A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Nine The Renaissance and the Reformation Chapter III The European States From the Middle of the Fifteenth to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century 1. International Politics p587 ...The fifty years which had elapsed since the end of the Hundred Years' War had sufficed to revolutionize the traditional order of politics. The conclusion of the great struggle between France and England merely confronted the European community with unexpected problems. While in the West new powers had made their appearance -- the Burgundian State on the shores of the North Sea, and to the south of the Pyrenees the Spanish State, henceforth including Castile and Aragon in a single monarchical bloc -- in the East the Turkish Empire was threatening the Christian world with a new Islamic invasion... p588 The Turkish invasion was undoubtedly the greatest misfortune to afflict Europe since the end of the Roman Empire. Wherever the invaders advanced they brought with them economic ruin and moral decadence. All those peoples which were subjected to the Turkish yoke -- Bulgars, Serbs, Rumanians, Albanians, and Greeks -- relapsed into a state verging upon barbarism, from which they never emerged until the beginning of the 19th century... Between the Islamism of the Turks ... and the Christianity of their subjects no reconciliation was possible... With the exception of a portion of the Albanian people, not one of the nations subjected to the Sultan was converted to Islam, and for that matter the Turks made no effort to convert them... their religion, by depriving them of all rights of whatever kind, helped to ensure their servitude... The only means of successfully resisting the Turkish offensive would have been a general European league combining the financial and military resources of the Continent for a period of several years... But the States of the 15th century were materially incapable of such an effort... [the most powerful States] left the burden of the conflict to those who were directly involved. p589 ...By uniting their forces, the Republic of Venice, the Habsburgs of Austria, and the kings of Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland could have opposed [?] an effective barrier to the enemy. But instead of doing this, each State allowed itself to be guided by its ambitions or its interests; they never acted with one common accord... p590 ...This battle [Mohacz (1526)] was a magnificent triumph for Austria, for it gave her the long-coveted crowns of Bohemia and Hungary, at last assured by the victory of the Turks... [Louis II, their king, was killed at Mohacz.] Soliman... advanced without difficulty as far as Pest, and in 1529 he reached the walls of Vienna, which the inclement weather and sickness in his army prevented him from capturing. [I believe this is when coffee first reached Europe.] However, he retained all Hungary as far as the Enns... p592 Under... [Soliman's] reign (1520-1556) the Turkish Empire covered the largest area it was ever to attain. The shores of the Black Sea had already been occupied under Selim I (1512-1520), and the Tartars of the Crimea were subjected to tribute. Rhodes, in the Aegean, was conquered in 1522, and the Knights of St John, who had heroically defended it, removed to Malta, whither Charles V had summoned them, and which they were to retain until the French Revolution. Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt were annexed (1512-1520) [why aren't we focusing on Selim I? Oh, Vienna.] Algiers and Tunis, conquered by the renegade corsair Barbarossa, became the outposts of the Grand Seigneur in the eastern Mediterranean... [But in the middle of the 16th century] The moment of its apogee was also the moment of its decline... [Isn't that implicit in the word "apogee?"] Financial disorder and fiscal oppression, with all their political, economic, and moral consequences, made their appearance in Turkey directly her expansion was checked... as a whole, the history of Turkey after the death of Soliman II was that of an incurable decline. She would have disappeared long ago as a State if the European powers had not safeguarded her existence, because they could not agree upon the partition of the spoils... Did not Francis I seek the help of Soliman II against Charles V? p593 This alliance, so monstrous at first sight, was only one of the consequences of the political disorder of Christianity since the middle of the 15th century. Pirenne has many opinions about Turkey -- currently one of the Central Powers. What I've quoted here seems to me to be true, but it's amazing what he's left out. Pirenne's written enough about coinage -- minting and debasement for example -- and about economies in general that you would think he would be alive to the consequences of the influx of American silver starting during the 16th century. The Ottoman regime, so brilliantly buttressed as a dynasty and in so many other ways, seems to have been unable to respond and recover from the devaluation of silver coinage. She continued to collect the usual taxes, yet was able to buy less and less with the proceeds. And then there's the geopolitical reality that there's really no excuse for Pirenne not being aware of. Like Germany, the Ottoman Empire was located in the center, not on an edge. The Turks could dominate the Habsburgs, or they could dominate the Persians, but it was next to impossible for them to do both at the same time. Austria and Persia were the same kind of natural allies, versus the Ottomans, that France and the Ottomans were vs Habsburg Austria. (Or that France and Russia were vs Germany in the Great War.) Yet another instance of an empire being faced with greater and greater inertia the more extensive its conquests extend. And this contradicts Pirenne's claim that it was their failure to continue expanding that was the problem. You can't be strong everywhere, and every conquest gives you more places to defend. I'm going to really abbreviate the brief history of England and France. p594 ...since the end of the 12th century... [France's] foreign policy had always been determined by the vital necessity of expelling England from the soil of France... England was not only the essential enemy: she was the only enemy of France. She had no enemies on the Continent, or only such as were incited against her by England... Now, directly the Hundred Years' War came to and end this state of affairs ceased for good... Henceforth she would have to fight upon her land frontiers, and by a complete reversal of tradition England would never attack her in future except by entering into a coalition with the European enemies of France. The formation of the Burgundian State marked the beginning of this new orientation of political history... ...The Low Countries emerged from their feudal subdivision to unite themselves, under a single dynasty, in a single State, the common ancestor of Belgium and modern Holland... flourishing cities, famed throughout the world for their cloth industry or their commerce, one of which, Bruges, had been for three centuries the great international port of the Occident, while another, Antwerp, was entering upon an even more astonishing period of prosperity... But the wealthier and more powerful this new neighbor became, the more dangerous was it to France. Whether it would or not, it was a permanent menace. From Amiens its troops, in two days' march, could appear under the walls of Paris; and above all, owing to its situation it imposed itself upon England as a natural ally... p597 [After Charles VII, Duke of Burgundy, is killed fighting the Swiss near Nancy, French King Louis XI is about to dismember the Burgundy State in the Low Countries when] ...In order to escape from the attempts of Louis XI, ... [Marie of Burgundy] offered her hand to the Austrian. [Maximilian of the House Habsburg] The opportunity was too good to miss. Maximilian hastened to her side, and the marriage was concluded at Bruge on August 28th, 1477. This was an expedient hastily devised under the pressure of necessity; yet never has a political marriage exercised such an influence over the future of Europe. By bringing the young Burgundian State into the hybrid complex of the Habsburg domain, not only did it condemn it to suffer henceforth the repercussions of the various schemes of the most ambitious and greedy of dynasties, but at the same time it opened between France and the House of Habsburg the long conflict which came to an end only in the 19th century. [Why not include Austria's role in The Great War?] ...her only purpose was to keep them [the Low Countries] for herself, and it was always her endeavor to separate them from Germany... For the interests of the princes and those of the peoples to be completely divergent has always, in any period of history, been disastrous. Of this the history of the House of Habsburg is the most striking proof. By its acquisition of the Low Countries it found itself drawn into that career of aggrandizement, in which nations were reckoned only as heritages and countries as domains, and which was to make the Habsburgs, down to our own days, the sworn enemy of all national aspirations and all public liberties. p600 ...Until... [the marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon (1469)] the Spanish kingdoms had been too weak to intervene actively in the destinies of Europe... but the doubly national union of Ferdinand and Isabella, while it put an end to the long mutual conflict which was exhausting their kingdoms, enabled them also first to rally and then to subordinate the peoples to their power. So completely did they subject them to their guidance in every domain that assuredly, in no country and at no period of history, have sovereigns exercised so profound an influence. In the Spanish State, as established by them, Catholic and political sentiment were associated so completely that it was impossible to dissever them. The monarchy summoned to its aid the old religious fanaticism of its subjects, and in their eyes its cause was identified with that of the Faith. Its zeal for orthodoxy had rendered it profoundly national, and now, surrounded by the most intolerant of peoples, its intolerance was the instrument of its success. From 1480 onwards the Inquisition, entrusted with the task of watching over the converted Jews (maranos), became, without losing its ecclesiastical character, a State institution, since the State appointed the Grand Inquisitor and there was no appeal to Rome against sentences which he pronounced. The figure of Torquemada is inseparable from the figures of Ferdinand and Isabella. All three were sincere in their hatred of heresy, and while the Crown confiscated for its own benefit the property of the victims who died at the stake, enriching itself by their agonies, it employed this wealth only in fresh enterprises, which were as profitable to itself as they were to the Church. [I had forgotten, if I ever knew, that the Spanish Inquisition predates the Reformation.] The Holy War, long interrupted, was resumed against the Moors, so that the final constitution of the national territory seemed like the result of a Crusade. But it was not enough to fight the Musulmans; the Jews, no less than they, were the enemies of Christ. In 1492, the very year of the conquest of Granada, they were expelled from the State. This conquest and this expulsion swelled the treasury to overflowing, and provided the necessary resources for further political and religious expansion. While Christopher Columbus set forth to discover a new world to subject and convert, the expeditions against the coasts of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunis seemed to announce that all the forces of Spain were about to league themselves against Islam... But having arrived at this decisive moment of her history, Spain turned aside. She turned aside from the Holy War and allowed herself to be involved in the dynastic ambitions of her princes. Without understanding that she was renouncing her mission, she proceeded to concentrate all the energies which she had acquired in her secular conflicts with the Crescent in order to subject the Christian Continent to her princes; only in the end to collapse, ruined and exhausted by two hundred years of effort, almost as barren as the neighboring shores of that Morocco whose certain and profitable conquest she had sacrificed to her sovereigns' dreams of universal dominion. p603 [Not going to go into detail about the dynastic struggle in Italy but...] Regarded against the entire background of French history, the Italian expeditions of Charles VIII and Louis XII had the appearance of mere excursions. They were not related to any national necessity. Inspired purely and simply by dynastic ambition, they were "wars of magnificence"; which is to say, useless wars... But the policy which they inaugurated... had no other consequence than a futile waste of men and money. Their only lasting result was that they oriented Spain toward Italy, and so, as an inevitable consequence, produced a rapprochement with the House of Habsburg. It seems to me that Pirenne is confusing himself here by thinking "Spain" when he should be thinking "Ferdinand of Aragon." As the Romans -- and even the Carthaginians -- could have told you, nothing makes more sense than to unite the countries on either side of the Western Mediterranean Sea. Pirenne is right that including the South shore would also have made sense. It was evident... that between Maximilian, fighting against France in the Low Countries, and the Catholic kings, fighting against France in the Kingdom of Naples, a political alliance and its inevitable consequence, a dynastic alliance, was imminent. In 1496 the double marriage of Don Juan, the heir of Ferdinand and Isabella, with Margaret, the daughter of Maximilian, and of Philip, the son of Maximilian, with the Infanta Juana bound the two families closely together... once more Nature favored the Habsburgs... The successive deaths of Don Juan (1497), and of his elder sister Isabella (1498), and of Isabella's son, Don Miguel (1500), resulted in the inheritance by Philip and Juana of the succession to the Spanish kingdoms. Six years later Philip was unexpectedly carried off by inflammation of the lungs, bequeathing his rights to his son Charles, then barely seven years of age... No one expects the luck of the Habsburgs. (Monty Python reference.) Charles V was one of those very rare characters of modern history whose name was to become universally known. [I've always associated the beginning of "modern" history with Frederick the Great, or at least that century.] He became very nearly as famous as Charlemagne or Napoleon. Yet it was not to his genius but to his heritage that he owned his eminence. With no more that mediocre abilities, he was raised by circumstances to such a position that only Charlemagne before him, and Napoleon after him, exercised such an influence over Europe. He was the meeting point of three dynasties and three histories: those of Austria, Burgundy, and Spain. The grandson of Maximilian of Habsburg and Marie of Burgundy, [Valois?] and also of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, he found himself in possession of so many portions of Europe that it seemed as though his power would finally extend over the whole Continent... And to all this must be added the new world which the conquistadors had laid at his feet. Fernando Cortez made himself master of Mexico between 1519 and 1527, and Pizarro of Peru between 1531 and 1541. The astonishing conquest of South America was completed before Charles died... Its consequences became manifest only under his son... At the moment when Spain fell into his hands through the death of Ferdinand (January 23rd, 1516), and Austria through the death of Maximilian (January 12th, 1519) he knew no more of the one country than of the other. Educated in the Low Countries by Belgian seigeneurs, who, regarded him merely as "their natural prince," did not even think to have him taught German -- and he never did learn it -- nor Spanish, he so shocked the Castilians when he appeared among them in 1517, speaking only French and surrounded by Flemish and Walloon favorites, that they welcomed him by the revolt of the Comuneros. But it did not take him long to adopt the distant, cold, and impersonal attitude which seemed necessary in a prince destined to reign over such a variety of countries and peoples... he did not really belong to any of the peoples whose crowns he inherited, and he found it easy to treat them all with an impartiality which arose from his indifference. Insensible to all national feeling, he thought of nothing but the greatness of his house... There was a striking contrast between him and his contemporaries, Francis I and Henry VIII, who seemed the very incarnation of France and England... p605 ...His policy was not and could not be that of a King of Spain; it was and it had to be the policy of a Habsburg, and Spain, under his guidance, devoted her energies to the realization of schemes that were not only alien but opposed to her true interests. p606 ...Hemmed in on every side by the domains of Charles... France found herself in danger of being stifled by an adversary who, once he had triumphed over her, would exercise universal dominion over Europe... ...the defeat of the King of France at Pavia (February 25th, 1525)... had startled the whole world, and France now appeared as the champion of European liberty. Pope Clement VII, in order to free Italy from the Spanish yoke, made approaches to France, and after the sack of Rome by the German troops of the Emperor [Charles V] he formally entered into an alliance with that country. Henry VIII did the same... the outbreak of Protestantism in Germany, and the invasion of Hungary by the Turks, ensured the neutrality of the Empire. Equilibrium was re-established. In 1529 the Peace of Cambrai restored Burgundy to France, who on her side renounced her lapsed suzerainty over Flanders and Artois, as well as her claims in Italy... [This peace didn't hold] ...in order to wage war upon the Catholic king [Charles] who had recently sacked Rome, the Most Christian king, allied himself with heretics [Lutherans] and Musulmans! The Peace of Crespy... (1544), left matters in statu quo... [Charles uses this peace to defeat the Lutheran princes.] In order to obtain the assistance of the successor to Francis I -- Henri II, who in his own country was cruelly persecuting the heretics -- they offered him the three bishoprics, Metz, Toul, and Verdun (1552). This finally directed French policy to one of the aims which it had envisaged... since the 13th century with a view to restoring the frontier traced in 843 by the Treaty of Verdun... Before abdicating... [Charles V] concluded with his adversary the Truce of Vaucelles (1556). p608 ...The succession which transmitted to his son Philip II comprised, in addition to Spain, the Kingdom of Naples, the Milanese State, the Franche Comte of Burgundy, and the Low Countries, without speaking of his immense possessions in the New World. Italy, subjected in the north and the south, bade farewell to the dreams of liberation... Italy, until the modern era, was to be no more than a geographical expression... The States of the Pope, and those of the Venetian Republic, alone preserved their independence... As for the Low Countries, enlarged by the final annexation of the Duchy of Guelders and the Frisian provinces, they were henceforth to constitute in the north of Europe the "citadel of steel" of the Spanish kings. The Imperial dignity had served him [Charles] only to assure the future of his house. He had not only taken the Low Countries from Germany; he had even obtained for his brother Ferdinand, in 1521, the crown of the King of the Romans, and had ceded to him the patrimonial duchies of Austria, which together with the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary that fell to Ferdinand in 1526, finally safeguarded the Habsburg power in Central Europe. Divided into two branches, the family none the less remained united by its dynastic interests... 2. Internal Politics This section seems very repetitive to me. Pirenne is arguing that both the Renaissance and the Reformation contributed to the strengthening of the great kings. p612 The Reformation, in fact, at all events in its beginnings, shared no less than the Renaissance in this conspiracy of all the great social forces on behalf of the sovereign power. Whether the princes protected it or fought against it, they none the less profited by it. And with that we end. Damn the Armistice! I wonder if anyone had ever considered taking up where Pirenne left off? This must have been frustrating even for Pirenne, as the history of the Low Countries was just getting really interesting at this point. The Wars of Religion were about to begin, while the Wars of Dynastic Domination (or against Dynastic Domination) were only getting started. Likewise, international maritime trade and commerce was about to explode. And, once again, the profits of that trade would generate unprecedented wealth and capital formation. In general, the history of Europe was about to jump into high gear and to become the history of the world. Already, though Pirenne hasn't gotten into this at all, European navigation has become the dominant vector for change on the planet. Initially as a vector for disease to and from the Americas, but soon as a vector for the dissemination of biological diversity (those potatoes, again, plus all the other plants and animals that would become established in new homes after a voyage inside the hulls of European ships). What I would most like to see continued, however, is the history of ideas, religion, dynasties, cities, and capitalism... is that asking so much?
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Nine The Renaissance and the Reformation Chapter II The Reformation 1. Lutheranism Continued p559 ...it was the weakness of the monarchical power [in Germany], and the backward and particularistic character of its institutions that saved Lutheranism, or at all events assured it of its rapid and easy diffusion, compared with the formidable conflicts in which Calvinism, in more advanced and powerful States, was involved from its very beginning. p560 [Charles V is thwarted in Germany, unable to take on a German religious war at the same time he is at war with France.]...But what he could not do in the Empire he could do in the Low Countries... As early as 1520 he had promulgated a first "bill" against heresy... This was only a prelude to what he had in mind... to introduce the Spanish Inquisition into his Burgundian provinces... until the end of his reign, a series of more and more violent and merciless "bills" were promulgated, which even went to the length of compelling the lay courts to prosecute and sentence to death persons who, not being theologians, had discussed questions of faith, or who, being acquainted with heretics, did not denounce them. ...it was reserved for the Low Countries to furnish the Reformation with its first martyrs. On July 1st, 1523, two Augustinians of Antwerp, Henri Voes and Jan van Essen, were burned alive in the great market-place of Brussels... p561 ...he [Luther] was a revolutionary only in religious matters, and his furious attacks upon the authority of Rome were in strange contrast with his docility in respect of the secular authorities. But when it reached the heart of the masses his propaganda was bound, before long, to awaken the confused emotions born of extreme poverty; a formidable force, which, once unleashed, escapes all guidance, obeying only itself. Edmund Burke would understand what Pirenne is saying here. Also the government of China, which always has recollections of the Boxer Rebellion in mind. p562 ...In the German art and literature of the 16th century the Bauer was treated with extraordinary disdain. He was apparently regarded merely as a disgusting or ridiculous brute; where he was concerned, anything was permissible... Against the feudal Burg which oppressed them the poor people of each seigneurie were quite defenseless... Religion was the most ancient and the most sacred of habits... the very foundation of existence, and they saw it attacked with impunity, derided and defied. Their dread of and respect for the clergy disappeared. How then should they continue to dread and respect their lords? [This sounds like Dostoevsky] The abuses of which the Church was accused were much less obvious to them than the injustice which they had to suffer at the hands of the nobles... Moved by the same passions, they became conscious of their strength, and in 1528 [this can't be right. Wiki says 1524-1525. Wiki also says the Anabaptists were behind this insurrection as well as the one in Holland.] the first riots suddenly revealed the magnitude of a peril which no one had foreseen because it had been so utterly disdained. The movement rapidly spread through the whole of Southern Germany... Their demands, which were advanced in the "Twelve Articles of the Peasants," were far more social than religious. They called for a return to the Gospel, but above all they demanded liberty, liberty as they understood it, which meant the liberty to enjoy the free use of forest and field, and to rid themselves of the illegal corvees and the arbitrary tyranny of the landlords... the terror which they excited paralyzed all resistance... counts, princes, and Electors humbled themselves to the extent of negotiating with the insurgent masses and agreeing to the "Twelve Articles." But already these seemed insufficient to hopes excited and passions fired by success. Once more the old dreams of a mystical communism, which had lingered amongst the people ever since the Middle Ages, had taken possession of their minds. Thomas Munzer, in Thuringia, excited the fanaticism of the peasants by the promise of a world of love and justice, in conformity with the Divine will, whose realization demanded the massacre of the unrighteous. The effect of such preaching upon simple and violent souls was to transform the agrarian revolt into a sort of mystical Terror... The nobles united their forces against those of the peasants. The peasants accepted battle, and on May 15th, 1525, they were cut to pieces at Frankenhausen. The conquerors were pitiless in proportion to the terror they had suffered... The yoke imposed upon the peasants was heavier than ever, and henceforth they were to bear it with docile resignation, until the beginning of the 19th century. p563 The crisis of Anabaptism was even greater proof of the religious confusion into which the too sudden disappearance of ecclesiastical authority had plunged the soul of the people. Accepting Luther's preaching literally, the first Anabaptists, who before 1525 had made their appearance in Switzerland, claimed that not only their faith, but society itself must be reformed in accordance with Holy Scripture. Since the Bible contained the Word of God they must conform to it strictly in all things. What need was there of a Church or State? Obedience to the Word of God should suffice to save men's souls as well as to regulate their mutual relations... The popular form of Manichaeism, based on the opposition of flesh and spirit, had never completely disappeared since the days of the Albigenses. Now it was revived, mingled with the apocalyptic visions and the mystical tendencies which had become so widespread since the 14th century. The religious believed that they were called upon to create a new world, in which all things would be fraternally held in common, wives as well as property. This notion found very ready acceptance in the lower classes of the urban populations, among the journeymen of the guilds and the wage-earning workers in the nascent capitalistic industries. Spreading by contagion among the manual workers, it soon reached the Low Countries, where industry... had prepared a most fertile soil for such a movement. It is not surprising that its adepts were savagely prosecuted by the public authorities. Catholics and Lutherans vied with one another in their ferocious suppression of this revolutionary heresy... Utopian though it had been in the beginning, Anabaptism now became a doctrine of hatred and conflict. The poor looked to it not only for deliverance, but for divergence... About 1530 a sort of mystico-social delirium seems to have seized upon Holland. Nearly all the lower classes of the cities became a prey to it... It was from Amsterdam and its suburbs that those prophets came, in 1534, who, taking advantage of the fact that the city of Munster had rebelled against its bishop, went thither to establish the "Kingdom of God." At no other moment of history, perhaps, has there been a more striking example of the lengths to which the masses may be driven by passion, religious illusion, and the hope of realizing social justice. For twelve months, blockaded by the troops of the neighboring princes, Protestant and Catholics, the Anabaptists of Munster organized... their "New Jerusalem." Polygamy and communism were instituted and practiced by the whole population. For a moment a mystical and socialistic Utopia became a reality. The city was taken by storm on June 24th, 1535, and this access of collective madness was quenched in blood. Not until our own days were the iron cages brought down from the tower of the cathedral in which the charred bones of the prophet John of Leyden and the Burgomaster Knipperdalling had so long swung in the wind... Until almost the close of the 16th century its [Anabaptism's] revolutionary ferment continued to work in the hearts of the people... But among the majority of its adherents it reverted to the evangelical simplicity of its beginnings, and it is in this form that it has been perpetuated down to our own days in the heart of the Protestant world of Europe and America. p565 The Peasant War, and the tragedy of Anabaptism, resulted in turning the humanists and the Erasmians away from Luther; horrified by so much violence, they moved in the direction of the Church. Luther was no less dismayed. He violently attacked the rebels and pitilessly applauded their defeat. This was the end of the popular tendencies which he had revealed in the beginning. It seemed to him that the only means of saving the Reformation was to place it under the protection and control of the princes... With the exception of the Dukes of Bavaria, who were as firmly Catholic as the Habsburgs, they [the princes] were inclined to make their faith conform to their interests... by proclaiming themselves, in their own principalities, the heads of their territorial Churches, they acquired a twofold authority and influence over their subjects. Such were the wholly mundane considerations which determined the conduct of these defenders of the new faith. Of all religious confessions, Lutheranism is the only one which... offered itself to them as a profitable business transaction. p566 The elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse first trod the path which others were soon to follow. In 1525 the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Albert of Brandenberg, supported the Reformation so that he might secularize the Order and transform it, to his own advantage, into a lay principality. The Dukes of Anhalt, Luneburg, and Friesland, and the Margraves of Brandenberg and Bayreuth, also declared for the Gospel. After its beginnings in the heart of the bourgeoisie in the South of Germany, Lutheranism thus became, through the adhesion of the princes, the religion of the North. For the confession of the princess determined that of their subjects, just as formerly, during the Great Schism, it had determined their obedience to the Pope of Rome or the Pope of Avignon. The question of conscience was therefore treated as a question of discipline. One would hardly have expected this of a religion that proclaimed justification by faith and saw a priest in every Christian. There is surely a contradiction here, which can only be explained by the necessity, of which Luther was becoming more and more conscious, of safeguarding the future of his followers by the protection of the temporal power. As for the people, they allowed their religion to be imposed upon them by the temporal authority with a docility which sufficiently proves the truth of the old literary cliche concerning Germanic individualism. The most sacred convictions of the individual were at stake, yet there was no rebellion, no resistance. The German Catholics seem to have adopted Lutheranism in obedience to the commands of their princes as readily as the Franks of the 5th century renounced their gods when Clovis was baptized. [Funny, I don't recall hearing about this in Lutheran Sunday school] We must conclude... that their faith was not very fervent, but another reason for their attitude may be found in the complete stagnation of political life in Germany. No one dreamed of contesting the rights of the princes. The people were accustomed to obeying their commands... They were... allowed, without protest, to put themselves in the place of the bishops, appoint superintendents of the clergy, suppress the ecclesiastical foundations, close the monasteries, secularizes their properties, and organize the schools: in short each of them, in his own principality, replaced the universal Church, subject to the Pope, by a territorial Church (Landeskirche) subject to the secular power. So the princes achieved what the Empire had always failed to achieve? p567 ... [Charles V's] war against Francis I kept him out of Germany and compelled him to bide his time. His brother Ferdinand, to whom he had ceded the hereditary domains of the House of Habsburg, and who represented him in his absence, was himself too occupied by the attacks of the Turks in the valley of the Danube, and the difficulty of getting the Hungarians to recognize him as the successor of their king Louis, who had perished in the battle of Mohacz (1526), to think of impeding the progress of the Reformation... In 1526 the Diet of Spire decreed that pending the arrival of the Emperor all could claim freedom of action in the matters judged by the Edict of Worms. When three years later Charles attempted to make it revoke this decision, five princes and certain of the cities immediately formulated a protest, and from that time onward the partisans of the new faith were known by the name of Protestants. Again, I don't think our Sunday school teachers mentioned that we were protesting the rights of princes to control their local Churches. I have to note here one of the most puzzling events of this confusing time. In 1527 an Imperial army -- commanded by Charles III, Duke of Bourbon, but fighting for the Emperor Charles V -- sacked Rome and took the Pope hostage because they had run out of funds. p568 It was not until 1530, at the Diet which Charles had convoked at Augsburg after his coronation, that the inevitable break occurred. The theological debate, in the course of which Melanchthon read aloud the "Augsburg confession," could only have the result of confirming each party in its own belief. It was too late to hope for a reconciliation... The Protestant princes quitted the assembly, of which the majority, encouraged by the Emperor, solemnly ratified the Edict of Worms, condemned all religious innovations, and ordained a general return to the Church. ...In 1531... [the Protestant princes] formed a confederation at Smalkalde, in association with a certain number of the cities... In the following year... [Charles] proclaimed the Nuremburg Peace of Religion, forbidding any religious war until a Council, or the impending Diet, had assembled... Philip of Hesse, the most turbulent... [of the princes] profited by the situation to do his utmost to undermine the power of the House of Habsburg. Supported by the subsidies of the King of France, he restored the Duke of Wurttemberg to the possession of his Duchy, which Ferdinand had united with Austria, and Protestantism was immediately introduced into the Dutchy (1534)... Already [before 1542?] the Archbishop of Cologne had expressed his intention of going over to the Reformation. The archbishoprics of Magdeburg and Halberstadt were secularized. At last, having concluded peace with France at Crespy (1544), Charles V was able to attend to affairs in Germany... ...nothing was easier than to secure the neutrality or even the co-operation of many of... [the Protestant princes] against their co-religionists by promises of aggrandizement. The Lutheran Maurice of Saxony won particular distinction as the ally of the Catholic sovereign in this war upon the Lutherans. The Spanish bands of the Duke of Alva did the rest. The battle of Muhlberg annihilated the League of Smalkalde (April 24th, 1547). The Electorate of Johann Friedrich of Saxony was given to Maurice. Philip of Hesse made his submission. In the same year Charles made the Diet of Augsburg accept an interim, which, pending the decision of the Council, established the religious position of the reformed estates. p569 It was not the triumph of Catholicism, it was the triumph of the Emperor that terrified the vanquished. They were much more afraid of falling under the yoke of Charles, and losing their princely autonomy, than of once more submitting to the jurisdiction of Rome. [Now joined by Maurice, the German princes]...did not hesitate to buy the aid of the Catholic King of France, Henri II... By the Treaty of Chambord (1552) they recognized his right to annex the three Western bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun... Once again, then, Lutheranism was saved by France. Charles, obliged to hasten to the Lorraine frontier, left it [Lutheranism] in possession of the field, and never, until his abdication, had he an opportunity of returning to the attack. As Catholic as himself, his brother and successor Ferdinand, still menaced by the Turks in Hungary, hastened to pacify Germany. The Peace of Religion concluded by the Diet of Augsburg on September 25th, 1555, settled the problem. It acknowledged the jus reformandi of the princes -- that is to say, their right to embrace the Reformation -- whether they had already done so, or whether they wished to do so in the future. Subjects were required to profess the religion of their princes, except that they were allowed to emigrate after selling their possessions. An exception was established in favor of the ecclesiastical principalities... There the prince's change of confession could only result in his abdication. p570 Thus conceived, the Peace of Augsburg appeared to be much less a peace of religion than a mere political compromise. It would have been impossible to show more absolute disrespect for liberty of conscience... The privilege of a free profession of belief was admitted only in the case of crowned heads; the masses had no privilege but that of obedience... the new religion was no more inclined than the old to suffer dissidence in its midst... ...The majestic unity of Christendom was officially shattered. [he means Roman Christendom] The Church, because it had not reformed itself with sufficient promptitude, had to watch the erection of a rival Church. Hitherto it had mercilessly crushed heresy, and henceforth it would be forced to suffer its presence. The fact was that the secular power, ceasing to fight for the Church, had itself gone over to the heretics. Not only did it recognize heresy as the religious truth, but it even profited by the heretics' need of its protection in order to impose upon it an ecclesiastical organization of which it was the master. With Lutheranism... it was a State Church that made its appearance, rather than a State religion... Through the clergy it would obtain that control over education which had hitherto evaded it. From the 17th century onwards it would make education compulsory, and its functions would be extended -- we can divine with what benefit to itself -- to the formation and control of ideas. p571 Obedience to the prince was inculcated as effectively by the pastors as obedience to the Pope by the Jesuits. The civil power benefited by the progress of the new faith in proportion as it gained empire over men's minds. Discipline, respect for authority, and belief in power were among the characteristics which were finally transmitted to modern Germany... it was the new faith that rendered possible such a State as Prussia: that is a State in which the virtues of the subject, the official, and the soldier coincide, but where we shall look in vain for the virtues of the citizen.
Juneteenth
I had to explain to one of our young workers what "Juneteenth" was about. This was the first time we had worked the event, and there was not much to do. They shut down Fillmore Street through what was the heart of the African-American section of the Western Addition, after the Japanese were shipped off to the camps and workers from the South were brought in to work in the shipyards. When I lived a few blocks to the north, back in the 1970s, this area was a mix of vacant blocks -- cleared by our version of Robert Moses back in the 1960s to improve the City by displacing the Blacks -- some Projects, and a few surviving buildings from the old days. This is where I would come -- only in daylight -- to buy the day-old bread and pastries that were the key component of my modest diet at that time. It was actually a good German bakery, but they always had lots left over at the end of the day.
Since then, very slowly, the promised urban development did occur, without really revitalizing the neighborhood. This little festival is an attempt to create a new neighborhood identity, but there is still no "there" there. Curiously, with that "there" quote in mind, we were all comparing Juneteenth (unfavorably) with the Art and Soul Festival in Oakland. There there is still enough of a local African-American community to support the event. And Oakland's downtown redevelopment is actually further along, and slightly more successful than the Western Addition. We had a little more than three blocks to keep in order and I -- as usual -- had the comparatively busiest block on the north end, where all the food stands were located. And still it was ridiculously slow. A good day for me is when I can go through multiple rolls of compost bags. Yesterday I went through less than one and didn't fill my first bag until an hour or so into the event. Until near the end (when the vendors started surrendering their waste to us) I was going through more landfill bags than compost bags. Not because there was a huge amount of landfill, but because my boss has a dream... a dream that if we only put out little landfill containers, along with the larger compost and recycling containers, people will see what we are trying to do and put their waste in the correct place. It's kind of charming how she can still think this. But no. What actually happens is that we have to spend more time emptying out (and sorting the mix of stuff people continue to toss into) the little containers. Normally, with full size containers, I don't have to pull the landfill until the end of the day, but with the tiny containers I have to empty them every hour or so or they will start overflowing and the plastic and other junk will blow out into the street. As it was, our large boxes for compost and recycling were blowing over and down the street unless they were maybe a third full. I was carefully pulling just enough to keep them functioning without making them too light, but then someone from another section (they were even more bored than we were) would wander in and pull the entire bag just to give them something to do. Which would be fine except for the wind. I will NOT rage against the food vendors again. Except to say that they were at least as bad as usual. I mean, who would think a half full recycling container was the place to dump a huge amount of garlic? And less than an hour later, an even larger amount of noodles? Because there was also a Juneteenth parade that ended at the festival, there were some horses riding around the event. Or it would be more accurate to say that one particular guy was riding a horse around the area showing off. Unfortunately, no one thought to provide us with shovels. My favorite site all day was this ferocious, tiny dog who was barking and lunging at a horse.
Father's Day
Now it's Father's Day and I've come out to Lincoln Park to visit my dad's ashes. Turned out to be a beautiful day, which I wasn't expecting after listening carefully to the weather report this morning, while still in bed. I realized that my dad was my present age when he and my mother visited thirty years ago, when I was still working at the Apple Multimedia Lab and when I was interviewing for a job at Skywalker Ranch. At that time he had about ten years left to live. I actually don't remember much about him at that time -- I remember more of some of the later visits when we spent more time together and his lack of mobility was a constant problem. It is interesting how my list of questions I would love to ask him grows over time. And only some of them are questions about ME. Because I'm still dealing with a temporary crown, I avoided my favorite Burmese/Thai restaurant and their so tempting Tea Leaf Salad (with peanuts) for my favorite Thai restaurant (that always has brown rice). Strangely, I had the place to myself except for a massive party against the wall. Despite this being Father's Day, I was unsure of the nature of the group until this young woman joined the table who was something of a hottie while acting like a four year old. She may have been a teen -- she ended up sitting by herself in the un-insulated section of the restaurant overlooking the street. Only a family party would tolerate this kind of behavior.
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War Book Nine The Renaissance and the Reformation Chapter I The Transformation of Social Life From the Middle of the Fifteenth Century 3. Ideas and Manners p536 ...In Italy the new orientation of ideas, manners, and artistic feeling began at the very moment when the economic development of the nation had reached its apogee. It was not contemporary with this development, but subsequent to it, and while the intellectual movement continued to progress the economic development was already beginning to decline. This intellectual development was the fine flower of the entire civilization that preceded it; the product of thought and beauty succeeding to the product of force. This development was not unlike that of ancient Greece in the days of Pericles: Athens in the 4th century, and Florence in the middle of the 15th century, shone with a glory which was no longer commensurate with their real strength; the dazzling radiance which they shed upon the world, before they made way for more vigorous successors, had the splendor but also the ephemeral quality of a sunset. At the very moment when the genius of Machiavelli, Guiccardini, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci was in flower, the discovery of the New World was diverting the current of European life from the Mediterranean. I see what he means about Florence but how was Pericles's Athens in decline? The case was very different to the north of the Alps. Here the Renaissance was not a sunset but a sunrise... it must not be believed that capitalism provoked the renaissance of thought which was contemporaneous with it. The one and the other were different symptoms of the same crisis of growth... What the discovery of the New World was for capitalism, the Italian Renaissance was for the intellectual movement... p537 ...The relaxation of morals in the 15th century, and the predominance of temporal interests, were no less striking in Northern Europe than in Italy... The Low Countries, under the Dukes of Burgundy, between France and England, the one exhausted by war and the other a prey to civil discord, were enjoying a period of peace and prosperity, and they afforded a spectacle which presented curious analogies with that of Italy. One might have observed, at the court, in the society of the great nobles, and among the government officials and the capitalists, whether landowners or merchants, a kind of life whose principal features were precisely those which are commonly attributed to the early Renaissance in Tuscany and Lombardy: a general relaxation of morality, a love of luxury and social festivities, a demand for elegance and comfort in private dwellings, a pronounced taste for fine clothing, and for the nobler pleasures of art, and the general diffusion of education and good breeding. Here... we see that the aristocracy of birth, like the aristocracy of wealth, was living a social life of a kind that no longer had anything in common with the conventional cortesia of the Middle Ages... it is enough to recall the adorable landscapes which assuredly contributed to the success of the Belgian school of painting in the 15th century in order to realize that the discovery of Nature at this period was by no means a purely Italian discovery. The same may be said of the discovery of the individual... p539 This worldliness of manners and of thought in and about the court of Burgundy was also to be observed, though in a less degree, in France and England... What were the first books to be printed? When Caxton established his printing-press in London, his customers, who consisted for the most part of noblemen, but also included a city haberdasher, asked him to produce translations from the French and Latin. He himself translated the Aenid... The printing-press did not create the taste for reading, for that already existed, but it hastened its diffusion... the great difference between the 15th century and the age of Charlemagne and the Middle Ages was that the culture which men of the 15th century acquired by reading was purely secular. The Church had no part in it... p540 We cannot doubt that in all these people [Edward IV, Richard III, Louis XI, the Dukes of Burgundy and others] there was an insatiable thirst for learning: an awakening -- unconscious, I believe, but none the less an awakening [what??!] -- of curiosity, eager to see beyond the two narrow frontiers within which the traditions of caste and religion had hitherto imprisoned it... p541 ...The "New Learning," as the English called it, was a direct return to antiquity, provoked, of course, by the example of the humanists, but not subordinated to them. It is true that there had been humanists in the North, and especially poets, like Pierre Gilles and the author of the Basia, Jean Second, while the Certamen poeticum Haftianum of Amsterdam was in the direct line of descent. Longolium of Malines belonged to the same school. But not so the great writers: neither Roechlin in Germany, nor Colet [John?] and More in England, nor the greatest of all, Erasmus. The literature of antiquity influenced them less by its form than by enfranchising their thought. It enfranchised it from the scholastic tradition, not only by means of the classic tongue, which they immediately adopted, but by the new standpoint which it gave them. The Miles Christianus of Erasmus might be described as their programme. And what do we find in it? The secular spirit!... religion is envisioned as an exhortation to morality, addressed to the honest man. The ideal is no longer asceticism, but the life of the citizen, with all its duties... hence... a whole plan of reforms, with a view to the future, and especially pedagogic reforms, which would replace the schools of the clergy by new schools, in which children should be educated in the cult of belles lettres, and in which "politesse" would have its place in a training which was to prepare the pupil no for the cloister, but for life. The Adagia of Erasmus, which appeared in 1500, exercised a pedagogical influence comparable only to that of Rousseau's Emile. For the first time... it was seen that the function of the school was to impart intellectual culture. One may say that the whole organization of education to this day is based on the conception of education evolved by these northern humanists. For them, the object of education was the free development of the personality... More, like Erasmus, was opposed to monasticism, asceticism, the celibacy of priests, and the worship of relics; and both, if the truth be told, tended to transform Christianity into a philosophia evangelica... in the North the spirit of the Renaissance was revolutionary, but it was purely theoretical... It made war upon the Church. It spared the State, hoping that the progress of enlightenment would win acceptation [?] for its opinions. p543 In return, all the social authorities made much of the humanists, just as they made much of the philosophers before the French Revolution... In their optimism they believed that the world might be changed. Vives wanted the Utopia to be placed in the hands of schoolboys, together with the Colloquia. If governments, and even popes and kings, applauded these books, as did all the high officials also, it was because they were careful to avoid political discussion. Their attitude was precisely that of Voltaire. In order that enlightenment should triumph, they had need of a strong government, an authority superior to the parties, more powerful than the Church. Like all intellectuals, they were, though they did not confess it, in favor of the "intelligent despot." The revolution of which they dreamed was to be carried out from above, because they expected that it would be the work essentially of science and reason. No doubt they wanted to extend its benefits to all men, but it must begin at the top, and as for the means by which it was to be brought about, they relied on the social aristocracy, hoping for the final constitution of an intellectual aristocracy... p544 Everywhere... [but Spain], during the twenty years which elapsed between the end of the 15th century and the appearance of Protestantism, it seemed as though a new world was on the point of birth. All that was strong and youthful and vigorous revolted against the past. Never, perhaps, have the social authorities so unanimously supported an intellectual movement... All were moving and straining in the same direction: authority, society, fashion, the politicians, the women, the artists, the humanists. There was a boundless confidence abroad, a feverish joy. The mind was liberated from authority, was free to wander under the heavens; the monopoly of knowledge was abolished, and it was now the possession of the whole community. And the knowledge that was derived from antiquity was all the more seductive, inasmuch as it went hand in hand with beauty, and was, so to speak, almost identical with beauty. This would be more convincing if we hadn't just read about the Hussite Wars in Bohemia, almost exactly a century before. I'm sure Pirenne is correct about how Erasmus and his friends felt, but notice that you will not find the common man in the list above of social factions all straining in the same direction. Continued next time.
Every morning, when I look out my kitchen window, the maple tree is greener and visibly fluffier. And my allergies are just about killing me. Yesterday was our first "real" greening event of the year. (By "real" I mean it was a public event in Golden Gate Park on a beautiful day.)
Some of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence on stage. The Hunky Jesus competition went on forever. It's nice to know that my generation can blaze the way when it comes to new manifestations of the "grumpy old man" trope. I, for example, found myself grumbling yesterday about the form of drag preferred by today's Sisters. Back when they started, they went with the traditional black nun's habit, accessorized with roller skates. Now they have to be so flamboyant it makes we want to set myself on fire. (That's an Arrested Development joke I'm pretty sure I've used before.) My planning for the new season went pretty well. I'm in good physical shape. I shaved my beard so I can apply sunscreen better. And I have a new, sun screen flap that hangs down from the back of my hat and covers the back of my neck, since I cut my hair shorter. Though spending an afternoon with the Sisters made me wonder if I might not be even better off with a wig. Maybe next year. Fortunately this was just a warm-up for the four day Cherry Blossom Festival in a couple weeks, because I do have something to work on. By the end of the day, and it was a short three and a half hour day for me, I was ready to kill the recycling scavengers. My assignment for this month is to chill and to avoid confrontations by not bagging up the CRV bottle and can portion of the recycling. This is tricky at picnic events like this where there's also lots of heavy glass and it helps to pull the light stuff out into bags. But there are ways to work around this, I just have to remember what they are. And chill.
I can't find any recent videos on YouTube -- which is a bit of a shock, honestly -- but here's the Hunky Jesus competition from several years back.
End of the Hundred Years' War
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War Book Eight The European Crisis (1300-1450) The Avignon Papacy, the Great Schism, and the Hundred Years War Chapter II The Hundred Years War 2. The Burgundian Period (1432) p436 ...The reign of Richard II [England] is memorable on account of the great rural insurrection of 1381. The fundamental cause of this rising, like that of the Jacquerie, was the poverty of the rural population... How should the political assemblies concern themselves with the troubles of the people, since they consisted only of the representatives of the privileged classes?... ...The religious movement provoked by Wycliffe let to the final catastrophe, just as in the 16th century the Lutheran propaganda led to the outbreak in Germany of the Peasant War. Of course, neither Wycliffe nor Luther urged the masses to rebel, but both reformers, by undermining the people's respect for religious authority, taught them to revolt against the social order which was the cause of their sufferings... p437 But the peasants could not hold their own against the nobles, those steel-clad policemen. Like the Jacquerie, their rising ended in a massacre, and like the Jacquerie it was not repeated. ... p438 [In England] The new king [Henry of Lancaster (1399-1413), chosen by Parliament] found himself in the situation which in 1689 was that of William of Orange on succeeding to James II. Parliament, to which he owed the throne, expected guarantees, which he hastened to give... p440 ...Louis de Maele resumed possession of his County. [Flanders, following the French victory at Roosebeke.] He had just inherited from his mother Artois and the Franche Comte of Burgundy, so that on his death in 1384, Philip [the Bold] became the possessor of these territories, as well as Flanders. Combined with his Duchy of Burgundy, they gave him a power which no vassal of the Crown had ever before possessed... The result at which Charles V had aimed was achieved. Flanders was now ruled by a prince of the blood... ... p441 ...when... [Philip the Bold] died in 1404 the influence of his dynasty was enormously increased in the Low Countries. [He married into Brabant, as well.] But these regions were so wealthy, and their political situation was so advantageous, that before long the dynasty took root there, when, forgetting its French origin, and actuated by an ambition which naturally identified itself with the interests of its northern subjects, it became naturalized among them... by the irony of history the marriage of 1369 [which had assured the Duke's possession of Flanders] was the beginning of that Burgundian power which was presently to become the cruellest enemy of France. Already, under Jean the Fearless (1404-1419)... we see the beginning of the evolution which was to make him, the son of a pure-blooded Valois, above all things a Burgundian prince... In the interest of Flemish industry he was obliged to humor England... Jean the Fearless has the Duke of Orleans assassinated in 1407. He supports the Paris mob against the Armagnac faction in France. p443 ...The disaster of Agincourt (October 25th, 1415) gave Normandy to the English. The French wished to negotiate. The claims of the victors were so exorbitant that Jean the Fearless, who had merely wished to see France and England neutralize each other, made approaches to the Dauphine, round whom the Armagnacs had rallied. But men's passions were too unbridled to subordinate themselves to the national interest. On September 20th, 1419, on the occasion of their meeting at Montereau, a blow from an axe avenged the murder of the Duke of Orleans. p444 At the very moment when the House of Burgundy was becoming reconciled to France, this crime led it to conclude an immediate alliance with the English. For sixteen years the son of Jean the Fearless, Philip the Good (1419-1467), strove to overthrow the kingdom, with an energy inspired by the spirit of vengeance and directed by political interest... While I see what Pirenne means when he talks about the power the Third Estate is gaining -- both in France and in England -- when it comes to financing government, I can't help also noticing how the behavior of the princes is just as bloody-minded as it was in Carolingian times. This conflict between the branches of the House of Valois is a wonderful example of this. That Jean the Good is finally killed with an axe only emphasizes the brutality of the grands seigneurs. I'm not going to go into detail about the steps that lead to Joan of Arc but I will include this, p444 ...The exalted, simple, pure and ingenious conception of the king entertained by Joan was possible only in a child of the people. Joan of Arc was no more than the sublime expression of the national sentiment of the French peasants, a sentiment which was blended with their religious faith, and which their memories of the good king Saint Louis had indissolubly associated with the monarchy. p445 ...when the war... was resumed in 1445, it was one series of victories. [For France.] In 1449 Rouen was recaptured. In 1450 the victory of Formigny gave the French the whole of Normandy; Bordeaux and Bayonne were theirs in 1451, and finally, in 1453, after the battle of Chatillon, [Castillon] the enemy evacuated the last positions which he still occupied in the south of the kingdom. Of all the English conquests, Calais alone was left, and the empty title of King of France, which figured on the English currency even in the 19th century. The only lasting result of the Hundred Years' War was the creation, on the northern frontier of the kingdom, of a powerful Burgundian State. Philip the Good, in assisting the English, was really working for himself... He purchased the County of Namur in 1421. In 1428 he was acknowledged... as the heir to Hainaut, Holland and Zeeland; in 1430 he succeeded his cousin... as Duke of Brabant and of Limburg; and when he concluded the Peace of Arras it was only in return for the cession of the King of Artois and the towns of the Somme. The following years brought him the possession of Luxembourg, and the protectorate over the ecclesiastical principalities of Liege and Utrecht. So the Duke of Burgundy becomes the new Duke of Normandy. p447 ...It was only to be expected that once France recovered from the terrible crisis by which Philip the Good had profited so greatly, she would never cease endeavoring to recover the preponderance which she had lost in the basins of the Meuse and the Scheldt. Her enemies just as obstinately disputed this preponderance, so that the creation of the Burgundian State created that problem of the Low Countries which, until the 19th century, when it was finally solved, was to give rise to so many European crises that it served... as a pressure-gauge in the international relations of the great powers. This would be more impressive, as an explanation for why this region is so crowded with famous battlefields, if there were not already a bunch of them. More than any particular political sequence of events -- from the Treaty of Verdun to the rise of Burgundy -- I still think the "problem of the low countries" has more to do with geography. I'm going to take another break here as I read and build up more material for future posts. There's still quite a long way to go. After all, the great German breakthrough and advance of one hundred years ago is only just getting started. Hardly any Americans have seen the elephant to this point. This is your lucky day! I'm deleting my paean to John Browning, the Thomas Edison of American automatic weapons -- yes, this is my coinage.
