My life skills in Daming Liver

The port city of the Netherlands has a very long history and has been an important center for shipping in the North Sea for a long time.

Although the dock is deserted, the neat stone houses on the edge of the dock and the small building of the port office are enough to see the former prosperity of the port.

Daguan and Captain Alfonso disembarked from the ship. His oriental face and striking bald head attracted the attention of many people.

Optimistic and undaunted, he and Captain Alfonso walked out of the port, rented a carriage, and headed for Amsterdam's City Hall.

Alfonso introduced the situation in the Netherlands to Daguan.

"Master, the Netherlands is actually a political concept. The cities in these lowland areas have formed an independent region through constant marriage and intermarriage, and are connected together because of trade."

"Every city in the Netherlands has a city hall. The city hall will elect a governor to manage the city, and the city hall will supervise the governor."

He put his palms together and said, "It's a bit like the Governor's Constitutional Assembly."

Alfonso nodded and said, but he shook his head and said: "Only hereditary nobles and big bourgeois with assets exceeding a certain amount can enter the Netherlands City Hall, which is different from the constitutional assembly promoted by the Metropolitan Governor."

Da Guan also nodded. Representatives of the Constituent Assembly were selected from all walks of life. There was no such thing as hereditary nobility in the Southeast.

This time Daguan Continental actually understood the situation in Continental Europe.

The sects in Europe are causing a lot of trouble. In fact, there are mainly two factions.

One faction is traditional Catholicism, of which Spain is the most fanatical. Philip II claims to be the Patron and is the most religiously upholding Catholic orthodoxy.

This is indeed the case in Spain. Its several financial bankruptcies were due to the religious fanaticism of the Spanish royal family.

For example, it competed with the Ottomans for hegemony in the Mediterranean, or the Habsburg family competed with the Ottomans on land.

This time the Ottoman Emperor Suleiman the Great personally went to Hungary. The new emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was also a member of the Habsburg family. Naturally, Philip II also wanted to send troops to help his relatives.

The second largest Catholic force is France, but France is different from fanatical Spain. France is known as the filial son of Catholicism. Of course, this "filial son" is a filial son like Lu Bu. France is very flexible on religious issues.

Although France is also a Catholic country, its political actions are mostly based on national interests rather than religious reasons.

For example, when allying with Spain and competing for hegemony with the Ottomans, France occasionally feared the power of the Habsburg family and formed an alliance with the Ottomans.

Thirty years ago, the King of France established an alliance with the Ottomans. The alliance was criticized at the time as an "evil alliance" and a "blasphemous combination of lilies and crescents." Therefore, it was also called the "impious alliance" and "blasphemous alliance." Holy Alliance".

The alliance with the Ottomans was basically based on national interests.

To the north of France is the Holy Roman Empire of the Habsburg family, and to the south is the Kingdom of Spain of the Habsburg family. Even the Netherlands in southwest France is also the territory of the Habsburg family.

France can be said to be surrounded by the Habsburg alliance, which makes France, which is mostly plains, very uneasy. It was against this background that the Sacrifice League was established.

Today's situation in Europe, after France's accession to the throne from Henry IV of the Bourbon dynasty, France has become increasingly centralized.

Henry IV himself converted to Catholicism in order to inherit the French throne, so Henry IV was very tolerant of religious issues and prevented France from falling into religious civil strife.

The growing strength of France has made the surrounding Habsburg alliance increasingly tense, and has also strengthened the blockade of France.

France allied with the pagan Ottoman Empire against the alliance of the Holy Roman Empire and Spain.

Britain is vacillating.

The former Queen of England, the "Bloody Mary" who has been written into various ghost stories throughout history, was a devout Catholic.

When Queen Mary was in power, she violently oppressed the Protestants.

This also led to a civil war in England, and finally the British throne fell to the Protestant Elizabeth I.

Elizabeth I was a Protestant, but when she succeeded to the throne, in order not to cause domestic religious conflicts, she adopted a tolerant attitude towards religion.

However, the religious balance in Britain is very unstable. Spain has always wanted to interfere in Britain. For this reason, Elizabeth I even promised not to get married in order to maintain the domestic religious balance.

But at the same time, Protestantism in the north of continental Europe continued to gain strength.

Martin Luther's religious reform allowed Protestantism to spread in some city-states within the Holy Roman Empire, and gradually affected the Netherlands.

Although the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was a Catholic, many powerful electors were Protestant believers.

The Holy Roman Empire itself was a loose alliance, and the electors and great lords all had strong independence.

Da Guan couldn't help but sigh, Europe is really in a mess now.

However, Daguan still thought of the situation in Europe that Su Ze explained to him.

Su Ze does not use a religious perspective, but a class perspective.

Su Ze said to Daguan:

"What Europe is fighting are actually three classes."

"Princes, Priests, and Bourgeois."

"As for all the issues on the European continent and the positions of all countries, we can see clearly and understand their positions from the perspective of these three classes."

This was the first time that Daguan had seen someone analyze a problem like this. He listened to Su Ze's analysis very carefully.

"The so-called Protestant Reformation is actually a group of enlightened clergy who believe that the church should not occupy too much property, believe that corrupt church institutions cannot monopolize the interpretation of theology, nor should they monopolize people's belief in gods, and advocate freedom of belief. "

“This freedom of belief does not actually mean belief in gods casually, but the ability to believe in gods without going through the church, which is the so-called ‘justification by faith’.”

"But no matter what the motivations of these Protestant reformers were, or what sacred goals they had, or what interpretation they made of scriptures, the lords and nobles who promoted Protestantism, and the monarchs who vigorously promoted Protestantism, were not motivated by faith. Such simple motivations.”

"Those imperial electors in the Roman Empire who supported Protestantism naturally supported Protestantism because Protestantism advocated freedom of belief. This was tantamount to attacking the Catholic clergy and enhancing the rights of the lords."

"Breaking the Catholic Church's right to interpret religious scriptures is equivalent to breaking the Catholic Church's control over secular power. It also loosens the shackles of the church on the heads of these lords. The lords naturally prefer Protestantism."

"For the nobles and property owners, the Catholic Church, which collects taxes on the heads of its believers, is just as much an object of opposition as the landlords who collect money on the land."

Daguan thought of the Southeast. Among the popular literary works in the Southeast today, there are many critical works on feudal landlords.

For example, a landlord oppresses his tenant farmers and uses loan sharking to snatch their daughters as wives.

Another example is that a certain landowner is rich and unkind, and lives a luxurious and dissolute life.

In fact, according to Daguan's social observation in the southeast, the lives of the workshop owners are not much different from those of the landlords. Even because they have more money, their lives are even more degraded.

But the writings up and down the Southeast are full of attacks on landlords.

Applying this idea to continental Europe would be an attack on the clergy.

Since the Renaissance, there have been endless literary and artistic works that discredit the clergy, and the church represents debauchery and depravity in many areas.

It is true that there are many bad priests, but are the aristocracy much better than the priests?

The handicraft owners, who increasingly had the right to speak, also spread many stories about priests oppressing people.

Protestantism was an attack on the clergy.

Su Ze gave Daguan an example at that time, and that was France.

Although France is a Catholic country, it is also very tolerant of Protestants and even accepted some Protestant priests who were persecuted in the Holy Roman Empire.

Many of these Protestant believers were craftsmen in the north who believed in Protestantism.

These people brought new technologies to France and the development of productivity to France.

What's more important is that the French monarch can see that if the clergy does not draw commissions from it, the monarch can get more power.

France began the path of monarchical centralization, and naturally became less concerned about maintaining Catholic authority.

The countries surrounding France are almost all the territories of the Habsburg family. For this hostile force that believes in Catholicism and restricts French expansion, France would rather shake its belief in Catholicism than form an alliance with the Ottomans to break through this encirclement. .

Britain also made the same choice as France.

Queen Elizabeth I's policy was to balance Catholicism and Protestantism, maintain domestic stability, and weaken the power of Catholicism.

It's just that Britain is alone overseas, and it is more difficult for Catholic forces to interfere in Britain, so they can only maintain the status quo.

The Netherlands that Tatism saw was the area where class conflicts were the most serious as Su Ze said.

The Spanish-appointed priests imposed exorbitant taxes in the Netherlands, which aroused the dissatisfaction of the emerging craft owner class in the Netherlands.

The nobles of the Netherlands were also dissatisfied with the oppression of King Philip II of Spain.

Protestantism was the flag of opposition chosen by all classes to fight against the oppression of Spain and the Catholic clergy.

After understanding this, Da Guan suddenly became enlightened. He saw the situation in the Netherlands more clearly than Alfonso.

And he even saw the undercurrent lurking beneath the calm surface of the Netherlands.

Sure enough, Daguan was warmly welcomed by the local nobles at the City Hall in Amsterdam.

The Dutch nobles regarded this religious scholar from the Eastern country as an honored guest and entertained him very warmly.

Even the leaders of several surrounding cities came to Amsterdam to communicate with Daguan.

The biggest figure among them is the Spanish ruler in the Netherlands, Prince of Orange, William I, the "Silent".