Lordship and State Formation. Bohemia and the Habsburg monarchy from the Thirty Years' War to Charles VI

Introduction The decades around 1700 were decisive for both Central Europe and its major power, the Habsburg monarchy� Much has been written about its main events and protagonists from the Ottoman siege of Vienna and the subsequent pushback of Christendom’s „hereditary enemy“ across the Hungarian plains, and the contemporaneous wars against Louis XIV’s France, which culminated in the greatest territorial extent of the Austrian monarchy in the early 18th century�2 Hardly surprising, the historiography of this era is extensive, and in many cases very lopsided, yet despite the amounts of ink that have been spilled over the Habsburg monarchy’s so-called „Age of Heroes“, or Heldenzeitalter, there are also blind spots: Perhaps echoing much of the older literature, even most newer studies continue to focus on „big men“ and their actions at court, in the various diets, or on the many battle fields, often more or less influenced by the Cultural Turn, which resulted in the publication of a wide variety of studies highlighting the serious limitations of Habsburg absolutism, emphasising the symbolic characteristics of their rule, and offering systemic explanations for the changes in the wake of the Thirty Years’ War� This holds particularly true for the Westphalian treaties, viewed by many, historians and scholars in fields as diverse as International Relations, Political Science, Legal History, and Sociology alike as the foundation of our „modern“ era�3 If there is a common thread that unites virtually all of these studies, it is


Introduction
The decades around 1700 were decisive for both Central Europe and its major power, the Habsburg monarchy� Much has been written about its main events and protagonists from the Ottoman siege of Vienna and the subsequent pushback of Christendom's "hereditary enemy" across the Hungarian plains, and the contemporaneous wars against Louis XIV's France, which culminated in the greatest territorial extent of the Austrian monarchy in the early 18 th century� 2 Hardly surprising, the historiography of this era is extensive, and in many cases very lopsided, yet despite the amounts of ink that have been spilled over the Habsburg monarchy's so-called "Age of Heroes", or Heldenzeitalter, there are also blind spots: Perhaps echoing much of the older literature, even most newer studies continue to focus on "big men" and their actions at court, in the various diets, or on the many battle fields, often more or less influenced by the Cultural Turn, which resulted in the publication of a wide variety of studies highlighting the serious limitations of Habsburg absolutism, emphasising the symbolic characteristics of their rule, and offering systemic explanations for the changes in the wake of the Thirty Years' War� This holds particularly true for the Westphalian treaties, viewed by many, historians and scholars in fields as diverse as International Relations, Political Science, Legal History, and Sociology alike as the foundation of our "modern" era� 3 If there is a common thread that unites virtually all of these studies, it is 1 their perception of early modern Europe from its courtly centres or from within the central governments, usually guided by the deeds of important events and their protagonists� 4 Whereas this conceptual framing is a perfectly valid and timetested one, it comes with serious limitations: Given the various main actors' social background, their aristocratic perception of the world, and their overwhelmingly courtly and urban outlooks, their sources are limited in scope, which further reduces the historian's interpretative leeway and, potentially, leads to reductionist analyses based on anachronistic assumptions� 5 Using the example of Bohemia -aguably the most important of the Habsburgs' possessions -during the Austrian monarchy's emergence as a great power, my study focuses on the usually overlooked by-products of state formation in early modern composite monarchies� 6 Whereas expansion of enquiry into the "fiscal-military state" ( John Brewer) 7 and Der Westfälische Frieden, das Heilige Römische Reich und die Habsburgermonarchie, in: Martin Scheutz -Arno Strohmeyer (edd�), Von Lier nach Brüssel� Schlüsseljahre österreichischer Geschichte , Innsbruck 2010, p� 99-110, including bibliography� 4 While Austrian historiography was Vienna-centred from its inception, two recent examples underscore this point: cf� the configuration of a multi-vol� handbook on the monarchy's administrative history currently prepared by the Austrian Institute of Historical Research and the Academy of Sciences: vol� 1 deals with the court and the central institutions, vol� 2 comprises the various crown lands' central institutions, and vol� 3 focuses on, among other aspects, local governance and regional varieties� Thomas Winkelbauer, "Verwaltungsgeschichte der Habsburgermonarchie in der Frühen Neuzeit" in drei Bänden -ein groß angelegtes internationales Kooperationsprojekt, in: Michael Hochedlinger -Thomas Winkelbauer (edd�), Herrschaftsverdichtung, Staatsbildung, Bürokratisierung� Verfassungs-, Verwaltungs-und Behördengeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit, Vienna 2010 (= Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 57), p� 9-17, especially p� 11-14; cf� the complete omission of local and regional issues by Zdislava Röhsner, Die zentrale Finanzverwaltung der Monarchie, in: Stefan Seitschek -Herbert Hutterer -Gerald Theimer (edd�), 300 Jahre Karl VI�, 1711-1740� Spuren der Herrschaft des "letzten" Habsburgers, Vienna 2011, p� 112-118� 5  the shattering of the Myth of Absolutism across Europe have transformed our understanding of central bureaucracies over the course of the past three decades, an overwhelming number of studies on early modern state formation continues to employ a top-down perspective� 8 By contrast, my book approaches one of historiography's late-comers to this debate, the Habsburg monarchy, based on two distinctively different premises: 9 First, individual actions as well as structural developments convey different -and differing -consequences for central institutions vis-à-vis those occurring contemporaneously in administratively and geographically more remote areas� It follows, second, that state integration, understood as an elite-driven process emanating from the centre of power, is accompanied by countervailing and at times opposing trends and pressures whose consequences only increased with geographical distance� Warfare, above all, concentrates decision-making and influence in the hands of a limited number of individuals and institutions while non-essential considerations (temporarily) recede: Armed conflict thus gives rise to a certain kind of state formation, which was accompanied by a contemporaneous disintegration and loss of cohesion outside the corridors of power� In short, my study explores, how, as the central government tried to cope with war-induced stresses, its actions started to tear apart the administrative and social fabric that held society together� 10 My study focuses on the interrelated aspects of bureaucratic practices, war, and taxation from the perspective of the composite lordship of the Eggenberg dukes of Český Krumlov� 11 Since the late Middle Ages, these territories formed a relatively large -in all c� 390 square kilometres (about the size of St Vincent and the Grenadines and a good deal larger than, say, Malta) -and comparatively contiguous territorial agglomeration, and its respective owners -the Rosenbergs (from the 13 th century to around 1600), the Eggenbergs (1623-1710/19), and Schwarzenbergs (1723-1948/49) -were among the most powerful lords in the Bohemian lands� 12 These large continuities resulted in equally vast archival holdings that, despite their exceptional richness in both quantitative as well as qualitative regards, remain seriously under-used to this day for two reasons� While this neglect is also in part attributable to the ideologically limiting conceptual and thematic predispositions of the Cold War, the archive's neglect since the Velvet Revolution (1989) has other sources (even though quite similar consequences): Many sources from the early modern period up until the Czech National Revival in the early 19 th century in those areas that until 1945 were inhabited by Germans were written in German, and during the Communist era (1948-89) the first foreign language taught in schools was Russian, which was replaced with English after the Iron Curtain came down, leaving large amounts of primary sources with only a very limited and, over time, further decreasing number of readers and researchers� 13 In addition and with only very few exceptions -most importantly the studies by Eduard Maur and Jaroslav Čechura -, since the 1990s most Czech historians focused on the early modern aristocratic body politic and their assemblies; 14 and while the owners of Český Krumlov were among the most 11 Topographical information follows present-day conventions, homonyms follow common usage in English; exceptions are those places generally familiar, e�g� Vienna or Prague; pertinent information from primary sources is reproduced as in the original with additional information, if helpful or necessary, added in parentheses� powerful lords throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period, the loss of the Eggenberg family archive appears dissuasive to most historians interested in aristocratic history, even though its incredibly rich holdings, and especially the examination of its administrative sources, yields so many new insights� 15 Given these circumstances, and the fact that Charles Tilly's dictum -that "war made the state, and the state made war" 16 -is generally, though no longer uncritically, accepted, there exists no large-scale study on the Habsburg experience of state formation between the Thirty Years' War and the reign of Charles VI that does not (and almost exclusively so) focus on the imperial court and/or on the various provincial estates and their assemblies (or Ständeforschung)� 17 Adopting a novel perspective from outside these circles, and by tapping into these rich seams of archival sources that have not been mined before, my study offers an innovative approach to specialist discussions on early modern state formation while at the same time provides a window into areas that are usually treated either rather lop-sidedly or mostly ignored� 18 In focusing on the princely officials and subjects as they tried to navigate the stormy passages of rising taxation and increasing pressures emanating from Vienna and Prague, I am addressing the following main questions: What where the consequences of the emperors' wars on local and regional taxation levels? How did the increasing tax burden manifest itself and how did the officials and subjects deal with it? How did the course of events and the accompanying structural developments affect both the various local, regional, and supra-regional interlinkages? And, lastly, the inclusion of questions dealing with the production and use of information and more qualitative issues like perceptions also allows for an assessment of the established, but still largely unanswered question of how ordinary people dealt with the massive tax hikes�

Bohemia in the Habsburg monarchy in the 17 th Century
Over the course of the Thirty Years' War, Bohemia changed drastically� The Estates' revolt was followed by large-scale redistributions of property, and the longer the conflict dragged on, the higher the damages the country and its inhabitants had to endure� When the dust finally settled, the Bohemian Lands had lost about a third of its people and large areas, especially in the fertile central regions, were most severely affected� 19 While the extraordinary wartime measures were gradually abrogated over the course of the early 1650s, a return to the status quo ante appeared all but impossible� Consequently, both crown and estates cooperated closely to reorganise the kingdom's tax administration, which after a multi-year effort yielded a new cadastre, the so-called "units" (osedlý, or Angesessene) that remained the basis of taxation in Bohemia until the early eighteenth century� 20 Thus similarly "renewed", the kingdom's tax system underwent considerable change during Leopold I's reign: During the second half of the 17 th century, Bohemian taxes became increasingly differentiated as both the military tax, or Contribution, and many other levies were specifically earmarked for certain purposes that ranged from extraordinary war taxes to more regular sums for the fortifications of Prague and Cheb to the salaries of officials throughout the country to wedding presents, all payable on specified dates� 21 These specifics remained fundamentally unaltered until the reforms under Maria Theresa, yet this briefest of sketches allows us to recognise the essential dynamic of the Monarchy's fiscal-financial history after the mid-17 th century: As time went on, the emperor engaged in more wars that, at the same time, became ever more costly� As regards Bohemia, the kingdom's tax levels roughly sextupled from about 300,000 to 350,000 fl� annually in the early 1650s to about 1�8m around the turn of the century� 22

Lordship and State (De-) Formation
Tax returns from the large Eggenberg possessions, however, mirror these developments only partially: Overall taxation rose rapidly during the first decade after the promulgation of the Berni rula (1657-66) before dropping equally fast below pre-war (1663/64) levels; a much closer correlation between Český Krumlov's taxation vis-à-vis the kingdom of Bohemia as a whole only emerged during the 1670s� Table 1 details the annual total tax receipts from the Eggenberg possessions during the second half of the 17 th century; these comprise both contributions as well as other regular and extraordinary levies;  in addition, it also details year-onyear changes and the correspondingly calculated tax level per osedlý� Figure   1, below, illustrates the divergence of Český Krumlov's tax history vis-à-vis developments for Bohemia: known trends (higher taxes granted by the Bohemian diet) affected one area, the Eggenberg dominions; and, second, to lay the foundation for the following chapters� The main finding is that while there is a certain correlation between the state's increasing demand for taxes in wartime, there was no structural change in how the individual appropriations were administrated in neither the corporate institutions in Prague (the diet and the estates' institutions such as the royal tax office) and in the circles nor in the invidual lordships� This becomes immediately apparent if we follow the labyrinthine paths of tax appropriations: Once the diet discussed the monarch's proposals and eventually granted (parts of ) them, the governor's office relayed them to the tax office where the total of each individual tax grant was repartitioned and passed on to the next lower administrative units; there, circle officials in turn repartitioned "their" sum again and then forwarded so-called "Assignationes" to the individual landlords, whose officials repeated the same process a third time -and all this happened before even a single fl� was collected� 23 In Český Krumlov, the princely administrators oversaw comparatively large dominions whose tax history is then further broken down into its components� 24 Moving the analysis beyond the traditional differentiation between military taxes, or contributions, and those additional levies due on specific dates is revealing on many accounts as the following  Staatlichkeit,p� 191,196,200,203,222 (all   (f ) Osedlý data from January through September 1683, as the cadastre revisions, in effect from 1 October, 1683, resulted in a significant reduction in the no� of osedlý (c� 39 %) for the entire Eggenberg dominions, which affected the average tax burden per osedlý (c) and YoY changes (d) accordingly� (g) Osedlý data from October to December 1683; see also (e)� (h) YoY change (d) relative to the no� of osedlý from January through September 1683 (f )� (i) YoY change (d) relative to the no� of osedlý from October to December 1683 (g)� While it is generally assumed that contributions, in Petr Maťa's words, eventually "became the real core of the estates appropriations" 25 , this particular category, with the exception of the tax hikes during the war of 1663/64, remained essentially flat throughout the second half of the 17 th century and only started to increase markedly after 1699� 26 Given the overall increases in the Habsburg monarchy's expenditure during the "Great Turkish War" (1683-99) and the successive War of the Spanish Succesion (1701-14), this may seem counterintuitively at first, however, massive tax increases were achieved by levying substantially more and higher additional taxes: Between 1682 and 1701, the Eggenberg tax records document 50 different tax categories that were due on 144 dates� Extensive documentation, including both taxation records as well as a large amount of correspondence, allows for the detailed assessments of how much and in which categories taxes were paid as well as how the tax burden changed over time� Analysis of Bohemia's two basic tax categories -monthly military contributions and taxes with fixed due dates -in the greatest possible detail revealed their equally composite nature, of particular importance with regard to their relative and changing shares of war financing� 27 More contentious, but equally intriguing, is the notion that the promulgation of a revised cadastre in the  (1695), which is roughly equal to a sixfold increase relative to four years earlier; sources as in tab� 1� 27 Apart from the information quote in tab� 1, above, see also the extensive documentation in S� Sander-Faes, Herrschaft und Staatlichkeit, p� 497-506; just to cite one example: from 1682-1691, each year saw four of these additional tax positions, from 1692-1701, the corresponding number (median and average) was ten� early 1680s modified not only the tax base but also affected both nominal and effective tax rates� In for the first time providing tax data on the crucial decades between the 1650s and the early 1710s, this serves as the foundation for the following elaborations and offers a yardstick to the widespread Vienna-focused reconstructions of Habsburg fiscal history� 28 Having established the basic framework of Bohemian tax administration, the focus in Chapter 5 then shifts to the lord's manor during the half-century of Český Krumlov serving as princely residence (1665-1710)� 29 It investigates the flows of "communication", which analytically includes both information and tax money, from the vantage point of the lord's court and his officials� This enables, first, the introduction of an analytical model that differentiates between communication "above" and "below" the level of the lordship� In a second step this approach is augmented by asking questions about the legitimacy of communication -what, exactly, constituted "official" information and how did it differ from "unofficial" ways and means? In combination, the reconstruction of these interlinkages and their administrative practices allow for a more balanced assessment of the individual actors' room for manoeuvring, in turn providing an innovative new perspective on the "ongoing human production" that is the ever-changing nature of the social order� 30 Chapter 6 builds on preceding chapters and takes a close look at those individuals who kept the princely estate and, by extension, the Emperor's war efforts, up and running� It builds on the analytical model developed in the previous chapter to differentiate between the varying communicative situations (regular vs� singular dealings; the directions of the flow of information) and illustrates the findings with two case studies� The first example revolves 28 Cf� the totals for the entire Habsburg monarchy that, even in the most recent syntheses, continue to be based on dated and methodically not unproblematic studies, in T� Winkelbauer, Ständefreiheit around the aspirations of the two Cistercian monasteries of Vyšší Brod and Zlatá Koruna, both incorporated fiscally into the Eggenberg domains, but repeatedly tried to reassert their independence, which, of course, the prince strenuously objected to� The second case study details the travails of one individual, Gregor Daubsky, whose personal misfortunes and his inability to pay his arrears caused the princely administrators considerable troubles� Examples like these, which both transcended the narrow territorial confines of the Eggenberg domains, reveal the many links between local issues, regional entanglements, and supra-regional consequences� 31 Chapter 7 presents a detailed case study of how these structural issues discussed so far played out in practice� 32 While acknowledging the special -and well-known -roles played by Leopold I's Jewish financiers, this chapter focuses exclusively on the brief reign of Joseph I (1705-1711) and explores the previously unknown story of how the emperor grew so desperate for additional funds that he, and perhaps counter-intu-itively so, undermined the centralisation achieved by his predecessor� Cash-strapped, Joseph turned to the Bohemian diet, which approached a consortium of Jewish financiers from Würzburg and Frankfurt who advanced the considerable sum of 1,333,333 fl� to the emperor� In exchange, Joseph offered future Bohemian tax revenues as collateral, thus de facto "outsourcing" his regal rights of tax collection to a (foreign) third party�  Sources: I 4 L α,62,63,64,65,and 66; n = 872 individual documents of varying length; note, first, that the no� in (a) does not represent the entirety of all documents as some of the sources were undated; sources without dates only appear, if their content allowed for a more or less unambiguous, content-based dating; and, second, that all more or less "regular" tax positions (such as the monthly contributions) as well as those instances related to the affair described in Ch� 7 are not included here, which was done for pragmatic reasons: the documentation of the latter dealings are so extensive that their inclusion would alter the findings (too much); see also S� Sander-Faes, Herrschaft und Staatlichkeit, p� 449-450� (a) No� of individual documents in each five-year period� (b) Calculated annual average no� of documents; note that these are calculated yearly averages convey a certain impression of the increasing war-induced stresses: tax and associated pressures between 1675-1704 occupied officials in Český Krumlov on average every 2�5 weeks; between 1705-1709, this had increased to almost weekly incidence� (c) Key terms in this category: infantry; militia; recruits; soldiers; troups; (cavalry) horses; artillery; board and lodging; not included here are those terms that are specified in (g)� (d) Key terms in this category: Turk, incl� translations and equivalents in other languages� (e) Key terms in this category: execution (impounding), incl� announcements; officials charged with the execution; background information in B� Rieger, Zřízení krajské, vol� I, p� 326-338; J� Pekař, České katastry, p� 95-96; and P� Maťa, "Unerträgliche Praegravation", p� 177-178� (f ) Key terms in this category: debts; security; seizure (execution); residual amount; liability; arrears� (g) Key terms in this category: anticipation; subsidies; poll taxes; beverage taxes; wealth tax; other unspecified extraordinary taxes�

Fig. 2: Analytical Categories
Hardly surprisingly, this arrangement caused considerable friction between all parties in Český Krumlov, Prague, and Würzburg, shedding new light on the interrelated consequences of dynastic ambitions and state disintegration in wartime, thereby offering a rare glimpse into the financial dealings of the Bohemian diet� 33 The final chapter asks the seemingly simple question who paid for the emperors' ambitions? 34 In recent decades, the number of publications detailing the interrelationship between warfare and state formation has grown considerably� 35 Most studies, however, mention the drastic consequences for the taxpaying subjects only in passing; in the case of Bohemia within the Habsburg monarchy, most recent scholarship builds on these assumptions and ascribes the massive increase in taxation to "tremendous improvements in efficiency", accompanied by "serious consequences for both military and society"� 36 Chapter 8 attempts to ameliorate this lacuna by putting the princely subjects at the centre of the investigation, addressing the following issues: How did the administrators describe, refer to, and treat the commoners living on the Eggenberg estates? And, perhaps more crucially, how did the subjects themselves consider their own state of affairs? While insights into the former are based on tax records, correspondence, and visitation reports, the latter are derived from a number of petitions and interrogation protocols� A quantitative survey of key terms such as "debts", "repossession", and "military" rounds off the chapter (see Tab� 2), in turn allowing for an assessment of how far administrative language and practices too became "mobilised"� This combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches allows for a more inclusive reconstruction than either group of sources would provide on their own�

War and Consequence -Conclusions
My study on the Habsburg monarchy around 1700 highlights the interrelated forces that contemporaneously drove both state integration and state disintegration, which refers to the loss of social cohesion and control over certain key areas and policies, were (are), not unlike the two-faced god Janus, two aspects of the same pheno-menon� 37 It is based on two premises that differ markedly from the overwhelming majority of studies on this subject matter 34 that employ a one-point perspective, that is, looking "down" from a courtly centre to the "lower" layers of the body politic� By contrast, I examine the implications of approaching the same developments from an inverse perspective based on these two premises: First, individual actions and structural developments convey different consequences for central institutions vis-àvis those occurring contemporaneously in more remote areas; and, second, I contend that the forces that drive state integration, understood as an elite-driven process emanating from the imperial capital, were also responsible for state disintegration, which refers to the loss of social cohesion and control over certain key areas and policies� Circumstances such as a state of war brings with it the tendency to more and more concentrate influence and power in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals and institutions while non-essential activities receded, i�e�, a certain type of state integration in the centre was accompanied by increasing disintegration and loss of cohesion on the lower levels, which in turn underscores the essentially composite nature of early modern mano-rialism� While the emperor and his inner circle attempted to deal with war-induced stresses, the consequences of their actions loosened the connections between state and society -which is exactly what happened in Český Krumlov� It would not seem too far-fetched to imagine that these routine, day-to-day issues could not be identified throughout early modern Europe (if more studies focused at state development from further "down" than the diets)� As examplary studies by Lucien Febvre, John Elliott, and Darryl Dee suggest, we can arrive at new insights into early modern statehood by focusing on local knowledge and practices embedded in their regional contexts� 38 This, however, implies going beyond the (ideal) typological considerations based on the selective reading of, among others, Max Weber and Otto Hintze, whose works constitute the foundations of the questionable interpretative marrying of Brewer's "fiscal-military state" thesis to the eventual emergence of "modern" statehood that have come to all but dominate historiographic discourse, which is especially true with respect to most German-language studies: Whereas the majority of them these days seek to integrate the early modern Habsburg monarchy within the larger framework ascribed to Brewer, both he and I remain quite skeptical of such unidimensional and quasi-teleological interpretations� 39 In looking at "my" sources that detail the crucial role of local actors, regional interlinkages, and the disintegrating consequences that warfare had on state formation, my analysis of the consequences of almost perpetual war between the 1680s and the 1710s from this perspective reveals both the unidimensional nature of some interpretations as well as the need for more nuanced, inclusive approaches� In providing a complimentary perspective to the rather one-sided historiographical mainstream, I discuss the larger ramifications of the nexus of warfare and taxation in a comparative manner� In offering a first glimpse into, in John Brewer's words, "how fiscal and administrative arrangements function", as opposed to labelling certain states as such, my study contextualises and re-positions the Habsburg monarchy within current academic debates, drawing out what was distinct and what was similar to the experience of other major European monarchies� 40 40 Stephan Sander-Faes

Lordship and State Formation Bohemia and the Habsburg monarchy from the Thirty Years' War to Charles VI (Abstract)
This essay focuses on the crucial role of the lordship in Habsburgs' attempts of state formation from the Thirty Years'War to Charles VI� During these decades, Austria became a great power, mostly from accident, helped by the unintended consequences of an ill-conceived Ottoman assault on Vienna in 1683� This essay focuses on the usually overlooked by-products of state formation in early modern composite monarchies, administrative confusion and social disruptions� Using the example of Bohemia and contrary to most books available, which employ a top-down perspective, my approach is based on two different premises: First, individual actions and structural developments convey different-and differing-consequences for central institutions vis-à-vis those occurring contemporaneously in more remote areas� And, second, state integration, understood as an elite-driven process emanating from a centre, is accompanied by countervailing and at times opposing trends whose consequences only increased with geographical distance� War thus gives rise to a certain kind of state formation, which was accompanied by the contemporaneous disintegration and loss of cohesion outside the centre� This essay explores, how, as the government tried to cope with war-induced stresses, its actions started to tear apart the administrative and social fabric that held society together� KEY WORDS: fiscal-military state; state deformation; fiscal-financial history; composite lordship; Český Krumlov