelona).
45. Bergh, Svenska riksrådets protokoll, XIII, 17, debate on 21 Feb. 1649 OS; Christina, Apologies, 345 (‘Les sentiments’, #266). In 1638 Gabriel Naudé, later Christina's adviser, had argued that religion served as a ‘pretext’ for political action (Considérations politiques, 148–51); so did the marquis of Hamilton: page 335 above.
46. Fernández Álvarez, Corpus documental, II, 104, Philip IV to don Gabriel Trejo Paniagua; Seco Serrano, Cartas, II, 42 and 48, Philip IV to Sor María, 11 Jan. and 19 Mar. 1656.
47. Jansson and Bidwell, Proceedings in Parliament 1625, 29, speech of Charles I to Parliament, 18 June 1625; Elliott, Count-duke, 378–9, Olivares's questions on 17 June 1629 and Philip's replies.
48. Mormiche, Devenir prince, 306, Louis to the Princess Palatine, 23 Aug. 1693; Rodger, The command, 66–7, quoting Sir William Coventry.
49. (Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin), Europe, 16–17. The play, apparently commissioned by Richelieu, received its first performance in Nov. 1642: see Lacour, Richelieu dramaturge, 141–65.
50. Pursell, Winter king, 226, Rusdorf to Frederick V, 13 Aug. 1624, reporting the views of Sir Edward Conway.
51. AHN E libro 714, unfol., consulta of the Council of State, 19 Oct. 1629; BRB Ms. 16147–48/139–40, marquis of Aytona to Olivares, 29 Dec. 1633; AGRB SEG 332/75, count of Oñate to the Cardinal-Infante, 8 Aug. 1634.
52. Both quoted in Odhner, Die Politik Schwedens, 5.
53. Peter Loofeldt, ‘Initiarum Monarchia Ruthenicae’ (on this occasion, common sense prevailed and the tsar did not ‘pull the sword from the scabbard’: see ch. 6 above); Scriba, ‘The autobiography’, 32; Morrice, Entring book, IV, 335.
54. Knowler, Strafforde, II, 243, Hopton to Wentworth, Madrid, 14/24 Nov. 1638; APW, 2nd series B, IV, pp. 579–81, Louis XIV [= Mazarin] to his ‘plenipotentiaries’ at Münster, 14 Oct. 1646.
55. Zaller, ‘“Interest of State”’, 151, Digby to Aston, 15 Dec. 1620 OS. The ambassador wrote just after Spanish forces had occupied the Rhine Palatine, belonging to James I's nephew.
56. Séré, ‘La paix’, 255, Hugues de Lionne to Mazarin, 10 July 1656, quoting Haro.
57. APW, 2nd series, B V, p. 1,151, Louis XIV to plenipotentiaries, 26 Apr. 1647, drafted by Mazarin; Co. Do. In, LXXXIII, 312–14, Peñaranda to the marquis of Caracena, Governor of Lombardy, 27 June 1647; and 334, Peñaranda to the marquis of Castel Rodrigo, Governor-General of the Spanish Netherlands, 12 July 1647.
58. Fletcher, ‘Turco-Mongolian monarchic tradition’, 238–9.
59. The Safavids also adopted the ‘cage’ system in the seventeenth century, but without creating the same instability as the Ottomans: ch. 14 above. Many Muslim political writers supported the murder of all male relatives when a ruler succeeded: see Alvi, Advice, 22.
60. Romaniello, ‘Ethnicity’, and Goffman and Stroop, ‘Empire as composite’, argue that the Russian and Ottoman empires (respectively) were composite states. See also Elliott, ‘A Europe of composite Monarchies’.
61. Álvarez, ‘The role of inbreeding’.
62. Anon. (probably James Howell), The times dissected, sig. A2.
63. Bacon, Essayes, 46. The Chinese magistrate Huang Liuhong used exactly the same image to describe the danger of tolerating political disorder: ‘When the accumulated hatred of the people towards their magistrate reaches the boiling point, a popular uprising may result and endanger the security of the state.’ (Bailey, ‘Reading between the lines’, 56, quoting Huang, A complete book concerning happiness, based on his experience as a magistrate in Shangdong between 1674 and 1699). This paragraph owes much to discussions with Daniel Nexon and Leif Torkelsen.
64. Burnet, The memoires, 55–6, Charles to Hamilton, 11 June 1638; Elliott, The revolt, 374–5, Olivares to Santa Coloma, viceroy of Catalonia, 7 Oct. 1639.
65. Favourites had existed in earlier periods – Haman in the Book of Esther; Sejanus in the reign of Tiberius; Alvaro de Luna and Piers Gaveston in the Middle Ages – and many in the seventeenth century cited their misdeeds; but, except in the Ottoman empire, they were more numerous between the 1590s and the 1660s than ever before or since.
66. Bidwell and Jansson, Proceedings in Parliament, 1626, II, 220–4, Sir John Eliot's speech in the House of Commons on 10 May 1626. Charles immediately stormed to Parliament to protest the comparison, because if Buckingham was Sejanus ‘(he said) implicitly [Eliot] must intend himself for Tiberius’, the emperor during whose reign Christ had been crucified (ibid., 235 n). For more on Buckingham, see chs 11 and 18 above.
67. ODNB, s.v, Francis Russell, 4th earl of Bedford (1587–1641), by Conrad Russell, quoting Bedford's Commonplace book (Bedford himself quoted the Spanish political theorist Juan de Mariana, S. J.).
68. Christina, Apologies, 142 (from her Ouvrage de loisir of the 1680s); Contamine, Histoire militaire, I, 391–2 (calculation by André Corvisier); Begley and Desai, Shah Jahan Nama, xvi n. 10; Wu, Communication and imperial control, 16; Spence, Emperor of China, 46.
69. Major, ‘The crown’, 639: quoting Father Joseph; Elliott, Count-duke, 42, exchange attributed to Olivares and Uceda, son and successor of the duke of Lerma, Philip III's ‘Favourite’ for 20 years.
70. Ogilvie, ‘Germany and the seventeenth-century crisis’, 68. Benigno, Specchi della Rivoluzione, 100–3, also suggests that it was style as much as substance that made ‘Favourites’ so loathed.
71. Cressy, ‘Conflict’, 134, 137, 138, 139. See page 357 above for the use of the metaphor (and the need) ‘to wink’ in a worried letter to Charles I from 1638.
72. Ras, Hikajat Bandjar, 329. The king wanted everyone to follow the dressing style (and other customs) of Java.
73. Rodger, The command, 67, quoting Sir William Coventry, secretary to James, duke of York, then Lord Admiral and the chief advocate of the war: see page 43 above.
Chapter 3 ‘Hunger is the greatest enemy’
1. Bacon, Essayes, 47 (first published in 1612).
2. Manuel de Melo, Historia, 25, 22; AMAE (M) Ms 42/15–16v, Chumacero to Philip IV, 22 Oct. 1647, and fos 45–8, consulta, 10 Sep. 1647; Bercé, ‘Troubles frumentaires’, 772, quoting ‘rumore del popolo’ in Fermo and neighbouring cities in 1648; Wildman, Truths triumph, 4–5; Sibbald, Provision for the poor, 1. Italics added throughout.
3. Details from Parry, ‘Climatic change’, and Dodgshon, ‘The Little Ice Age’ (quoting the marquis of Lorne, whose family owned Kintyre). Both articles contain striking maps and tables.
4. On yield ratios, see Aymard, ‘Rendements’, 483–7, and idem, ‘Rese e profitti’, 436; on Leonforte, see Davies, ‘Changes’, 393–7, and Ligresti, Sicilia moderna, 108.
5. SCC, IV.iii, 245, quoting Yan Sengfang, Shang ting Chi. See also the discussion of ‘Internal frontiers and intensified land use in China’ in Richards, Unending frontier, 112–47.
6. Ince, Lot's little one, 92–4; Jacquart, ‘Paris’, 108; Wrigley and Schofield, Population history, 79, 80, 168; Woods, Death before birth, 95–6, 194 and 196 (all data series peaked in the second half of the seventeenth century).
7. McIlwain, Political works of James I, 343–4, Speech to Star Chamber. The king claimed that, in t
his, England followed ‘the fashion of Italy, especially of Naples’.
8. Jonson, Epigrams, CXXXIV, ‘On the famous voyage’ (1612); Howell, Epistolae, 25, to Captain Francis Bacon, Paris, 30 Mar. 1630; Dunstan, ‘Late Ming epidemics’, 7, quoting Xie Zhaozhe, Wu-za-zu (1608).
9. Keene, ‘Growth’, 20–1; Baer, ‘Stuart London’, 633–4, from the ‘Settlement of tithes’ of 1638.
10. Wakeman, The great enterprise, 455; Nef, The rise, 282–97 (quotation from the Venetian ambassador in London, 15 July 1644); Davenant, The first days, 54–5 and 84 (1656). Paris was no better: Newman, Cultural capitals, 12.
11. Quotations from Evelyn, Fumifugium, 5–16. See also Jenner, ‘The politics of London air’.
12. Foster, The voyage of Sir Henry Middleton, 97–8 (Edmund Scott, ‘Exact discourse of the subtilties … of the East Indians’). In East Asia, both religious and medical considerations encouraged the use of wood rather than stone in home building: see Pomeranz, Great divergence, 134–5.
13. Friedrichs, The early modern city, 276; Jones, Porter and Turner, A gazetteer, table 6; Hessayon, ‘Gold tried in the fire’, 4–5; Pepys, Diary, II, 128, entry for 30 June 1661. Seaver, Wallington's world, 54–6, notes how often Nehemiah Wallington reported major fires in mid-seventeenth century London (and, like a good Calvinist, he gloated when they consumed the property of sinful Sabbath-breakers).
14. Pepys, Diary, VII, 267–79, provided a memorable eyewitness account. Mauelshagen, Klimageschichte, 127–9, documents the climatic anomaly of the summer of 1666 and the prevalence of urban fires in Europe.
15. RAS, Diplomatica Muscovitica 39 unfol., Pommerenning to Christina, 16 July 1648 N. S (Ellersieck, ‘Russia’, 264, 343 and 353 discusses the frequency and causes of the numerous fires in mid-seventeenth century Moscow); Bernier, Travels, 246, described the Delhi fire; Mantran, Istanbul, 36, lists all seventeenth-century fires.
16. McClain, Edo and Paris, 106, quoting Asai Ryôi, Musashi abumi; Viallé and Blussé, The Deshima Registers, XII, 294, 2–9 March 1657 (diary entries of Zacharias Wagenaer), and 337 (12 Apr. 1658), final death toll.
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