Europe in 1945 confronted a bald fact. A continent that fifty years earlier had confidently ruled a third of the world’s population had torn itself to pieces. It had killed forty million of its own people, mutilated its historic towns and submerged half its population in famine and destitution. The economies of the combatant countries reverted to where they were in 1900, wiping out half a century of progress. Nothing so damaging to Europe’s prosperity and culture had been seen since the religious wars of the 17th century. Hubris had led to nemesis. As the continent began to pick itself up, as in 1918 one thought was uppermost in every mind - ever again.
An immediate crisis was caused by massive refugee displacement. An estimated twelve million people were evicted from their homes by the collapse of Germany, mostly German speakers expelled by Stalin from Poland and elsewhere in eastern Europe, and others relocated by Russia to replace them. Millions fled from fear of ethnic retribution or of communism. It was the cruelties of peace, not war, which created the greatest forced migration in Europe’s history.
As the 20th century dawned, Europe held half the world’s population under its sway and controlled 85% of world trade. London’s 6.5 million people made it by far the biggest city on Earth. No other continent or group of peoples had ever claimed such mastery over the planet. This supremacy gave rise to a sense that Europeans were a superior race, with a right - and perhaps a duty - to conquer others, to rule them and convert them to Christianity. This power represented a Europe that had reached an evolutionary climax, and was tempted to define the world civilization in its own terms. It was the moment when it flew too close to the sun.
In retrospect, the period was one of self-satisfaction and overconfidence, but its starkest feature was a lack of leadership. 19th-century Europe had been built on the deeds of bold and perceptive statesmen, if not always well-meaning ones. Few at the start for the 20th century merit that description.
France at the start of 1798 faced the most dangerous moment for a bad government… when it sets about reform.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen went on to describe the nature of a new state. The principle of any sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation. No body, no individual can exert authority which does not emanate expressly from it. Government required the voting participation of ‘active citizen’, not what it regarded as passive ones - thus excluding women, servants and non-tax-payers.
The Declaration of Independence told the British king briskly that he was ‘unfit to be ruler of a free people’. Its author, Thomas Jefferson, wrote of ‘self-evident truths’ and ‘inalienable rights’. These were partial, being inapplicable to women, ‘Indians’ or slaves.
Prussia is not a nation that has an army, but an army that has a nation.
The rulers of medieval Europe acquired legitimacy through force of arms. A weakling inheritor would be challenged by a stronger one or by no inheritor at all. For their subjects what mattered was one thing, security, and they would support any ruler who could deliver it.
The marketing of indulgences to repay the Fugger loans became fanatical. Leo stipulated that they could be bought not only by sinners but as gifts for sinners. They could be bought on behalf of dead relatives, claimed to be at that very moment suffering agonies in purgatory for want of such purchase. Indulgence ‘futures’ could even be bought as insurance, by the living for sins not yet committed. Scenes of the fate awaiting sinners in the afterlife were horrifically portrayed by the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. The remission of sins became salesmanship on an industrial scale.
Clovis fixed his capital in Paris, while his name mutated into Louis, Ludwig and Lewis.