The Move From Aristocracy To Bureaucracy

The Move From Aristocracy To Bureaucracy ? Discuss This View Of The Development Of States Within Thi Essay, Research Paper This question assumes much about the nature of an aristocracy in a Europe that saw countries such as Turkey where, until around 1570, the aristocracy was almost negligible to Russia, where the boyars of Ivan IV are believed by some to have replaced the Tsar himself. In a continent of such diversity, there is bound to be a different reasoning for each form of aristocracy and the development of each state.? The schism is particularly strong between Western and Eastern Europe.In the fifteenth century, the Papal schism, the accession of such characters as Charles VI of France, the repeated minorities in Scotland and the limited constitutional power of the

Holy Roman Emperor lent western rulers a dependence on their nobles who started the period as the best educated large class of lay people reliable for use at court, but this would soon change, aided by the growth of educational institutes, founded on the spur of the Renaissance and the Reformation.? The death of the feudal army or fyrd was vital in decreasing the importance of the nobility.? Experienced mercenaries were hired across Europe with their experienced veteran captains.? Henry VIII hired ?Scots, Spaniards, Gascons, Portuguese, Italians, Albanians, Greeks, Tatars, Germans, Burgundians and Flemings? according to one contemporary whilst Michael Romanov kept 17,400 mercenaries in his service.? His son, Alexis, employed 60,000 by 1663.? Until the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis,

the French border along the Spanish Road was guarded by 10,000 Swiss pikemen.? Removing the need to rely on the aristocracy as one?s source of military power removed a vital part of the nobility?s hold on the monarchy and took away all of their power to insist on political influence.? The destruction of nobility in battle, such as that of the Scots at Flodden not only reinforced the need for professional soldiers but reaffirmed the decline of the soldier-noble as a class, and set the tone for an era of downsizing and demoting the old noblesse d?epee.? The muzzling of the aristocracy and the power to patronise the lower nobility increased the power of monarchies through this age . Bodin wrote that the only ?truly royal? states in Early Modern Europe were England, Spain and France,

and it is with these category of states that we will start. France was a strongly monarchical state that, from the reign of Francis I, openly held venal offices.? The growth of offices throughout the period and of the office-holding class was more advanced in the French kingdom than elsewhere. Between 1515 and 1665, the number of venal offices rose from 4,000 to 46,000 and the amount of revenue they produced was reckoned to be about 419 million livres ? five times the annual royal budget.? As a result of ennoblement through these channels, the noblesse de robe emerged to challenge the three ancient estates (leading some historians to suggest, probably mistakenly, that the gentry wished to form a fourth estate), and in line with the increase in the sale of offices, they increased

the power of their class. Whereas Henri II and Francois I had courts filled with princes of the blood, dukes, peers and great officers (reflecting the roots of the noblesse d??p?e), by the late sixteenth century, the power of the old aristocrats even at the highest levels was being eroded.? In 1594, the Constable Montmorency-Damville sat on the Royal Financial Commission with three other great nobles, but by 1598, with the exception of the Protestant Sully, the King?s council was a representation of the noblesse de robe. The accumulation of offices in France in some cases did reinforce the aristocracy as they bought they way to influence, and in some cases, wealthier aristocrats amassed such a number of offices of such influence that they could become local sovereigns.? This is