How European Kings Defeated their Nobles - Medieval History DOCUMENTARY

Kings and Generals animated historical documentary series on medieval history and history of Europe continues with the video on how centralization of various Western European kingdoms took place and how the kings defeated the nobles kickstarting the evolution from feudal kingdoms to nation-states

#Documentary #Feudalism #Medieval

[MichaelSmith-ijut]

As a 15th century noble myself, I'm happy to see our repression finally being covered.

[LeoWarrior]

If only the european monarchs knew to just spec into the intrigue branch and maximize on dread so your vassals wont form factions against you.

[holyfreak]

The bourgeoisie became the economic engine of many european kingdoms. Gradually, royalty started to see them as supporters instead of the nobility.

[noahkidd]

This is crack. More videos on the political/economic/military transformations of states during the medieval, renaissance, and early modern periods would be greatly appreciated!

[grapeshott]

1. Laws, royal courts
2. Marriage
3. Nobles
4. Standing, professional Armies
5. Church
6. Gunpowder
7. More crown Land
8. Taxation
9. Foreign ambassadors
10. Resolving issues between the ruler and the ruled

[kermitthethinker]

You could have spoken about Portugal, we are always quite forgotten, D.João II story in how he centralised the Portuguese realm that was practically in nobles hands after his father king Afonso V, gave them so much power to the nobles that D.João II called his father"King of the roads of Portugal", he had noble opposition in every way, and he discovered a huge noble and clergy conspiracy to assassinate him, the ringleader was his wife brother and the king cousin Duque of Aveiro that said the he would stab the king himself, when the king(that had created a spy network)discovered he summoned him and killed him with his own hands by stabbing him to death and put the rest of nobility and clergy behind bars, also he lead and austere live with few courtesan living with him to reduce spending, increased the bureaucracy and fought corruption among the noble and avoided expansionist policy to avoid to end like his father that wasted the realm treasury and king powers to have nobles support to his campaigns in North Africa and Spain with money and soldiers, instead going for the unpopular(Nobles loved war)maritime exploration and route to India.

[ekesandras]

The Habsburgs expropriated most of the old nobility during the Reformation time. The fact that most of the traditional nobility turned Protestant gave them a perfect pretext. Very few old families in Austria, Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia could keep their postition and estates. Later they created a completely new nobility in their lands by promoting seasoned soldiers and civil service bureaucrats, people like Wallenstein, the Starhembergs, the Liechtensteins or the Eszterházy family. Some rumors say that even the infamous case against Erzsébet Báthory was made up, to get hold on the vast wealth of this last heir of the formerly most powerful Hungarian magnate family.
In the HRE though, they were not successful with this strategy, it only worked in the lands directly controlled by them. Therefore Germany never was centralized in any way.

[Warmaker]

Nice video.

When I was younger I imagined these kingdoms to be a lot more centralized. All authority from the king, one army, the king's royal army. And everyone being in step with the king. I was very surprised to learn that these various kingdoms were anything but centralized. Armies were not the king's army, but armies raised by various lords who had their own interests. I remember being very surprised by how fractured France was before the time covered in this video.

But as this video showed, eventually these kindgoms gradually shifted to be more centralized, closer to what I imagined them to be. Even then a lot more development still had to take place. But for hundreds of years before, goodness, it was pretty darn loose.

[podemosurss]

Great video. Fun tidbit: Provincial courts are still called "Audiencias" in Spain, and there is also the "Audiencia Nacional", which is a court that deals with cases of terrorism and those kind of things (as well as people making jokes about Carrero Blanco's death in 1973).

[bencohen]

I’m really proud of what this channel has become and how it has expanded beyond just the shattering tiles to also discussing political, social, and economic history topics in a respectfully complex but also accessible way. Also the artwork has continued to improve in a really impressive way. Keep at it!

[johanm_]

Hello, Johan researcher for the video. I am going to post the sources for the video:

The Making of Polities: Europe, 1300–1500
-The new monarchies and representative assemblies; medieval constitutionalism or modern absolutism? Arthur Joseph Slavin
-Monarchy Transformed, Prince and their Elites in Early Modern Western Europe, von Friedeburg and Morrill
-The Formation of national states in western Europe, Charles Tilly
-Conquest: The English kingdom of France, Juliet Barker
-The Valois Kings of France 1328-1589, Robert J. Knecht

The video’s inspiration is the “new monarchy” theory where some monarchs transformed European countries in the 1500’s from medieval to modern states. The theory has long fallen out of favor among historians but we still look at some of the evolution states had in the period, with some broad generalizations (as it’s a long, heterogeneous period, where different countries had different evolutions, and scholars don’t always agree) with a few examples. Hope you enjoy!

[JamesQI-qk]

Very informative video. Thanks Kings and generals!

[koolaid]

Musical scores are improving exponentially along with everything K&G Thank you for everything!

[JoaoPedro-gcmw]

"The monarchies of 15th century Western Europe, such as France, England, and the forming Spain"

They always forget the first centralized state in Western Europe. Portugal 🇵🇹

[corn]

The Animation just keeps getting better, Great job 👍👊♥️

[Chris-vwqb]

Don't get me wrong I absolutely love your videos, been watching for several years now. However, can you please finish a series before starting new projects? I have been waiting for the conclusion to he 2nd triumvirate and Alexander's for months now. They were a fortnightly treat! Thanks.

[juanfervalencia]

It is either that you at Kings and Generals are reading my mind, or I'm so into your episodes that I end up reading about what you are going to publish. I love this channel, it has widen my perspective. Thank you very much.

[JohnDoe-ptos]

One of the most interesting case study of governmental evolution in Western Europe has to be the development of England and France. Two nations (which were both former Roman provinces, subsequently conquered by Germanic invasions, and then another sort of governmental reunion with the Franco-Norman conquest) grew in time to be the polar opposite of each other with the English pseudo-republican monarchy in contrast to the absolute monarchy in France.

Perhaps this is why I find Mr. DeLolme's book (On the Constitution of England, 1771) to be so interesting and engaging in this matter. The central argument centers around these questions: Why did England and France diverge, and more importantly how can this trend be applied to any European government? Why did Sweden, though having the next most liberalist form of government after England fail to achieve the same liberties as England? Why was England able to revive its liberal constitution despite being introduced and enacted the same restrictive feudal laws as in France under the Norman conquest? Why was France able to achieve absolute monarchy despite the ruling class coming from a Germanic origin whose custom had always been to hold elective government (see the continued tradition under the Holy Roman Empire)? What did divine right and the sacred person of the king truly signify? And lastly, how does this comparison apply to countries outside of France and England in antiquity and modernity?

Such a book whose influence on English governmental theory during the Enlightenment Era ranked only behind that of David Hume's has regrettably fallen into obscurity. His work has been cited in the Federalist Papers (#70) as the model for the executive branch, included in Thomas Jefferson's reading list (8/30/1814), praised as "the best defense of the political balance of three powers that was ever written" by President John Adams (which then inspired his later magnum opus, The Defense of the US Constitution, 1787), by Jeremy Bentham "it is to a foreigner we were destined to owe the best idea that has yet been given of a subject so much our own. Our author [Blackstone] has copied; but Monsieur DeLolme has thought" (Fragment on Government, 1776), and more recently as the "English Montesquieu" by Issac Disraeli (1812).

It introduces a "novel" perspective to those who are used to analyze simply through political marriages, economic development, and other forms of dramatic/romantic intrigues. DeLolme himself puts it best: "As the Mathematician, the better to discover the proportions he investigates, begins with freeing his equation from coefficients, or such other quantities as only perplex without properly constituting it, —so it may be advantageous to the inquirer after the causes that produce the equilibrium of a government, to have previously studied them, disengaged from the apparatus of fleets, armies, foreign trade, distant and extensive dominions, in a word from all those brilliant circumstances which so greatly affect the external appearance of a powerful Society, but have no essential connection with the real principles of it." "In general, the Science of Politics, considered as an exact Science [with history as empirical evidence], that is to say, as a Science capable of actual demonstration, is in- finitely deeper than the reader so much perhaps as suspects."

His work still remains invaluable to any scholar willingly to study upon this subject, and I highly encourage it. His Political Science marks a shift from philosophical metaphysics to a more grounded reality.
"Instead of looking for the principles of Politics in their true sources, that is to say, in the nature of the affections of Mankind, and of those secret ties by which they are united together in a state of Society, Men have treated that science in the same manner as they did natural Philosophy in the times of Aristotle, continually recurring to occult causes and principles, from which no useful consequence could be drawn, Thus, in order to ground particular assertions, they have much used the word Constitution, in a personal sense, the Constitution loves, the Constitution forbids, and the like. At other times, they have had recourse to Luxury, in order to explain certain events; and at others, to a still more occult cause, which they have called Corruption: and abundance of comparisons drawn from the human Body, have been also used for the same purposes: continual instances of such defective arguments and considerations occur in the Works of M. de Montesquieu; though a man of so much genius, and from whose writings so much information is nevertheless to be derived."


P.S.
For those interested in the evolution from the Imperial Roman Empire to the post-germanic France, Mr. Fustel de Coulange's History of the Political Institutions of Ancient France is widely respected in the same manner (though this work of Mr. Coulanges has remained untranslated from the original French... at least for now 😉)

[Saidsopmac]

So, Portugal was "de facto" a nation-state, with central rule, long before all otheres, yet not a word about it.

[mikemodugno]

Great video! I would like to suggest a video about the Siege of Trebizond in 1461 and perhaps the subsequent siege of Theodoro. Thank you for your great work.