Monarchies

Of the

Renaissance Time Period

Monarchies

 Rulers of the Renaissance were far more successful than earlier monarchs had been in securing the resources and developing the machinery of effective centralized government. Not all aspects of the reigns of these "new monarchs" Louis XI of France, Henry VII of England, and Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain - were equally new, and they still wielded far less power than later rulers would. In particular, with the possible exception of the French King, these monarchs were limited in the essential ability to tax. Nevertheless, their reigns marked the beginning of the development toward the modern state.

These European rulers had much in common. Their success was largely due to their subjects' longing for peace and order after prolonged civil wars in each country; the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) in France, the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) in England and factional struggles among the nobles of Spain in the first half of the 15th century and before.

The German king Maximilian I was unable to unify his empire his empire in a similar fashion. He did bring together the holdings of the Habsburg family in central Europe. In other regions, however, increasingly ambitious rulers consolidated political power and adopted an attitude toward the use of this power that closely resembled that of the princes of Italy.

Maximilian I 1486-1519

Louis XI pictured Center 1469

Henry VII of England