International Comparisons Yet this Habsburg failure, it is
Citations (1)
- The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers whole source · open book
Far from being a great force in international affairs, France after 1560 threatened to become the new cockpit of Europe, perhaps to be divided permanently along religious borders as was to be the fate of the Netherlands and Germany.55 Only after the accession of Henry of Navarre to the French throne as Henry IV (1589–1610), with his policies of internal compromise and external military actions against Spain, did matters improve; and the peace which he secured with Madrid in 1598 had the great advantage of maintaining France as an independent power. But it was a country severely weakened by civil war, brigandage, high prices, and interrupted trade and agriculture, and its fiscal system was in pieces. In 1596 the national debt was almost 300 million livres, and four-fifths of that year’s revenue of 31 million livres had already been assigned and alienated.56 For a long time thereafter, France was a recuperating society.
chapter: International Comparisons