How did Europe react to the execution of Charles?

Just how big was the shock by the other powers to Charles's execution?

Did it mean that any Commonwealth would be a pariah state?

By the way (writing as an opponent of the death penalty on principle) what could or should the Commonwealth have done with Charles - given that honestly and reasonably believed no agreement with him could be trusted.
 
With some horror, no doubt. The fact that any populace would have overthrown and executed their own king, made the other monarchs worried about this sort of thing happen in their own countries. I think it may have particularly affected the Bourbons of France, because Charles I was married to Maria Henrietta, whom was a daughter of that family, and as such, France lost their friend amongst the English.
 
In part, I suspect the reaction was magnified in retrospect. 1649 was the beginning of Absolutism, so a generation later the idea would be viewed with utter horror. At the time, though, the idea that the king was inviolable and entitled to do anything was still contentious, and the idea of killing a king at least thinkable. Nonetheless, it must have shocked many as the kind of thing you'd expect Germans to do, not civilised Europeans.
 
In part, I suspect the reaction was magnified in retrospect. 1649 was the beginning of Absolutism, so a generation later the idea would be viewed with utter horror. At the time, though, the idea that the king was inviolable and entitled to do anything was still contentious, and the idea of killing a king at least thinkable. Nonetheless, it must have shocked many as the kind of thing you'd expect Germans to do, not civilised Europeans.

That seems about right - coming as it did right after the 30 Years War, I suspect the response was more along the lines of, "oh, Christ, this is still going on?" than the kind of horror it would have been greeted with in, eg, 1700.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
They were regarded as breeds apart?

it must have shocked many as the kind of thing you'd expect Germans to do, not civilised Europeans.

There was this kind of rap against Germans even before the Franco-Prussian war?

As Z said:
I suspect the response was more along the lines of, "oh, Christ, this is still going on?" than the kind of horror it would have been greeted with in, eg, 1700.
.....right, and much, much less horror than in the 1790s.

What happened to Charles stood out less in what was a half-century of instability.
 

Susano

Banned
There was this kind of rap against Germans even before the Franco-Prussian war?
Its not the same kind of bad reputation. After the 30YW, it would be more like the same bad reputation as the Middle East, the Balkan or better yet, Somalia have nowadays...
 
Edward II in 1327, Richard II in 1400 and Henry VI in 1471 were all English kings who were murdered after they had been deposed. I don't know if there was any outcry against their murder by other European monarchs.
 
Edward II in 1327, Richard II in 1400 and Henry VI in 1471 were all English kings who were murdered after they had been deposed. I don't know if there was any outcry against their murder by other European monarchs.

pipisme

They were all killed by rivals who deposed them, i.e. other monarchs. In the Commonwealth not only was it a republic that deposed and killed Charles I. Not only that they placed him on trial 1st, challenging the primacy of monarchies and their rule by divine right. Both posed a serious potential threat as they attacked the institution of the monarch and its position rather than just replacing one monarch by another.

Saying that, while I don't think the Commonwealth was popular with the European monarchies I'm not sure there was any actual organised operations against them. Other than the French support for the deposed Stewarts, which was more a case of seeking to get a candidate friendly to/reliant on them in place.

Steve
 
pipisme

They were all killed by rivals who deposed them, i.e. other monarchs. In the Commonwealth not only was it a republic that deposed and killed Charles I.
I think you're overestimating how much of a republic the Commonwealth was perceived as being at the time; it was still run by the English nobility after all, and there was a fair expectation in England and abroad that Cromwell would end up just becoming the head of a new dynasty. The Commonwealth was never seen as being extremely radical in the was the French Republic would later be.

As for international perception, French backing of the Stewarts was pure power politics; the French were quick enough to side with the Commonwealth against the Hapsburgs once the political situation shifted.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Even before the French killed their king,

they were regarded as more radical, dangerously and unacceptably so, than the Commonwealth had been regarded.

Was this simply because it was the century of absolutism, and a century of greater stability? Or was it because the French were proclaiming "universal truths" were on their side. That eventually happened in the American Revolution, but that was another continent. Weirdness among frontiersmen going off into the wild could be expected.
 
they were regarded as more radical, dangerously and unacceptably so, than the Commonwealth had been regarded.

Was this simply because it was the century of absolutism, and a century of greater stability? Or was it because the French were proclaiming "universal truths" were on their side. That eventually happened in the American Revolution, but that was another continent. Weirdness among frontiersmen going off into the wild could be expected.

The French court had dictated European culture for quite some time. French culture was supreme across the continent. When the culture most copied and respected gets torn down, its aristocracy starts fleeing the country, its king executed, and the people doing it cite an Enlightenment intellectual tradition as the reason for these things (an Enlightenment thinking that most of Europe's elites also believed in), that might scare the rest of Europe. I think the thinking was, "if this can happen in France, it can happen here." Since most European monarchs wanted to keep their heads, they decided it would probably be best to end the French Republic.
 
The French court had dictated European culture for quite some time. French culture was supreme across the continent. When the culture most copied and respected gets torn down, its aristocracy starts fleeing the country, its king executed, and the people doing it cite an Enlightenment intellectual tradition as the reason for these things (an Enlightenment thinking that most of Europe's elites also believed in), that might scare the rest of Europe. I think the thinking was, "if this can happen in France, it can happen here." Since most European monarchs wanted to keep their heads, they decided it would probably be best to end the French Republic.

And the way the revolutionaries tried to spread the revolution pretty much from 1792 on - which doesn't call to mind "fervour" or even "fanaticism" so much as "rabies" - probably didn't help much.
 

Thande

Donor
Remember that the Commonwealth was in many ways similar to the Dutch Republic, which Europe had accepted the existence of or was close to doing so. Besides, it could be viewed as Cromwell and a small circle of cronies being responsible for the regicide - it was very unpopular in England even at the time, despite everything Charles had done.
 
Top