Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 766 Spain is not invincible

[This chapter mainly explains the situation facing Europe, especially Spain, please subscribe carefully, and friends who do not follow please do not subscribe]

Gao Yushi has read a lot of novels, most of which portray the Spanish colonial empire in this period as extremely powerful and invincible, as if the Habsburg dynasty would have swept the world if it weren't for the accidental failure of the Armada.

This is really bullshit.

Today's Habsburg dynasty is of course powerful. If Philip II's Austrian clan is included, the Habsburg dynasty is definitely the number one power in Europe.

Philip II's father, Charles V, inherited the crowns of four major dynasties, Castile, Aragon, Burgundy (not Kingdom) and Austria (not Kingdom), and later his family received Bohemia Asia, Hungary, and Portugal, and for a short time even received the crown of England (Philip II was her husband and co-king during the "Bloody Mary" period).

The occurrence of these dynastic events, coupled with Spain's conquest and plunder in the New World at the same time, brought wealth and resources unmatched by other European countries to the Habsburg family.Although there are many holes and inaccuracies in the statistics of later generations, and the population figures of that period are not very reliable, it is assumed that the inhabitants living in the territories ruled by the Habsburgs accounted for a quarter of the population of early modern Europe. One, it shouldn't be a big mistake.

Needless to say, the strength of the Spanish phalanx and the Spanish fleet, but in fact the strength of the Habsburg dynasty at this time is also reflected in its financial resources.

The Habsburgs had five main sources of finances, with a few other minor contributions.The most important of these is Spain's Castilian heritage.The place was ruled directly by the royal family, to whom various periodic taxes were ceded by the parliament and the church (business tax, "crusade tax" on religious property).

In addition, the commercial wealth and working capital of Europe's two trading regions—the Italian city-states and the Low Countries—could provide considerable financing.

A fourth source, which has grown in importance over time, is income from the American countries.The "one-fifth royal tax" on the mining of silver and gold in the Americas, combined with sales taxes, customs duties, and ecclesiastical levies, made the New World a large dividend for Spanish kings.

There is not only direct here, but also indirect, for the flow of American wealth into private hands, whether Spaniards, Flemish or Italian, helps these individuals or companies to pay more and more heavy national taxes, And in an emergency, the monarch could borrow heavily from bankers, because he could theoretically pay off the debt as soon as the silver fleet arrived.

The presence of many important financial and commercial families in the territory of the Habsburg family, such as those living in southern Germany, Italian cities and Antwerp, should also be counted as an advantage, which is the fifth main source of finance.

In fact, this source was easier to come by than the taxes from the German regions, because the princes and representatives of the free cities in the Holy Roman Diet traditionally voted for the emperor only when the Turks came to the door.

However, even though the Habsburg dynasty seemed so powerful, Gao Yushi did not feel that it was invincible, because its financial and military resources, although extremely strong in the eyes of the people at the time, were never sufficient.And this fatal flaw stems from three factors that are always interacting.

The first factor was caused by the "military revolution" in early modern Europe, that is, in the 16 years after the 20s, the scale, cost, and organization of wars expanded dramatically.The change itself was caused by several intersecting factors, tactical, political and demographic.

The army of the Spanish Empire provides perhaps the best example of how the "Revolution in Military Affairs" can be carried out.As historians who study it say, before 1529, in the struggle between France and Spain for Italy, "there is no evidence that either side used more than 3 troops," but by 1536-1537, the Emperor Charles V In Lombardy alone, the world recruited 6 people to defend the newly occupied Milan and invade Provence in France.

In 1552, to attack simultaneously on all fronts—in Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain, in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean—Charles V conscripted 10.9 troops from Germany and the Netherlands, and 2.4 from Lombardy , in addition, there were conscripts from Sicily, Naples and Spain.

Thus the army under the emperor's command, and therefore his support, must have numbered some 15 men.This upward trend continued, and by 1574 the Spanish army in Flanders alone numbered 8.6 men.

What happened on land happened on a much larger scale at sea.

The expansion of maritime trade, the competition of trading fleets in the English Channel, the Indian Ocean, or the coasts of mainland Spain, the threat posed by North African corsairs and the Ottoman galley fleets all interacted with new shipbuilding techniques, allowing ships to be built ever 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 predators.But there is a tendency to establish a royal navy, by which the sovereign may possess a certain number of regular navies, forming a nucleus.In wartime, armed merchant ships, three-masted warships, and two-masted small ships can only concentrate on this core.

Henry VIII of England was particularly supportive of this plan, while Charles V was reluctant to build his own navy, preferring to requisition the private Spanish galleons and galleons in his Spanish and Italian territories.

Philip II, under heavy pressure in the Mediterranean and then the Atlantic, could not enjoy this luxury and had to pay for a vast shipbuilding program in Barcelona, ​​Naples and Sicily: by 1574 he was maintaining 146 large ships. Sailing boats are almost three times that of ten years ago.

During the next decade, wars in the Atlantic forced him to make greater efforts to secure sea routes to the West Indies (after Portugal had been annexed in 10) and the East Indies, to protect the coast of Spain from British The army was sent to Britain, all of which urgently needed an ocean-going fleet.

Even after the Anglo-Spanish peace treaty was signed in 1604, Spain still needed a large fleet to defend its communications with Flanders against the Dutch sea attack.Moreover, as time goes by and time flies, these warships are equipped with more and more equipment, and the cost is becoming more and more expensive.

It was this spiraling cost of war that exposed the real weakness of the Habsburg regime.

General inflation caused the price of food to increase fourfold from 1500 to 1630, and the price of industrial products increased by two times. This was an extremely heavy blow to the government's finances. pour oil on the flame.As a result, the Habsburgs were constantly struggling to be solvent.

In the 16s, after various campaigns against the Protestants in Algiers, France, and Germany, 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 the drastic step of confiscating the wealth of the West Indies, and seizing all the coinage of Spain, could money be found to support the war against the Protestant princes. In 1552, he spent 250 million ducats in the battle of Metz, about 10 times the normal income he collected from America at that time.

As a result he was forced to take on new debts continually, but on increasingly stringent terms.The Crown's credit was declining, and the interest charged by the bankers was higher and higher, so that a large part of the normal income could only be expended in paying interest on past debts.When Charles abdicated, the national debt left to Philip II was about 2000 million daka.

Philip also inherited the war with France, and how costly was this war?By 1557, the Spanish royal family had to declare bankruptcy on its own.At the time, big banking families like Fujere had to bow down.

It can be said that in the same year, France was also forced to declare bankruptcy, which was the main reason why both parties agreed to peace talks at Chateau Cambrezi in 1559.

But then, Philippe had to deal with a powerful Turkish enemy, 20 years of war in the Mediterranean, campaigns against the Moors of Grenada, intricate military operations in the Netherlands, northern France and the English Channel, forcing the royal family to seek all possible income. source.

Spanish taxes tripled during the reign of Charles V, while Philip II doubled them between 2 and 1556 alone, and almost doubled them again by the end of his reign.

Philip's expenditure was even greater. In the Battle of Lepanto, it is estimated that the cost of maintaining the Christian fleet and soldiers needs to exceed 400 million daka per year. Although Venice and the Pope shared a large part, Spain also took a lot of money .

By the 16s the expenses of the Flemish army were already very large, and they were not always paid on time, resulting in military riots. The situation worsened in 70 when Philip stopped paying interest to Genoese bankers.Although the sharp increase in income from American minerals temporarily eased the financial and credit crisis of the royal family, in the 1557s, there were about 16 million dakars per year, and it was only 80/200 of what it was about 40 years ago; however, the Armada in 1 The cost of the war reached 10 million dakars, and its tragic fate was not only a naval disaster, but also a disaster for the royal family's finances.

In 1596, after taking out an unprecedented amount of public debt, Philip once again refused to pay.When he died two years later, the total debt was Dk1 crore.The interest on this gigantic debt was nearly two-thirds of all taxes.

Although Spain quickly reached a peace agreement with France and Britain, the war with the Netherlands continued arduously. It was not until 1609 that the ceasefire was achieved, and the ceasefire itself was urgently brought about by the Spanish mutiny and further collapse in 1607.

During the peacetime years that followed, Spanish government spending was not substantially reduced.Leaving aside the issue of huge interest for the time being, the continued tension in the Mediterranean requires a large sum of money to build a coastal fortification; the vast Spanish coast has been repeatedly robbed by privateers, and it also needs to be built in the Philippines, the Caribbean, and the High Seas Fleet. Costs a considerable defense cost.

After 1610, the truce in Europe did not make the proud Spanish leaders consider reducing military expenditures. The Thirty Years' War, which broke out in 1618, only turned a cold war into a hot one, sending more and more Spanish troops and money into Flanders and Germany.

It is worth noting that the initial victories of the Habsburgs in Europe and the effective defense of the Americas during this period largely coincided with and were supported by a marked increase in gold and silver ingots from the New World .

But for the same reason, fiscal revenue decreased after 1626, and it declared bankruptcy the following year.In particular, the astonishing act of the Dutch hijacking the silver fleet in 1628 caused Spain and its residents to lose as much as 1000 million ducats, which also made Spain's war efforts suspended for a period of time, but its income was absolutely unable to make up for the huge deficit .

This was how Spain dealt with the war for the next thirty years, pooling new debts, adding new taxes, and using any windfall income from the Americas to finance a major military campaign.For example, Cardinal Infante's intervention in Germany in 30-1634, but exhausting wars always eventually eroded these short-term incomes, and the financial situation worsened within a few years.

After the Catalan and Portuguese uprisings in the 17s, wealth from the Americas dwindled, and a long, slow decline was inevitable.Even if a country has excellent soldiers, can any good be expected when it is governed by a government which outspends two or three times its normal income?
The second main reason for the defeat of Spain and Austria is not difficult to see from the above brief description: the Habsburgs have too many things to manage, too many enemies to deal with, and too many fronts to defend!
Although the Spanish army is very strong on the battlefield, it is difficult to disperse them in domestic defense, North Africa, Sicily, Italy, the New World and Holland.

Just like the British Empire three centuries later, the Habsburg Group combined a wide range of territories, an amazing feat of a political dynasty, but it required great material resources and ingenuity to maintain its operation.

This situation is the greatest example in history of strategic overextension. Once a large territory is occupied, the price is to create many enemies. Fortunately, one of its great enemies, the contemporary Ottoman Empire, also carried the same burden.

Then, looking back, even though Spain is powerful at this time, how can it threaten Daming?
It can't even threaten the highly pragmatic Jinghua Group! ——
The number of words is controlled to 3900+, and it does not reach 4K, saving some money for friends who like international perspectives.

(End of this chapter)