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manhefnawi

The Ottoman Empire: Succession, Deposition and Fratricide | History Today - 0 views

  • As with any ruling dynasty, the requirement that the reigning sultan produce an heir was central to succession
  • judicial royal fratricide became an accepted method of securing the Ottoman throne until its abolition in the 17th century by Ahmed I
  • The eventual abolition of fratricide came about following widespread public disapproval over the accession of Mehmed III to the throne
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  • Ahmed I did go on to produce sons, but, at his death in 1617, his eldest was only 13 years old. This prompted the imperial council to allow Mustafa, then aged 25, to ascend the throne as Mustafa I, although he would be deposed and re-enthroned several times throughout his life
  • a key turning point in the power structures of the Ottoman Empire
  • It is a truth universally acknowledged that royal depositions must, sooner or later, be in want of a regicide. The first in the history of the Ottoman Empire occurred on Friday 20 May 1622, with the death of Osman II, son of Ahmed I. Known as Osman the Young, he had ascended the throne in 1618 at the age of 14, following the coup that deposed Mustafa I, his uncle, for the first time. In 1622, aged 17, he had still not succeeded in legitimising himself as a conqueror of territory and so sought to cultivate the role of a pious sultan instead
  • That Osman II announced his intention to undertake the pilgrimage immediately after returning to Istanbul from Edirne provoked fears that he might become an absentee monarch, who might be seeking to return the capital to its original site – Edirne
  • The introduction of the ‘cage’ and the survival of a number of other viable candidates for the throne meant the sultan faced a greater danger of depositions and coups by interested individuals or parties seeking to wield power.
  • The dynasty continued with variable succession methods until the end of the sultanate, with Mehmed VI, who ruled from 1918 until 1922. Following the official declaration and recognition of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, Mehmed VI went into exile
  • the title of Head of the House of Osman is still passed down and used today
Javier E

Opinion | This Might Be What Broke the Deadlock at COP28 - The New York Times - 0 views

  • “And then we became the first COP to host a change-makers majlis,” Al Jaber said in his prepared closing speech. “And I felt that that was the turning point in our negotiations. You reconnected with your spirit of collaboration, you got out of your comfort zones and started speaking to each other from the heart.”
  • “That,” he said, “made the difference.”Could a majlis really do all that? Or did the sultan overstate the benefits of the majlis because it was kind of his thing? I looked into these questions and came away thinking that the sultan was on to something. The majlis is a tradition of the Arab world that just might have a role on the world stage.
  • A majlis (pronounced MAHJ-liss) is both a place and an event. It is the place in an Arab home where people sit with guests. Often the richer the homeowner, the bigger the majlis. Traditionally there are carpets, cushions, a teapot, an incense burner. In a majlis, people don’t rush to do business. Sociably sitting is part of the experience.
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  • Another type is the majlis-ash-shura, which is quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial, though traditionally not democratic. No voting is involved. But people do have a chance to be heard, and there is an expectation of being treated fairly. The decision may be handed down by the local leader, such as a sultan, or by religious leaders who are respected for their piety.
  • That brings us up to Dubai and the sultan. Considering that Al Jaber is the president of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, I think he deserves credit for cajoling delegates from nearly 200 countries to, for the first time, approve a pact that calls for “transitioning away from fossil fuels.” In his closing address he thanked delegates “who met me at 4 and 5 a.m.” When does this guy sleep?
  • Al Jaber may have been right that there was more speaking from the heart than usual. “The gathering seemed to evoke a more personal, emotional tone, and confidences were shared,” Environment News Service wrote.
  • In both cases, no one is clearly in charge. In ancient Arabia, tribal leaders who had conflicts couldn’t appeal to some higher authority. They had to work things out among themselves.
  • There is no higher authority — certainly not the United Nations — that can tell sovereign nations what to do. They need to work things out among themselves.
  • Modern majalis might be able to resolve disputes — and help save the planet — by drawing on sources of authority beyond one-person, one-vote democracy. Trust that’s built up over time, for one.
  • A majlis is also a natural forum for scientific experts, religious leaders and artists to be heard and heeded.
  • In modern diplomacy, Yusuf said, “There’s just a complete lack of regard for expertise and any type of leadership.
  • The majlis is based on a kind of decorum. There are things that are totally unacceptable in a majlis, such as backbiting, speaking ill of people. There’s a hushed aspect to it. People speak in a very respectful, formal way. Each situation is going to be unique.”
  • Elinor Ostrom, a political scientist who won a Nobel Prize in economics in 2009, showed how ranchers, fishermen and others had devised clever ways to cooperate, without appealing to government, and to avoid the tragedy of the commons, which is the overexploitation of shared resources. One way they built the necessary trust was through what Ostrom called “cheap talk,” which is simple communication. “More cooperation occurs than predicted, ‘cheap talk’ increases cooperation, and subjects invest in sanctioning free-riders,” Ostrom wrote in her Nobel lecture.
  • The trust-building communication that Ostrom put her finger on in her Nobel lecture seems like the kind of talk that occurs in a majlis, Erik Nordman, the author of “The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom,” told me.
  • I also don’t want to make too much of the role of the majlis in reaching the deal. The majlis should not be a replacement for democracy but a complement to it. In that role, I think it could be quite useful.
jaxredd10

Ottoman Empire - WWI, Decline & Definition - HISTORY - 0 views

  • The Ottoman Empire was one of the mightiest and longest-lasting dynasties in world history.
  • The chief leader, known as the Sultan, was given absolute religious and political authority over his people.
  • Osman I, a leader of the Turkish tribes in Anatolia, founded the Ottoman Empire around 1299. The term “Ottoman” is derived from Osman’s name, which was “Uthman” in Arabic.
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  • In 1453, Mehmed II the Conqueror led the Ottoman Turks in seizing the ancient city of Constantinople, the Byzantine Empire’s capital. This put an end to 1,000-year reign of the Byzantine Empire.
  • Sultan Mehmed renamed the city Istanbul, meaning “the city of Islam” and made it the new capital of the Ottoman Empire.
  • By 1517, Bayezid’s son, Selim I, brought Syria, Arabia, Palestine, and Egypt under Ottoman control.
  • The Ottoman Empire reached its peak between 1520 and 1566, during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent
  • The Ottomans were known for their achievements in art, science and medicine.
  • Some of the most popular forms of art included calligraphy, painting, poetry, textiles and carpet weaving, ceramics and music.
  • The Ottomans learned and practiced advanced mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, physics, geography and chemistry.
  • At the start of World War I, the Ottoman Empire was already in decline. The Ottoman Turks entered the war in 1914 on the side of the Central Powers (including Germany and Austria-Hungary) and were defeated in 1918.
  • The threat of assassination was always a concern for a Sultan. He relocated every night as a safety measure.
  • the millet system, a community structure that gave minority groups a limited amount of power to control their own affairs while still under Ottoman rule.
  • The devshirme system lasted until the end of the 17th century.
  • Starting in the 1600s, the Ottoman Empire began to lose its economic and military dominance to Europe.
  • n 1878, the Congress of Berlin declared the independence of Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria.During the Balkan Wars, which took place in 1912 and 1913, the Ottoman Empire lost nearly all their territories in Europe.
  • Under Sultan Selim, a new policy emerged, which included fratricide, or the murder of brothers.
  • In 1915, Turkish leaders made a plan to massacre Armenians living the Ottoman Empire. Most scholars believe that about 1.5 million Armenians were killed.
  • After ruling for more than 600 years, the Ottoman Turks are often remembered for their powerful military, ethnic diversity, artistic ventures, religious tolerance and architectural marvels.
  • The mighty empire’s influence is still very much alive in the present-day Turkish Republic, a modern, mostly secular nation thought of by many scholars as a continuation of the Ottoman Empire.
julia rhodes

Turkey's ailing sultan - Le Monde diplomatique - English edition - 0 views

  • “Increasingly, democratisation and authoritarianism are going hand in hand, and not just in Turkey.”
  • Erdogan’s ambition to institute an enhanced presidency with himself as a new “sultan” now looks unlikely to succeed after his imperious response to the protests over the development of Gezi Park
  • For the first time, Erdogan, who had confidently steered Turkey through choppy waters, seemed at a loss
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  • His worsening authoritarianism escaped the world’s attention, although in Turkey, there were worries about unaccountability and crony capitalism, the penetration of Fethullah Gulen’s Islamist movement into the police and judiciary, the silencing of the media, and the arrest of many journalists and other critics of the government
  • Secular intellectuals regard Gezi as a turning point: in the first major political protests since the 1970s, an apolitical younger generation has become politicised — not by big ideas like democracy or nationalism, but for their rights. They were joined by activists for Kurdish, Alevi and gay rights — a coming together of separate causes that is new to Turkey.
  • As it built its own coalitions at home, it set out internationally to demonstrate that Islam was compatible with democracy. The policy worked. The AKP was re-elected on 22 July 2007, and won a triumphant third term in the 12 June 2011 elections
  • The AKP, though not democratic, became a democratising force, giving a new sense of belonging and empowerment to a majority of Turks, previously excluded by the old secular elites
  • His other recent attempts at social control (restrictions on the sale of alcohol or moves to end abortion, which he has described as murder) infuriated secular Turks, but were aimed at winning votes from Muslim conservatives in this still divided society.
  • It is clear the justice system is not free of politics and has failed to investigate evidence of wider involvement in criminal activity and human rights abuses, particularly in the southeast. Yet with the verdicts, Turkey’s demilitarisation has been underlined.
  • Much of the AKP success story was based on the economy, which it opened up, building on structural adjustment reforms by the former economy minister Kemal Derviş (2001-02).
  • . On Cyprus, there is a sense that the AKP government has done what it can, backing the UN peace plan proposed by Kofi Annan for a federal solution.
  • he AKP government’s biggest achievement so far — and greatest remaining challenge — is its attempt at a solution to the Kurdish question.
  • “We used to see self-determination as the only solution... Now our Kurds want to look west. Both for economic benefits and because of the regional conjunction, Kurds here see their future in a democratising Turkey that recognises their rights.” Those rights mean an end to ethnic discrimination, full recognition of Kurdish identity with the right to teach Kurdish at school and a decentralisation that will lead to a form of autonomy. For this, constitutional reform is needed.
  • Further diplomatic incidents led to Turkey’s suspension of military, though not economic, ties with Israel that October. This made Erdogan the darling of the Arab world and played well with the Turkish public. Washington under Obama was not dissatisfied. Then came the Mavi Mamari affair, when a Turkish flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza was attacked in international waters on 31 May 2010 and nine Turkish activists killed. This year, after a very public row, the Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu apologised.
  • There were miscalculations on Syria. After Turkey’s close alliance with President Bashar al-Assad was swiftly reversed at the start of the uprising, Turkey facilitated the rebels, set up refugee camps along the shared border and allowed the opposition Syrian National Council to set up its headquarters in Istanbul. Ordinary Turks welcomed Syria’s refugees but there was no enthusiasm for military involvement, with the risks of unrest among the country’s own Alevi minority (3) and concern at the porous borders that allow infiltration of Al-Qaida-linked jihadists into Turkey.
jongardner04

Atatürk was ordered by the Sultan to head Turkish War of Independence, docume... - 0 views

  • Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, was commissioned by the Caliph of the Muslims and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire as part of a state operation to initiate the Turkish War of Independence in the northern Turkish city of Samsun, a document from 1919, revealed by leading Turkish historian journalist Murat Bardakçı show
nolan_delaney

Tsar v sultan | The Economist - 0 views

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    International policy regarding to countries we have studied extensively for the WWII unit: turkey and Russia
manhefnawi

Battle of the Three Kings | Moroccan history | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • defeat dealt the invading Portuguese armies of King Sebastian by the Saʿdī sultan of Morocco, ʿAbd al-Malik.
  • At the Wadi al-Makhāzin near Ksar el-Kebir (Alcazarquivir), between the Loukkos River and one of its tributaries, Sebastian struck at ʿAbd al-Malik and his brother Aḥmad. The Muslim forces, though not as well equipped as the Portuguese, numbered 50,000 men—infantry and cavalry.
  • The victory provided the Muslim soldiery with a rich booty and the country with a new sultan, Aḥmad, now known as Aḥmad al-Manṣūr (Aḥmad the Victorious); it gave Morocco a new prestige in Europe, furthering its diplomatic and commercial status. The death of the young Sebastian without heir, on the other hand, brought the Portuguese empire under Spanish control for the next 60 years.
Javier E

Sultan Erdogan: Turkey's Rebranding Into the New, Old Ottoman Empire - Cinar Kiper - Th... - 0 views

  • "Why is it that when the whole of Europe is casting off its borders and unifying they don't become the Neo-Romans or the New Holy Roman Empire, but when we call for the peoples who lived together just a century ago to come together once again, we are accused of being Neo-Ottomans?"
  • In that same speech, the foreign minister spoke of the need for a "great restoration" where "we need to embrace fully the ancient values we have lost." Praising the historic bonds that connected the peoples of Turkey over the "new identities that were thrust upon us in the modern era," Davutoglu maintained that the road to Turkey's progress lies in its past - an assertion that has terrified the government's detractors enough for them to make it a losing political platform each new election.
  • The drive for change comes not from the 16th century Middle East or even 7th century Arabia, but rather 19th century Japan.
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  • Japan's Meiji Restoration of 1868 and Turkey's Kemalist Reforms that followed the establishment of the republic in 1923 are both models of modernization adopted by lagging countries in the periphery of the West. Both ushered in new eras for their respective countries and both involved great risks, often implementing drastic measures and facing hostile opposition
  • "Humanity is in need of a great restoration; our region is in need of a great restoration, and right in the center of all this great restoration, our very nation is striving for its own great restoration within itself." One does not repeat with such fervor the "need to restore greatly" unless they are making a point about the distinction between restoration and reform
  • The Ottoman Empire had already tried, and failed at, something similar in 1839 with the Tanzimat Reorganization, so by the time Ataturk's Kemalist Reforms rolled around 50 years after the Meiji Restoration, modernity and tradition seemed irreconcilable: modernization could not occur without Westernization. Almost everything was brought in line with the West; clothing was Europeanized, the alphabet was Latinized, numerals were - rather ironically - Arabized, and women could now not only display their hair but also vote and pursue professional careers, just to name a few
  • Erdoğan doesn't seek a return to pre-revolutionary Turkey. His actions aren't those of an overzealous Ottoman romantic but rather of a Meiji restorer, re-appropriating the republican revolution by redefining its spirit and essence to one that blends Western innovation with local culture, tradition and historic bonds -- "Western technique, Ottoman spirit"
  • the fundamental divergence between the two paradigms was in their disagreement over the role of culture. Adopting the slogan "Western technique, Japanese spirit," the Meiji Restoration involved taking the technological, scientific, industrial and military advancements of the West but retaining Japanese values. Japanese culture needed not be sacrificed in adopting modern economic and military techniques and would in fact be the glue that kept a revolutionary society together.
  • synthesizing the best of the West and the best of the East in order to strengthen his hand.
  • If your country has spent the past nine decades claiming to be a copy of the West, then the West has no reason to see you as anything more than an inferior copy of itself.
Emilio Ergueta

The Mamluks | History Today - 0 views

  • James Waterson introduces the slave warriors of medieval Islam who overthrew their masters, defeated the Mongols and the Crusaders and established a dynasty that lasted 300 years.
  • They destroyed the Crusader kingdoms of Outremer, and saved Syria, Egypt and the holy places of Islam from the Mongols. They made Cairo the dominant city of the Islamic world in the later Middle Ages, and under these apparently unlettered soldier-statesmens’ rule, craftsmanship, architecture and scholarship flourished. Yet the dynasty remains virtually unknown to many in the West.
  • The Mamluks’ opportunity to overthrow their masters came at the end of the 1240s, a time when the Kurdish Ayyubid dynasty, set up by Saladin in the 1170s, had reached a modus vivendi with the Crusader states; skirmishing, rather than outright war, was the order of the day in Syria and the Holy Land.
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  • the Mamluks eventually forced Shaggar ad Durr to marry their commander Aybeg. Louis’ crusade therefore proved the catalyst for the Mamluks to finally dispense with their Ayyubid overlords. The Bahri Mamluk dynasty was set up in 1250, with Aybeg as its first, though not uncontested, sultan
  • The Mamluk dynasty was now secure, and it lasted until the 16th century. Power struggles prevented continuity at the centre, and even after the Circassian Burji Mamluks seized power from the Bahri Mamluks in the mid-14th century, factionalism and insecurity continued unabated. The Mamluks managed successfully to re-establish their Syrian powerbases following Timur’s brief but hugely destructive invasion in the early 1400s; but the dynasty had been left weakened by the Black Death which had made repeated onslaughts through the Middle East from the mid-14th century and it soon lost the valuable trade revenues of Syria after the Portuguese had opened up Europe’s Ocean trade and the route to India in the later 15th century. In the end it took two only two brief battles for the Ottoman Sultan Selim I to decimate the last Mamluk army to take the field just outside Cairo near the Pyramids in 1517.
  • Selim I continued to employ a Mamluk as viceroy, however, and recruitment of Circassians as ‘tax farmers’ continued until the new age arrived in Egypt with Napoleon’s army in 1798. Indeed faction building and Mamluk infighting were still characteristic of Egyptian politics in the early 19th century. 
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    History of the Mamluk empire.
g-dragon

Timur or Tamerlane: A Brief Biography - 0 views

  • Throughout history, few names have inspired such terror as "Tamerlane." That was not the Central Asian conqueror's actual name, though. More properly, he is known as Timur, from the Turkic word for "iron."
  • vicious conqueror, who razed ancient cities to the ground and put entire populations to the sword. On the other hand, he is also known as a great patron of the arts, literature, and architecture.
  • The child's father, Taragay, was the chief of the Barlas tribe. The Barlas were of mixed Mongolian and Turkic ancestry, descended from the hordes of Genghis Khan
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  • . Unlike their nomadic ancestors, the Barlas were settled agriculturalists and traders.
  • "Tamerlane or Timur: The Great Amir," states that Timur was descended from Genghis Khan on his mother's side; it is not entirely clear whether that is true.
  • During Timur's youth, Transoxiana was riven by conflict between the local nomadic clans and the sedentary Chagatay Mongol khans who ruled them. The Chagatay had abandoned the mobile ways of Genghis Khan and their other ancestors and taxed the people heavily in order to support their urban lifestyle. Naturally, this taxation angered their citizens.
  • Timur was not directly descended from Genghis Khan on his father's side, so he ruled as an amir (from the Arabic word for "prince"), rather than as khan.
  • Timur invaded Russia in 1380. He helped the Mongol Khan Toktamysh retake control, and also defeated the Lithuanians in battle.  Timur captured Herat
  • the opening salvo against Persia. By 1385, all of Persia was his.  
  • Timur fought against his former protege in Russia, Toktamysh. The Timurid army captured Moscow
  • Persia revolted. He responded by leveling entire cities and using the citizens' skulls to build grisly towers and pyramids.
  • The Turkic/Mongol invaders left carnage along their path; Delhi's army was destroyed in December, and the city ruined. Timur seized tons of treasure and 90 war elephants and took them back to Samarkand.
  • Timur captured early Ottoman Turkey and received the submission of Egypt.
  • The rulers of Europe were glad that the Ottoman Turk sultan Bayazid had been defeated, but they trembled at the idea that "Tamerlane" was at their doorstep. The rulers of Spain, France, and other powers sent congratulatory embassies to Timur, hoping to stave off an attack.
  • Timur had bigger goals, though. He decided in 1404 that he would conquer Ming China.
  • the Timurid army set out in December, during an unusually cold winter. Men and horses died of exposure
  • Timur started life as the son of a minor chieftain, much like his putative ancestor Genghis Khan. Through sheer intelligence, military skill and force of personality, Timur was able to conquer an empire stretching from Russia to India, and from the Mediterranean Sea to Mongolia.
  • Unlike Genghis Khan, however, Timur conquered not to open trade routes and protect his flanks, but to loot and pillage. The Timurid Empire did not long survive its founder because he rarely bothered to put any governmental structure in place after he destroyed the existing order.
  • While Timur professed to be a good Muslim, he obviously felt no compunction about destroying the jewel-cities of Islam
  • Damascus, Khiva, Baghdad... these ancient capitals of Islamic learning never really recovered from Timur's attentions.
  • Timur's line had better luck in India, where his great-great-grandson Babur founded the Mughal Dynasty in 1526. The Mughals ruled until 1857 when the British expelled them. (Shah Jahan, the builder of the Taj Mahal, is thus also a descendant of Timur.)
manhefnawi

Europe and the Turks: The Civilization of the Ottoman Empire | History Today - 0 views

  • This year the Turks have been celebrating the 500th anniversary of their conquest of Constantinople. Turkish rule in Europe began nearly a century earlier, and was firmly established by the time that the occupation of the Imperial city rounded off the Turkish dominions and made Constantinople once again the capital of a great empire. But the anniversary may serve as the occasion for some reflections on the place of the Ottoman Empire in the history of Europe and of the world
  • the loss of Constantinople is a great historical disaster, a defeat of Christendom which has never been repaired
  • Western travellers in Turkey, who were the major source of information to the Western world, with few exceptions reinforced these prejudices. Most of them lacked the perceptiveness and imagination to realize that though the familiar good qualities that they appreciated at home were missing in Turkey, there were others present of a different kind
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  • Like most liberated peoples, the Balkan, and later the Arab, states tended to blame all the defects and shortcomings of their societies upon the misrule of the fallen imperial masters
  • This negative attitude to the Turks, while predominant, is not the only one. There is also what one might call a positive legend of the Turk in Europe - and here I am not speaking of the political and military considerations which from time to time led European powers to sup with the Turk, though with a long spoon
  • Turkish culture is, as one would expect, mainly Islamic, and the educated Ottoman was as familiar with the Arabic and Persian classics as his Western contemporaries with those of Greece and Rome
  • Against the charge of destructiveness that is often brought against Turkish rule, the same evidence may be cited. The registers show an increase in population and prosperity in most areas after the conquest, which the travellers - by no means friendly witnesses - confirm
  • Certainly the Sultan was no democrat; but after all, democracy, as we know and practise it, has flourished in only a few places, and in most of them is recent and precarious. The Sultan was not a true despot, but the supreme custodian of the God-given Holy Law of Islam, to which he himself was subject.
  • This security and prosperity, given to peasant agriculture by a Government which had inherited the ancient loyalty owed by the Balkan peoples to the Imperial Byzantine throne, did much to reconcile them to the other imperfections of Ottoman rule, and account in large measure for the long tranquillity that reigned in the Balkans until the explosive irruption of nationalist ideas from the West
  • Two other qualities which have been attributed to the Turks are fanaticism and intolerance. The Ottoman Turks were indeed fanatical Moslems, dedicated to the maintenance and expansion of the Islamic state. But toleration is a relative matter
  • The well-known preference of the 15th-century Greeks for Moslem rather than Frankish rule was not without its reasons. The confrontation of Christendom and Islam has sometimes been compared with the present Cold War
  • When Ottoman rule in the Balkans ended, the Balkan peoples resumed their national existence, with their own religions and languages and national cultures intact
  • With the decline of the Ottoman Empire, some of the traditional charges against the Turks become in part justified.
  • Islam is far more akin to Europe in its cultural traditions than to the true Orient, in India and China. But the Turks were familiar in a nearer and more material sense. They had been in Anatolia since the 11th century, absorbing the ancient races of the peninsula; in Europe since the 14th century
  • The loss of Constantinople was certainly a defeat of Christendom and of Europe - though perhaps not so total as was once feared.
  • Nor was it a victory of barbarism, but rather of another and not undistinguished civilization
manhefnawi

Why did the Habsburg-Valois Conflict Last so Long | History Today - 0 views

  • The conflict between the Habsburg Emperor Charles V (1500-1558) and the Valois King of France Francis I (1494-1547) commenced in 1521 and came to an end in 1559 in the reigns of their successors, Philip II and Henry II
  • to Christendom as a whole
  • One explanation for the protracted nature of the Habsburg-Valois wars is that the character of warfare was changing
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  • It might fairly be asked why the Emperor Charles V did not dispose of the Valois challenge more quickly.
  • In 1519 he was elected Holy Roman Emperor, ruler of Germany
  • Francis, in turn, harboured a deep-seated resentment against Charles
  • The kingdom had recently been consolidated by the incorporation of great provinces like Burgundy and Brittany
  • This explains why the history of the Habsburg-Valois rivalry is one where intensive periods of bloody fighting were followed so often by stalemate and financial exhaustion
  • The two kings [Henry II and Philip II] realised that if they attempted to mount another campaign in 1559, they might stretch their finances and the loyalty of their subjects to breaking point
  • In waging war he could only really rely on the financial support of the Netherlands and Castile, and as the Habsburg-Valois wars persisted he, and his successor Philip II, found himself plundering both territories to their absolute limits
  • In the mind of the young Charles V, no family ambition loomed larger than that of recovering his ancestral lands of Burgundy from the French
  • Much of the Habsburg-Valois rivalry revolved around rival ambitions in Italy
  • Habsburg-Valois conflict to an end was that the conflict was essentially a dynastic one; the rivalry was between two proud ruling families who were determined to protect the achievements of their forbears and to enhance the reputation and power of their family, or dynasty
  • This helps to explain why the House of Habsburg and the House of Valois persisted for so long in their conflict with such a disregard for the damaging consequences to their lands and peoples
  • Francis's successor, Henry II, had spent three years as a hostage of the Habsburgs in Spain, after the Treaty of Madrid, and as King of France from 1547 he exhibited an animosity to the Habsburgs that perhaps exceeded even that of his father
  • The continuation of the Habsburg-Valois conflict was also a tremendous boon to the Ottoman Sultan. He aimed to extend Muslim Ottoman power into Europe. The major obstacle to expansion were, firstly, the Austrian Habsburg lands in central Europe, ruled by Charles V's brother Ferdinand, and, secondly, the military and naval presence of the Habsburgs in the Mediterranean
  • The impression is often given that Charles abandoned his claim to Burgundy in the Peace of Cambrai in 1529
  • Thus for Charles V his personal rivalry with Francis I was overlaid by a sense of injustice at what he perceived to be the theft of his family's Burgundian inheritance by the Valois kings
  • It was also here that the deeply felt dynastic rivalry between the Houses of Habsburg and Valois was at its most acute. Throughout the long conflict the French chafed at Habsburg control of the kingdom of Naples
  • Charles V consequently acquired Naples when he inherited the kingdom of Aragon in1516
  • Francis and his successor Henry II continued to press French claims to Naples
  • The House of Valois did periodically renounce its claim when peace with the Habsburgs was expedient or unavoidable
  • Francis I's successor, Henry II, continued to uphold the Valois claim and in 1557 launched a final and unavailing assault on the kingdom.
  • The House of Valois felt strongly that they had the strongest dynastic claim to the Duchy of Milan
  • When Charles V had acquired his extensive empire by 1519 he regarded Milan not only as a satellite of the Empire
  • The Habsburg-Valois wars were, then, to a very significant extent, an unremitting struggle for mastery over Milan
  • The conflict between the Habsburgs and the Valois appeared at times to escalate into something approaching a general European war. The German Protestants, the lesser powers of Europe and even the superpower of the Ottoman empire were all drawn into the fray at various times
  • Henry VIII of England took a distinctly opportunistic view of the conflict. When he was anxious to undermine Habsburg predominance in Europe he sided with the French
  • Charles believed that he had triumphantly achieved his great dynastic dream in 1526, when the defeated and captive Francis I agreed to surrender the territory in the Treaty of Madrid
  • the Sultan was brought into an anti- Habsburg alliance by the French firstly in 1536 and, later, in 1542
anonymous

Sultan of Yogyakarta: A feminist revolution in an ancient kingdom - BBC News - 0 views

  • The Sultan of Yogyakarta holds a powerful political and spiritual position on the Indonesian island of Java. He is manoeuvring to make his eldest daughter his heir, sparking a bitter feud, as the BBC's Indonesia editor Rebecca Henschke reports.
  • In Javanese culture, things are not said directly, but instead conveyed by symbolism.
  • The Javanese royal rule stretches back to the 16th Century and while the family is now Muslim like most Indonesians, the rituals they carry out are steeped in mysticism, a product of Hinduism, Buddhism and animism of the past.
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  • Fingernail clippings and locks of the sultan's hair are offered to the sea goddess every year. They are also offered to the ogre Sapu Jagat inside Mount Merapi, one of Indonesia's most active volcanoes that looms over the city.
  • So Yogyakarta is the only place in Indonesia where residents don't get to directly elect their leader. When it was suggested by Jakarta that this should change in 2010 there were angry protests on the streets of Yogyakarta and the central government backed down.
  • Veneration of objects or idols, and hints to polytheism, run in conflict with the Wahhabis strain of Islam that is growing in popularity in Java.
  • Recently the daughter of Indonesia's first President Sukarno, Sukmawati, was reported to the police for blasphemy and forced to apologise for saying in a poem that the Javanese hairbun was more beautiful than a Islamic chador.
  • The sultan's extended family accuses the queen, who is a senator in the national parliament, of leading the revolt against tradition.
alexdeltufo

Syrians weep as first aid in months reaches Madaya - CNN.com - 1 views

  • The first shipment of foreign aid since October reached the besieged Syrian city of Madaya on Monday,
  • The first shipment of foreign aid since October reached the besieged Syrian city of Madaya on Monday
  • It was set to deliver enough aid to sustain 40,000 people for a month, WFP spokeswoman Abeer Etefa said.
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  • The situation has been so dire that a doctor told CNN that he has nothing to give his patients except sugar or salt water.
  • But the United Nations said last week that it had received credible reports of people dying of starvation and that the Syrian government had agreed to allow aid convoys into Madaya, Foua and Kefraya.
  • On Monday, activists said that 15 people -- including at least 12 children -- had been killed in an aerial bombardment on a school in the town of Enjarah on the western outskirts of Aleppo, the largest Syrian city, which is in the north of the country.
  • He denied the Syrian government is using starvation as a tool of war, which is generally considered a war crime.
  • For example, in Damascus, flour costs 79 cents a kilogram. But in Madaya, a kilo of flour costs $120, and a kilo of rice costs $150.
  • In the capital, milk costs $1.06 a liter. But in Madaya, the price soars to $300 a liter.
  • "The problem is the terrorists are stealing the humanitarian assistance from the Syrian Red Crescent as well as from the United Nations," al-Ja'afari said.
  • The first shipment of foreign aid since October reached the besieged Syrian city of Madaya on Monday
  • Syria's state news agency, 65 trucks loaded with aid supplies entered Madaya and two other besieged towns, Foua and Kefraya.
  • It's heartbreaking to see so many hungry people," said Sajjad Malik, the UNHCR representative in Syria. "
  • "Syrians are suffering and dying across the country because starvation is being used as a weapon of war by both the Syrian government and armed groups."
  • An activist described scenes of chaos at the school as he arrived after the strike, about 8 a.m. local time Monday.
  • "Everyone was trying to find his children."
  • Um Sultan said she hears every day of someone too sick to leave the bed.
  • "My husband is now one of them,
  • "Grass for the old man," she replies.
  •  
    Nick Paton Walsh - CNN
g-dragon

The Armenian Genocide - 0 views

  • From the fifteenth century on, ethnic Armenians made up a significant minority group within the Ottoman Empire. They were primarily Orthodox Christians, unlike the Ottoman Turkish rulers who were Sunni Muslims.  Armenian families were subject to the and to heavy taxation. As "people of the Book," however, the Armenians enjoyed freedom of religion and other protections under Ottoman rule.
  • To make matters worse, other Christian regions began to break away from the empire entirely, often with aid from the Christian great powers. Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia...  one by one, they broke away from Ottoman control in the last decades of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.
  • The Armenian population began to grow restless under increasingly harsh Ottoman rule in the 1870s.  Armenians started to look to Russia, the Orthodox Christian great power of the time, for protection.
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  • From the Turkish point of view, the Armenians were collaborating with the enemy.
  • Local massacres of Armenians became commonplace,
  • In the spring of the following year, a counter-coup made up of Islamist students and military officers broke out against the Young Turks. Because the Armenians were seen as pro-revolution, they were targeted by the counter-coup, which killed between 15,000 and 30,000 Armenians in the Adana Massacre.
  • the Ottoman Empire lost the First Balkan War, and as a result, lost 85% of its land in Europe. At the same time, Italy seized coastal Libya from the empire. Muslim refugees from the lost territories, many of them victims of expulsion and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, flooded into Turkey proper to the discomfort of their fellow subjects. Up to 850,000 of the refugees, fresh from abuse by Balkan Christians, were sent to Armenian-dominated regions of Anatolia. Unsurprisingly, the new neighbors did not get along well.
  • Embattled Turks began to view the Anatolian heartland as their last refuge from a sustained Christian onslaught.  Unfortunately, an estimated 2 million Armenians called that heartland home, as well.
  • Enver Pasha ordered that all Armenian men in the Ottoman armed forces be reassigned from combat to labor battalions, and that their weapons be confiscated. Once they were disarmed, in many units the conscripts were executed en masse.
  • The Armenians quite rightly suspected a trap, and refused to send their men out to be slaughtered, so Jevdet Bey began a month-long siege of the city.  He vowed to kill every Christian in the city. 
  • this Russian intervention served as a pretext for further Turkish massacres against the Armenians all across the remaining Ottoman lands.
  • Abdul Hamid II intentionally provoked uprisings in Armenian areas
  • Red Sunday incident
  • Tehcir Law, also known as the Temporary Act of Deportation, authorizing the arrest and deportation of the country's entire ethnic Armenian population.
  • These acts set the stage for the genocide that followed.
  • Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were forcibly marched out into the Syrian Desert and left there without food or water to die. Countless others were crammed onto cattle cars and sent on a one-way trip on the Baghdad Railway, again without supplies. Along the Turkish borders with Syria and Iraq, a series of 25 concentration camps housed starving survivors of the marches.
  • In some areas, the authorities didn't bother with deporting the Armenians. Villages of up to 5,000 people were massacred
  • The people would be packed into a building which was then set on fire.
  • thrown overboard to drown.
  • In 1919, Sultan Mehmet VI initiated courts-martial against high military officers for involving the Ottoman Empire in the First World War.
  • they were accused of planning the elimination of the empire's Armenian population.
  • The victorious Allies demanded in the Treaty of Sevres (1920) that the Ottoman Empire hand over those responsible for the massacres. Dozens of Ottoman politicians and army officers were surrendered to the Allied Powers
manhefnawi

The Throne of Zog: Monarchy in Albania 1928-1939 | History Today - 0 views

  • September 1st, 1928, Europe gained a new kingdom and its only Muslim king: thirty-two year-old Zog I of Albania
  • the birth of the Kingdom of Albania – a native monarchy, not an alien imposition – did attract a flicker of international attention
  • For five decades, Albania was synonymous with hard-line Marxism-Leninism
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  • The modern state of Albania came into being as a result of the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 after 500 years of Ottoman Turkish rule
  • A population of just under one million lived in a territory about half as big again as Wales
  • The Ottomans had never really mastered these people
  • Language did act as a unifying force
  • Nominally neutral during the First World War, and without a recognised government, the country was overrun by seven foreign armies
  • Like other Balkan states, it should repudiate the legacy of the Ottoman period and strive to catch up with the rest of Europe
  • He had first been fascinated by the story of Napoleon Bonaparte during his schooldays in Istanbul. King Ahmed sounded too exclusively Islamic, so the new monarch adopted his surname (which means ‘bird’)
  • According to Zogists, the Albanian throne had a 2,500-year history
  • In 1928, Zog purported to be filling Skanderbeg’s throne, left vacant for 450 years, and he claimed the medieval hero’s helmet and sword as regalia
  • Prince Xhelal, his half-brother, played no part in royal events, remaining largely forgotten in Mati
  • The day-to-day lifestyle of Zog did not seem so lavish to upper middle-class Western European diplomats
  • Albanians endured the poorest living conditions in Europe.
  • Zog did not dare to tax the rich and powerful for fear of provoking rebellion
  • Great Britain, France, and the US had greeted the kingdom with a modicum of politeness. They wanted to believe Zog when he assured them that monarchy would help promote peace and stability
  • Though Albania was legally a sovereign nation, it was wholly subordinate to Italy in all its foreign affairs
  • The Albanian monarchy reached the peak of its publicity in April 1938
  • Zog had always wanted a Christian queen, as a Westernising influence and a mark of approval for mixed marriages in general
  • Albanian resistance was minimal, King Zog fled abroad with a considerable fortune, and the monarchy stood revealed as a failure as great as most of his other modernising schemes
  • Had their King meant any more to them than the Ottoman Sultan before him
  • King Zog himself had sometimes observed that his homeland was ‘centuries behind the rest of Europe in civilisation’
  • The King, who died in France in 1961, never abandoned his claim to the throne
manhefnawi

Power of the Court | History Today - 0 views

  • Courts are a key to understanding European history. Defined as ruling dynasties and their households, courts transformed countries, capitals, constitutions and cultures. Great Britain and Spain, for example, both now threatened with dissolution, were originally united by dynastic marriages; between, respectively, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in 1469; and between Margaret Tudor and James IV King of Scots in 1503, leading to the accession a hundred years later of their great-grandson, James I, to the throne of England. 
  • The House of Orange was crucial to the formation of the Netherlands, the House of Savoy to the unification of Italy, the House of Hohenzollern to that of Germany. Dynasties provided the leadership and military forces that enabled these states to expand. As Bismarck declared, while asserting the need for royal control over the Prussian army, blood and iron were more decisive than speeches and majority decisions. 
  • Like previous European conflicts, including the Napoleonic Wars and repeated wars ‘of Succession’, the First World War was in part a dynastic war; between the Karageorgevic rulers of Serbia, whose supporters had murdered the previous monarch from the rival Obrenovic dynasty, and the Habsburgs, determined to oppose Serb expansion, symbolised by another Serbian victim, the assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand; and between the Hohenzollerns and Romanovs for domination in Eastern Europe. The fall of four empires in 1917-22 – Romanov, Hohenzollern, Habsburg and Ottoman  – was a European cataclysm comparable to the fall of the Roman Empire 1,500 years earlier. 
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  • The history of capitals, as well as countries, confirms the importance of courts. The rise of Berlin, Vienna, Madrid (often called Corte), St Petersburg and Istanbul cannot be understood except as court cities, apparent in the appearance of their streets and squares or, in Istanbul, mosques. A final, fatal expression of that role occurred in July 1914. Thousands, eager for war, gathered in front of palaces in London, Berlin, Munich (where, in a photograph, the young Hitler can be seen in the crowd) and St Petersburg, to wave hands, flags and hats, cheer and sing the national anthem as their monarch appeared on the palace balcony
  • The Louvre was a royal palace before it became an art gallery, founded by Francis I and principal residence of Louis XIV from 1652 to 1671. After the Revolution Paris again became a court city and remained one from 1804 to 1870.
  • The development of constitutions also owed much to courts. The rise of the House of Commons was helped by disputed royal successions – no monarchy had more of them than England – as well as the needs of royal finances. The founding document of constitutional monarchy in 19th-century Europe was the Charte constitutionelle des francais, promulgated by Louis XVIII (who was one of its authors) on June 4th, 1814. The Charte became the principal model for other constitutions in Europe, including those of Bavaria (1818), Belgium (1831), Spain (1834), Prussia (1850), Piedmont(1848) and the Ottoman Empire (1876). Britain could not have a comparable influence, since it did not have a written constitution to copy
  • A constitution was a royal life insurance policy: when Louis XVIII’s brother Charles X violated it in July 1830 the dynasty was deposed. Nevertheless France finally became a republic, after 1870, only after three dynasties – the Bourbons, Orléans and Bonapartes  – had been tried and found wanting
  • Having helped to finance the struggle against the French Empire, the Rothschilds became financiers to the Holy Alliance. They financed Louis XVIII’s return to France in 1814, Charles X’s departure in 1830, the Neapolitan Bourbons both before and after their exile in 1861 and the Austrian monarchy. As one Rothschild wrote to another, on February 8th, 1816: ‘A court is always a court and it always leads to something.
  • Under Edward VII public ceremonial increased in splendour, the court entertained more frequently than before and there were more royal warrant-holders
  • He wrote admiringly about monarchs, from Henri IV and Louis XIV to Charles XII. In the 19th century Walter Scott was an admirer of George IV, whose visit to Edinburgh he arranged; Chateaubriand was a brilliant royalist pamphleteer and memorialist; Stendhal and Mérimée were convinced Bonapartists
  • Court history also subverts national boundaries. The Tudors came to power with French help: Henry VII, after 14 years of exile in Brittany and France, had French as well as English troops in his victorious army at Bosworth. One aspect of Anne Boleyn’s appeal to Henry VIII was her French education and the skills she had acquired while serving at the French court. The House of Orange was both German and Dutch (and partly English), the Bourbons acquired Spanish, Neapolitan and Parmesan branches. The Habsburgs were  able to switch nationalities and capitals between Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Brussels, Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon and, in the brief reign of Philip I, London
  • Through the prism of courts and monarchy, Cortes could communicate with Montezuma. The Sunni-Shi’a struggle now destroying Syria and Iraq is another war of succession. It began as a dynastic dispute, between the prophet Muhammad’s Umayyad cousins and his son-in-law Ali over succession to the caliphate: from the start Islam was a state as well as a religion. In 680 the struggle culminated in the murder of Ali’s son, the Imam Hussein, in Kerbela in Iraq. Every year, on the Day of Ashura, this murder is commemorated by Shi’a in mournful flagellatory processions
  • Above all, courts subvert boundaries between the sexes. Because of a European consort’s role in assuring the succession and enhancing dynastic prestige, her household and apartments could rival in size and splendour those of the monarch. Sometimes she controlled her own finances. The court of France was called ‘a paradise of women’. A court was therefore the only arena where women could compete with men, on near equal terms, for power and influence. Hence the decisive impact on national and international politics of, to name only a few consorts, Anne Boleyn, Catherine the Great and Marie Antoinette. Or, among rulers’ mothers: Catherine de’ Medici and Anne of Austria in France; 17th-century Valide Sultans in the Ottoman Empire; and the Empress Dowager in China
manhefnawi

Francis the First of France: Le Roi Chevalier | History Today - 0 views

  • This was the reputation acquired by Francis the First in his own time and reverently preserved by subsequent generations. His mother, Louise of Savoy, laid its foundation even before it was certain that he would inherit the throne of his second cousin, Louis XII. In 1504 she had a medallion engraved in honour of the ten-year-old Duke of Valois
  • While Francis I has been remembered as the chivalrous leader who sustained a long and unequal struggle against the Hapsburg Emperor, Charles V, he has also been described as the King of the Renaissance
  • There are, however, other aspects of Francis I that are less consistent with the popular impression. He was the autocrat who built upon the work of Louis XI in creating the despotism of the new monarchy.
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  • He was the “most Christian King” who entered into an alliance with the enemy of Christendom. He was the destroyer of the integrity and tradition of the Gallican Church. He was the voluptuary who allowed his court to be divided into factions
  • His father, Charles of Angouleme, resembled his namesake and uncle, the graceful lyric poet, Charles of Orleans
  • The group accepted the easy guardianship at Amboise of Louis, Duke of Orléans, who two years later became King as Louis XII.
  • The adulation of his mother and sister shielded him from the hatred of Anne of Brittany. The Queen had borne Louise XII an only child, the Princess Claude, who was heiress of Brittany in her mother’s right
  • Francis was heir-presumptive to the French Crown. A marriage between Francis and Claude seemed a natural arrangement, which would prevent the alienation of the Duchy of Brittany from the French royal house. But the Queen was firmly opposed to it, and the marriage took place only after her death in 1514
  • the future of the heir-presumptive remained in doubt. In October 1514, Louis XII
  • married Mary of England, the sister of Henry VIII. Francis was less distressed than his mother
  • Bonnivet was made Admiral of France, and the long-vacant title of Constable was bestowed upon his cousin, Charles of Bourbon
  • The election of Charles V marked the beginning of a two-hundred-year conflict between the French monarchy and the Hapsburgs
  • In February 1516, the grandson of the Emperor, Charles of Austria, inherited the thrones of Aragon and Castile. Six months later, he recognized the French conquest of Milan. At this time there was no hostility between him and Francis I.
  • Political responsibilities were not neglected in the flush of military success.
  • opposed to a rival whose encircling dominions included Spain, the Netherlands, Germany and southern Italy, and whose strength was augmented by the wealth of the New World
  • The contrast between the ebullient King of the Renaissance and the melancholic Emperor has always attracted the attention of historians
  • The one reliving the ancient myths of the universal monarchy and the crusade against the infidel: the other replacing the symbolic attitudes of the past with the realistic values of the nation state
  • The two Kings were too much alike in age and temperament to allow common interests to still the spirit of mutual competition
  • Henry VIII, reading through the terms of a declaration, obligingly omitted his title of King of France
  • When hostilities began in the following year, the Tudor King, after making some show of mediation, aligned himself with the Emperor. The war went badly
  • For a year Francis I remained the captive of the Emperor in Madrid, while Louise of Savoy rallied national sentiment for the continuation of the war
  • The great-grandfather of the Emperor was Charles the Bold of Burgundy. It was as a Burgundian that Charles V claimed the lands that had been seized by Louis XI. The release of the King was not secured until a pledge had been given for the cession of Burgundy
  • The subsequent death of Catherine of Aragon removed the cause of English disagreement with the Emperor. In the last two wars of the reign Henry VIII reverted to the imperial alliance
  • In the course of the war, Bourbon was killed during the ferocious assault of his mutinous forces on Rome in May 1527
  • In the sack of Rome Henry VIII saw an opportunity to win the favour of Clement VII and obtain the annulment of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon. For several years he remained the ally of France
  • Even after the revelation of the marriage with Anne Boleyn, Francis pleaded the English case during his meeting with the Pope at Marseilles in October 1533
  • The King had never intended to observe the terms of the Treaty of Madrid. Fresh allies were found in Italy, notably Pope Clement VII
  • Turkish armies were threatening the eastern imperial marches. In his league with the Sultan Sulaiman he inaugurated one of the most enduring of French policies
  • a vast Turkish army had erupted into Hungary and overwhelmed the Emperor’s Hungarian allies
  • The infidel was regarded with mingled curiosity and horror
  • The Ottoman alliance appalled the conscience of Europe; but the King found it difficult to resist the temptation offered by the expeditions of Charles V to North Africa and the campaigns of his brother, Ferdinand, upon the Bohemian border
  • Although the King’s diplomacy with the Papacy, the Turk, England and the Princes of the Empire, contained many failures and much duplicity, it was pursued with a realism and a flexibility that offset his lack of strategic ability in war
  • By June 1538, when Paul III personally negotiated the truce of Nice, it appeared possible to achieve a genuine reconciliation
  • The significant campaigns of the future were not to be fought in Italy, but on the frontiers of France
  • The altered texture of French society in the first half of the sixteenth century was, in part, a response to the demands of the monarchy
  • Francis I never summoned a full Estates-General
  • In July 1527, in the presence of the King, the Parlement heard from the lips of secretary Robertet a statement so imperious and unequivocal that it represented an unprecedented declaration of monarchical absolutism. The King, like Louis XII before him, was called the father of his people; but, whereas Louis earned his patriarchal status through his benevolence, Francis claimed it as his right
  • His sister, Marguerite, now Queen of Navarre, was scarcely less influential
  • Factions long concealed within the court became more apparent after the death of the Dauphin in 1536
  • The plain and modest Queen Eleonore, sister of Charles V, whom the King had married five years after the death of Claude in 1525, became the centre of the pro-Hapsburg party at the court
  • He held the office once occupied by de Boisy and, finally, that which the traitor Bourbon had forfeited
  • the King’s death in 1547
  • In the last years of the reign the glories of the new monarchy seemed tarnished and outworn
  • bowed to the zealots of the Sorbonne and aped the gallant ways of his youth
manhefnawi

Austria - Early reign of Joseph II, 1780-85 | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • Maria Theresa died in 1780 and was followed by Joseph II. The problem of succession had caused Maria Theresa considerable grief in her early years, and she had vowed to create not only governmental institutions to protect her lands but familial ones as well, most notably by making certain that there would never again be a shortage of Habsburgs to rule the monarchy (after her marriage, the official name of the family changed from Habsburg to Habsburg-Lorraine
  • Maria Theresa kept most of the authority in her hands
  • frequent clashes between the strong-willed mother and the strong-willed son
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  • While Maria Theresa regarded Protestants as heretics and Jews as the embodiment of the Antichrist
  • Joseph’s most radical measures in church matters were the Edict of Toleration (1781) and his monastic reforms.
  • When Joseph became sole ruler, he was determined to implement his own policies
  • Another of Joseph’s famous reforms was the abolition of serfdom, which was not quite a total abolition but certainly changed considerably the status of the peasants.
  • Toward the end of Joseph’s reign, there was indeed increasing dissatisfaction. Religious elements were unhappy with many of his reforms
  • To add to the Hungarians’ horror, Joseph refused to submit to a coronation in Hungary lest he have to swear to uphold laws that he did not wish to, and then he had the sacred crown of the kingdom moved to Vienna.
  • By 1787 resistance to Joseph and his government was intensifying. One Habsburg possession that had escaped reforms during the reign of Maria Theresa and Joseph was the Austrian Netherlands,
  • Joseph’s reforms might not have generated as much opposition had it not been for his foreign policy.
  • Kaunitz firmly believed that Austria could check Prussia only with the help of Russia. Consequently, in 1781 he and Joseph negotiated with Catherine the Great a pact that provided for Russian help for Austria in case of war with Prussia
  • In exchange, Austria promised to help Russia in case of war with the Ottoman Empire.
  • Catherine then engaged in a series of provocations toward the Turks that resulted in 1787 in a declaration of war by the sultan. Although Joseph had no real desire to participate in this war, his treaty obligations with Russia required him to do so
  • In 1788 the Austrians waited for the Russians to take the offensive in Romanian lands—which they failed to do—only to be themselves attacked by the Turks and sent scurrying north from the Danube in an effort to reconsolidate their lines
  • Faced with these difficulties, Joseph revoked many of the reforms that he had enacted earlier
  • he consented to return the crown to Hungary and to his own coronation as that country’s king. The crowning never came to pass, however, for Joseph died the following month.
manhefnawi

Francis I, the Greatest French King | History Today - 0 views

  • 'This Big Boy will ruin everything', so Louis XII of France is reported to have said, on more than one occasion, of his own son-in-law and putative successor: not exactly a ringing endorsement
  • Yet, 500 years after his accession, if there is one king of France before Louis XIV that the French people remember – and with affection – it is Francis I
  • Francis was betrothed to Louis XII's eldest daughter, Claude de France, in May 1506. Two years later he moved to court, was acknowledged as heir presumptive with the courtesy title of 'dauphin' and soon attracted attention throughout France and beyond
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  • Francis married Claude in May 1514 and, in October of the same year, Louis XII married the young and beautiful Mary Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII. Had she conceived a son, all Francis' hopes would have been dashed. Yet, less than three months after his marriage, Louis XII was dead and the 20-year-old Francis was proclaimed king of France on January 1st, 1515
  • He inherited Charles VIII's claim to the Kingdom of Naples, which included Sicily and most of southern Italy. He claimed certain territories along the ill-defined border between France, the Netherlands and the Holy Roman Empire, whose Habsburg overlord was the future emperor, Charles V. Francis also wanted the city of Tournai, conquered by Henry VIII in 1513, to be returned to France. For roughly 20 of his 32 years as king, Francis was preparing for war, active in it, or managing its consequences in expensive and convoluted diplomacy
  • Barely nine months after his accession, in September 1515, Francis conquered Milan, after defeating a Swiss mercenary army at the battle of Marignano
  • He secured this prominence through peace treaties and alliances, culminating in his inclusion in the 'Universal Peace' of 1518, agreed in the name of Pope Leo X but actually organised under the auspices of Henry VIII, who felt a keen and life-long rivalry with Francis
  • Francis had hoped to impress and intimidate Henry into committing himself as an ally against Charles V, whose power in Italy unnerved Francis
  • appreciated that securing and maintaining the support of interest groups, particularly the nobility, was vital to effective kingship
  • He made an ill-advised pre-emptive strike against imperial territory in the Netherlands and Spain in early 1521
  • Disappointed by Charles V's lack of support for his own claim to France, Henry once more turned the tables on the emperor. A renewed Anglo-French alliance enabled Francis to repudiate the treaty of Madrid and led indirectly to a more acceptable agreement
  • Francis maintained peace with his English counterpart until 1542
  • He never finally secured Milan from Charles but he did, nevertheless, maintain his dynastic rights against the emperor's potentially overwhelming power. This he did in part by allying with the papacy, with various Italian states, with the heretical Henry VIII and with the Ottoman sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. These last two alliances scandalised Catholic Europe, but keeping Charles' enemies close for as long as he could assisted Francis in projecting royal power well beyond the borders of the French state throughout his reign
  • Another important factor in Francis' capacity to project this power was his widespread reform of crown fiscal administration after his return from Spain in 1526. These were prompted first and foremost by the need to pay huge debts incurred in the war and in securing peace with Henry and Charles
  • His sale of judicial offices set up long-lasting difficulties for the monarchy
  • Francis was taken to Spain as the emperor's prisoner. France was left vulnerable to its enemies and to internal dissent, which Louise de Savoie, as her son's regent, had much to do to overcome while trying to secure Francis' release. She immediately sought the assistance of the English and sympathetic Italian states, who were wary of the immense power of Charles V in the wake of his triumph at Pavia
  • Daily life there was never as elaborately choreographed under Francis as it would be under his successors. He is perhaps second only to Henry IV in his reputation for informality and spontaneity as a French king.
  • The 'big boy' had come close at times to ruining everything, but had also made France a power to be reckoned with and made his own mark on its history
  • Under Francis, the court of France was at the height of its prestige and international influence during the 16th century.
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