30.3 Europe: a.d. 1501 to 1600  (Page 5/29)

People, in general, were not what we might call "cultured" in the 16th century. Silver forks were used at table in Venice about 1581, but the custom did not last long and they were not used elsewhere, except in France. At this time the potato, corn, beans and squash spread to northern Italy. (Ref. 45 , 50 )

Central europe

Germany and austria

Germany consisted of a number of autonomous states and in the beginning of the century, at least, Austria was just another German-speaking sub-kingdom, all a part of the Holy Roman Empire. As noted previously, the "Electors" of the various German states chose an emperor, who was nominally over all, although his actual power over any particular state was probably little or none. Maximilian I (Habsburg) of Austria opened the century as that emperor and made his capital at Innsbruck. He married into the House of Burgundy and had his son marry Juana of Castile and Aragon, as well as arranging that his grandchildren marry into the royal families of Bohemia and Hungary. Thus, at the end of his reign, the Habsburgs were well entrenched in all of central and western Europe and their home base of Austria was a power to be reckoned with. Maximilians' grandson followed him as king of Austria as Ferdinand I, a ruler who had constant troubles with the Turks on the eastern border. In 1529 the Ottomans were actually under the walls of Vienna, where they were supplied by camel trains. But there were also peasant revolts in both Germany and Austria in 1525 and latent social war continued for more than another century. Peasants everywhere shared more or less constant poverty and low living standards, yet managed to snatch a precarious existence from the soil. (Ref. 292 )

Ferdinand's brother, Charles of Ghent, raised in Flanders, inherited the throne of Spain, where he was known as Charles (or Carlos) I. In 1520 he was chosen as the Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V and by 1550 the Habsburg Empire was at its height, including all of Spain, the Balearic Islands, Italy (excepting the papal states and Venice), Sardinia, Sicily, the Netherlands, all of Germany, Austria, Hungary (that part not held by the Turks), Bohemia and parts of Serbia. On the European continent proper, only Portugal and France and the small areas of Italy previously mentioned, were out of the empire. In addition there were vast overseas holdings in the Americas.

The Fuggers, with headquarters at Augsburg, furnished the money for Charles V and their operations stretched from Danzig to Lisbon and from Budapest to Rome, to Moscow and even to Chile, where their interests extended to silver, copper and mercury mining. Jakob Fugger had learned double-entry bookkeeping in Venice while it was unknown in Germany at that time. The Augsburg merchants also owned silver mines in Bohemia and the Alps and their city rivalled Antwerp as a trade center, particularly for central and eastern European communities. In this connection we must also mention the Welsers of Augsburg, whose financial dealings also penetrated Europe, the Mediterranean and even the New World. But the state always kept a hand in. Augustus I of Saxony owned 2,822 Kuxen (shares) in the mines of his state. These various mines brought together for the first time huge concentrations of labor. In 1550, in the mines of the Tyrol there were 12,000 workers. 500 to 600 men were used solely to keep pumping water that threatened the tunnels. In the last half of the century, however, mining in central Europe declined, apparently because of falling profits, destruction of forestland with resulting high cost of fuel and increased wage demands. (Ref. 51 , 177 , 184 , 8 , 292 )