The Development of Modern Europe Volume I

Since Catharine was to play a conspicuous role in all the affairs of Europe for thirty-five years, a word must be said of the manner in which this German woman became the ruler of all the Russias. She was the daughter of one of Frederick the Great’s officers and had been selected by him in 1743, at the request of the Tsarina Elizabeth, as a suitable wife for Peter, the heir to the throne. At the age of fourteen this inexperienced girl found herself in the midst of the intrigues of the court at St. Petersburg; she joined the Greek Church, exchanged her name of Sophia for that of Catharine, and, by zealous study of both books and men, prepared to make her new name famous.

However, it was in this very war that Frederick earned his title of “the Great” and showed himself the equal of the ablest generals that the world has seen, from Alexander of Macedon to Napoleon. Learning the object of the allies, he did not wait for them to declare war upon him; with entire disregard of international law, he invaded Saxony, expelled the elector, assumed the administration of the province, and defeated the Austrians sent against him (1756). The next year, however, he found himself thickly beset with difficulties. Sweden, having joined the coalition against him, occupied East Pomerania; France began to pour an enormous army into his Rhenish provinces; Russian troops invaded Prussia and overwhelmed the general whom Frederick dispatched against them; and Frederick himself was badly beaten at Kolin by the imperial army.

status quo ante bellum, which meant that everything should be restored in general to the conditions which existed before hostilities began.

Of the Russian princes who went to prostrate themselves at the foot of the Great Khan’s throne, none made a more favorable impression upon him than the prince of Moscow, in whose favor the Khan was wont to decide all cases of dispute between the prince and his rivals. When the Mongol power had begun to decline in strength and the princes of Moscow had grown stronger, they ventured, in 1480, to kill the Mongol ambassadors sent to demand tribute, and thus freed themselves from the Mongol yoke. But the Tartar occupation had left its mark, for the princes of Moscow imitated the Khans rather than the western rulers, of whom, in fact, they knew nothing. In 1547 Ivan the Terrible assumed the Asiatic title of Tsar, which appeared to him more worthy than that of king or emperor. The costumes and etiquette of the court were also Asiatic. The Russian armor suggested that of the Chinese, and their headdress was a turban. It was the task of Peter the Great to Europeanize Russia.

beginnings of the Russian state fall in the ninth century; some of the Northmen invaded the districts to the east of the Baltic, while their relatives were causing grievous trouble in France and England. It is generally supposed that one of their leaders, Rurik, was the first to consolidate the Slavic tribes about Novgorod into a sort of state in 862. Rurik’s successor extended the bounds of the new empire so as to include the important town of Kiev on the Dnieper. The word “Russia” is probably derived from Rous, the name given by the neighboring Finns to the Norman adventurers. Before the end of the tenth century the Greek form of Christianity was introduced and the Russian ruler was baptized. The frequent intercourse with Constantinople might have led to rapid advance in civilization had it not been for a great disaster which put Russia back for centuries.

In order to make the later history clear, it is necessary to notice here a remarkable change in the English line of kings. None of Queen Anne’s children survived her, and she was succeeded, according to an arrangement made before her accession, by the nearest Protestant heir. This was George I, son of James I’s granddaughter, Sophia. She had married the elector of Hanover; consequently the king who came to the English throne in 1714 was a German, and as elector of Hanover his continental realms belonged to the Holy Roman Empire.

In America, England acquired from France Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the Hudson Bay region, all of which she still holds. In this way the gradual expulsion of the French from North America began. From Spain England received the rock of Gibraltar from which she still commands the narrow entrance to the Mediterranean Sea, now doubly important since the establishment of the British Empire in India and the opening of the Suez Canal.

PEACE OF UTRECHT, 1713

The Peace of Utrecht changed the map of Europe as no previous treaty had done, not even that of Westphalia which closed the Thirty Years’ War in 1648. Each of the combatants got a share of the Spanish booty over which they had been struggling. The Bourbon Philip was permitted to retain the crown of Spain and all her colonies, but the Spanish and French crowns were never to rest on the same head. Though losing the Spanish Netherlands and the Italian possessions, Spain was really benefited by this arrangement, for, under the new sovereign, attention could be given to those domestic and administrative reforms so long and so sadly needed.

In this they succeeded, for when finally the long-expected death of the Spanish king occurred (November, 1700) it was found that he had left a will in which he desired that his twenty-two crowns should fall to the duke of Anjou on condition, however, that the crowns of France and Spain should never rest upon the same head. Should the Bourbons refuse to accept the bequest, the inheritance was to be passed on to the Archduke Charles of Austria, that hereditary enemy of France.

In 1686 the German powers signed an alliance known as the League of Augsburg, which was joined by Spain and the Dutch. Catholics and Protestants alike were ready to fight side by side in order to check the boundless insolence of the French king. Moreover a singular revolution soon greatly increased the strength and resources of Louis’s chief adversary, William of Orange, for in 1688 he became king of England.