Reason of State and Predatory Monarchy in the Dutch Republic, 1638‐1675 The Legacy of the Duc de Rohan Marianne Klerk Reason of State and Predatory Monarchy in the Dutch Republic, 1638‐1675 The Legacy of the Duc de Rohan Staatsraison en Roofzuchtige Monarchie in de Nederlandse Republiek, 1638‐1675 De erfenis van Duc de Rohan Marianne Klerk Reason of State and Predatory Monarchy in the Dutch Republic, 1638‐1675 The Legacy of the Duc de Rohan Staatsraison en Roofzuchtige Monarchie in de Nederlandse Republiek, 1638‐1675 De erfenis van Duc de Rohan THESIS To obtain the degree of Doctor from the Erasmus University Rotterdam By command of the rector magnificus Prof. dr. H.A.P. Pols And in accordance with the decision of the Doctorate Board The public defense shall be held on Thursday 27 October at 11.30 hours By Marianne Barbara Klerk Born in Middelburg, the Netherlands i Doctoral Committe: Promotor: Prof. dr. R.C.F. von Friedeburg Other Members Prof. dr. H.J.M. Nellen Prof. dr. L. van Bunge Prof. dr. K. van Berkel Co‐promotor: Prof. dr. C. Condren ii Hawk Roosting I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat. The convenience of the high trees! The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray Are of advantage to me; And the earth's face upward for my inspection. My feet are locked upon the rough bark. It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot. (…) by Ted Hughes (1930‐1998), Lupercal (London: Faber and Faber, 1960). iii Table of Contents Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 The crisis of the rule of law and the struggle to restore order 3 1.2 Restating ‘state building’: dynastic agglomerate, society of princes and monarchy transformed 6 1.3 The early modern fashion of reason of state 8 1.4 Predatory monarchy 14 1.5 Approach and Contents 16 Chapter 2 De l’interest (1638) by Henri de Rohan: satire through interest analysis 19 2.1 Henri de Rohan: Huguenot warrior, noble prince and famous author 23 2.2 The backdrop of Rohan’s reason of state 26 2.2.1 French reason or interest of state? 27 2.2.2 Monarchy in crisis and Richelieu’s crisis management of reason of state 31 2.2.3 Between fact and fiction: the threat of the ‘new monarchy’ 33 2.3 Satire by interest analysis: Spanish unrestricted tyranny and French patriotic unity 37 2.3.1 ‘The interest of Spaine’ 38 2.3.2 ‘The interest of France’ 43 2.3.3 Failed interest management: argument from history 47 Chapter 3 Republicanism revisited: reason of state and ‘war despotism’ by Pieter de la Court 53 3.1 ‘War despotism’ 57 3.2 Pieter de la Court: textile merchant, aspiring regent and controversial author 60 3.2.1 Intellectual background: self‐interest, reason of state and harmony of interests 62 3.2.2 ‘War despotism’ in Het welvaren der stad Leyden (1659) 67 3.2.3 The Orange‐Republic 69 3.2.4 The stadholderless regime: warfare, taxation, debating ‘interest’ and ‘freedom’ 71 3.2.5 The Orangist revival of 1660‐1661 74 3.3 Reason of state and ‘war despotism’ in Interest van Holland 77 3.3.1 ‘Holland’ unified in an ‘interest’ 78 3.3.2 The ‘interest’ of ‘war despotism’ 79 3.3.3 The ‘interest’ of Holland in Europe 87 3.3.4 Freedom of trade, religion and government 90 v Chapter 4 Lisola and Louis XIV’s French monarchy: universal monarchy and reason of state 99 4.1 Illustrious diplomat and anti‐French pamphleteer during the rise of Louis XIV 101 4.1.1 High‐profile diplomat 102 4.1.2 Polemical publicist 105 4.1.3 Bouclier: reason of state and legal argumentation 106 4.1.4 The rise of the French monarchy: expansionist and ‘absolute’ 109 4.2 Bouclier: reason of state, European legal order and the French hazard 112 4.2.1 Preface: a gentle attack on Louis XIV 112 4.2.2 First five articles: legal rebuttal and the image of a predatory monarchy 115 4.2.3 Sixth article: interest of state 119 4.2.4 The interest of Spain: good government versus France’s predatory monarchy 122 4.2.3 The interest of France: ‘Robberies’, ‘Conquerors’, ‘absolute’, ‘Masters of Europe’ 124 Chapter 5 Petrus Valkenier’s ‘t Verwerd Europa (1675): reason of state to restore order 131 5.1 Valkenier and ‘t Verwerd Europa (1675): anti‐French diplomacy, crisis of order and Lisola’s legacy 134 5.1.2 Petrus Valkenier and his anti‐French and pro‐Protestant diplomacy 135 5.1.3 The Crisis of Order and the ‘Year of Disaster’, 1672 139 5.1.4 Lisola’s legacy: universal monarchy, balance of power and religion 151 5.2 ‘t Verwerd Europa: the rule of law and reason of state 154 5.2.1 Five pillars of every Political State 156 5.2.2 French interests of state and Predatory Monarchy 166 5.2.3 Interest analysis of Europe 172 5.2.4 Dutch interest of state 175 Chapter 6 Conclusion 181 Sources and Bibliography 187 Archival material 187 Primary printed sources 187 Secondary literature 194 Summaries 209 Curriculum Vitae 219 Acknowledgements 221 vi This research was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). The study is part of a larger research project ‘Reason of state’ or ‘reason of princes’? The ‘new monarchy and its opponents in France, Germany and the Netherlands, during the seventeenth century (2011‐2016). The research was supervised by prof. dr. R.C.F. von Friedeburg and comprised four projects of which the present study is one. Ingmar Vroomen examined the use of fatherland rhetoric in Dutch pamphlets (1618‐1672) as a response to foreign threats and internal strife. Annemieke Romein studied the employment of fatherland‐terminology in estate debates in Jülich and Hesse‐Cassel between 1642‐1655, and in Brittany France in the period 1648‐1652. Jesper Schaap examined the use of the idiom of reason of state in the political writings of Henri Duc de Rohan (1579‐1638) and Gabriel Naudé (1600‐1653). vii Chapter 1 Introduction A common view among historians has been that in there was a disintegration of the late medieval and renaissance regimen politicum et regale, based on Christian humanism, rule of law (divine, divinely natural and partly positive), and on virtue essentially based on Christianity, as illustrated by Erasmus’ Institutio principis christiani (1516); and that in its place arose the polarities of absolutism and republicanism, with France and Spain versus England and the Netherlands as foremost examples.1 This view has slowly collapsed: the historiographical concept of absolutism has been rather eroded or demythicized, at least in the sense of a monarch being free from law– Louis XIV scrupulously followed positive law and ruled with consent or consultation of the Estates and parlements;2 and recently the notion of republicanism has been challenged –Helmer Helmers has convincingly argued that the Dutch were full‐heartedly ‘Royalist Republicans’ after the execution of Charles I; or it has been qualified as entailing by degrees a monarchical element, as is suggested by Patrick Collinson’s notion of the English ‘monarchical republic’.3 And republics might be no less shy of asserting a principle of absolute 1 See in particular Helmut G. Koenigsberger, ‘Monarchies and Parliaments in Early Modern Europe Dominium Regale or Dominium Politicum et Regale’, Theory and Society 5:2 (1978), 191‐217. 2 See for instance Robert von Friedeburg and John Morrill (eds.), Monarchy transformed: princes and their elites in early modern Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, forthcoming), in particular introduction and conclusion; Nicholas Henshall, The Myth Of Absolutism: Change And Continuity In Early Modern European Monarchy (London: Longmann, 1992); Ronald G. Asch and Heinz Duchhardt (eds.), Der Absolutismus‐‐ein Mythos?: Strukturwandel monarchischer Herrschaft in West‐ und Mitteleuropa (ca. 1550‐1700) (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Bölhau, 1996); Johan Sommerville, ‘Early Modern Absolutism’, in Cesare Cuttica and Glenn Burgess (eds.), Monarchism and Absolutism in Early Modern Europe (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012), 117‐130. Sommerville (re)defines absolutist political thought in line with revisionist socio‐economic historical research as a model of ‘social collaboration’ between the Crown and its elites. 3 Helmer Helmers, The Royalist Republic. Literature, Politics, and Religion in the Anglo‐Dutch Public Sphere, 1639–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Helmers persuasively explained the staunch support amongst the Dutch for Stuart royalism under the ‘republican’ (stadholderless) regime of 1650‐1672 after the regicide; Patrick Collinson has stressed the republican character (high level of social collaboration between Crown and its elites) of the English monarchy for Elizabethan England. Patrick Collinson, ‘The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I’, in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library LXIX (1987), 394‐424. Mark Goldie stressed this republican character of the English monarchy on a more general level. Mark Goldie, ‘The Unacknowledged Republic: Officeholding in Early Modern England’, in Tim Harris (ed.), The Politics of the Excluded, c.1500‐1850 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 153‐194. See Sommerville’s critical remark on the overlapping definition of republicanism and absolutism in terms of the social collaboration model. Sommerville, ‘Early Modern Absolutism’, 118‐119. See also in the same volume Michael J. Seidler’s comment that the contestation of ‘absolutism’ as political language ‘has also undermined the counterpart language of “democracy” or “republicanism” (…) the opposition assumed in such discussions is misconceived.’ Michael J.