Western Civilization I / Unit 14 WC1 1321 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Spain, England, France Compared as New Monarchies
The idea
The exam sets the three new monarchies side by side and asks which statement fits which. The method is four features with paired answers: how the crown unified, what it did to nobles, what tax it lived on, and what it did to religion.
In practice
Unified: Spain by a marriage of two crowns and the conquest of Granada; England by a civil war's winner in fourteen eighty-five; France by a professional army that finished the Hundred Years' War. Nobles: Spain razed castles and shipped rebels overseas; England allied with the gentry against great lords and banned private armies; France made nobles exempt from the taille and dependent on the crown. Tax: Spain trade reform; England seized rebel lands; France the taille and gabelle made permanent. Religion: Spain expelled Jews and Muslims; England, under Henry VII, left the Church alone; France appointed its own bishops. Apply: a statement about expulsion is Spain; a statement about gentry justices is England; a statement about a permanent salt tax is France; a statement about a foreign-born heir uniting two kingdoms is Spain under Charles.
Where people slip
The Empire fits none of the four, and the exam uses it as the contrast: elective, unable to tax its princes, its emperor dependent on his own lands. Learn the three kingdoms as the pattern and the Empire as the exception.
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