Oswald Spengler. Le Déclin de l'Occident. Esquisse d'une morphologie de l'histoire universelle. (Première parution en 1931),Trad. de l'allemand par M. Tazerout Édition en deux volumes (01-10-1948) --- (or Gutenberg project The Decline of the West)

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[The Monarchs- Emmett Cooke. Music intro starts slowly fades out]

The Tsar

The prolonged warfare against the Ottomans between 1683 and 1718 drew in Russia, hastening that country’s integration within the nascent European states system. Although initially regarded as a useful ally against the Ottomans, it soon became clear that the tsar was replacing the sultan as chief challenger to the Habsburgs’ claim to be Europe’s pre-eminent monarchs.

Russia originated in the Varangians (Vikings) who conquered Kiev and were called Rus by the Slavs. The ruling Rurik family were wooed by Byzantine and Latin missionaries and they ultimately adopted eastern Christianity, which allowed them to use a Slavonic liturgy. The conversion of Prince Vladimir in 988 established the basis of a highly personalized sacral monarchy. Rurik princes contributed one third of the 180 Russian saints from the tenth to thirteenth centuries. Internal disputes produced rival Rurik principalities after 1054, all of which were conquered by the Mongols, who overcame the fearsome Russian winter by using the frozen rivers as roads for their cavalry. The Mongols established themselves by 1240 as the Golden Horde on the Lower Volga, extorting tribute from the Rurik princes. The principality of Moscovy emerged from the wreckage after 1325, facilitated subsequent to 1438 by the fragmentation of the Golden Horde. Tribute was stopped in 1480. Five years later, Moscovy took Novgorod, eliminating a major rival and signalling a desire to extend towards the Baltic.

As with the Ottomans, rapid expansion encouraged ambitions to formalize prestige through more overt imperial imagery. Ivan III ‘the Great’ married Zoe Palaiologina, niece of the last Byzantine emperor, in 1472 and proclaimed himself ruler of all the Russias. He took the title tsar, again a word derived from Caesar, which had been used before but was now employed more consciously to mean emperor in contrast to the old Kievan title knyaz, meaning prince or king. The link to ancient Rome was reinforced by the Russian Orthodox church’s rejection of the brief reunification of the Greek and Latin churches imposed by the Byzantine emperor in 1439. Philotheus, abbot of Pskov, developed his own version of imperial translation, arguing that the first Rome fell through heresy, the second (Constantinople) was conquered by the infidel, but the third (Moscow) would endure until Judgement Day. Like their western equivalents, such ideas derived their importance not as practical programmes, but through fostering an intellectual climate conducive to imperialism. Russian rulers aimed to ‘liberate’ Constantinople and claimed to protect Christian holy places – both as late as 1853 contributory factors in the outbreak of the Crimean War.

Byzantine traditions were readily adaptable to Russian circumstances, as they did not challenge the idea of a sacred ruler. The tsar already exercised greater control over his metropolitan than the Byzantine emperor over his patriarch – one metropolitan was strangled in 1568 for daring to criticize the tsar. The Russian church secured full autonomy in 1685 when the tsar declared the metropolitan independent from the Greek patriarch, who still lived under Ottoman rule in Constantinople. The move deliberately undercut the sultan’s authority over his Christian subjects whilst bolstering his Russian rival’s pretensions as champion of the true church.

The imperial double eagle first appeared as a tsarist symbol in 1480, though it only became the primary one under Peter I ‘the Great’, displaying icons and other religious symbols on military flags around 1700. Ivan IV ‘the Terrible’ staged a coronation 14 years into his rule, in 1561, that deliberately asserted Russia as a continuation of ancient Rome. The ceremony used a Slavonic translation of the Byzantine coronation service, while the regalia were presented as those of the former Byzantine emperor. Ivan regarded himself as a direct descendant of Emperor Augustus, and even the tsar’s notorious terror was influenced by ancient examples.

Assumption of the Byzantine legacy reinforced western perceptions of Russia as an alien civilization, but it also raised the tsar’s profile as a potential ally. The first imperial embassy to Russia was despatched in 1488 by Frederick III. This revealed how the two-emperor problem had also translated to Moscow. Frederick approached negotiations from the perspective of his pre-eminence, while Tsar Ivan III (rightly) stressed that neither he nor his ancestors had ever been imperial vassals. Ivan and his successors wanted international recognition that their title of tsar meant emperor, while westerners continued to ignore it and to refer to Russian rulers as merely ‘dukes’. Civil wars eventually saw the Ruriks replaced by the Romanovs in 1613, but these events simply reinforced westerners’ prejudices of Russia as barbaric and discouraged acceptance that its new rulers directly continued Romano-Byzantine imperialism. Russians for their part remained baffled by the Empire, despite increasing efforts to understand it – for example, the tsar’s government obtained copies of the Peace of Westphalia just three months after its conclusion in 1648. The Empire’s constitution contained many elements for which there was no Russian equivalent, and the tsar and his advisors found it hard to understand that feudal relations did not mean the princes’ servitude under the emperor. The desire to learn more grew as Russia’s frontiers advanced westwards after 1653, bringing greater influence in Poland and direct contact with the eastern edge of the Ottoman empire by 1667. German traders and immigrants were an important source of information, but the main shift came with Peter the Great, who personally travelled across the Empire on his famous European tour in 1697–8. Russia’s involvement in the Great Northern War (1700–1721) not only secured access to the Baltic but brought direct contact with imperial politics as Peter’s army pursued the Swedes across northern Germany. On 19 April 1716, Peter the Great’s niece Ekaterina Ivanovna married Duke Carl Leopold of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, initiating two centuries of close dynastic relations between the Romanovs and German princely families.

Russian imperial imagery became increasingly western, though without entirely jettisoning Byzantine elements. Peter issued a two-rouble coin depicting himself as an ancient Roman emperor to celebrate his victory over Swedish forces at Poltava in 1709. His officials then discovered a letter from Maximilian I sent in 1514 seeking an alliance. Whether by accident or design, the Habsburg chancellery had addressed Vasily III as Kayser, implicitly recognizing the Russians’ insistence on translating tsar as emperor. Peter had the letter published in 1718 as part of the careful preparations culminating in his self-proclamation as imperator in October 1721. The coincidence of this act with the successful outcome of the Great Northern War underscored Russia as an imperial power.

The Habsburgs persisted in refusing to recognize the Russian emperor as their equal, rebuffing a proposal that the two emperors alternate as Europe’s foremost monarch. Backed diplomatically by France, Emperor Charles VI recycled old arguments that Europe could not have two emperors. Deteriorating relations with western European powers forced Charles to compromise, recognizing the tsar’s imperial title as part of a wider alliance in 1726, though Charles still claimed formal pre-eminence. Russia remained content until 1762, because it saw Austria as a useful ally against the still-powerful Ottomans. The alliance drew it deeper into imperial politics. Russian troops thrice entered the Empire to assist Austria in wars between 1733 and 1762. The Romanovs were now closely related to the princely families of Mecklenburg, Holstein, Württemberg, Hessen-Darmstadt and Anhalt-Zerbst, with the last providing the princess who ruled Russia as Catherine II ‘the Great’ between 1762 and 1796. The purpose of involvement shifted from payback for Austrian assistance in the Balkans to a growing concern for the Empire’s internal political balance as a factor in Russia’s own wider strategic interests. Russia brokered the Peace of Teschen ending the Austro-Prussian War of the Bavarian Succession (1778–9), and thereafter claimed this made it a guarantor of the Peace of Westphalia. Although he was never fully recognized, a permanent envoy at the Reichstag was maintained by Russia after 1782 to safeguard its interests.47

The Most Christian King

A factor in Austria’s accommodation with Russia was the growth of France as a western European great power. France shared common roots with the Empire in the Carolingian realm. The Treaty of Verdun (843), which divided the Empire into three kingdoms (West Francia, East Francia and Lotharingia), was celebrated later as the foundation of France and Germany, but at the time there was no sense that this had created separate countries. Reunification efforts continued into the 880s, while ties amongst the elite persisted across the Rhine long after that. Distinctions became clearer as the Ottonians succeeded the defunct eastern Carolingian royal line in 919. The meeting between the Ottonian Henry I and the ‘French’ King Rudolf I near Sedan in 935 was carefully choreographed to stress parity – something that was repeated during further royal summits in 1006–7. However, none of the monarchs involved held the imperial title at the time of the meetings.

Common origins allowed French kings to claim the imperial tradition themselves. King Lothar reacted angrily to Otto I’s imperial coronation in 962, while the Capetian family ruling France after 987 were prepared to recognize Byzantium’s imperial title if this would secure an anti-Ottonian alliance. From the tenth century onwards, French writers Frenchified Charlemagne and the Franks, stressing an unbroken line of Christian kings since Clovis. They disputed the concept of imperial translation, instead presenting the empire as a Carolingian creation always centred on Paris, not Aachen. A central feature was the myth that Charlemagne had gone to Jerusalem and brought back the relics of St Denis to found a Parisian monastery – a story vigorously propagated by the monks to assert their house as home to French royal and national identity. Unable to ignore Ottonian possession of the actual imperial title, they sought to reduce the emperor’s role to protecting the pope, judging the emperor’s actions according to the current state of Franco-papal relations.

The initial goal was to maintain parity with the former East Frankish realm, but after 1100 French writers increasingly distinguished between the German kingdom as a foreign country and the imperial title that they claimed for their own king. However, some went further, arguing that, as direct heir to the Franks, the French king should rule all former Frankish territory, including Germany. The victory of King Philip II Augustus over Otto IV at Bouvines in 1214 decided the Welf–Staufer civil war and appeared to make France the arbiter of imperial affairs. Philip’s troops carried the Oriflamme, the blood-red banner of St Denis abbey that was traditionally considered Charlemagne’s own flag, while their superiority appeared confirmed by their capture of Otto’s imperial standard in the battle. Heavy French involvement in the Crusades after 1095 added interest, because the emperor was widely regarded as the Crusaders’ ‘natural’ leader. French observers interpreted the prolonged absence of a crowned emperor between 1251 and 1311 as a factor in the failure of later crusading ventures. Opposition to individual emperors remained contingent on specific circumstances, not principled objections to the idea of the Empire. For instance, action against Henry VII stemmed from a desire to protect French interests in Italy and the belief that the pope had crowned the wrong king as emperor. Prayers for the emperor continued in France and Spain into the fourteenth century. French kings made serious efforts to secure the imperial title in 1273–4, 1308, 1313 and 1324–8. Charles Valois, brother of Philip IV, even married the granddaughter of Baldwin II, the last Latin emperor of Byzantium, in the hope of reuniting the eastern and western empires. These attempts failed, but thanks to their growing power, French kings did assert themselves as the papacy’s protectors by the late thirteenth century. The propagandists of Philip Augustus already presented him as Charlemagne’s true heir. ‘Augustus’ was in fact a nickname given the king by Rigord, a senior monk of St Denis, to celebrate Philip’s appropriately ‘imperial’ expansion of monarchical authority across France. Rigord also repeatedly referred to him as ‘Most Christian King’ (rex Christianissimus), a rank chosen to outflank the imperial title by emphasizing the French monarch’s special mission. This title was later confirmed by the pope, while further papal concessions since the twelfth century cemented the separate identity of the French church.

Failure to obtain the imperial title encouraged the assertion that the French monarchy already possessed imperial, in the sense of sovereign, powers. Charlemagne had been a great king before his imperial coronation. This became the standard argument into the mid-seventeenth century, serving to justify continued bids to obtain the title, and to deflect any criticism when these attempts failed. The belief in both the independence of the French monarchy and its continued membership of a single, universal Christian order did not strike contemporaries as contradictory. While later nationalist writers played up the former whilst ignoring the latter, late medieval and early modern opinion was in fact strikingly modern: twenty-first-century France is clearly still a sovereign country despite being part of the European Union.

The myth of Charlemagne helped inspire Charles VIII’s invasion of Italy in 1494, especially as his immediate target, Naples, claimed the defunct title of king of Jerusalem since 1477. François I had more concrete imperial ambitions, securing papal backing and canvassing German support from 1516. In his attempt to cover all the ideological bases he claimed Trojan descent, presented himself as embodying Roman virtues, and argued that French and Germans shared common Frankish ancestry. He pushed universalism to its logical conclusion: the title was not a purely German possession, but open to all worthy candidates. However, the process of becoming emperor was by now firmly associated with election as German king. The German electors regarded Charlemagne and the Franks as their own, exclusive ancestors and rejected François’ overtures in favour of Charles V.

Louis XIV and his advisor, Cardinal Mazarin, made the last attempt at securing the imperial title, following Ferdinand III’s death in 1657. Mazarin backed the candidacy of the duke of Pfalz-Neuburg as a stalking horse to test German support for Louis. But the primary motive was to prevent another Austrian Habsburg emperor who might involve the Empire in France’s ongoing war (since 1635) with Spain. The ploy contributed to what became the longest imperial interregnum since 1494–1507, but failed to prevent the election of Leopold I in 1658. Speculation about another French candidacy persisted into the 1670s, but was rendered irrelevant by Leopold’s longevity (he died in 1705). French diplomats swiftly fell back on arguments advanced since the 1640s that their king was the German princes’ natural ally in defending their constitutional liberties against the threat of ‘imperial absolutism’.

The abandonment of direct imperial ambitions inevitably led to assertions that France was already superior. The experience of civil war between 1562 and 1598 had produced new arguments for strong royal rule as the foundation of a stable social and political order. French writers increasingly drew disparaging contrasts with the Empire, which they presented as declining from an (allegedly) hereditary monarchy under Charlemagne’s ‘French’ rule into a degenerately elective one under the Germans. It was no longer an empire, but merely a sorry shadow of one, whereas the continuous line of Christian French kings had existed beyond the combined span of republican and imperial Rome. France was a divine monarchy, with its king chosen by God through hereditary succession. As the Sun King, Louis outshone any other ruler. Thanks to his Christian credentials and practical power, he, not the emperor, was the natural arbiter of Europe.

French pretensions to be Europe’s arbiter foundered in a series of wars between 1667 and 1714. Louis achieved the long-standing French goal of keeping Spain and Austria apart by defeating Habsburg claims to the entire Spanish succession after 1700. Yet by the Sun King’s death in 1715 it was clear that most diplomats favoured ideas of a power balance rather than a single peacekeeper. France also struggled to assert itself as arbiter of the Empire’s internal balance, because it proved hard to find a reliable German partner to facilitate intervention. Bavaria was preferred since the 1620s as suitably Catholic and large enough that, with help, it could serve as a counterweight to the Austrian Habsburgs. Franco-Bavarian cooperation intensified when Charles VI’s death without a male heir in October 1740 broke the line of Habsburg rulers since 1438 and opened the War of the Austrian Succession, lasting until 1748. Carl Albrecht of Bavaria was eventually elected as Charles VII with French backing in 1742. His brief reign of just under three years proved a disastrous failure for both Bavaria and the Empire. The setback encouraged the French foreign minister, the Marquis d’Argenson, to propose federalizing Germany and Italy by reorganizing them into fewer, larger territories in 1745. The plan was opposed by Prussia and Savoy, who saw greater opportunities for themselves through preserving the old order. Austria’s recovery of the imperial title through Francis I’s election later in 1745 ended d’Argenson’s scheme.

A Fool’s Hat?

Habsburg statesmen realized long before this point that the imperial title no longer meant what it had done in the Middle Ages. Following successful wars against the Ottomans, by 1699 the Habsburgs had more land outside the Empire than within it, inevitably changing how they regarded the imperial title. Plans to raise Austria to a kingdom had been abandoned in 1623. Nonetheless, the term ‘Austrian monarchy’ was employed from 1703 as a vague yet suitably regal designation for the Habsburg lands, which in fact included several genuine kingdoms: Bohemia, Hungary, Croatia, Naples (between 1714 and 1735), plus Galicia, annexed from Poland in 1772, and nominal claims to Jerusalem. These developments raised questions about the continued utility of the imperial title, especially as the Habsburgs survived without it between 1740 and 1745 during the international War of the Austrian Succession. They felt betrayed by the failure of the imperial Estates to back them against France, Bavaria and their allies. Francis I’s wife, Maria Theresa, took an especially dim view, calling the imperial crown a ‘fool’s hat’, refusing to be crowned empress and referring to her husband’s coronation in 1745 as a ‘Punch and Judy Show’ (Kaspar Theater). These misgivings persisted even when their son Joseph II succeeded his father in 1765. Joseph described the position of emperor as ‘a ghost of an honorific power’ and was quickly frustrated by the imperial constitution, which was indeed functioning to constrain Habsburg management of the Empire as French diplomats hoped.

Historians have often cited these comments as evidence for the Empire’s supposed irrelevance after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. However, Francis I’s advisors replied to his questions on 7 March 1749 by stressing that the imperial title was a ‘brilliant symbol of the highest political honour in the West … bringing precedence ahead of all other powers’ (see Plate 7). The entire Habsburg government – including the imperial couple – were convinced that the loss of the imperial title in 1740 had been disastrous, and resolved to defend the Empire’s internal political hierarchy since this gave Austria a privileged position and helped maintain its international influence. Austria was obliged to concede ceremonial parity with France in 1757 as part of an anti-Prussian alliance. Even the French Revolutionaries remained sufficiently status conscious to get this confirmed in 1797 and 1801. The imperial title was now the sole marker of this pre-eminence and the Habsburgs clung to earlier arguments that all others calling themselves ‘emperors’ were really only ‘kings’. For the Habsburgs, both the Empire and Europe as a whole were hierarchical political systems. These arguments were useful in putting upstarts like Prussia in their place, and were backed by many of the smaller imperial Estates, which felt any levelling of the established order would lead to the kind of federalism proposed by d’Argenson, thereby threatening their autonomy.

Having found Prussia an unreliable German partner after 1740, France switched to an Austrian alliance in 1756, lasting until the Revolutionary Wars after 1792. The resulting Seven Years War (1756–63) failed to eliminate Prussia as challenger to Austria. The French envoy to the Reichstag after 1763 identified the other imperial Estates as ‘inert resources’ (forces mortes), which France should preserve from both Austria and Prussia to prevent either German great power from dominating central Europe. The French public failed to appreciate the subtleties of this policy, seeing only surface aspects like the arrival of the unpopular Austrian princess, Marie-Antoinette, as symbolizing their country’s humiliating association with its long-standing enemy. Few were interested in the complexities of imperial politics, and those that were believed the Empire could not be reformed without destroying it. French hostility grew after 1789 when some German princes sheltered the émigrés fleeing the Revolution. The Girondin and Jacobin factions were both disappointed by their failure to replace their country’s established ties to German princes with a new alliance with the ‘German nation’. Revolutionary policy became ever more extreme as it departed from accepted diplomatic norms. French policy-makers now considered the Westphalian settlement as ‘absurd’, while still using it in negotiations to further their goals. Even this lost its relevance once advocates among the French revolutionaries of ‘natural frontiers’ seized power in Paris by 1795, intending to annex the entire left bank of the Rhine to France.

A New Charlemagne

French military successes by 1797 raised urgent questions about the Empire’s reorganization, renewal or dissolution. Many answers focused on Napoleon, the rising figure within the French Republic. Beethoven was not the only central European disappointed by Napoleon. The smaller imperial Estates hoped Napoleon would renew the Empire, especially Arch-chancellor Dalberg, who sent him numerous proposals. Napoleon initially continued earlier French policy, writing in May 1797 that if the Empire did not already exist, France would have to invent it to keep Germany weak. Differing interpretations of Charlemagne’s legacy reflect how Napoleon’s attitudes soon diverged radically. Central Europeans, like Dalberg, who hoped to preserve the Empire, regarded Charlemagne as the progenitor of a thousand years of power tempered by law and propriety through the Empire’s constitution. Napoleon’s interpretation was rather closer to the historical reality, seeing Charlemagne as a heroic warrior and conqueror.

Napoleon’s use of Charlemagne’s memory was primarily directed at consolidating his authority within France, where he used his position as First Consul to foster a personality cult, replacing the Revolution’s classical republican iconography with royalist-imperial images. The words Karolus Magnus are carved into the rock at Napoleon’s feet in Jacques-Louis David’s famous portrait of him crossing the Alps, painted in 1801–2. The idea of a heroic strongman asserting order had considerable popular appeal after the revolutionary disorders. The appropriation of Charlemagne was part of a wider strategy to legitimate the regime without tying it to any single tradition. More specifically, the Frankish king’s role as papal protector proved useful when Napoleon urgently needed a compromise with the papacy to end the Revolution’s war with French Catholics, which had killed 317,000 people since 1793. These moves culminated in Napoleon’s proclamation of himself as ‘emperor of the French’ on 18 May 1804, followed by his coronation on 2 December where Pope Pius VII read the same text used by Leo III when investing Charlemagne over a millennium before. Replicas of Charlemagne’s sword and crown had to be used, because the Austrians still had the originals. Napoleon hoped to reconcile republicans by issuing a new constitution, but he did not regard the French as new Roman citizens. He declared Rome a free city when he annexed the Papal States to France in 1809, rather than making it his imperial capital.

The Napoleonic empire promised to guarantee order by sweeping away defective socio-political arrangements and defeating all possible external enemies. Napoleon’s universalism rested on the hegemony of decisive victory and rational uniformity exemplified by his civil code and the metric system. His deployment of Charlemagne’s legacy directly challenged the Empire by suggesting his territorial ambitions extended to the entire former Frankish realm. Initially, he still formally deferred, promising in May 1804 that he would only use his imperial title once it had been recognized by Emperor Francis II and the Empire.

Austrian ministers immediately recognized that refusal would mean renewed war, but like their Prussian counterparts, they deluded themselves in thinking that Napoleon’s conversion of the revolutionary republic into a monarchy would make France more predictable. Although the leading minister, Count Cobenzl, acknowledged that Francis II’s status ‘has shrivelled to little more than an honorific title’, it had to be upheld lest Russia claim parity and Britain assume its own imperial crown. Conversion of the Holy Roman imperial title into a hereditary one was rejected as breaching the Empire’s constitution. Instead, the vague status of the Habsburg lands as a separate monarchy provided the basis for Francis II to assume a new, additional and hereditary title of ‘emperor of Austria’. The title was intended to maintain Austria’s formal parity with France since 1757, whilst still allowing Francis to trump Napoleon through his additional Holy Roman dignity. In December 1804 the new status was announced along with a fanfare of trumpets and kettledrums to crowds assembled before specially constructed wooden tribunes in Vienna’s six suburbs.72 No coronation was considered necessary, because Francis had already been crowned as the (last) Holy Roman emperor in 1792: there was never an Austrian imperial coronation throughout the entire life of the Austrian empire, between 1804 and 1918.

The conservative publicist Friedrich von Gentz wrote to the future chief minister Metternich that Francis might as well call himself emperor of Salzburg, Frankfurt or Passau. His critique reflected the widespread belief that the proliferation of imperial titles diminished them all. Sweden lodged a formal protest in its capacity as guarantor of the Peace of Westphalia, claiming Francis had exceeded his powers by unilaterally assuming the title rather than securing agreement from the Reichstag. Criticism was rendered irrelevant by relentless French pressure, which frustrated any remaining hope of reforming the Empire. Napoleon crowned himself king of Italy on 26 May 1805 using the Lombard iron crown, thus usurping one of the Empire’s three core kingdoms. Further friction produced renewed war, culminating in Napoleon’s decisive victory over Austria and Russia at Austerlitz on 2 December 1805. Napoleon soon abandoned ideas of assuming the Holy Roman imperial title, partly because this would hinder peace with Britain and Russia, while Austria still had the original regalia, but mainly because its associations were incompatible with his style of imperial rule. He now sought to undermine the remnants of the old order to break Austria’s remaining influence over the smaller German territories. Faced with the threat of renewed war, Francis II reluctantly abdicated on 6 August 1806, hoping that by dissolving the Empire he would undermine the legitimacy of Napoleon’s reorganization of Germany.

The events of 1804–6 signalled a new age for European empire. Although Napoleon’s Grand Empire collapsed in 1814, his nephew ruled a Second French Empire between 1852 and 1870, while the subsequent republican regime expanded the country’s overseas possessions into a large colonial empire from the 1880s. Prussia’s victory over the Second French Empire led to the foundation of the German Second Empire in 1871. Queen Victoria finally formalized British imperialism by assuming the title ‘Empress of India’ in 1876. Throughout, Austria, Russia, and the Ottomans remained imperial states. There were now six empires on one continent. ‘Empire’ ceased to mean a singular ‘world order’ and became the title accorded a monarch ruling a large state.

[The Monarchs- Emmett Cooke. (full) slow rise, peak, fades out]

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