National Monarchies Rise: Power, Law, and Nation Building
The Growth of National Monarchies
Feudalism didn’t meet the needs of growing nations. In the Middle Ages, strong national governments were unknown. A nation is a group of people occupying the same country, under the same government, and usually speaking the same language. It has a central government that can defend itself against enemies and keep order. The people are differentiated from other countries’ peoples by language, religion, traditions, and ways of life. The people within a nation are loyal and proud of their group. This feeling is called nationalism.
Wider trade required improved government. By the 1100s, cities began to grow rapidly. Trade expanded, and the population of Europe grew. The middle class disliked the lack of law and order because it hurt business and threatened property. They were becoming unhappy with the feudal obligations of land taxes and military services, the many separate legal systems, the monarchy, and the Church. Nobles often charged tolls for the use of a road or river that went through their property. People had no reliable police force.
Strong Kings Extended Their Powers
The pattern that nations followed when establishing central national power governments during this period was: First, the king gained power by challenging the Church and nobles. Then, he began to collect taxes from the merchants. This way, the king became more independent of the nobles. With more income, the king could pay mercenaries to fight for him. As kings gained power, they strengthened their governments. They hired civil servants (workers who handled money matters, military affairs, and legal problems). Kings began to develop a system of royal courts that would judge all classes of people. These courts applied the same laws to everyone. Gradually, kings built larger, stronger units called nations.
England Became a Nation
England began to build a strong centralized government in the 11th century. When the king died in 1066, William stated his right to be king. The throne was given to Harold, but William crossed the English Channel and defeated Harold in the Battle of Hastings. William ‘the Conqueror’ became king of England. William the Conqueror established a strong monarchy. He introduced centralized feudalism into England. With this, he required all nobles to become his vassals. He also broke up the largest feudal holdings of nobles and distributed the land to his vassals. He ordered a census of all the taxable wealth in his kingdom. William didn’t make England a unified nation but laid a firm base for a strong monarchy.
Henry II and the Legal System
The Norman kings were William and the three kings that followed him. After them, Henry II, the founder of the Plantagenet dynasty, became king. He was the son of William’s granddaughter. His reign was one of the most important in English history. To unite all of England under his rule, he made three major reforms in the legal system:
- Common law: he made the royal law the law of everyone. This way, it became known as common law. It was applied equally to all people in the country and it was based on customs and court decisions.
- Circuit courts: sending judges on regular tours all over the country. These judges combined local legal customs with legal opinions to form their decisions. They were strangers in each district, so they were not affected by bribes, threats, or feelings about friends.
- Jury system: the first juries were men who came before a royal judge to accuse someone of breaking the law. The accusers only brought charges. From this early jury came the grand jury of today, which decides whether there is enough evidence against the accused.
The Magna Carta
Henry’s youngest son, John, became king in 1199. He was an unreasonable and cruel ruler. In 1215, his nobles rebelled against his unjust rule and forced him to agree to the Magna Carta, which limited his power and protected the nobles’ feudal rights. This document didn’t guarantee representative government but laid three principles: the law is above the king, the king can be forced to obey the law, and there is equal justice under the law. The king could not raise any new taxes unless the people agreed through their representatives.
Parliament Became Important Under Edward I
Edward I tried to bring the island of Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales) under one rule. In 1284, he took over Wales and tried to conquer Scotland. In 1295, Edward I ordered the sheriffs to hold elections in their counties. People chose two knights from each county to serve in the national council called Parliament. In time, the Church withdrew from Parliament. The lords made up the House of Lords. Elected knights and townsmen made up the House of Commons, which was a representative body; each member spoke for many people and voted in their interests. At first, the Parliament was asked to grant money. However, the Parliament’s members refused to grant money until some ruler corrected what was wrong about the government. It drew up statements of demands, called bills. As a result, it became a legislative body.
The War of the Roses
In 1454, the Lancaster and York families went to war because they both claimed the throne, as they were descendants of Edward III. It was known as the War of the Roses because their badges were a red and a white rose, respectively. Henry VI (Lancaster) ruled in England but was overthrown by Edward IV. Henry took the crown back but was murdered, and Edward ruled again. He died, and young Edward V ruled but was disappeared. Richard III became king. The only leading noble man that remained was Henry Tudor, who defeated Richard. Henry married Elizabeth of York and united both families. Before the War of the Roses, the Parliament was the highest lawmaking body. During the Tudor reign, the Parliament was weak, and the nobles had been subdued. Common law was enforced, and England gained leadership in European affairs and had a great growing culture. By the 17th century, England was an established nation.
French Kings Built a National State
During Charlemagne’s reign as emperor, a centralized government had ruled the land, but it collapsed after his death. In 987, the French nobles elected Hugh Capet as king. The Capetian family grew strong. The Capetian dynasty ruled until 1328.
Capetian Kings
Louis VI gained control over his royal lands and put down the barons who threatened his power. Year by year, the Capetian kings made the region under their rule larger and larger. French kings gave the people a better government than the feudal lords had. Louis IX set up a system of royal courts. He made his people know that their well-being was important to their government. The French didn’t develop a strong parliament. Louis IX led his knights in the Crusades. Peace and justice were more important than military conquests. Later, he was canonized by the Church and called Saint Louis.
France and England in the Hundred Years’ War
In 1328, the last Capetian king died without leaving a male heir. Edward III of England, who had blood ties with the Capetians, claimed the throne of France. The French refused. Edward decided to take an army to France because of this. Another reason was the attempt by the English to control Flanders, an important market for English wool, that was important to both countries. Edward’s moves against France started a series of wars known as the Hundred Years’ War. Much of the fighting took place in France, but the English had the advantage of better generals and weapons.
Joan of Arc
By 1425, England seemed to have won the victory over France. A simple country girl, Joan of Arc, had visions and believed that she heard the voices of saints calling on her to save France from the English soldiers. She asked Charles (not yet king) for an army to save the city of Orleans. She promised to defeat the English and save the throne for Charles. Joan inspired the French soldiers and gave them confidence. She was captured by the English, accused of bewitching their soldiers, and burned at the stake. Her love of country and her courage helped develop a national spirit in France. By the end of the war, in 1453, the English held only the city of Calais. The Hundred Years’ War had three major consequences: the French victory, leaving both countries free to concentrate on their internal problems; war worked to encourage patriotism; and new methods of warfare.
Spain, Portugal, and Other Nations Formed in Europe
Portugal and Spain Became Separate Nations
The Visigoths had settled in the Iberian Peninsula. Their kingdom lasted until 711, when an invasion of Moors crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and conquered most of the Iberian Peninsula. The Moors built up a kingdom but was broken up into more than 20 small states. This helped strengthen the Christians in the north, who began a crusade to regain Spain. Alfonso I of Portugal was the son of a French knight who had helped the king of Castile conquer Toledo from the Moors. In return, he was given Portugal as a fief. He declared Portugal an independent kingdom. By the late 1200s, only Granada remained in Muslim control. When Ferdinand and Isabella married, they joined the two leading Christian kingdoms of the area. The Reconquista succeeded, and they conquered Granada and united Spain. They believed that national unity required religious conformity. They revived the Inquisition, a medieval procedure for punishing heretics, and they burned thousands of people at the stake.
Other Europeans Began to Build Nations
The Danish Queen Margaret I forged Denmark, Norway, and Sweden into one empire, which lasted only a century. Sweden revolted and broke away, but Norway remained a Danish province until the 1800s. In Eastern Europe, around 900, the Magyar tribes occupied a fertile region along the Danube River and formed the kingdom of Hungary. In the mid-900s, Polish tribes were united under one king. To the west, Czechs of Bohemia and Moravia were joined under the king of Bohemia.
Germany and Italy Failed to Build Nations
By the 850s, the people in East Frankland were calling themselves Germans, and their language was becoming different from that spoken in West Frankland. German kings wanted to bring their country under a strong centralized government. In the 900s, Henry the Fowler became the German king of East Frankland. He forced his nobles to be loyal to him. Henry’s son, Otto the Great, became one of the strongest kings of Germany. He defeated the Magyars and the Slavs. Otto made a mistake: instead of making himself supreme at home, he turned his attention toward Italy. He married the widow of an Italian king and declared himself king of Italy. He had the pope crown him emperor. From this time on, the rulers of Germany considered themselves emperors. The lands they ruled came to be wrongly called the Holy Roman Empire. They wasted their time, money, and armies fighting to conquer Italy. Germany was only a collection of many free cities and little feudal states. The emperor had little power, so some feudal vassals became important, claiming the right to elect the ruler, and were called electors. Frederick Barbarossa was the second ruler of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, the family that ruled the Holy Roman Empire. He hoped to unite Germany and Italy into one strong empire under his rule. Supported by the papacy, the Italian cities defeated Barbarossa. Instead of one Italian nation, there were papal states, controlled by the pope. Each city-state controlled the land around it and had its own army and ambassadors. Because the separate Italian states disliked one another, they were always at war, so Italy didn’t become a nation. Italy and Germany were not unified until the 1800s.