Life of Elizabeth I

Queen Elizabeth I

Queen Elizabeth I

AD 1533～AD 1603

Queen Elizabeth I is generally regarded as the most beautiful person in British history. Outstanding emperor. During her 45 years in power, Britain's economy prospered, its literature was brilliant, and its military became the world's leading naval power. She lived in an era when the British king was not just a figurehead, so a significant part of the achievements of Britain's Golden Age should be attributed to her.

Elizabeth was born in Greenwich, England in 1533. Her father was Henry VIII, who led the English Reformation. Her mother, Anna Breen, was Henry's second wife. Anna was beheaded in 1536, and a few months later the English Parliament declared Elizabeth, then three years old, illegitimate (this has always been the view of most English Catholics, as they believed that Henry's divorce from his first wife was illegal). Despite this setback from the British Parliament, Elizabeth was raised in the royal family and received a good education.

In 1547, when Elizabeth was 13 years old, Henry VIII died. The exploits of the British rulers during the next eleven years were not particularly outstanding. Elizabeth's half-brother, Edward VI, ruled from 1547 to 1553. Under his rule, the government pursued a policy of firmly supporting British Protestantism. During the next five years of her reign, Queen Mary I supported papal supremacy and restored Roman Catholicism.

During Mary's reign, Anglicans were persecuted and about 300 people were executed (which gave the Queen the disgraceful nickname "Bloody Mary"). Elizabeth was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London, and although she was later released, her life remained in danger for a period. When Mary died in 1558 and was succeeded by the 25-year-old Elizabeth, the country rejoiced.

The young queen immediately faced many problems: the war with France; tense relations with Scotland and Spain; especially the sharp conflicts between religious sects in England.

The latter problem was solved first. Soon after Elizabeth came to power, she passed the "Act of Supremacy and Identity" (1559), establishing Anglicanism as the official British religion. This satisfied the moderate Anglicans, but the Puritans wanted a more radical reform. But Elizabeth ensured that the Compromise Act of 1559 was firmly implemented throughout her reign.

The religious situation was complicated by the situation of Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary was forced to leave Scotland and seek refuge in England. There she soon found herself Elizabeth's prisoner. Elizabeth did not act arbitrarily. Mary was a Roman Catholic and had every right to inherit the British throne. This meant that in the event of a successful rebellion or assassination, Britain would have yet another Catholic Queen. In fact, during Mary's 19 years of imprisonment, several plots against Elizabeth occurred, and there is ample evidence that Mary was involved in these plots. In 1587, Mary was finally guillotined. Elizabeth reluctantly signed the execution sheet. Her ministers and most of the MPs wished that Mary had been executed long ago.

Religious struggles inevitably brought danger to Elizabeth. In 1570, Pope Pius V excommunicated her and ordered her to be deposed from the throne. In 1580 Pope Gregory VIII declared that the assassination of Elizabeth was not a crime. But the situation also worked in Elizabeth's favor. During her reign, English Catholics were always worried about the restoration of the Catholic Church in England, and Elizabeth was defensive about this. This is indeed the main reason why she is so popular among believers.

Elizabeth carried out a flexible foreign policy. In 1560 she concluded the Treaty of Edinburgh, which provided for a peaceful settlement of disputes with Scotland. Britain's war with France ended and relations between the two countries improved. But circumstances forced Britain into conflict with Spain. Elizabeth tried to avoid war, but due to the militant Catholic forces in Spain in the 16th century, war between Spain and Protestant England was probably inevitable. A revolt against Spanish rule in the Netherlands was an active factor. The majority of the Dutch rebels were Protestants. Spain attempted to quell the rebellion, so Elizabeth aided the Dutch rebels. Elizabeth herself was not very enthusiastic about war, but most of the British people, her ministers and parliament were more enthusiastic about war than she was. So when war with Spain finally broke out in the late 1580s, the English people firmly supported Elizabeth.

Elizabeth continued to develop the British navy over the years. King Philip II of Spain quickly developed a huge naval fleet - the Armada - in order to invade Britain. The number of ships owned by the Armada is almost the same as that of the British fleet, but the number of sailors is much smaller than that of the latter. Moreover, the British sailors are well-trained, the quality of the ships is better, and they have more firepower and equipment. A large-scale naval battle between the two sides in 1588 ended with the complete defeat of the Armada. This victory firmly established Britain as the world's leading naval power, a position it maintained as maritime supremacy until the 20th century.

Elizabeth was always diligent and thrifty. During her early years in power, the Crown's government was in good financial shape. But due to the huge cost of the war with Spain, the treasury was in poor shape during her later years in power. But because the king's government remained clean, the country was still more prosperous than when she ascended the throne.

The 45 years of Elizabeth's reign (from 1558 to 1603) are considered the Golden Age of England. Some of the most famous British writers such as William Shakespeare were born in this era. This achievement certainly included her share of the credit: she supported the Shakespeare Theater despite the opposition of local authorities in London. But music and painting are not as glorious as literature.

The Elizabethan era was also an era of British exploration. There was the expedition to Russia, Martin Frobisher and John Davis' discovery of the northwest route to the Far East, Sir Francis de Clay's circumnavigation of the world via California, Sir Walter Raleigh's and others stumbled upon the adventures of British immigrants in North America.

Perhaps Elizabeth's greatest fault was her unwillingness to propose an heir to the throne. Not only did she never marry, she also always avoided naming an heir. This may be because she fears that whoever is designated as heir will soon become a dangerous rival for her. Whatever Elizabeth's reasons for not mentioning an heir, had she died prematurely (assuming she had died at any time before Mary of Scots), England might have descended into a civil war over the issue of succession. But Britain was lucky because Elizabeth lived until she was 70 years old. In her last will and testament, she named King James VI of Scotland (son of Mary of Scots) as her heir. Although this brought England and Scotland under one king, it was an uncertain choice. Both James and his sons were dictators and unpopular in Great Britain, resulting in a civil war in the middle of the century.

Elizabeth is a woman of extraordinary intelligence and an extremely agile politician. She is reserved and cautious. She clearly hates war and bloodshed, but she doesn't hesitate when the need arises. Like her father, she came to power by working with Parliament rather than against it. It is possible for her to publicly declare that she would remain chaste and never marry, but it would be completely wrong to think of her as a hater of the opposite sex. On the contrary, she likes men and wants to be with them. Elizabeth was very ingenious in selecting her ministers. Part of her credit was certainly due to William Sesso, Lord Burverley, who was her chief adviser from 1558 until his death in 1598.

Elizabeth's main achievements can be summarized as follows. First, she led England through the second phase of the Reformation without serious bloodshed. This was in particularly stark contrast to Germany, where the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) killed as much as 25 percent of the population. She succeeded in maintaining the unity of the nation by, to a certain extent, relieving the deep hatred between Catholics and Protestants in England. Second, the 45 years of her rule were the golden age of one of the great nations in the world. Third, during her reign, Britain developed into a major great power and remained so for hundreds of years.

Elizabeth is a highly unusual character in this volume. The people included in this book are basically great inventors and people who created new ideas or changed policies. Elizabeth was no inventor, and her policies were largely cautious and conservative, but the progress made under her reign far exceeded that achieved by most rulers who were serious about reform.

Elizabeth was in no mood to deal with the thorny issue of the relative power of Parliament and the King. She never wanted to be a tyrant, which may have been more beneficial to the development of British democracy than her promulgation of a democratic constitution. Elizabeth did not pursue military exploits, nor was she interested in building a large empire. Indeed, under Elizabeth, Britain was not an empire. But she left Britain with the most powerful navy in the world. It laid the foundation for the subsequent development of the British Empire.

Britain's many overseas dependencies were acquired after Elizabeth's death - most long after her death. Many others played important roles in the establishment of the British Empire, which in any case can be seen as an inevitable consequence of the overall expansion of Europe and Britain's geographical location. It should be noted that other important European countries on the Atlantic coast (France, Spain and even Portugal) also became huge overseas empires.

Similarly, Elizabeth's role in the struggle to defend England against the Spanish threat is easily exaggerated. In retrospect, Spain does not appear to have posed a truly serious threat to British independence. We should remember that the battle between the British fleet and the Armada was not over at all (the British did not lose a single warship). Furthermore, even if Spanish troops had successfully landed in England, it was highly unlikely that they would have conquered the country, and Spanish troops had no notable successes elsewhere in Europe. It seemed obvious that had Spain failed to put down a rebellion in tiny Holland, it would have had virtually no chance of conquering England. By the 16th century nationalism in England was very strong; Spanish conquest was impossible.

So where should Elizabeth be ranked? She was essentially a regional figure, and comparisons to Peter the Great of Russia seem reasonable.

Considering that Peter's creative spirit was far greater than that of Elizabeth and that he set Russia on a new course, I think it would be difficult to convince an impartial Russian to rank Elizabeth above Peter. But considering the important role that England and the English have played in the centuries since Elizabeth, it would also be a mistake to place Elizabeth far behind Peter. It is obvious from every aspect that only a few emperors in history have achieved anything comparable to these two.

Nonetheless, modern research shows that Elizabeth I's achievements were obviously not as great as people expected. On the one hand, the Anglo-Spanish War failed to truly make Britain a maritime hegemon. Although the Spanish Armada suffered heavy losses, it was not truly eliminated. Spain relied on its large colonial system and prosperous economy to easily make up for the financial losses caused by the war. Spain truly withdrew from the stage of history in 1648 after the Thirty Years' War. In addition, Elizabeth was also biased in dealing with the conflicts between Protestantism and Catholicism. Before Elizabeth's death in 1603, England had become the absolute ruler of the British region due to her Protestant beliefs. Queen Elizabeth herself was excommunicated by the Pope for her Protestant beliefs. She had to take some extreme methods to persecute Catholics, which triggered the Irish and There was strong dissatisfaction in Scotland. Since then, conflicts between England and Ireland have continued until 1921 when the British government recognized the independence of Southern Ireland, while Northern Ireland was governed by both parties.

In any case, Queen Elizabeth left a considerable legacy for later Britain. In 1603, the Queen died in Greenwich. James VI, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, also became the King of England. Scotland and England were briefly unified. The beginning of the Stuart dynasty, the first bourgeois dynasty in British history, also announced the end of the feudal era.