[This chapter mainly explains the situation facing Europe, especially Spain. Please be careful when subscribing. Friends who are not following please do not subscribe]
Gao Pangshi has read a lot of novels, most of which exaggerate the Spanish colonial empire in this period as extremely powerful and invincible. It seems that if it were not for the unexpected failure of the Invincible Fleet, the Habsburg Dynasty would be able to sweep the world.
This is really nonsense.
Today's Habsburg dynasty is of course powerful. If Philip II's Austrian co-ancestors are included, the Habsburg dynasty is definitely the leading power in Europe.
Philip II's father, Charles V, inherited the crowns of four major dynasties, Castile, Aragon, Burgundy (non-kingdom) and Austria (non-kingdom), and later his family received Bohemian crowns.
Asia, Hungary and Portugal, and for a short period of time even received the crown of England (during the period of "Bloody Mary", Philip II was her husband and co-king).
The occurrence of these dynastic events, coupled with Spanish conquests and plunder in the New World, brought wealth and resources to the Habsburg family that other European countries could not match. Although later generations have many loopholes and errors in the statistics of the time.
There are imprecisions, and population figures for the period are not that reliable, but it would not be wrong to assume that the inhabitants of the territories ruled by the Habsburgs accounted for a quarter of the population of early modern Europe.
It goes without saying that the power of the Spanish Grand Formation and the Spanish fleet was needless to say, but in fact the power of the Habsburg Dynasty at this time was also reflected in its financial resources.
The Habsburg family has five main financial sources, and there are also some small sources of income. The most important of them is the Castile inheritance in Spain. This place is directly ruled by the royal family, and the parliament and the church give away various regular donations and taxes.
To the Crown (business tax, "crusader tax" on religious property).
In addition, the commercial wealth and mobile capital of Europe's two trading areas - the Italian city-states and the Low Countries - were able to provide considerable funding.
A fourth source, increasingly important as time went on, was revenue from the American countries. The "royal tax of one-fifth" on the mining of silver and gold in the Americas, plus business taxes, customs duties, and ecclesiastical levies, made
The New World offered large dividends to the Spanish kings.
This is not only direct, but also indirect, because the American wealth flowing into private hands, whether Spanish, Flemish or Italian, helps these individuals or companies pay increasingly heavy national taxes.
Moreover, in an emergency, the monarch could also borrow large amounts from bankers, because in theory he could pay off the debt as soon as the fleet transporting silver arrived.
The presence of many important financial and commercial families in the Habsburg territory, such as those wealthy merchants living in southern Germany, Italian cities and Antwerp, should also be counted as an advantage, and this is the fifth major source of finance.
In fact, this source was easier to obtain than taxes from the German regions, because the princes and representatives of the free cities in the Holy Roman Empire were always willing to vote for the emperor only when the Turks came to their doorstep.
However, even though the Habsburg dynasty seemed so powerful, Gao Pragmatic did not feel that it was invincible at all, because although its financial and military resources were extremely strong in the eyes of people at the time, they had never met the requirements. And this fatal
The flaws stem from three factors that always interact.
The first factor was caused by the "military revolution" in early modern Europe, that is, in the 150 years after the 1620s, the scale, cost and organization of wars expanded dramatically. This change itself was caused by several intertwined
It is caused by factors, including tactical, political and demographic factors.
The army of the Spanish Empire perhaps provided the best example for the realization of the "Military Revolution." As historians who studied it said, before 1529, in the struggle for Italy between France and Spain, "there is no evidence that either side used
"More than 30,000 troops", but by 1536-1537, HRE Emperor Charles V raised 60,000 troops in Lombardy alone to defend the newly occupied Milan and invade Provence, France.
In 1552, for a simultaneous attack on all fronts - in Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, on the Atlantic and the Mediterranean - Charles V raised 109,000 troops in Germany and the Netherlands and 24,000 troops in Lombardy
, in addition, there were soldiers recruited from Sicily, Naples and Spain.
In this way, the army under the emperor's command and therefore supported by him must have been about 150,000 people. This upward trend continued, and by 1574, the Spanish army in Flanders alone numbered 86,000 people.
What happens on land happens on a greater scale at sea.
The expansion of maritime trade, competition between the fleets of trading nations in the English Channel, the Indian Ocean or the Spanish coast, and the threats posed by North African pirate ships and the Ottoman galleons all interacted with new shipbuilding technologies, allowing ships to be built larger and larger.
Equipment is getting more and more advanced.
In this era, there is no clear boundary between warships and merchant ships. Merchant ships of a certain size are basically equipped with guns to deal with pirates and other plunderers. However, there is a trend of establishing a Royal Navy, whereby the monarch can possess a certain number of regular ships.
The navy forms a core. During wartime, armed merchant ships, three-masted warships, and two-masted small ships can move closer to this core.
Henry VIII of England was particularly supportive of this plan, while Charles V was unwilling to build his own navy. He preferred to requisition private Spanish galleons and single-deck galleons from his Spanish and Italian territories.
Philip II, who was under heavy pressure in the Mediterranean and then in the Atlantic, could not enjoy this luxury and had to finance a massive shipbuilding program in Barcelona, Naples and Sicily: by 1574 he had 146 large ships in service
The number of sailing ships is almost three times that of a decade ago.
In the next ten years, the outbreak of war in the Atlantic forced him to make greater efforts to secure sea routes to the West Indies (after Portugal was annexed in 1580) and the East Indies, to protect the Spanish coast from British attacks, and to prevent invasion.
The army was sent to Britain, all of which were in urgent need of an ocean-going fleet.
Even after Britain and Spain signed a peace treaty in 1604, Spain still needed a large fleet to resist the Dutch maritime attacks and protect communications with Flanders. Moreover, as time went by, these warships were equipped with more and more equipment.
, the cost is also getting more and more expensive.
It was this spiraling war cost that exposed the real weaknesses of the Habsburg regime.
Widespread inflation caused food prices to quadruple from 1500 to 1630, and industrial product prices to triple. This was an extremely heavy blow to the government's finances. The army and navy doubled or tripled in size, and even more so.
Adding fuel to the fire. As a result, the Habsburgs were constantly struggling to remain solvent.
In the 1540s, after fighting various battles against Algiers, France, and German Protestants, Charles V found that his normal and extraordinary income could not cover his expenses at all, and his taxes had been mortgaged to bankers many years in advance.
Only by taking drastic measures to confiscate the wealth of the West Indies and seize all Spanish coins can money be found to support the war against the Protestant princes. In 1552, he spent 2.5 million ducats on the battle of Metz, which was about the same as his time.
10 times the normal revenue from America.
As a result, he was forced to borrow new debts constantly, but the conditions became more and more harsh. The credit of the royal family was declining, and the interest charged by the bankers was getting higher and higher. As a result, a large part of the normal income could only be used to pay off previous debts.
interest. When Charles abdicated, the national debt left to Philip II was approximately 20 million ducats.
Felipe also inherited the war with France. How expensive was this war? So much so that in 1557 the Spanish royal family had to declare bankruptcy on its own. At that time, large banking families like Fugger had to surrender.
What can be said is that in the same year, France was also forced to declare bankruptcy. This was the main reason why both sides agreed to the peace talks at Chateau Cambrizzi in 1559.
But then, Philip was about to deal with the powerful Turkish enemy, the 20-year Mediterranean War, the campaign against the Moors of Grenada, and intricate military operations in the Netherlands, northern France and the English Channel, forcing the royal family to seek all possible income.
source.
During the reign of Charles V, Spanish taxes tripled, while Philip II doubled taxes only between 1556 and 1573, and by the end of his reign, they almost doubled again.
Philip's expenses were even greater. During the Battle of Lepanto, it was estimated that the cost of maintaining the Christian fleet and soldiers would exceed 4 million ducats per year. Although Venice and the Pope shared a large part, Spain also chipped in a lot of money.
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By the 1570s, the costs of the Flemish army had become very large, and they were always unable to be paid on time, which resulted in military riots. In 1557, after Philip stopped repaying interest to Genoese bankers, the situation worsened. Although from
The surge in mining revenue in the Americas temporarily alleviated the royal family's financial and credit crisis. In the 1680s, there were about 2 million ducats per year, which was only 1/10 of what it was about 40 years ago; however, the cost of the Armada in 1588
It actually amounted to 10 million dhaka, and its tragic fate was not only a naval disaster, but also a financial disaster for the royal family.
In 1596, after Philip borrowed an unprecedented amount of public debt, he once again refused to pay. When he died two years later, the total debt was as high as 100 million ducats. The interest on this huge debt was almost equal to 3% of all taxes.
Two-thirds.
Although Spain quickly reached a peace agreement with France and England, the war with the Netherlands continued to be arduous. It was not until 1609 that a ceasefire was achieved, and the ceasefire itself was urgently promoted by the Spanish mutiny in 1607 and its further collapse.
In the following years of peacetime, the Spanish government’s expenditures did not decrease substantially. Let’s put aside the issue of huge interest rates for the moment. The continued tension in the Mediterranean Sea will require large sums of money to build a coastal defense fortifications; the vast Spanish coast has repeatedly
Being robbed by privateers will also require considerable defense costs in the Philippines, Caribbean and High Seas Fleets.
After 1610, the ceasefire in Europe did not make the proud Spanish leaders consider reducing military expenditures. The Thirty Years' War that broke out in 1618 only turned a cold war into a hot war, causing more and more Spanish troops and money to flow into Spain.
Rand and Deutschland.
It is worth noting that the Habsburgs' initial victories in Europe and effective defenses in the Americas during this period were largely coincident with and supported by the significant increase in gold and silver ingots they brought from the New World.
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But for the same reason, fiscal revenue decreased after 1626, and bankruptcy was declared the following year. Especially in 1628, the Dutch hijacked the silver fleet, causing Spain and its residents to lose as much as 10 million ducats. This also made Spain's
The war effort was suspended for a while, but its revenue could never make up for the huge deficit.
This was how Spain dealt with the war in the next 30 years. By pooling together newly borrowed debt, adding new taxes, and using any unexpected income from the Americas, an important military operation could be supported. For example, Infante
The cardinals intervened in Germany in 1634-1635, but financially draining wars always eventually eroded these short-term gains, and within a few years the financial situation worsened.
After the Catalan and Portuguese revolts in the 1640s, wealth from the Americas was greatly reduced, and a long, slow decline was inevitable. Even if a country has excellent soldiers, once its expenditure exceeds
If a government with two or three times the normal income manages it, can we expect any good results?
The second main reason for the failure of Spain and Austria is easy to see from the above brief description: Habsburg had too many things to take care of, too many enemies to deal with, and too many fronts to defend!
Although the Spanish army was strong on the battlefield, it was beyond their capabilities to disperse them to defend the country and disperse them to North Africa, Sicily, Italy, the New World and the Netherlands.
Just like the British Empire three centuries later, the Habsburg Group combined a widely distributed territory. It was an amazing stunt for a political dynasty, but it required huge material resources and scheming to maintain its operation.
This situation is the biggest example of strategic overexpansion in history. Once a vast territory is occupied, the price is to establish many enemies - fortunately, one of its biggest enemies, the Ottoman Empire at the same time, also carries the same baggage.
So, looking back, even though Spain was powerful at this time, how could it threaten the Ming Dynasty?
It cannot even threaten the highly pragmatic Jinghua Group!
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The word count is controlled to 3900+, not reaching 4k, to save some money for friends who like an international perspective.