The same result is exhibited in the state of Germany. It was in the middle of the fifteenth century, in 1438, that the house of Austria returned to the empire, and with it the imperial power acquired a stability which it had never possessed before: the form of election became almost a mere consecration of hereditary right. At the end of the fifteenth century, Maximilian I. definitively fixed the preponderance of his house, and the regular exercise of the central power. Charles VII. had been the first in France to create a standing force for the maintenance of order, so also Maximilian in his hereditary states adopted the same means for the same object. Louis XI. had established the post-office in France, and Maximilian introduced it into Germany. In every quarter similar advancements in civilisation universally conduced to the advantage of the central power.
The history of England in the fifteenth century consists of two great events—the war with France outwardly, and that of the Roses inwardly, a foreign and a civil war. These two wars, so different in appearance, tended to the same result. The contest with France was maintained by the English people with a zeal which turned almost exclusively to the profit of the royal power. This nation, even then more skilful and firm than any other in sparing its troops and its money, abandoned them to its kings at that epoch without foresight or calculation. In the reign of Henry V., a considerable revenue, the rights of customs, was granted to the king for life from his accession to the throne. The foreign war being finished, or nearly so, the civil war, which had been at first connected with it, continued alone, and the houses of York and Lancaster maintained their respective claims with the sword. When a final term was put to their bloody contests, the high English aristocracy was ruined, thinned, and utterly unable to preserve the power which it had exercised in former times. A coalition of the great barons could no longer awe the crown. When the Tudors mounted the throne in the person of Henry VII., in 1485, the era of political centralisation and the triumph of royalty commenced.
In Italy, royalty was not established, at least not under that name; but it is of little moment with regard to the result. The republics fell in the fifteenth century; or where the name still lingered, power was concentrated in the hands of one or a few families; the republican life was burnt to the socket In the north of Italy, almost all the Lombardian republics merged in the duchy of Milan. In 1434, Florence fell under the dominion of the Medicis. In 1464, Genoa became subject to the Milanese. The majority of the republics, great and small, gave place to sovereign houses. Shortly afterwards, the pretensions of foreign sovereigns to the north and south of Italy—to the Milanese on the one hand, and to the kingdom of Naples on the other—began to be advanced.
Upon whatever country of Europe our eyes fall, whatever portion of its history we contemplate—whether it have reference to the nations themselves, or to the governments, to institutions, or territories—we everywhere perceive the ancient elements and forms of society decaying, and ready to disappear. Old traditional liberties are swamped and perish, whilst new powers arise, more regular and concentrated. There is something infinitely mournful in this spectacle of the fall of the old European liberties; and at the period of its occurrence, it inspired the bitterest sorrow. In France, in Germany, and especially in Italy, the patriots of the fifteenth century fiercely, and with the energy of despair, opposed and deplored a revolution, which on all sides was working up to what they had a right to call despotism. We cannot but admire their courage and compassionate their grief, but at the same time we must allow that the revolution in question was not only inevitable, but also useful. The primitive system of Europe, the old feudal and borough liberties, had utterly failed in organising society. Security and progressiveness are the main ingredients in the social state. Any system which does not effect order for the present, and advancement for the future, is vicious, and soon abandoned. This was the fate of the old political forms and liberties in the fifteenth century. They were unable to impart to society either security or advancement. These consequences were to be sought for elsewhere, and from other principles, other means of action. This is the purport of all the facts I have just dilated upon.
Another fact dates from the same epoch, one which has held a great place in the history of Europe. In the fifteenth century, the relation of governments amongst themselves commenced to become frequent, regular, and permanent. Then were formed for the first time those great combinations and alliances, either for peace or war, which ultimately produced the system of the balance of power. Diplomacy in Europe dates from the fifteenth century. In fact, towards the end of that century, we see the principal powers of the continent, the popes, the dukes of Milan, the Venetians, the emperors of Germany, the kings of Spain, and the kings of France, form connections, negotiate, come to understandings, and unite amongst themselves, and balance their respective states. Thus at the time that Charles VIII. made his expedition for the conquest of Naples, a grand league was formed against him between Spain, the pope, and the Venetians. The league of Cambray was arranged some years later (in 1508) against the Venetians. The holy league, directed against Louis XII., succeeded, in 1511, the league of Cambray. All these combinations sprang from Italian politics, from the desire entertained by the different sovereigns to possess its territory, and from the fear that one of them, by seizing upon it exclusively, should gain too great a preponderance. This new order of facts was highly favourable to the development of the royal power. In the first place, from the very nature of the external relations of states, they can only be managed by one person, or by a small number of persons, and they require a certain degree of secrecy. In the next, the people possessed so little foresight that the consequences of a combination of this description were not appreciated by them; such things had for them no direct, home interest, and therefore they concerned themselves very little respecting them, and left them to the discretion of the central power. Thus diplomacy, as it arose, fell into the hands of the kings; and the idea that it belonged to them exclusively, that the country, even when free, and monopolising the right of levying its own taxes, and interfering in its own affairs, was not permitted to meddle with foreign concerns, was established in almost all minds as a settled principle, as a maxim of common right. Look at the history of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; we there perceive what power this idea possessed, and what obstacles it opposed to English liberties, in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. It was always under plea of this principle that peace and war, commercial relations, in a word, all external affairs, belonged to the royal prerogative, that absolute power defended itself against the rights of the country. Nations have been excessively timid in confessing this portion of prerogative, and this shyness has been the more prejudicial to them, since, dating from the epoch upon which we are shortly to enter—that is, from the sixteenth century—the history of Europe is essentially diplomatic. Exterior relations form, for nearly three centuries, the important part of history. Within, the countries were organised, and the settlement of the internal government, on the continent at least, produced no more shocks, and no longer absorbed the whole public activity. Hence the external relations, wars, negotiations, and alliances, are the matters which draw attention, and fill the pages of history. Thus it appears that the greater portion of the destinies of nations have been abandoned to the royal prerogative, to the central power.
It was indeed scarcely possible that it should be otherwise. It requires a great advancement in civilisation, a prodigious development of political comprehension and studies, to enable the public to interfere with credit in affairs of this nature. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, the people were very far from possessing any such capability. Take, as an instance, a scene from the history of England at the commencement of the seventeenth century, under James I. His son-in-law, the elector-palatine, having been elected king of Bohemia, had lost his crown, and had even been despoiled of his hereditary states, the palatinate. The whole of Protestantism was interested in his cause, and on that account England was affected with a strong sympathy for his success. There was a powerful ebullition of public opinion to force James to take the part of his son-in-law, and to procure his restoration to the palatinate. The parliament furiously demanded war, promising ample means to sustain it. James was not very eager for it; he eluded the question, made some attempts at negotiation, sent a few troops into Germany, and then came to inform parliament that he would need £900,000 sterling to carry on the war with any chance of success. It was not said, and in fact it does not appear, that his calculation was exaggerated. But the parliament recoiled with surprise and affright at the prospect of such an expense, and it voted, with much reluctance, a sum of £70,000 sterling to re-establish a prince, and reconquer a country some hundreds of miles from England. Such was the ignorance and political incapacity of the public in such matters. It acted without knowledge of facts, and without burdening itself with any responsibility: therefore it was not enabled to interfere with regularity or efficiency. This was the principal reason that caused the external relations to fall into the hands of the central power, for it alone was in a condition to direct them, I will not say for the public good, as that necessarily was not always consulted, but with any continuity and sound sense.
Thus we see that under whatever point of view the political history of Europe of that epoch presents itself to us—whether our attention is directed to the internal state of the countries, or to their mutual relations with each other—whether we look to the administration of war, justice, or taxation—the same general character is in all distinguishable; we perceive everywhere the same tendency to centralisation and unity, to the formation and predominance of general interests and public powers. This was the hidden labour at work in the fifteenth century—a labour which did not then produce any very apparent result, any revolution, properly so called, in society, but which prepared the way for all. I now proceed to facts of another nature, to moral facts, or those which have reference to the development of the human understanding and of general ideas. We shall there also discern the same phenomenon, and be carried to the same conclusion.
I will commence with an order of facts which has very often been the subject of our inquiry, and which, under various forms, has always occupied an important station in the history of Europe: I mean the facts relative to the church. In our views of affairs in Europe up till the fifteenth century, we have been made aware that the only general and potential ideas operating veritably on the masses were religious ideas. We have seen that the church alone was invested with authority to regulate, promulgate, and prescribe these ideas. Often, it is true, attempts at independence and separation were made, and the church was called upon for its most strenuous exertions to put them down. Those exertions had hitherto been successful; the dogmas anathematised by the church had not taken general and permanent possession of the minds of the people; even the Albigenses had been crushed. Dissent and strife were continual in the bosom of the church, but without any decisive or striking result. At the opening of the fifteenth century, a very different state of things appeared; new ideas, and a public, avowed desire for alteration and reform, agitated the church itself. The close of the fourteenth, and the dawn of the fifteenth century, were illustrated by the great western schism, arising from the translation of the Holy See to Avignon, and the creation of two popes, the one at Avignon, and the other at Rome. The contest between these two papacies is what is called the great schism of the west. It commenced in 1378. In 1409, the Council of Pisa, wishing to bring it to an end, named a third, Alexander V. This proceeding, so far from moderating the violence of the schism, fanned it into additional fury, and instead of two opposition popes, there were three. The disorder and abuses caused by this lamentable dissension went on increasing. In 1414, the Council of Constance assembled at the instance of the Emperor Sigismond. It entered upon a very different matter than naming a new pope; it undertook the reform of the church. It first of all proclaimed the indissolubility of the general council, and its superiority over the papal power. It endeavoured to make these principles recognised as fundamental in the church, and then set about the task of reforming the abuses which had crept into it, especially the exactions by which the court of Rome drew money from the faithful. The better to attain its object, the council named what we would call a committee of inquiry—that is to say, a reforming college, composed of deputies taken from the different nations represented in it. This college was charged to investigate the abuses which tarnished the church, and the means of remedying them, and to make a report to the council, which would deliberate on the modes of execution. But whilst the council was engaged upon the labour, a question was submitted to it—Whether it could proceed to the reform of abuses without the participation of the head of the Church, without the sanction of the pope? It was decided in the negative, by the influence of the Romanist party, supported by honest but timid men; so the council elected a new pope, Martin V ., in 1417. This pope was instructed to present a plan of reform for the church, which was not acceptable, and the council separated. In 1431, a fresh council assembled at Basle, with the same design. It took up and continued the reforming labour of the Council of Constance, but had no better success. The schism which divided Christianity broke out in the assembly likewise. The pope removed the Council of Basle to Ferrara, and afterwards to Florence. A portion of the prelates refused to obey the pope, and remained at Basle; so as there were formerly two popes, there were then also two councils. That of Basle stuck to its projects of reform, and named its own pope, Felix V. After a certain period it migrated to Lausanne, and finally broke up in 1449, without having effected a single object.