Wars in the New World

While Europe was fighting and burning, the New World was having its own trouble: the colonies were growing bigger. This would have been a good thing if nobody else had been living in the whole of North America. But as it was, there were already very many people who had made their home there: the Native Americans. The kings in Europe were glad to see their colonies growing, but the Indians were not. The colonists were taking over more and more of their land, and they were not happy about it. The Indians who had once been the settlers’ friends were now their enemies.

It was the Wampanoag tribe who fought back first. Metacom, the leader of that tribe, gathered together other tribes to fight against Plymouth Plantation. At first, Plymouth ignored the warning a friendly Indian had given them, but when they found out that the Indian had been murdered by his own tribe shortly after, they began to consider what he had said. Soon after, a war began.

The Indians were good at surprise attacks, but the English had guns. Eventually they defeated Metacom and his army. This war lasted for months and months. It was called “King Philip’s War” because the English called Metacom “King Philip.” But there was still another war going on in a different part of North America, but for a different reason. This time it was the Indians who wanted more land.

Down in New France, the Europeans and the Huron Indians were friends. But this friendship was not always good for the Hurons. Besides the gifts the French gave them, the Indians also got a disease called small pox. They became weak from sickness and rashes. This made them a good target of another Indian tribe nearby, the Iroquois. The Iroquois captured the land the Hurons lived on and killed many of their people.

Then, they turned towards the colonies. The French settlers were afraid of the Iroquois and their attacks. As more raids on their village happened, more of them left to go back to Europe. King Louis XIV didn’t want his New France colony to be lost. He sent a lot of soldiers over to America. The soldiers were not able to totally defeat the Indians, but they did force them to retreat back onto their own land.

 King Louis XIV had promised the soldiers land in return for their help fighting the Iroquois. When they settled down, however, there was another problem. All the soldiers were men, and they wanted to start families. But for every six men in the colonies there was only one woman. King Louis XIV to the rescue again!!! He paid women from France grand amounts of money so that they would travel to New France. This plan worked, and soon New France was growing bigger than ever.

The Iroquois did not give up, however, and soon they started another war on the French colonies. One fourteen year old girl, Marie-Madeleine de Vercheres was walking through her father’s fields when she saw them running and shooting at her. She screamed for help to the guards, but the guards were all hidden away in fear in the fort. Finally, she ran into the fort, and cried to the soldiers to fight the Iroquois who were trying to get into the fort. Realizing no one else would lead them; Marie-Madeleine took off her bonnet and commanded her two younger brothers to help her guard the fort. They shot cannons which frightened the Iroquois. The children and an old man held the fort for eight days, before French soldiers finally came to help them. Marie-Madeleine is still regarded as a French Canadian Heroine.

At this time, the French and English colonies were colonies of war. One man, named William Penn, wanted to build a colony of peace. William was a Quaker. Quakers were often persecuted throughout England and other parts of Europe. King Charles II owed William’s family money that they had loaned him. After his father’s death, William reminded the king of this, and suggested that he pay back the debt with land in North America, rather than with money. The king agreed and gave William a portion of land in North America almost as big as England itself!

William organized the way the government in his new land would work. It was almost like the way the USA government works today. He also made plans about being friendly to the Indians there. He sent messages to them telling them that he would pay for any land that the colonists took from the Indians. The colony prospered. More and more Quakers came from Europe to live in Pennsylvania. But the Maryland governor, whose colony was right next to William’s, thought that Maryland should have the land that Pennsylvania had. William had to go to court with him back in England. William didn’t return to America for fifteen more years. But when he returned, he was very happy to see that colony had prospered greatly.

While William Penn was in England, an important event happened. Charles II, who had given William the land, died. His brother, James II became king. But the people of England were worried. James was Catholic, and he had married a Catholic woman and had a Catholic son. Most of England did not want to become a Catholic country. So the Protestants sent a message to James’s daughter and her husband who were both Protestants. The soon-to-be monarchs agreed to seize the throne and to sign a message saying that they would never pass any laws without the approval of Parliament. The people of England were happy, (but William Penn was arrested several times because he was suspected of being loyal to the former king.) England was at peace at last.

The Sun King or France and the Prussian king of Prussia

Have you heard of the Egyptians, who thought that their kings were the god’s sons? France’s kings believed a different version of that story. They thought that the king of France was the owner of every little thing in France, down to the last ladybug. The king was sometimes known as “a visible divinity.” In 1638, France was one of the most powerful countries in Europe, and because the five-year old king was “visible divinity,” he ruled with no opposition.

Known as the Sun King, King Louis XIV sent away his board of advisors, announcing that he would rule his own kingdom by himself. The advisors were astonished! For almost a century, no French king had ever ruled without his advisors.

 Louis XIV also had a gargantuan palace built for himself. After nearly fifty years of labor, the quarter-of-a-mile long palace was finished. It was called Versailles. One of the most famous rooms is called the Hall of Mirrors. In it, are seventeen large mirrors, each facing a tall window. 

Louis XIV wrote in his memoirs, that he preferred fame to all else, even life. He lived a lavish life, and liked to act in ballets.

Louis XIV’s subjects fought over doing the small things for the king, such as handing him his clothes after a bath. They all wanted to be in the king’s favor, even if all it meant was a more ornately decorated chair at a dinner party, or special clothes reserved only for the king’s favorites.  Louis XIV encouraged his subjects to spend a lot of money on rich and lavish things and to mind their courtly manners. This made the courtiers and subjects depend on the king, because they had spent all their money on other things.

While Louis XIV reigned, France was the most important and powerful country in Europe, but when he died, catastrophe was ready to strike. In fact, even while Louis XIV was alive, catastrophe struck. Many of his family members died, including Louis’s son and grandson.  Some other European countries were bonding together to fight against France. Most of Louis’s reign had been spent trying to increase France’s borders. He had forced people to work hard and pay high taxes.  Many men died in the wars that Louis started.  “Anger was spreading through France-” Susan Wise Bauer said. “-Anger which would eventually destroy the French crown forever.”

In Germany, there were 300 little German states. But the people who lived in these states probably didn’t think of themselves as German. All the states were ruled by princes, and one of these princes, Prince Frederick, decided to make his two states into a kingdom.

One of the states, Brandenburg, was on the border of the Holy Roman Empire, so when he was in Brandenburg, Frederick had to obey the Holy Roman Emperor. But Frederick asked the Holy Roman Emperor if he could call himself “King of Prussia”, the other state, since Prussia was not in the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Emperor agreed, partly because Frederick had just helped him fight against Louis XIV. Frederick was now the King of Prussia. He also acted like he was the king of Brandenburg, and he entered this other state like a king would do, with cannons firing and bells ringing.  Frederick’s acting like a king helped the people in his “kingdom” to think of themselves as citizens of Prussia.



The German Flag



 Susan Wise Bauer says, “Prussians learned to pay allegiance to an idea of a German kingdom, ruled by a German king.” This meant that instead of paying homage to a king, like King Louis XIV, the German people of Prussia learned to pay homage to the state of Prussia. In later generations, Frederick’s son, Frederick William, announced that Prussia and Brandenburg were all one country, Prussia, and his son, Frederick II, even added land to the kingdom. One day, this country that these men established would be the European country of Germany.

India and England

In past blogs of 2011, I have talked about the thirty years war, the emperors of China, the Kings of Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. But I have hardly mentioned India, except for a blog in January. In the times that I have been reading about in Bauer, three emperors have ruled India.

The first was a strict man named Jahangir, who called himself “world seizer.” He knew that India would prosper if there was more trade going on. So, he and King James the First of England made a trade treaty saying that the English traders could come to India to trade in peace. When Jahangir died, his son, who was renamed Shah Jahan, meaning “King of the World," became the emperor.



The Taj Mahal



Shah Jahan had a wife who he loved very much. He was filled with grief when she died, and he built a huge tomb for her. It took over 20 years for twenty-thousand laborers to build this exquisite tomb, complete with a mosque and garden, often called “the eighth wonder of the world.”

Shah Jahan had four sons. His favorite was a boy named Dara, who was lazy, and didn’t do much fighting. When the emperor announced that Dara was going to be his heir to the throne, one of the other sons, Aurangzeb, rebelled.

Aurangzeb was a fierce warrior, and one of Shah Jahan’s best generals. However; the king was not appreciative of Aurangzeb’s strength, and instead of praising him, he demoted him! So when Aurangzeb heard that Dara was going to be the next king, he raised an army and easily defeated Dara’s small army. He imprisoned his father in his own fortress, and though the former king was well cared for, with servants and doctors, as well as food and water, he was never let out again.

Aurangzeb had taken drastic measures to be made king, and now he was taking drastic measures to make India a good country. But when he died, India was very close to either falling apart or being conquered by foreign invaders. He made three decisions that would change the life of India greatly.

 First, he ordered that India was a Muslim country. This was a great change, because, in the last couple generations, Hindus had had jobs at court, and had been able to worship freely. One had even been made Prime Minister by Akbar, Aurangzeb’s great-grandpa. From now on, Hindus had to pay high taxes, and they couldn’t work in the court. Since the Koran was the Muslim book of law, Aurangzeb decided that the laws of the Koran and the “Shari’ah”, (the Muslim law,) would be the laws for all India. Since the Koran forbid wine, wine was made illegal throughout India. Aurangzeb banished art and parties, since he thought that the Koran was against them.  His Muslim subjects welcomed these new decrees, but the Hindus did not.

Aurangzeb’s next decision made the gap between the Muslims and Hindus even greater. He decided to try to conquer all of the southern parts of India. So he tried to conquer the Deccan, the tribes who lived up in the mountains of India. The Deccans called on some Hindus to help them fight Aurangzeb. While the king and the Deccans fought against each other, Aurangzeb ignored the rest of his empire, and he made his third rash decision. He let the English come into India and build their own cities. his was bad. The English established cities, fortified the settlements, and brought more and more people over to India. This was the beginning of an English takeover.

While they were beginning to build the foundations for the takeover of Japan, the English were having troubles of their own. James the First had died, and his son, Charles, had become king. Charles married a Catholic wife, which none of the English Protestants liked. Charles got mad at Parliment and told them to go away. But the Parliment stayed. And when the rash king brought an army of five-hundred soldiers to force five Protestant members out, the people of England started to be against Charles. Even though the Protestant members had been warned and had escaped, a civil war began. Finally, the Parliment and the Protestants won, and Charles was beheaded. England was now a "commonwealth", which meant that Parliment listened the to the people, and then made the decisions.

But a man named Oliver Cromwell got tired of the Parliment, and sent them all away. Then, he selected his own men to be in the Parliment. However; England wasn't a commonwealth for long. Soon, the men loyal to Cromwell passed a bill giving all the Parliment's powers to him, and then naming him "Lord Protector." Even though no one dared call him a king, Cromwell was basically that. One man even wrote a little booklet, encouraging someone to assasinate him.  When Cromwell died, a lot of people were very happy. Cromwell's reign had not been the brightest of times for England, but more sorrow was yet to come.

After Cromwell died, there were at least half a million people living in London, England. They lived in small houses, not well made, and squished together. All in all, London, in 1665, was the perfect place for plague to spread. So when a few men died in the outskirts of London, no one hoped it would spread. But spread it did. By that year's Christmas, whole families were dying of the black death. Very few people went out of their houses. So many people died, that there wasn't enough room in the graveyards to bury them! The plague raged for a year, until finally, over 200,000 people had died in London.

The next tragedy happened when a baker was putting out his fire, a coal rolled out, unnoticed, and started the Great Fire of London. The fire started small, but because the wooden houses were crammed so close together, the fire spread quickly. It burned the bakery, the shipyard, stores, houses, and even a great stone castle. When the fire stopped, after almost a four days, more than 3\4 of London had been burned. Most of the buildings were gone. Susan Wise Bauer writes that John Evelen, who lived in London at that time, wrote in his diary, "London was, but is no more."