Mary, Queen of Scots

The queen of Scotland from 1542 until 1567, Mary was born on December 8, 1542, at Linlithgow Palace, Scotland, the only child of King James V of Scotland, who died six days after she was born.

When Mary was five, her French mother, Mary of Guise, sent her to the French court, where she lived for many years. Being extremely attractive, she caught the eye of Francis, the eldest son of King Henry II of France. They were married, and when Henry died in 1559, Mary became the queen consort of France.

In 1558, following the accession of Elizabeth Tudor, as Mary’s grandmother was a sister of Henry VIII, the father of Elizabeth, Mary became the heir to the English throne.

However, some English Roman Catholics felt that Elizabeth was illegitimate, as they regarded Henry VIII’s divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, as invalid, as was his subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth’s mother. Thus, Mary was queen of Scotland and the queen consort of France and had a disputed claim to the throne of England.


After Mary’s first husband, Francis, died, and she became isolated at the French court, Mary decided to return to Scotland. There she had great difficulty in trying to reconcile the various court factions.

Her illegitimate brother, James, earl of Moray, tried to help, and Mary, a Roman Catholic in a country that had been officially proclaimed a Protestant nation during her absence in France, initially embarked on a policy of religious tolerance.

In July 1565, Mary married Henry Stewart, earl of Darnley, a cousin. He was handsome, had his own claim to the throne of England, but was foolish and quickly alienated many at the Scottish court by his irresponsible and wanton behavior. In March 1566, Darnley, jealous at Mary’s reliance on advice from her secretary, David Rizzio, stormed into the royal apartments and with others stabbed Rizzio in front of the queen.

Three months later the son of Mary and Lord Darnley, James, was born. However, Mary hated Darnley for what he had done to Rizzio and may have started having an affair with James Hepburn, fourth earl of Bothwell. She certainly came to trust Bothwell.

It was not long afterward that Lord Darnley was killed while recovering from an illness; his house was blown up and his strangled body was later found in the garden. Soon afterward, Mary married Bothwell, but this started a major Scottish rebellion against the pair.

Mary was formally deposed as queen, with her infant son proclaimed king. She fled to England; Both-well went overseas. Over the next 18 years, she was held in custody in England. Some English Catholics started conspiring with her, and in 1586 she was found to have been involved in a rebellion against Queen Elizabeth. Tried by an English court, she was sentenced to death and was executed on February 8, 1587, at Fotheringhay Castle.

Marie-Thérèse of Austria

Marie-Thérèse’s role as the queen of France and the wife of King Louis XIV was a precarious one, as she was used by the Spanish branch of the Habsburg dynasty to secure peace with France in the 17th century.

King Philip IV of Spain and Elisabeth of France welcomed the birth of their daughter Marie on September 10, 1638. The ambitions of Cardinal Jules Mazarin and Anne of Austria, the mother of King Louis XIV, to link the Bourbon dynasty to the Spanish branch of the Habsburg family extend back to 1646.

These two individuals wanted to create a marriage union between Louis XIV and Marie-Thérèse to stabilize relations between the French and Spanish governments as these two countries had been at war since 1635.

There were complications with the proposed marriage between the two families because the Spanish Habsburg family did not want to give the Bourbon dynasty an opportunity to inherit any part of the Spanish Empire.

The Spanish court was also reluctant to allow the proposed marriage for it feared that the offspring of this union would create instability within the Spanish empire for rival claimants might seek to acquire various parts of the empire.


The anxiety of the Spanish court over this proposed marriage was relieved by the fact that Mariana of Austria, Philip IV’s second wife, gave birth to a son named Philip Prospero in 1657. Despite the fact that infant mortality rates were high in the 17th century, the birth of this son made Philip IV more agreeable to the marriage between Marie and Louis XIV. The marriage contract between Marie and Louis XIV was completed when the Treaty of the Pyrenees was finalized in 1659, and the two were married in June 1660.

In accordance with the marriage contract, Marie abandoned any territorial claim she possessed to the Spanish Empire, and the Habsburg family had to provide 500,000 gold escudos for Marie’s dowry. Because of the financial weakness of the Spanish Empire, the Habsburg family could not pull together enough funds for the dowry. Despite the fact that Marie renounced her claims to the Spanish Empire, she was unable to do this on the part of her offspring, which Mazarin knew at the time of the wedding.

Mazarin also intended to use the inability of the Spanish government to pay the dowry as an excuse to ignore the fact that Marie renounced her inheritance to parts of the Spanish Empire. The French government used the failure of the Spanish government to pay the dowry as a justification to attack the Spanish Netherlands in 1667, resulting in the War of Devolution.

Marie was a devout woman who believed it was her responsibility to marry Louis XIV and to provide him with offspring to succeed him. Marie fulfilled these obligations to Louis XIV by providing him with a number of children, but only their son Louis survived into adulthood. She often prayed and had great admiration for priests but was also concerned for the Catholic religious community.

Despite this extreme faith in her religion, she failed to possess a strong influence in the French government, probably as a result of her lack of education and her poor relationship with her husband. Marie’s relationship with Louis XIV was a strenuous one, but she continued to be loyal to him and fulfilled her obligations as a wife and queen.

Marie did exercise some influence over the French court as regent in 1672 when Louis XIV was fighting in Holland, but this was for a short period. Louis XIV had several mistresses, a well-known fact in the French court. Marie learned of many of these relationships, but it usually took time before she was made privy to this information.

Despite the fact that Marie had no major influence at the French court, her death on July 30, 1683, was properly mourned in France as she was given a state funeral. There is some degree of speculation that Marie might have been poisoned, but there is no firm evidence to support this claim.

Marie’s funerary rites possessed similarities to the funerary rites observed by Egyptian pharaohs, as her heart was removed from her body, placed in a silver box, and deposited in a chapel situated at Val-de-Grâce, while her intestines were also removed from her body and deposited in an urn.

Louis XV

Louis XV

When Louis XIV died in 1715, his great-grandson and heir Louis XV was five years old. The child king’s regent was Philippe II, duc d’Orléans, related to the royal Bourbon dynasty. Philippe II, in the period of French history often called “the Regency,” became known for a sensational lifestyle.

The duke, famous for his sensual appetite, resigned his regency in 1723 largely because of the adverse publicity brought about by his lifestyle that was in effect funded by the French people. He died later that year.

Philippe II’s downfall was followed by that of the financial network set up in France by the Scottish economist John Law. Philippe II had employed Law to help the French economy, which had suffered severely from the almost incessant wars of Louis XIV.

Law’s note-issuing bank was a spectacular success, until it collapsed after a bank run in 1720, plunging France and Europe into a severe economic crisis that contributed to the French Revolution. John Law was exiled from France.


Had Louis XV followed a more conservative fiscal policy, the revolution might have been delayed, or averted. However, with dire consequences, Louis XV’s reign was marked by the same disastrous spending on maintaining France’s position in Europe as the reign of Louis XIV.

With the resignation of Orléans, catastrophe was averted by the appointment of Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury, who essentially served as the king’s first minister. Louis XV left most of the government of France to Cardinal Fleury.

Fleury stabilized France’s currency, built roads, expanded the reach of the merchant marine, and stimulated the economy. He set his sights on peace, although the War of the Polish Succession was unavoidable because of Louis XV’s marriage to Marie Leszcynska, a member of Polish royalty.

Although Cardinal Fleury attempted to make the kingdom more fiscally responsible, the dynastic wars of Europe continued to drain the French treasury, as they had during the reign of King Louis XIV. Indeed, during the reign of King Louis XV, two of the largest wars in French history, the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War, took place.

These wars would be global conflicts, because not only were France and England combatants in Europe, but the fighting spread to overseas colonies. The War of the Austrian Succession highlighted the rise of Maurice de Saxe to French command; he had joined the French army in 1720. De Saxe was a son of King Augustus II of Poland.

The kala of Maurice de Saxe marked the apogee of the reign of King Louis XV. With the death of Cardinal Fleury during the war in 1743, Louis XV lost his most important minister. He sought to govern on his own but lacked the abilities to do so.

Too much influence was given to his mistresses, Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry. At the same time, unchecked by the king, corruption worked to sap the strength and morale of the army.

In 1756, in a move at least partly attributed to Madame de Pompadour’s influence, Louis XV embarked on what has become known as the diplomatic revolution of the 18th century. Orchestrated by Maria Theresa’s foreign minister von Kaunitz, the diplomatic revolution saw the alliance of France, the Holy Roman Empire (of which Austria-Hungary was the most important part), and Russia.

With Frederick the Great of Prussia occupied with the Russians and Austrians, in the fall of 1757, Louis XV sent a French army under Marshal Soubise to attack Frederick from the rear. Unfortunately, Soubise, a product of the favoritism now governing France, proved no match for Frederick.

Then on August 1, 1759, a French army commanded by the marquis de Contades suffered a serious defeat at the hands of a British, Hanoverian, and Prussian army led by Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. Contades was only saved a near-rout like Soubise’s because Sir George Sackville, through cowardice or incompetence, refused to charge the enemy with his cavalry squadrons.

While the war was going badly for Louis XV in Europe, it was worse overseas. British prime minister William Pitt had set as his goal the destruction of France’s colonies. The war began in 1754 with a skirmish in North America where George Washington made his first appearance in command against forces from New France (Canada). In North America, the conflict became known as the French and Indian wars.

In 1760 the French finally surrendered to Jeffrey, Lord Amherst at Montreal. In India, the British East India Company, supported by regular British troops, fought its own struggle with the French Compangnie des Indes, buttressed by French troops sent from France to support it. Yet, in India too, the balance of power tipped in favor of the British.

In February 1763, the Seven Years’ War was brought to an end for England and France by the Treaty of Paris, by which France relinquished its claims on New France. France, however, retained its islands in the French West Indies which, because of their great production of sugar, the French government valued more than New France. The end of the war found the reputation of French arms, raised to new heights by Maurice de Saxe, at its lowest point in the century. Financially, the years of war were a calamity for France.

Efforts to reform the financial system of France proved frustrated by opposition, and Louis XV lacked the personal determination to force them through opposition. Although the last decade of Louis XV’s reign passed in relative peace, it was only the quiet before the storm. Only 15 years after his death, the French Revolution destroyed the monarchy.

Louis XIV

Louis XIV

Louis XIV was born in 1638, the son of King Louis XIII and his wife, Anne of Austria, from the Habsburg dynasty. Anne served as regent until Louis XIV began to govern in his own name in 1651.

However, he was carefully guided by Cardinal Jules Mazarin, who had been the protégé of Cardinal Richelieu. Anne’s loveless marriage to Louis XIII fueled the rumor that Louis XIV’s father was actually Jules Mazarin, with whom the love-starved Anne shared a romance.

As he settled into his reign, he increased the size of his bureaucracy. To fill expanding government positions, Louis XIV turned toward the middle class. These men, rather than owing their positions to ancestral power, were truly “the king’s men”; everything they gained was from the king, and they knew the king could take it away if he became displeased with their service.

Louis XIV began construction outside Paris of his Palace of Versailles, which earned him the name “Sun King.” This not only was a reflection of his wealth and power, but also served to provide distance from the danger of rebellious Paris mobs.


The palace itself and its grounds are huge. Under the scepter of the Sun King, Versailles became the cultural capital of Europe. Among many creative personalities stimulated by the cultural atmosphere was the playwright Molière, who, in October 1658, staged his first royal performance before the king.

Absolutist Policies

Louis XIV continued pursuing the absolutist policies of Richelieu and Mazarin. In domestic affairs, Jean-Baptiste Colbert assured a steady and reliable system of finance for the king, while overseeing spending by the various departments of the French government’s budgets.

Colbert also became the father of the French navy, establishing a fleet of the best-designed warships in the world, a distinction they would hold until the Napoleonic Wars. What Colbert did for the French navy, Michel Le Tellier, and his son Michel Le Tellier, marquis de Louvois, did for the French army. The combined efforts of these men gave France military might.

In one of the last state acts before he died, Mazarin negotiated peace between France and Habsburg Spain. However, eight years later, Louis XIV began a series of wars that consumed most of the rest of his reign, and the royal treasury.

When Philip IV of Spain died, territory in the Spanish Netherlands was ceded to Charles II of Spain and not to Louis XIV’s wife, Marie-Thérèse, who was Charles’s half sister. Louis XIV went to war in 1667 under a claim for the territory in the Spanish Netherlands. Once again, Spain and France were at war.

The Dutch feared that Louis XIV could easily lay claim to Holland, because it too had once been ruled by Spain. In 1668, the Dutch formed the defensive Triple Alliance with England and Sweden against Louis XIV. But Charles II of England signed a separate peace with Louis XIV in 1670 guaranteeing Charles a secret subsidy, which freed him from dependence on the money annually voted him by the British parliament.

In 1672, Louis XIV and Charles smashed into the Dutch United Provinces in one of the most devastating invasions in European history. Although Charles left the war in 1674, Louis XIV continued until 1678. He gained more territory in Spanish Netherlands and the strategic border region of the Franche-Comte but was still not satisfied with his territorial enlargement.

Edict of Nantes Revoked

A decade of peace followed, in which Louis continued to assert his royal power both in France and in its colonies. In 1685, Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had granted religious toleration to the Huguenots; this caused thousands of them to flee.

Consequently, the Huguenots and their children became some of France’s most bitter enemies during the wars of the 18th century. Since Jansenist (a sect of the Roman Catholic Church) ideas bore some resemblance to Calvinism, Louis waged war against the Jansenists, even closing their spiritual center, the Abbey of Port-Royal.

In 1688, the diplomatic balance of power in Europe suddenly shifted against Louis XIV. His ally, Charles II of England, had died in 1685 to be succeeded by his Catholic brother, James II. James’s religious stance brought on the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

James was forced to flee, to be supplanted by his Protestant daughter, Mary, and her husband, William of Orange, the stadtholder of the Dutch Netherlands, who had come to power as a result of Louis’s Dutch War.

William in the same year brought England into the League of Augsburg with the Dutch Netherlands, then known as the United Provinces, the Holy Roman Empire, and other European powers. With England now part of the coalition to frustrate Louis XIV’s European ambitions, the War of the Grand Alliance broke out in 1688; it would continue until 1697.

A major series of battles was fought in Europe, but Louis XIV neglected to support James II fully when James II attempted to regain his English throne in 1688. A victory by James could have removed William from the throne, thus taking the most relentless adversary out of the coalition. However, the death of Charles II of Spain led Louis XIV to pursue seeing his grandson become King Philip V of Spain.

Louis succeeded, only to wreck his diplomatic triumph by decreeing in 1701 that the future rights of Philip and his line were to go to the French Crown. The prospect of a French-Spanish union was something the other powers in Europe could never accept, and the War of the Spanish Succession broke out.

The war devastated both Europe and the European colonies until 1713. Two years later, in September 1715, Louis XIV died. Although he had lived to see his ultimate diplomatic triumph, his Bourbon grandson Philip on the throne of Spain, the cost of his wars had inflicted such a toll that the royal treasury never really could recover before the French Revolution swept the monarchy away entirely in 1789.

Louis XI

Louis XI

Louis XI, son of Charles VII, was a king of France from the Valois dynasty that had replaced the Capetian dynasty a century earlier. A schemer whose reputation in history was solidified when Sir Walter Scott condemned him a century later, Louis was nicknamed “the Spider King” for his weaving of webs of intrigue. At age 16, he tried to overthrow his father, Charles VII.

The so-called Praguerie—Prague had been the site of similar uprisings—was the second such led by the duke of Bourbon, as the nobility sought to remove Charles from power and replace him with Louis, in response to Charles’s limits on noble power and reforms increasing the power of the monarchy. When the revolt failed, the major participants, including Louis, were forgiven after their surrender and submission.

Six years later, Louis was sent to the province of Dauphine to govern and never saw his father again. They continued to plot against each other, and Charles even sent soldiers to retrieve Louis in 1456, but the prince was given shelter by Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy. Charles died five years later, and Louis succeeded him at the age of 38.

Two Charleses—Louis’s brother the duke of Berry and Normandy, and Philip’s son Charles the Bold—led a revolution against Louis, each motivated by the desire to expedite his inheritances and seeking Louis’s removal in the name of breaking down the centralized authority of the French monarchy. Like Louis’s rebellion against his father, it was unsuccessful—and like the aftermath of that rebellion, the participants were forgiven after submitting to the king’s authority.


Louis was the king of France during England’s Wars of the Roses, and since the rebel Charles the Bold was an ally of the Yorkists, Louis supported the Lancastrians, even manipulating events in order to force France’s Yorkist king Edward IV into exile.

When Edward was restored to power, Louis prevented his planned retaliatory invasion of France by relinquishing any French claim to the English throne—which became another bone of contention between the king and the nobility. When Louis finally decisively defeated Charles, there were no pardons this time—the rebel was killed in battle and many of his noble supporters executed.

Louis strengthened the monarchy, further limiting the powers of the nobility even as he granted more power to common-born merchants. Though he was poorly remembered, France prospered under him—prosperity it lost under the reign of his son, Charles VIII, a pleasant-natured man called Charles the Affable whose bumbling led to mounting debts, ill-considered wars, and treaties that put the kingdom at severe disadvantage as the Middle Ages waned.

James I (James VI of Scotland)

James I (James VI of Scotland)

James Stuart became king of England in March 1503, following the death of the last monarch of the House of Tudor, Elizabeth I, the daughter of Henry VIII, king of England. Robert Carey brought the word of Elizabeth’s death to James, already king of Scotland as James VI, at Holyrood House in Edinburgh on March 26.

James was born on June 3, 1566, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Henry, Lord Darnley. From the birth of James, Mary feared for the safety of her son, one main reason being the desire of Darnley to be king, an ambition that the birth of a male heir to the throne threatened. James Hepburn, the earl of Bothwell, and other Scottish lords shared the same concern. (Bothwell would later become Mary’s lover and then her husband.)

There was more at stake than the throne of Scotland, because Mary also had a claim on the throne of England through Margaret Tudor, the daughter of Henry VII, king of England. Margaret had married James IV of Scotland. By the beginning of February 1567, Elizabeth recognized Mary, Queen of Scots, as heiress to the throne of England (since Elizabeth was childless). Thus, through his mother, one day the infant James would reign in England. Elizabeth had already undertaken to be the baby boy’s protector.

With such high dynastic stakes, the fate of the conspiratorial Darnley was sealed. On February 10, 1567, he was killed when his house was blown up with the knowledge of, if not on the orders of, Mary. However, the death of Darnley brought neither peace to Scotland nor security to Mary.


Defeated in battle by James Stewart, earl of Moray, Mary in May 1568 made a surprising decision—she would seek refuge with Elizabeth in England. Her closest supporters urged her to go to France, where she had been queen to King Francis II, who had died in 1560. Nevertheless, she entered England. Once in England, she remained in varying stages of confinement until Elizabeth had her executed for plotting against her in February 1587.

During the intervening years, James was brought up in the Protestant faith, his guardians preventing any exposure to the Roman Catholic religion of his mother. At 19 years of age, he became monarch of Scotland as James VI.

It appears that the goal of succeeding to the English throne became the abiding ambition of James VI. Indeed, he was so fixated on this goal that his reaction to the trial and execution of his mother was quite mild. Then in March 1603, upon the death of Elizabeth, James VI of Scotland also became James I of England.

In becoming king of England James had not reckoned on the growing assertiveness of the English parliament that Elizabeth had managed throughout her long reign (1558–1603) with an effective mix of feminine guile and political art. James’s deep-set belief in the divine right of kings brought him into collision almost immediately with his English parliament.

He attempted to stay on good terms with Parliament, especially when the Catholic-inspired Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was seen as an attack on the entire Protestant settlement of England. For a time, Parliament and king could combine against the common foe of a Catholic conspiracy.

When Parliament refused to accept James’s Great Contract, James took the dramatic step of dissolving Parliament in 1611. Parliament met twice more during James’s reign, and both times he dissolved it again.

His overall adroit handling of the situation can be attributed to the wise guidance given James by Robert Cecil, first baron Cecil of Essenden, and the son of Elizabeth’s wise councilor, Lord Burghley. When Cecil died in 1612, the king lost his most astute adviser.

As evidenced in his strong belief in the divine right of kings, James had a special interest in religious matters. In 1604, he presided over the Hampton Court Conference, which produced a new and definitive Protestant version of sacred Scripture known as the King James Bible. For a man skilled in the modern arts of political intrigue, he was a firm believer in witches and in 1604 made witchcraft a capital offense, without benefit of clergy.

In foreign affairs James’s later years were overshadowed by the eruption of the Thirty Years’ War in Europe, a struggle between Catholic and Protestant nations that ravaged central Europe, where many of the battles were fought.

Although James’s daughter Elizabeth was wed to Frederick V, the elector Palatine, one of the Protestant champions, James’s son Charles was engaged to marry the daughter of the Catholic king Philip III of Spain in 1623.

Ultimately domestic opposition in England ended the arrangements for a Spanish marriage. Charles instead would become engaged to wed Henrietta Maria of France, the daughter of Henry IV, king of France and Navarre, who had brought an end to the Wars of Religion in France, and the sister of King Louis XIII.

Although often derided as a witless king, James I proved himself to be a wise ruler. He managed to keep Scotland and England united, though bitter enemies for centuries. On the world stage in 1607, English voyagers to the New World arrived in what is now the United States and established the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown. Thus, when James I died in March 1625, he not only could lay claim to the union of England and Scotland, but to the foundation of what would become the British Empire.

Portuguese and Dutch Colonization of Malacca

Malacca (Melaka) is a settlement that commands the strategically important Malacca Straits and thus the sea route linking China to the west. The Strait also links to the Spice Islands of Indonesia. The location of Malacca has made it attractive to pirates.

A settlement was established at Malacca by the Sumatran prince Paramasvera at the beginning of the 15th century and it grew in importance rapidly. The prince converted to Islam and the Sultanate of Malacca became an important outpost of that religion in a region in Southeast Asia.

In the 18th century, the sultanate became a tributary to the Ming dynasty in China. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to arrive at Malacca and captured it in 1511, with a force commanded by Afonso de Albuquerque. The Portuguese would control Malacca for 130 years before being supplanted by the Dutch.

The defeated sultan established a new capital at Johor and attempted to expel the Portuguese in alliance with Malay rulers nearby, but their mutual rivalry prevented them from forming effective alliances to defeat the Portuguese.

The Acehnese made the most serious attempt to expel the Portuguese with an armada of 300 boats, perhaps 15,000 troops, and artillerymen from Turkey. The Portuguese, however, were able to withstand the repeated assaults.

The Portuguese attempted to convert some of the people of Malacca to Christianity. The noted Jesuit Saint Francis Xavier spent some time in the region. The arrival of Sir Francis Drake of England in the late 16th century brought a new power to the region and another challenge to Portugal.

Dutch ships also became active in the region in the latter part of the 16th century as part of the Dutch trading empire. The Dutch eventually struck up a strong alliance with Johor, a state on the Malay Peninsula, and thus were able to prosecute a successful siege that ended in the Netherlands’s gaining control of Malacca.

The rise in importance of Malacca in the 16th century and beyond was the result of local elites and their ability to mobilize trading networks and the arrival of enterprising Chinese who became merchants, miners, and general traders. Other ethnic groups also contributed to making Malacca a cosmopolitan port. They include Indians, Arabs, Persians, and other Europeans.

Ferdinand Magellan - Portuguese Explorer

Ferdinand Magellan - Portuguese Explorer

Ferdinand Magellan’s exact date of birth is unknown but is believed to be in 1480. His parents were petty nobles. After the return of Vasco da Gama’s expedition from India, Portugal launched subsequent expeditions there.

When Francisco de Almeida, who would become the first Portuguese Indian viceroy, set out for India in 1505, Magellan joined his expedition. Magellan spent eight years there in a number of different positions. He was also involved with Diogo Lopes de Sequeira’s expedition to Malacca in 1508–09. Magellan returned to Portugal in 1513.

Magellan then served in Morocco, where he was involved in a number of battles and skirmishes. He also served as quartermaster in charge of the spoils of war. Upon his return to Portugal, he requested an increase in pay from King Manuel, but the request was denied because of rumors that he sold cattle to Portugal’s enemies in Morocco.

Magellan returned to Morocco to clear his name so the king would consider his request for more pay. King Manuel still denied the increase. This was apparently one of the main motivations behind Magellan’s decision to approach the Spanish with his idea of finding a passage from Europe to India sailing west, either around or through the Americas.


Magellan convinced the Spanish to back the expedition in 1517. The expedition set out in September 1519 with five ships. They sailed to the South American coast of Brazil.

From there Magellan explored the bay at Rio de Janeiro and the Rio de la Plata before halting for the winter in Patagonia from March through August 1520. It was during this time that Magellan faced a mutiny and saw one of his ships desert the expedition. With winter over, Magellan continued south along the coast of South America.

Upon reaching the southern tip of South America, Magellan took 38 days to find a passage to the Pacific through the strait that now bears his name, the Strait of Magellan. Having found the way through to the Pacific, the expedition started up the western coast of South America on November 28, 1520.

Magellan took 98 days to cross the Pacific with hopes of reaching China but instead made landfall at Guam. From there, the expedition continued on a western course that brought them to Cebu on April 7, 1521. There Magellan made an alliance with the local leader and agreed to help them attack a neighboring island.

It was during this attack that Magellan was killed on April 27, 1521. The expedition continued west and eventually made its way back to Spain, having rounded the Cape of Good Hope in September 1522, three years after having left.

While Magellan did not actually live to complete the circumnavigation of the globe, the journey was the product of his ambition and determination. More important was his discovery of a way to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean going west rather than around Africa.

Francesco Guicciardini

Francesco Guicciardini

Guicciardini was born in Florence to patrician parents. After receiving a humanistic education, he obtained a degree in civil law from the University of Padua and began practicing law in Florence.

In a calculated maneuver that was designed for political advancement, he married Maria Salviati, whose family was aligned with the Medici. Within a few years of his marriage, he became ambassador to Ferdinand of Aragon for the Republic of Florence and later served in the Florentine government when the Medici family held political power.

Although Guicciardini was critical of clerical abuses in the church, he did not hesitate to accept political preference from the papacy when it was to his advantage. He was an official in several cities and territories in the Papal States under popes Leo X and Clement VII and served as counselor and papal lieutenant general for the latter.

Guicciardini’s writings on politics and history are extensive. They include a history of Florence and a critique of his friend Niccolò Machiavelli’s Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy. However, today Guicciardini is appreciated primarily for his Ricordi and for his magnum opus, The History of Italy.


The Ricordi’s maxims offer a set of reflections on politics, history, and the conduct of life. Those that deal with Guicciardini’s sense of history demonstrate that he held a view of history that differed from that of Machiavelli and humanist historians, who perceived history as exemplary and counseled their contemporaries to imitate ancient Rome.

Guicciardini stressed that the mutability of human affairs, driven by the conflicting self-interests of leaders, coupled with the unpredictability of fortune make it impossible to derive lessons from history. To expect his contemporaries to act like citizens of ancient Rome, he wrote, was similar to expecting a jackass to behave like a horse. Guicciardini believed that the value of history lies in its ability to preserve the memory of the past.

The History of Italy is the product of his mature thinking about the momentous events that he participated in or was witness to from the l490s to 1534. Its scope and its stress on the self-aggrandizement of the secular and religious leaders of the time give the book an appeal that far exceeds the parochial orientation of humanist history.

The book opens with the invasion of Italy in 1494 by the forces of Charles VIII of France, an event that Guicciardini regarded as calamitous because it opened the door to repeated invasions by European powers. It marked the end of city-state hegemony on the peninsula and the balance of power politics brokered by Lorenzo de’ Medici.

The discovery of the New World, the spread of syphilis in Europe, and an awareness of the impending rift in Christianity are also features of the book. The History ends with the rapacious sack of Rome by the Imperial forces of Charles V and the death of Pope Clement VII. Guicciardini was completing the History when he died at his estate in Santa Margherita on May 22, 1540.

Niccolò Machiavelli

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Machiavelli was born in Florence on May 3, 1469. His parents provided him with a humanistic education, with a stress on Latin grammar, rhetoric, and history. As he matured, he deepened his knowledge of the works of the philosophers and historians of ancient Greece and Rome and became familiar with the comedies of Plautus.

Machiavelli was head of the Second Chancery and secretary to the Ten of War of the Florentine Republic from 1498 to 1512. His duties included diplomatic missions to heads of state on the Italian peninsula and elsewhere in Europe.

Especially noteworthy are those missions to Louis XII of France, Emperor Maximilian I, Caterina Sforza of Forli, Pope Julius II, and Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI. When the Medici overthrew republican rule in 1512, Machiavelli was suspected of a conspiracy against them, imprisoned, and tortured. After his exoneration and release under a general amnesty in 1513, he turned to writing.

Machiavelli’s literary output is extensive. His History of Florence, commissioned by the Medici, begins with the city’s origins and ends on a pessimistic note with the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1492. The Art of War is a technical look at military preparations and makes a plea for a citizen militia.


Machiavelli’s best known work, The Prince, is based on his diplomatic experience and his reading of ancient history. It is a complex assessment of the qualities needed for political leadership by a new prince.

Although the book is modeled on the “mirror for princes,” advice books common to the Renaissance era, many of its recommendations are the inverse of the princely virtues advocated by that literature. Its meaning has often been reduced to the trite phrase “The end justifies the means.” Some critics have deemed the book an advice manual for would-be autocrats.

As early as the century in which he lived, Machiavelli and The Prince were condemned and demonized in French Protestant circles and in Elizabethan English literature. Leading Jesuits also attacked him, and his works were placed on the Index of Prohibited Books of the Roman Catholic Church in 1559.

his statue

Although criticism of Machiavelli and The Prince continues, recent scholarship has modified these negative assessments. Greater stress is now placed on his advocacy of republicanism, especially as expressed in the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy. Modern scholars also recognize Machiavelli’s literary creativity.

His play Mandragola presents a comic as well as ironic look at Renaissance marriage patterns and offers an astute analysis of desire and ambition. Another, Clizia, revolves around an aged married man’s attempts to gain the love of a young woman. The fable Belfagor recounts the experiences of a fiend who is delegated by the devil to spend time in marriage on Earth.

His Tercets on Fortune is an extended study of Fortune, whom he personifies as a woman and associates with discord and unpredictability in human affairs. Machiavelli died on June 21, 1527, and is entombed in the basilica of Santa Croce in Florence.

Portuguese in Macao

Portuguese in Macao

Portugal established a trading empire in Asia in the 16th century by means of a string of important ports that tapped the products of the continent. Macao (Macau) was Portugal’s outpost on the South China coast.

Vasco da Gama was a Portuguese explorer and the first European to reach India via Africa. He was followed by Afonso de Albuquerque (1435–1515), viceroy of Portuguese India, who arrived in Goa on the western coast of India. In 1410, he sent a fleet to capture Malacca on the Malay Peninsula.

There they found many Chinese sailing vessels trading in silks and other products throughout Southeast Asia. In 1517, Portugal’s envoy Tomé Pires arrived in Guangzhou (Canton) on the Pearl River delta, an important trading port for two thousand years.


The eight Portuguese ships fired cannon shots as a salute upon entering the harbor, a ritual that the Chinese misunderstood. Pires however remained in China, attempting to negotiate with the government of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). The Chinese held him responsible for the misdeeds of Portuguese sailors and he died in a Chinese jail in 1524.

Despite this inauspicious beginning, the Portuguese continued to explore trading opportunities along the Chinese coast and finally were permitted to build an outpost at the end of a peninsula on the southwestern end of the Pearl River estuary in 1535, a two-square-mile land with a good harbor called Macao. The Portuguese paid rent to China for Macao and in return were allowed to build docks, trading facilities, a church, schools, and so on, and to govern themselves.

Even when other European nations were allowed to establish trading companies in Guangzhou, they had to leave their “factories” (offices and warehouses) along the waterfront outside that city when the trading season was over and retreat to Macao. In addition, Macao became the base for Jesuit missionaries coming to China.

Jesuit missionaries were honored and their services in fields such as astronomy, cartography, architecture, and weaponry were valued by the Ming, and later the Qing (Ch’ing [1644–1911]) court. Several Jesuit fathers designed and supervised the making of European style weapons such as cannon pieces in Macao for the Ming government up to 1644 and the Qing after that.

The arrival of the Portuguese in China in the early 16th century opened a new chapter in China’s relations with the outside world. Sino-Western relations would be fundamentally different from China’s interactions with its land neighbors and with earlier Persian, Arab, and Malay maritime traders in eras past.