Early Western Civilization

Traces the development of western civilization in 20 year time periods from 1050 to the present, in Europe and the New World.


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August 28, 2012

The Stuart Lorraine Marriage

In 1603, following the death of Elizabeth I, her nephew, the catholic James VI of Scotland became James I of England and an uneasy union took place between the two nations in terms of ethnic, political and religious divisions. The catholics, both British and Scottish -- and elsewhere in the Holy Roman Empire -- were united in wanting James to rule in accordance with the dictates of the Pope in Rome, and the Emperor in Austria, not the English parliament (which suffered the Gunpowder Plot of 1605), and when the Houses of Stuart and Lorraine were united in 1613 with the marriage of Fredrick of the German Palatinate and Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James I, the catholic cause looked good except for the fact that Fredrick accepted the crown of Bohemia, adopted Rosicrucian influences and sparked a Thirty Years' War 1613-1645 which ravaged Germany, causing the death of hundreds of thousands of young men in battle, widespread starvation of peasants and massive migrations of Germans to the new American colonies.

The Thirty Years' War was essentially a Catholic Reformation against the Protestant forces in the Empire, most especially Fredrick of the Palatinate and his Scottish wife, and it gained additional focus with the new Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand II (1619-1637).

There were incredibly bitter divisions between German Catholics and Protestants -- far more so than in England and Scotland -- but by far the most pressing reason for Germans to emigrate at any time before unification (two centuries later in 1871) was incessant conflict between the many German kingdoms.

The founding by the English of the first American colony of Jamestown in 1607 along non-sectarian lines provided a safety valve for the insanity of the old world, and over time more German than English new settlers arrived.

In 1625 James I was succeeded by his son Charles I who, in 1637, tried to impose a new prayer book on Scotland, provoking protest from the Calvinists who retaliated by drawing up the National Covenant asserting the inviolability of the Scottish church.

As a result, Civil War broke out in England in 1642. Charles I surrendered to the Scots army and was executed in 1649. The new king, Charles II, had to wait until Oliver Cromwell's protectorship of England ended in 1660 before commencing his reign which was also followed by another spectacular event -- the Great Fire of London in 1666 -- possibly another Catholic act of retribution.

In Germany, after the Seven Years War, from 1645 onwards, the plight of the impoverished and war-weary Germans was so terrible that Catherine the Great of Russia and many of the Austro-Hungarian kings sent envoys into the German countryside offering the starving farmers and their families a new home in their lands.

At a time when Europe was torn by sectarian violence, William Penn came to the rescue with a vision of harmony in the new world. He was granted the Charter of Pennsylvania in 1681 and founded Philadelphia in 1682 with migrants he had previously attracted during his travels through Europe actively promoting religious freedom in the new land. Germans -- both Catholics and Protestants -- constituted the largest group of emigrants to Pennsylvania and they founded Germantown in the same year, 1683, that the Moslem Ottoman Turks had advanced through southern Austria and were beseiging its capital, Vienna.

By 1680, the threat of Eurabia was far more terrifying -- and possible -- than it is now.

In 1685, Charles II died and all hell broke loose when his brother, the openly Catholic and French supported James II, succeeded him. James II was deposed in 1688 and replaced the next year by his Protestant daughter, Mary, and her Dutch husband, William of Orange.

James II's exile by William and Mary of Orange sparked the birth of the Catholic Jacobite movement to restore the Stuarts to the English throne. His son, Charles Edward Stuart, born in Rome in 1720, carried on the struggle as Bonnie Prince Charlie until 1788 and his brother, a Roman Catholic cardinal, paid no attention to the remaining Jacobite exiles -- who now called him Henry IX.

With all European powers now involved in colonial expansion, the Stuarts and the sectarian violence they fomented lost impetus and migration to the American colonies became a tactical rather than humanitarian project. However, if the succession act preventing a catholic from ruling England is repealed then there are several contenders living today who can claim a right to the monarchy -- Franz, Duke of Bavaria being the first in direct line and his neice Sophie, Hereditary Princess of Liechtenstein, being the next in line.

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