Spain and Europe in the 16th and 17th century

Originally posted by Zamudio [QUOTE=pikeshot1600]... Spain became exhauseted from all these wars. They had more fighting over in Europe than fighting in their colonies abroad? Maybe they should not have stretched themselves so far. But I would think they could recruit people from their colonies to help them battle wars in Europe too to help them in their conquests no?

 

In fact, the permanent ask of the spanish was: what are we doing in Europe? why are our soldiers diying in the border with Poland?

There were many persons that claimed to leave the effort in Europe and concentrate it in the Atlantic and North �frica...

Hi Pike, the fact is many persons in the Juntas, advisers believe and claim against the war in Europe. The official position (not always the majority) think in a feudal sense: they couldn't lost any territory and not only because a question of honor, but because the "card castle" very similar to the american political view in the 50 and 60's: if Low Countries fall, fall Lombard�a and if fall this all will be lose. Of course, at least in the case of the Low Countries initially we can see an economic cause, because the castillians had many trades with that land.
But the "castillian" position was leave the european positions, get the sea superiority, defend the "Indias" and fought against the true enemy, the moors in North �frica. Here there was a painful contradiction between the real interests of Spain, more near to the castillian position, and the official politic that was mixed with the interests of other territories; at the moment that the entire responsability, mainly economical, of the Hapsburgs wars fall over the back of the spanish the critics grew.

So you know well that the spanish soldiers was few, but they were the elite of the spanish habsburg armies . A common phrase between the spanish soldiers in the Low Countries was, more or less, "if the heretics want go to the Hell, good luck for theirs" In many senses, the war of Flandres was the Vietnam of Spain.

bye

The war in Flanders (or the entire Netherlands) was a revolt of Protestant and Catholic subjects of the King of Spain against the Inquisition and vice royal practices.  The Austrian Habsburgs had little to do with it except in support for Spanish Habsburgs.

The Catholic southern Netherlands returned to allegience by the 1580s, but the Dutch fought on to have their independence recognized.

The Austrian Habsburgs had virtually no standing military forces with which to implement their policies (except for war w/ Turks 1593-1606).  The dynasties of Spain and Austria were closely connected, and strong in their support of the Church and the Counter Reformation.

Their interests began to diverge during the Thirty Years War for a number of reasons, and Austria made a separate peace with France while Spain continued to be at war with the French.