Using a vast range of primary sources, this substantial and important volume provides a comprehensive analysis of the division and near-collapse of Habsburg authority during the 1550s. The principal episodes of this period (the death of Charles V, the accession of Philip II, and the latter's marriage to Mary Tudor) are well known in outline, but Dr Rodriguez-Salgado provides much that is new and original, both on the internal history of Spain, and on the highly complex diplomacy of the period. Why did Charles V and Philip I go to war against France, and Papacy and Islam, and how did the...

Drawing on hitherto unpublished sources James Casey explores two major themes in Spanish historiography - the consequences of the expulsion of the Moriscos (heavily concentrated in Valencia in the early seventeenth century), and the way in which the Habsburg Monarchy kept or lost control over its peripheral provinces. The study ranges widely over questions of population (including a pioneering attempt for early modern Spain at family reconstitution), landholding and agriculture, exploring the links between depopulation and economic decline - twin phenomena which characterized the peninsula in...

In 1614 the French Estates General met for the last time before the Revolution of 1789. The meeting marks the beginning of the political career of Cardinal Richelieu and provides an opportunity for studying the regency of Marie de Medicis. In another sense 1614 marks the end of the Estates General in its early modern form of three separate estates preparing lists of grievances from the preliminary lists submitted to each deputy by his electors, while attending to the needs of the king. This book provides a full description of that last meeting in 1614, based on extensive research into...

This is the first full-scale analysis of the social and political transformation of the nobility of Holland during the revolt against Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the age of Rembrandt, nobles seemed to have been obliterated by the rising bourgeois merchants. However, in this study of the impact of the Dutch revolt, the author finds that Dutch nobles were extremely successful in maintaining their positions within the supposedly bourgeois Republic, forming the elite in administrative, political and economic systems. This is a revised edition of van Nierop's widely...

This study examines a significant development within late medieval and early modern European government, set in the context of the tense relations between the young Emperor Charles V and his ageing chancellor Mercurino de Gattrina. It focuses upon an important transformation in the administrative reorganisation of European monarchies: the shift in the political centre of gravity from the medieval institution of the chancellery as the secretariat for all government business and authentication to a small group of secretaries, the minister of a later age, acting directly in collaboration with...

This book presents a new interpretation of the development of the French army during the "personal rule" of Louis XIV. Based on massive archival research, it examines the army not only as a military institution but also as a political, social and economic organism. Guy Rowlands asserts that the key to the development of Louis XIV's armed forces was the king's determination to acknowledge and satisfy the military, political, social and cultural aspirations of his officers, and maintain the solid standing of the Bourbon dynasty.