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T H E O R I G I N S O F T H E M O D E R N S TAT E I N E U R O P E th to th Centuries General Editors: Wim Blockmans and Jean-Philippe Genet
T H E O R I G I N S O F T H E M O D E R N S TAT E I N E U R O P E th to th Centuries General Editors: Wim Blockmans and Jean-Philippe Genet Theme A. War and Competition between States Philippe Contamine Theme B. Economic Systems and State Finance Richard Bonney Theme C. Legislation and Justice Antonio Padoa-Schioppa Theme D. Power Elites and State Building Wolfgang Reinhard Theme E. Resistance, Representation, and Community Peter Blickle Theme F. The Individual in Political Theory and Practice Janet Coleman Theme G. Iconography, Propaganda, and Legitimation Allan Ellenius
War and Competition between States
Edited by
Philippe Contamine
European Science Foundation CLARENDON PRESS
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © ESF The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data War and competition between states / edited by Philippe Contamine. p. cm.—(The origins of the modern state in Europe ; theme A) Includes bibliographical references and index. . Europe—Armed Forces. . Europe—History, Military. . Europe—Politics and government—‒. . Europe—Politics and government—‒. I. Contamine, Philippe. II. Series. UA .W '.—dc - ISBN ‒‒‒ Typeset by Jayvee, Trivandrum, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., Guildford and King’s Lynn
G E N E R A L E D I TO R ’ S P R E FAC E
The seven books in this series are the proceedings of the seven working groups which together constituted the four-year-long programme, ‘The Origins of the Modern State in Europe, th to th Centuries’, sponsored by the European Science Foundation (ESF). From the outset, the aim was to bring together specialists from different countries, who accepted the challenge of developing a new vision of fundamental aspects of European state formation. Some of the seven themes were more original than others but, taken together, they reflected essential aspects of this far-reaching process. The choice of themes was also determined by what we, as the programme’s initiators, saw as most outstanding in terms of current research. Most themes, moreover, combined problems (and in some cases disciplines) rarely tackled in conjunction, and it was hoped that this would produce additional stimuli. No group could aim at comprehensiveness—whether thematic, geographical, or chronological. Rather, the volumes they have produced offer coherently chosen examples and approaches to fundamental aspects of state formation, in different contexts, so that at least the wide range of developments was covered. The themes of the seven working groups were chosen in order to deal with key issues in the process of European state formation, while their goals were defined in somewhat broader terms than those often found in current historical research. This was mainly attempted through the combination of different disciplinary or thematic approaches in each group. Theme A, War and Competition between State Systems, the topic which is considered in this volume, focuses on various forms of competition between states, including both war and diplomacy. It starts from the assumption that interstate rivalries and conflicts were at the heart not only of the demarcation of territories, but also of the ever-growing need to mobilize resources for warfare. Institutionalization was consequently highly dependent on such competition. Fiscality—pecunia nervus belli—was of course another indispensable topic (Theme B: Economic Systems and State Finance) not only in terms of the comparative tax-generative capacities of different states, but also in relation to the economic systems on which it was based. Law (that is, both legislation and justice), as a primary attribute of princes (whose legitimacy was founded on their effective guaranteeing of the rule of law
vi · General Editors’ Preface and internal peace, later defined as public order), is treated from both an institutional and a legal viewpoint in Theme C, The Legal Instruments of Power. It was felt in this group that sociological theories of state formation tended to underestimate this fundamental factor. Case studies for several countries converge towards the conclusion that justice was a more effective factor in establishing the authority of the state, and in rendering it effective, than was legislation. Prosopographical methods have been increasingly applied by historians of the medieval and early modern periods in the last twenty years or so, and the scope of their investigations has been considerably widened, thanks to the expansion of electronic databases. It was on the basis of these still fragmentary and selective materials that Team D attempted to formulate generalizations focusing on the themes of social foundations, recruitment, social reproduction, and political functions of power elites in Theme D, Power Elites and State Building in Europe. It was felt that processes of state formation should be viewed from the periphery, as well as the centre. Small-scale public authorities, such as rural and urban communes, lordships, confederations, leagues and territories, established and institutionalized before the expansion of territorial monarchies into larger states in which many of them were incorporated, continued to hold real power until the end of the ancien régime, with or without a (semi-)sovereign status. Their political role was studied in Theme E, Resistance, Representation, and Sense of Community, in order to observe in what way, through various forms of representation and resistance, they contributed to the shaping of specific forms of states. The view ‘from below’ helps to diversify the picture of the early modern state and to include more of the great variety of European experiences of public authority. Several groups felt that general historical works at present largely overestimate both the level of centralization and the homogeneity of the larger dynastic states in early modern Europe. The way in which the role of the state contributed to the concept of the individual was studied in Theme F, The Individual in Political Theory and Practice, in various areas of social and political life and on different levels of the theory and practice of philosophy and politics, while the uses made by states of the visual and performing arts for the purposes of political propaganda and the legitimation of power were studied through the fruitful interaction of both art historians and historians in Theme G, Iconography, Propaganda, and Legitimation. During the years ‒, the groups met six times in order to discuss common questionnaires, the data which had been assembled, and preliminary papers, some of which were produced collectively. Over one hundred scholars from eighteen countries examined sources (largely relating to the history of their own nations), as well as interpretations and explanatory models. Often they had to explain to their colleagues the terms in current use in the fields in which they
General Editors’ Preface · vii worked. Inevitably, this all led to integrated volumes, reflecting the efforts of each group to come to terms with the variety of information and approaches. When the programme was formally presented in , we stressed some of its innovative aspects: it would be interdisciplinary, it would group together both medievalists and early modernists and, self-evidently, it would be international. During the course of the programme, we observed how the study of the ancien régime was accepted as a most fruitful and relevant means for the discovery of real continuities or disjunctions. The international nature of our enterprise is elaborated further below, while interdisciplinarity produced some creative confrontations, without ever raising obstacles. These three premises were fully accepted by all participants. Not only did they adopt them as a working scheme, but they also clearly had considerable influence on our collective work. This should be stressed, since it is not typical of most research in this field. The international character of our research programme is far more meaningful in the context of the study of European state formation than it normally is in ESF activities. Unlike those who explore themes in molecular biology or oceanography, we are dealing with a subject which deeply influenced the organization and content of our research itself. Since the Middle Ages, states have stimulated their own national historiographies, whose effects continued to be experienced in our collaboration. We believe that the programme has played a considerable part in overcoming the predominant fallacy of studying states mainly, or exclusively, from within their twentieth-century borders, leading to the teleological view of state formation which we subjected to critical scrutiny in our First Plenary Conference at Rome.1 Not only did this research programme help us adopt a more open-minded attitude to the variability of developments from any given moment in history onwards: it also demonstrated clearly that the development of a few states in western Europe into centralized bureaucratic and absolutist monarchies is inadequate as a standard of reference for developments throughout Europe. Not only were more variegated models brought to the fore, we also learned that in practice the level of centralization, bureaucratization, and absolutism remained far below that assumed by earlier historians. The working groups’ international and long-term approach meant that their analysis could not be in terms of geographical borders. Close collaboration around specific themes offered the opportunity of complementing the information provided by each individual researcher. At this stage, however, it became apparent how deeply the states themselves interfere with our research. Many of us were hampered by linguistic shortcomings which obviously reduced access to 1
Blockmans and Genet ().
viii · General Editors’ Preface material published in unfamiliar languages. Some groups largely overcame this difficulty by joining forces. We have to face up to this fact, which plays a greater role in our disciplines than in, for example, natural science and medicine. Beyond this first, and elementary, obstacle, we found two more in differences of terminology and conceptualization. These essential tools for communication proved largely dependent on specific historical context and languages, and thus inadequate for our more general and comparative analysis. However, we hope the publication of our results in several unilingual series will contribute to the introduction of a more generally consistent terminology. Having tackled these obstacles of sources, conceptualization, and vision, we may hope that the wider scale of our analysis will lead us to further wide-ranging explanatory models, no longer reducing the broad phenomenon of state formation to mainly internal factors. W. B. J.-P. G.
CONTENTS
List of Tables List of Figures
xii xii
. Introduction by Philippe Contamine
. Political and Military Bonds in the Italian State System, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries by Maria Nadia Covini
. The Military Organization of the City-States and the Urban signorie . The Free Companies: A Troubled Intermezzo . War and the Formation of the Regional States . The System of the Italian States . The Italian System and the System of the European States . Types of Armies: Early Modern Spain by Luis Ribot García . . . . . . . . .
Introduction The End of Noble Wars The Century of the Mercenaries Military Entrepreneurs and Intermediaries Compulsory Service: Prisoners, Quotas, Militias The Origins of Conscription The Bureaucratic Revolution The Rise of State Armies The Nation in Arms
. States and Their Navies from the Late Sixteenth to the End of the Eighteenth Centuries by Jaap R. Bruijn . Navies and Their Size
x · Contents . Formal and Informal Navies, c.–c. . A Race for Permanent Navies, c.‒ . Continuity and Free Play versus Overall State Interference, –c. . The Belated Dutch Reaction and the Human Factor, c.‒ . Conclusion . States, Roads, Armies, and the Organization of Space by Jean Meyer . . . . . .
Introduction Communication and Transmission Fortifications and Frontiers Roads and Control of the State Interior The Role of the State in the Intellectual Mastery of ‘Space’ Conclusion
. Men, Money, and Means by Jan Lindegren . . . . . .
Introduction The Problem People Money Means War and Resources
. The Growth of State Control. Practices of War, ‒: Ransom and Booty by Philippe Contamine . The End of the Middle Ages: The Golden Age of Private Ransom . The End of the Middle Ages: Regulation of Capture and Division of Spoils . The End of the Middle Ages: Comparative Elements . The Modern Period: Persistence of the Private Appropriation of Booty . Ransoms in the Modern Period: Gains Diminishing with State Control
Contents · xi . The Modern State and Military Society in the Eighteenth Century by Bernhard R. Kroener . Social Stratification in Military Society: The Officers . Institutes of Military Education as a Measure of Military Professionalism . In the Shadow of the King’s Mercy: The Social and Economic Foundations of the Officer’s Existence . Non-Commissioned Officers and Tension between Officers and the Rank and File . The canaille: The Lower Military Classes . The Reality of the Soldier’s Life: Marriage and Secondary Occupations . The Army and the Enlightenment: The Role of the Army in the Political Calculations of the European Powers on the Eve of the French Revolution . Pro deo et patria mori: Sanctified Patriotism in Europe, ‒ by Norman Housley
. The Peacemakers and the State: Pontifical Diplomacy and the Anglo-French Conflict in the Fourteenth Century by Françoise Autrand
. Towards a History of Peace . Papal Diplomacy at Avignon vis-à-vis European States . Peace and Sovereignty
. War and International Law in Europe, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries by Heinz Duchhardt
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
L I S T O F TA B L E S
. . . . . .
Naval strength of four major seapowers, ‒ Naval strength of three Baltic seapowers, ‒ Sizes of European armies, ‒ Societal surplus in Scandinavia (expressed in millions) Some ransoms in the s and s Ratios of military personnel to total population in major European powers in the eighteenth century
LIST OF FIGURES
. . . . . . . . .
The population of the Scandinavian states, ‒ (in millions) Swedish wars, ‒ (annual average, in five-year periods) Percentage of population in the armed forces, c.‒ Swedish absolute war losses () and relative war losses (expressed as a percentage of the population), ‒ Lost soldiers as a percentage of the population in Sweden, Denmark-Norway, and Castile, ‒ (yearly averages) Annual death rates and proportion of dead in the Swedish national forces in Germany, ‒ Value and composition of Swedish exports, ‒ (in millions of riksdaler) Centrally disposable means (in millions of riksdaler) Adult men and women in the parish of Bygdeå, ‒
Introduction Philippe Contamine
I
f the reader pictures the geographical and political area called ‘Europe’, during the five hundred-odd years from c. to c., it was divided at every point in time into a number (indeed, a huge number) of ‘sovereign’ powers which could both conduct war and be its objects or victims. Taking account of this political distribution and the innumerable peripheral or purely local conflicts which persistently broke out for most of the period, besides wars at sea and colonial wars (in so far as they were to varying degrees an extension of European wars), it would probably be difficult to find a single year between these two dates wholly without war or without an open demonstration of hostility in one corner of the continent or another, or indeed outside it. On the other hand, during this entire period there were perhaps at most several dozen major conflicts which rightly captured the imagination of contemporaries by the size of the material means employed, the number of human lives lost, the extent of material destruction, the importance of what was at stake, or the difficulty with which protracted confrontation was eventually ended. Within this European space, war can be described as ‘endemic’, just as the plague is, at least from the mid-fourteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries, there being sudden and sometimes extended outbreaks at regular intervals in both cases. These outbreaks have names: the Hundred Years’ War, Thirty Years’ War, Seven Years’ War—a complete list would be pointless. In any case, even when there was no open warfare, states and peoples lived under the shadow of war and were ceaselessly prompted to consider the possibility of war, even though they were not directly preparing for it. For a long time—indeed, ever since the first outbreak and waging of war—and for practically every state actively participating in this phenomenon, there have been annalists, chroniclers, and historians, who made it their duty to narrate every circumstantial detail of the ups and downs of each war; who depicted with
· Philippe Contamine varying degrees of vividness the role of states and other powers in the outbreak and unfolding of these wars. These narratives also revealed the inevitable consequences of war in the life of the states. Only recently have some authors dared to take a somewhat higher view of events, scorning myopic traditional complacency and abandoning the sense of caution once compulsory among scholars of all countries, in order to raise in all its tragic immensity the problem of the role of war in the destiny and growth of the various European states, when they themselves were confronted with the unavoidable phenomenon of competition. In other words, the question was raised of the extent to which so-called foreign policy, of which war was an intrinsic part, fashioned every other aspect of the life of the states. Surely, war was the most powerful element in the development of states, or rather of ‘the state’, at least in the period under consideration here. The problem of war should be present—emphatically, ubiquitously present—within each of the six other themes in this series on the origins of the modern state. Public income was, after all, chiefly raised from the people in order to finance war, so that almost everywhere the ‘modern’ system of taxation, whether direct or indirect, was constructed with war in mind, presented rightly or wrongly as a predominantly defensive operation. Without this powerful incentive, states would probably have failed to show such zealous imagination in the varied and exigent forms of raising public revenue; most probably, too, the peoples of Europe would not have submitted as easily (for all the tax revolts) to this harsh obligation. Comparative examination of public expenditure shows that the costs of war, broadly defined, absorbed a very high proportion of the money available— often up to half, or even more, depending of course on the general circumstances. In more ways than one, war was linked to the construction of European law. This connection came about because of the practice, since the Middle Ages and even in the classical period, of the idea of the ‘just war’, through the slow establishment of particularly strict and increasingly elaborate codes used in both military and civilian spheres, and through the development of the concept of a law of nations—once again a very old idea, but one which reached its archetypical expression precisely in the last decades of the period we are considering here. No social group served the state more than those who fought—so much so that ‘service’ per se, unqualified, was deemed to refer to military service. Admittedly, this idea of service was accepted only with some difficulty, and there is no lack of examples of men at every social level fighting on their own account, from lowly mercenaries trying to supplement their pay with income from pillage and ransom, to the general contractors of war, whose Golden Age was the Thirty Years’ War, through the condottieri of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. None the less, on the one hand, as early as the late Middle Ages strongly organized states achieved de facto control for their own advantage over all the armed forces theoretically at
Introduction · their disposal or acting within their territory; on the other hand, European states were the ultimate long-term victors over all competing initiatives, and they achieved an acknowledged monopoly over the exercise of military violence, or even of violence per se, in the areas they dominated. It is equally possible to claim that war even influenced the communal, or ‘communitarian’, phenomenon: as the case of the Swiss cantons showed so clearly (but examples could easily be multiplied). It could be argued that military comradeship constituted the first form of communal spirit, whether at the level of the extended family, the clan, or the inhabitants of village, town, or country (pagus, patria). The setting-up of political assemblies, whatever their context, was closely linked to war. The history of European individualism is also not far from our topic: from the medieval period, for instance, the immunity in times of war of certain kinds of individuals by reason of their status—clerics and ecclesiastics, as well as the elderly, women, children, merchants, peasants, indeed, eventually all ‘civilians’— became widely accepted. It is also possible to discern medieval origins in the concept of conscientious objection. Despite all the pressures and violations of immunities, it cannot be maintained that the way war was then waged automatically deprived individuals of their individuality. Indeed, not only did the state which employed an individual have to respect this individuality to some degree, but even victorious enemies had to treat the vanquished with some moral and juridical consideration. The frequent presence of an oath taken by each soldier when he enlisted in a given army goes to show that there was a truly individual link between the soldier in question and the authority—apparently anonymous but in reality concrete and, when all is said and done, personalized—to whom the oath had been made. As for the history of fine arts and its relationship to the state, it can all too easily be observed that many works of art were aimed at glorifying, if not in war itself, at least in war as waged by a particular people, state, or prince. Moreover, this glorification of war, in its various shapes and themes, was to serve the goals of internal or external propaganda. It would be possible to construct a musical or pictorial history, in which the state’s activity and interventions would be continuously observed behind the various manifestations constituting the narrative whole. Turning from feudal to modern Europe is to leave a politically highly segregated world for another in which small states still existed, sometimes within a larger grouping (the Holy Roman Empire for example), but which was none the less dominated by a few very large powers. The simplification of the map of Europe between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries included the complete disappearance of one old kingdom, Poland, and the grouping under a common sovereign of previously separated units, as with the Habsburg Empire or the
· Philippe Contamine United Kingdom. The consequence of such an evolution was a sharp reduction in the number of powers able to conduct a war on their own. At the same time, several of these enlarged units enjoyed a more extensive capacity for action. Although the total European population increased only within relatively narrow limits, and economic development was quantitative rather than qualitative between and (this is still the period before the industrial revolution), the capacity of states to draw on existing economic and human resources were very significantly increased. The current state of knowledge makes it impossible to sketch the situation for the whole of Europe: suffice it to say that in France in the reign of Philip the Fair (‒), mobilization of an army , strong for six months was a maximum, while the figure reached , men for a whole year, or even longer, in France under Louis XI (‒), exceeded , under Henri IV (‒), and passed the , mark in the last years of the reign of Louis XIV (‒), to say nothing of the , soldiers in Napoleon’s Grande Armée. At a later date there were the ,, men of the German army in the war of , the same army numbering ,, in —but this clearly belongs to another sphere. The number enlisted is only one element among many, however. Let us not forget the fundamental difference between a state of war and a state of peace, with respect to concrete economic consequences. Well controlled, a peacetime army used up few resources and could even increase the prosperity of a given region. Moreover, guesswork suggests that , looters, whether in friendly or enemy territory, were more destructive than , disciplined men; the big battalions in western Europe in the eighteenth century were probably a more bearable presence for the people than the small companies of roving mercenaries in the Hundred Years’ War. Granted that a given state, either alone or as part of a coalition, was caught up in a spiral of competition, and was consequently forced to redouble its efforts merely to ensure continued military credibility, nevertheless, it could not ignore a series of highly limiting socio-economic obligations. At least in western and central Europe, armies generally became less destructive, especially from the last decades of the seventeenth century onwards and through the eighteenth until the French Revolution. This was at precisely the period at which the prevailing style of government came to entail some degree of restraint in the expression of political ambitions. It was as if sovereigns had made a common decision to spare each other and thus to slow down what might be called the ‘dynamics of competition’. Analysis of the operation of these dynamics between states implies an examination of the causes and goals of war. It has often been stressed that the twentiethcentury World Wars, with their ideological bases and desire for complete victory and unconditional surrender (a desire sometimes made public by the warring
Introduction · parties), led to convulsive and totalitarian eruptions of naked power struggles of ‘pitiless rivalry’. Similarly, from the time of the French Revolution and throughout the nineteenth century, nationalist passions became an appallingly successful fuel forcing the engine of war to full throttle. Admittedly, the period c.–c. also witnessed wars indisputably national and ‘popular’ in character, and others sanctioned by ideology: the Jacquerie in the fourteenth century, the Hussite Wars in the fifteenth, the Peasants’ War and the Wars of Religion in the sixteenth, and the Wars of Religion again in the seventeenth. But it cannot be denied that with the passage of time an increasing number of conflicts came mainly from the leaders’ naked desire for power—and glory—and were thus conducted with an enthusiasm which was less widely shared, although no less intense than before. The Italian campaigns of the Valois kings from the late fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries were even referred to at the time as ‘munificent wars’. Domination of the duchy of Milan and other parts of Italy was naturally very attractive, profitable, and significant, and the French leaders’ fear of the threat of Habsburg encirclement is understandable. Nevertheless, even in contemporary eyes, the enterprises could not be viewed as absolutely vital, and this fact offered increased opportunities for diplomacy and negotiations for peace. Thus states, like wrestlers, could regain their breath at leisure. Conversely, as long as many wars only reached a level of intensity that was generally bearable to the predominantly insensitive body of society, were not too expensive, and affected above all, on the one hand, marginal groups and, on the other, a small group of noblemen professionally engaged in military activity, a number of military actions could take place with some regularity without encountering an undue number of obstacles or storms of indignation. War was part of the familiar landscape, and the daily horizon; it somehow belonged to the order of things in the world. Conflicts often occurred because they were limited; there were just as many cruel events, which were either ordinary or perceived as such, but which recurred periodically, such as epidemics or poor harvests, or blood-letting for the individual human body. The idea of competition between states was of course not wholly absent in such an environment, but neither could the claims and consequences of the concept be pushed to the limit. Despite haughty proclamations and thunderous speeches, rulers, however absolute the power they claimed, could only recognize its fairly narrow limits. There was no lack of checks, material or intellectual, on the free exercise of competition between states. In the long run, therefore, setting aside a few clearly circumscribed episodes, the intensity and permanent character of the dynamics of interstate competition can be called into question. Numerous signs of these dynamics can of course be identified, but they were far from being present at every moment in the life of the various states.
· Philippe Contamine This said, the whole of ‘political history’, in the broad sense of the term, can be read emphasizing the means used by states to increase their power beyond their borders, and consequently to strengthen their domination within them. It would be useless to deny either the military roots or the military constituents of the socalled ‘modern European state’ (thirteenth–eighteenth centuries); in any case, this modern state differed in intensity rather than nature from the ‘traditional’ pre-thirteenth-century state which was then still to be found in areas outside Europe. Just as one of the duties of a state, then as now, was to establish peace as far as possible among those who recognized its authority or had to submit to it through its exercise of justice or the ‘sword’, so another equally crucial duty, indeed one fully recognized by those it governed, was to ensure when necessary the defence and salvation of these people and their territory. For a long time, kings and princes claimed to be war-lords: they were to lead the armies and to fight if need be. Kings were ‘kings of war’. In order to achieve this goal, they were entitled to exercise certain rights over their subjects and to demand the fulfilment of a number of duties, among them inventorying men and resources, full- or partmobilization, the taxing of all those who were not going to fight, and so on. In short, the first service required by the state was military service or its equivalent. The modern state was built around the two great institutions of the court and the army; but the court itself had an entire military dimension, at times discreet, at others conspicuous, manifest in ways which varied according to time and place. Indeed, life at court had its extensions in life in the camps. The modern state was made up of palaces, residences, and princely retreats, but also of bastions, citadels, and barracks. The state initially extended its duties for the benefit of the military, with education (military schools and academies), treatment of the wounded and the sick (hospitals), and provision for soldiers who had been pensioned off (Les Invalides, the Royal Hospital, Chelsea). The welfare state has authentic military roots. Military organization was used by the state as a model on which to create a number of organs and institutions with civilian purposes (hierarchy, discipline, regulations, and the wearing of uniforms). It was clearly for military reasons, and with military aims, that the state secured control of time and space, both at sea and on land. At the same time, however, military personnel tended increasingly to form another society within society as a whole—one that was at the same time, or by turns recognized and admired, or relatively marginalized and despised. Civilian skills gradually elbowed military capacities off the centre-stage. Many heads of state distanced themselves physically from war, thereby weakening their charismatic power, as Louis XVI found to his cost at the beginning of the French Revolution. The duties of the state began to diversify at the time of the Enlightenment. States were viewed less and less as large war-machines: in this respect, the case of
Introduction · Prussia was exceptional. There was conflict, still frequent but confined to a given area of Europe—the most archaic—and increasingly limited elsewhere. An elegant and scientific war was born, conducted with at least a modicum of geometrical skill and subtlety. Daily violence tended to be contained by the army, which provided unobtrusive crowd control and had suceeded in many countries in taming and ‘civilizing’ its own. In short, the intense dynamism of war seems to have diminished during the eighteenth century. This general evolution would be broken by two factors: first, the whirlwind of revolution, which unleashed ideology and revived nationalism, and, secondly, industrial capitalism, which put its powerful resources at the disposal of war while introducing new centres of interest, new stakes, and thus hitherto unheard-of causes, into war. Thus, despite European diversity over time and space, it is possible to draw balanced conclusions. Although conflict between European states can be compared to gang rivalry with participants ready to use any means to increase their efficiency in a struggle without principle, mercy, or respite, such a representation (which has the singular advantage of underlining many elements glossed over all too willingly by historians) is surely at least partly schematic and to some degree a caricature. It is at least true that, on the one hand, the people governed did not see the situation in this light and endowed their warring rulers with many legitimizing qualities, while, on the other hand, the rulers themselves would have categorically denied that they were engaging in robbery (magna latrocinia, to use St Augustine’s phrase): the problem of form was also one of content. Not one of the great utopias of universal peace saw even the glimmer of fulfilment; the pax europea which George Podiebrad, Sully, Leibniz, the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, and several others all glimpsed in turn remained no more than an idealistic dream. Modern Europe had its share of tyrants and warmongers, but it was also graced with sovereigns and powers quick to reach compromise of all kinds, and it was, for various reasons, attached to the values of negotiation and peace. Competition between states never went as far as it might have. It went through phases of acceleration and deceleration, and allowed militarily insignificant powers to survive. Peace treaties and international congresses took place just in time to decrease tensions and interrupt the war-game, securing a demilitarization of society as a whole which was, to varying degrees, rapid, thorough, and lasting. Policies such as that which led to the partition of Poland were relatively exceptional, and indeed viewed as scandalous. The history of the modern state is far from being synonymous with the history of violence, although the historian cannot entirely ignore this crucial dimension.
Political and Military Bonds in the Italian State System, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries Maria Nadia Covini
I
n this chapter, I shall consider the Italian political system in the period from the middle of the thirteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth centuries: the two-and-a-half centuries which saw the establishment of an order of states characterized by political particularism. This particularism originated in the distinctive experience of the city-states which had grown up between the eleventh and twelfth centuries and continued, after the Italian Wars, until the nineteenth century. In this period, relations between the Italian powers took place in a kind of fictitious isolation with respect to the European conflict as a whole. Only with the invasion by French armies at the end of the fifteenth century did the European dimension enter the peninsula, making it, for the next half century, the battleground for continental supremacy. Without doubt, the early development of the autonomous power of the cities and the absence of a monarchic initiative able to promote territorial aggregation and bring together elements of ‘statehood’, gave events on the peninsula in this period a particular character. Far removed from the ‘canonical’ experiences of the constitution of the great national monarchies, here the question of state formation can be examined without the risk of falling into a deterministic view which tends to project into the past the results of the present. The peculiar Italian experience allows the multiplicity of forces involved and the specific pathways leading to the formation of states to be examined, while emphasizing both elements which fostered growth and those which slowed down or apparently diverted development.1 In short, the particularism and strong competition which 1
Historical writing from Europe and elsewhere has recently shown an interest in these topics. See
· Maria Nadia Covini characterized Italy make it possible to identify what, primarily, seems to have been decisive in ensuring the survival, expansion, or disappearance of the different states and what gave shape to their structures.2 I shall now examine the system of political and military powers which operated on the peninsula, pointing out factors of change, elements of conflict, and the multiplicity of forces involved. On this basis, two questions deserve particular attention: first, the competitive dynamics and consequent selection of the competitors; secondly, the relationships of interdependence created within the system between the major states and other autonomous holders of political power. One of the favoured mechanisms is that of military alliances, which in Italy from the fourteenth century took the form of the condotta.
. The Military Organization of the City-States and the Urban signorie In northern and central Italy of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, territorial organization and the formation of states derived from a particular political and institutional experience, originating in the development of the cities and the formation of urban communes. From the outset, the city-states of northern and central Italy were strongly linked to the surrounding countryside and showed a general tendency, which might be more or less successful, towards the subjugation of rural lords, land, and minor centres, and the assumption of political, jurisdictional, and fiscal control of the surrounding territories.3 This action only partly relied upon armed conquest; primarily, it was the result of negotiations, political alliances, feudal or other bonds, or the acquisition of economic and jurisdictional rights. Nevertheless, from the beginning of the twelfth century when the Italian city-states defined and consolidated their own political and institutional identity in the struggle against the Empire and its allies, the military dimension was ever-present. In many respects, the year represents a turning-point: with the death of Frederick II and the subsequent struggle between the Swabian and Angevin parties, the Empire ceased to represent an effective political force on the peninsula, and the cities acquired more autonomy in their political action. The arrival of the Angevin forces and the creation of the Guelph and Ghibelline military leagues Genet (), ‒; Fernandez Albaladejo (); Tilly (), ‒, ‒, ‒. For Italian studies, see esp. Fasano Guarini (); Isaacs (). Isaacs (), : this essay is a valuable source of ideas. Chittolini (a, ). See also Anderson (), ch. ; Jones (); Cammarosano (); Maire Vigueur (). 2 3
Political and Military Bonds · brought further momentum to a situation which was ripe for change. The open conflict of the second half of the thirteenth century and the formation of inter-city and inter-regional alliances accelerated the institutional changes within the citystates. From as early as the first decades of the century, the pars populi asserted itself over the aristocratic class of the milites, offering armed opposition to the violence and predominance of the nobles. This phase of popular domination of the city-states also corresponded to the period of stronger expansionist moves towards the subjugation of the communities and rural lords of the urban district, the contado (the old comitatus), which had been the cities’ most immediate object of conquest. With the communal armies, which already enjoyed a glorious tradition and a tried and tested organization, the stronger cities embarked upon more forceful territorial expansion.4 The internal struggles and armed conquest posed new organizational and logistic problems to the city-states. In the view of the times, the communal armed force was an army of the people: every citizen was obliged to contribute to military operations and was a depository, for the commune as a whole, of goods and equipment to be used in war.5 In effect, from the thirteenth century onwards, the corner-stone of the communal armies became the cavalry, made up of members of the milites class who at the foundation of the communes had dominated the urban governments. The milites originated from noble families cultivating old military traditions, bellicose customs, and readiness to fight. The communal armies also included cives and members of the non-noble classes who generally served in the infantry, which was the proud descendant of the infantries that had been created in the twelfth century for the struggle against the Empire. The rural militias also contributed to the military campaigns of the city-states: each community of the contado provided an infantry of a size proportional to its estimo and led by a local captain. Moreover, the countryside bore the main burden of logistic support for the army: provision of pioneers, sappers, and auxiliary personnel variously responsible for supplies, transport, and the setting-up of camps, military quarters, and siege positions.6 From the twelfth century, the city-states had ceased to see the cavalry as a prerogative of the nobility. In a well-known passage in his Gesta Friderici I, Otto of Freising observed that the cavalry of the city-states included many iuvenes of modest status from the artisan and middle classes.7 In the thirteenth century, See above, n. ; Pini (); Tabacco (a), ‒; Sestan (), ‒. Galletti (), . 6 Davidsohn (), , ‒; Bowsky (). 7 Otto of Freising and Rahewin, Gesta Friderici I imperatoris, ed. G. Waitz and B. de Simpson (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores; Hannover–Leipzig, ), . On the th-cent. communal armies: Settia (, ). 4 5
· Maria Nadia Covini many Italian city-republics adopted reforms aimed at facilitating the participation of these classes in the communal armies. From , the popular government of Padua organized the army on the basis of wealth: those possessing between , and , libre were entitled to join. In Verona, after , this faculty was granted to all citizens possessing at least , libre, military equipment, and a warhorse. This provision formally extended entry into the city-state’s cavalry to the wealthy families of the professions, the Arti, and trades, while other provisions aimed against the magnati classes led to the signori and the leading feudal families leaving the scene.8 Extending recruitment to the cavalry to the popular classes, which corresponded to the success of the populares in the new city-state governments, was not, however, sufficient to satisfy the new levels of competition between the cities. Although some leading merchants and craftsmen aspired to emulate the customs and lifestyle of the aristocrats,9 for the great majority it was only with reluctance that they left their own activities in order to take part in campaigns which, as the city-state’s sphere of influence grew larger, became ever longer and more demanding. Moreover, the infantry recruited in the city and the contado began to show growing disaffection with military service, leading to widespread recalcitrance and the tendency to commute the obligation into a sum of money.10 In addition, the military performance of the conscripted infantry was not comparable to that of the professional forces; the obligations of the urban and rural levies were limited in time, their equipment was often old and deficient, and the logistical support was not sufficient to maintain the city-state’s army in the field for very long. The conscripted armies were mobilized at the beginning of the campaign together with special corps and contingents of mercenaries. However, if operations became protracted or required more forceful and efficient military capacity, the city-state armies left the field to the masnade of professionals, who, since they were paid, were able to sustain a campaign for a prolonged period.11 With time, external warfare became an activity almost exclusively of mercenaries, who were ‘better armed, better equipped, and more reliable, since they were not involved in any factional conflict’.12 In the course of the twelfth century, urban society became progressively demilitarized,13 albeit in the context of intense internal conflict between different 9 Castagnetti (), , , . Tabacco (a), ‒; Tabacco (b). Galletti (), , ‒; Davidsohn (), ‒. 11 Davidsohn (), ; Galletti (), ‒. For Machiavelli’s well-known thesis against mercenarism: Chabod (), ff.; Waley (), ‒; Gilbert (). 12 Pieri (), . For a comparative survey: Puddu (). 13 Galasso (), ‒; Jones (), ‒; Pini (), ‒. 8
10
Political and Military Bonds · factions of the urban classes who organized themselves into armed societies. The armed groups which grew up in many cities, based on the quarters of the city or representing partes and social classes, did not have a combative function in external wars, although they helped to keep the military attitudes of the milites and the citizens alive. This demilitarization seems to be contradicted by the presence in city records, even at a late date, of military service rolls. However, although it is true that many communes continued to keep rolls, arranged by role and military position, of citizens atti alle armi, after these rolls were little more than registers of the urban population which could be used for administrative and fiscal purposes, and did not imply that the listed citizens were effectively in military service with the city-state.14 Some forms of recruitment of the urban and rural population continued to be practised throughout the fourteenth century, but these declined progressively and relentlessly with respect to the use of professional forces. As Daniel Waley has shown, from the beginning of the thirteenth century the Italian city-states began to recruit mercenaries on formal contracts, initially engaging individuals or small groups and later small organized units.15 As early as the mid-thirteenth century, and with a huge financial effort, Milan was paying over , mercenaries from different parts of Italy.16 At the battle of Montaperti in , in which Siena and the Florentine exiles faced Florence, urban and contado militia with some small mercenary support fought for Florence. A few decades later, in , at the battle of Altopascio between Florence and the lord of Lucca, only armed citizens, recruited through the cavallate system, did battle with , professional cavalry, almost all of whom were foreigners.17 The number of professional soldiers increased considerably from the end of the thirteenth century, and the city-states began to use loans and new forms of taxation in order to find sufficient funds to maintain such large military contingents.18 Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century mercenaries were a heterogeneous group of different nationalities and social conditions, ranging from Italian citizens to the French knights, so admired by the Florentines, to the mass of Provençals, Catalans, and Germans who had arrived in Italy following the Angevin and imperial armies. The urban milites, who had begun to make military service into a real profession, were particularly evident among the professional forces. A relatively early example is found in , when Milan sent a contingent of milites in support of the allied town of Alba. When, after a few months, the period of obligatory service
Pini and Greci (), ‒, ; Galletti (), ; Davidsohn (), ‒. 16 Waley (). Waley (), ch. , para. . 17 Waley (), ‒, ‒, and passim. See also the Libro di Montaperti, ed. C. Paoli (Documenti di Storia Italiana, ; Florence, ). 18 Galletti (), . 14 15
· Maria Nadia Covini expired, the soldiers agreed a recruitment contract with Alba, henceforth fighting not as allies but as paid professionals.19 At the end of the thirteenth century, the struggles between many of the major city-states and the polarization around the Guelph and Ghibelline parties generated a considerable number of exiles and refugees who came to swell the ranks of the professional armies. The extrinseci, one of the most famous of whom was Farinata degli Uberti, were in general nobles and grandi accustomed to warfare who, having been expelled from their own cities, dedicated themselves of necessity and by vocation to military service and, seeking allies and masters of their own political party, attempted to return home and drive out their rivals.20 To a certain extent, the armed exiles were autonomous players with a clear political and legal identity derived from their membership of a faction. As a block of factions, the extrinseci of a city formed leagues, entered the Guelph and Ghibelline confederations, and occasionally returned victorious to their respective cities as signori.21 Together with the foreign mercenaries and the exiles, there was another numerically important (and possibly dominant) element on the battlefields of thirteenth-century Italy: the armies and the masnade recruited and headed by the rural lords. From the twelfth century onwards, the Italian cities had frequently entrusted military recruitment to the signori of the countryside who, as descendants of warring families, had their military clients as well as vassals and subjects rich enough to own a horse and the equipment of war. Thanks to these political and military clients, the rural domini were able to equip small or larger armed forces with little difficulty. Many of these had preserved their rights as landowners and holders of jurisdictions around the territories subjected to the city, and, for them, war was part of everyday life, a means of survival and of protecting their own land, opposing their rivals, and also earning money by placing their own military capacity at the service of others.22 In the mountain areas, dynasties of bellicose nobles exercised their domination quite independently of the politics of the cities. Some of these rural signori were descended from old feudal families and noble lineages, but others belonged to families of various origins which were somehow linked to the city and the mercantile and popular classes, and which, in every case, possessed land and public rights and were able to gather armed clients around them and raise masnade.23 The effective strength of a rural lord was 19 The document is edited by P. Vayra, in his ‘Cavalieri lombardi in Piemonte nelle guerre del ‒’, Archivio Storico Lombardo, (), ‒. 20 Davidsohn (), ‒; Maire Vigueur (), ; Castagnetti (), . 21 Sestan (), ‒. 22 Waley (), ‒; Waley (), ‒; Galletti (), ; Maire Vigueur (), ‒; Pini (), . 23 Chittolini (), . For the changing and questionable distinction between rural domini and urban–rural milites: Castagnetti (), .
Political and Military Bonds · measured by the number of armed men he could control and mobilize. While the minor signori could only count on a small, rural masnada which could only be employed in local wars, the more powerful signori were real military recruiters, able to raise armies even of some hundreds of men. In , the count of Montefeltro recruited cavalry for the city of Urbino, and between and a group of feudatories from Piedmont engaged hundreds of mercenaries for the city of Genoa.24 This system based on the military power of the signori was spread all over Italy, but had its roots in the mountainous region of the Appennines and in central Italy, areas which became the main recruiting reservoir of the Italian powers. The signori in these regions headed small contingents which took on more and more the appearance of extremely mobile, professional units, so that there was little which distinguished them from the foreign mercenaries in the service of the major cities.25 Formal contracts were drawn up between the city state and the dominus of the contado which stipulated the form of service, pay, division of spoils and ransom, conditions of arms and horses, compensation for injury or loss of horses, and so on. As a rule, these contracts also included a number of special clauses obliging the city-state to provide armed protection for the recruiter’s land and possessions. In the contract made in between a dominus, Bonifacio di Ugolino di Buonconte, and the city-state of Spoleto, the commune agreed to defend the castrum and the lands of Buonconte’s consortes and to exclude them from the military campaign which was about to be launched against the enemy cities of Todi and Terni.26 In the events which have been outlined briefly here, a sort of paradox can be noted. A particular characteristic of the Italian city-states in comparison to the European cities of the time was their will to subjugate the territory surrounding them and the rural lords. However, it was precisely the military needs of the citystates which presented a new opportunity to the rural aristocracy who enjoyed a long tradition of warfare.27 Some members of declining dynasties of signori placed themselves at the service of city-states of their own political faction: Guido da Montefeltro, lord of a small dominion in the Marches was defeated in ‒ when he tried, at the head of a league of city-states and Ghibelline forces, to establish a vast dominion between the Marches and Romagna. Obliged to go into exile by a Guelph revolt, in he took command of the armies of Pisa, which belonged to the same faction, and began an important reorganization of communal forces.28 In the north too, while the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries had 24 27
25 Waley (). Maire Vigueur (), ‒. 28 Chittolini (), . Maire Vigueur (), .
26
Ibid. .
· Maria Nadia Covini seen many lords suffer from the city-states’ policy of subjugating the contadi and eliminating all forms of intermediate signoria, at the end of the thirteenth century many dynasties of rural lords were able to recover as the conflicts between the cities represented an opportunity to bring their own military talents and attitudes into the field. In the intense political game between the cities, the Empire and the Angevin initiative, some dynasties of signori, which had seen their sphere of influence reduced to very limited areas by the expansion of the surrounding city-states, found new opportunities for political promotion and deflected the threat of a definitive decline. The case of the marquis of Monferrato, a ruler of a Piedmontese dominion and descendant of a feudal dynasty, is well known. In c., the marquis was the head of an ailing rural signoria besieged by the communes which surrounded it and financially drained by debts with the city bankers. The dynasty’s policy was founded entirely on the attempt to save the territory of the dominion from the aggressive policy of the neighbouring city-states.29 In the course of just a few decades, the position of this lord changed radically. Having successfully established himself in a complex web of alliances, he became the champion of the antiAngevin league and gained the leadership of contingents of communal and feudal troops. He also became a podestà and captain of many city-states in Piedmont and southern Lombardy, and—at the height of his short-lived fortune—even managed to impose a kind of military dictatorship on the powerful city of Milan which had recruited him as a captain against its own exiles.30 Indeed, the more powerful territorial signori were able to encourage the rivalry between the cities and insert themselves into the conflicts between the opposing powers, offering their services to the stronger party. The longer the wars lasted, the greater their advantage, and they took every opportunity to increase the size of their territories and extend their sphere of jurisdiction.31 The more enterprising among the rural lords financed their own wars by taking part in those of others. It has been rightly said that feudal Italy became the recruiting reservoir for the other, city-based, Italy.32 In this dynamic of events and wars, the entwining of the levels of conflict is an element of particular interest. In central Italy and the Appennines, the city-state institutions coexisted with a substratum of power in the hands of minor and major rural lords who cultivated military traditions. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Umbria, the Marches, Lazio, and Romagna were the principal areas of recruitment for all the Italian powers.33 In this region, we witness dynasties and
29 31 33
30 Bozzola (). Ibid. Jones (), , ‒; Larner (), ‒; Bozzola (). Maire Vigueur (), ‒, ‒.
32
Jones (), .
Political and Military Bonds · clans dedicating themselves intensely to military activity, competing with neighbouring powers for control over castra and land and, at the same time, taking an active part in the political game played at higher levels. For example, the Prefetti of Vico were vassals of the Pope in the Latium and placed their own forces at the service of the Empire and its allies, or indiscriminately at the service of the major citystates of the region. Like the other leading dynasties in central Italy, the lords of Vico missed no opportunity to assert their own military potential, taking part both in conflicts involving the major powers of the region and in smaller engagements and campaigns which differed little from common brigandage.34 The same situation prevailed in Romagna, where the rural lords fuelled a state of continual conflict—at local level a fierce battle between families, regionally a struggle in the Guelph and Ghibelline leagues for and against papal interference.35 Medieval wars, like but more than those of the modern age, were both the sum of small, local conflicts36 and also the result of many forces at play, the product of many minor conflicts which unravel and interact at various levels. At the highest level, the ‘grand’ inter-state and inter-regional competition sprang from renewed attempts to impose imperial hegemony, from the wars linked to papal initiatives, and from the ambitions of the leading dynasties of signori and the most powerful city-states to crush their neighbours and take on the role of regional leaders. Beneath this level there was the more modest competition between families and local powers, minor centres which fought with perennial intensity to defend pasture rights or waged for centuries their little wars over the exploitation of collective property. It would be inappropriate and anachronistic to ascribe these local conflicts to the category of ‘private wars’ which take on meaning only when one of the recognized ‘modern’ states imposes a monopoly of coercion and war on its rivals.37 These local conflicts, fought at different levels, for different reasons and objectives, in defence of privileges and specific rights, are a particular and inseparable element of the struggle for regional hegemony. The meeting-point of the different levels of conflict is represented by the competitors, sometimes acting as protagonists, sometimes as second leading actors. In Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio, the minor lords fought for their own objectives or in the service of pre-eminent lords; in turn, the major lords of the region played interchangeable roles: they fuelled brigandage, defended their own privileges and areas of influence, but, at the same time, they were recruiters for and allies of other powers, whether citystates, Papacy, or Empire.38
34 37
35 36 Ibid. . Larner (), ‒, ‒. Parker (a), ch. . 38 Contamine (), . See Maire Vigueur (), ‒.
· Maria Nadia Covini In areas under papal control in the fourteenth century, the conflict became further complicated when the Papacy assumed a more decisive role in territorial reorganization, bringing into question relations between the network of citystates, feudal lords, and minor territorial powers. However, the element of smallscale conflicts remained unchanged: ‘Throughout the fourteenth century cities and lords continue to fight over borders and pasture land with the same hatred as in the previous century’.39 The battles between the Guelphs, supported by Robert of Anjou, and the Ghibellines, the antagonisms between the Pope and the urban and rural lords, and the conflicts provoked by the growing power of the baronial families and the repression exerted by the papal armies are founded on this perennial substratum of local hostilities.40 These particularly eventful circumstances led, on the one hand, to the success of papal attempts to re-establish authority in the region, and, on the other, to the increased importance of a number of cities, for example Perugia, once a principal military ally of the Papacy, and of some dynasties, such as the Montefeltro and the Malatesta, who took advantage of their military capacity.41 In the Po valley, political developments in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in many cities are marked by change from commune to urban signoria. This institutional change, bringing the city-state under the dominion of a lord, did not imply any substantial modifications in military organization, as can be seen in the composition of the armies of the signori of Verona, the Della Scala, who in the first half of the fourteenth century developed a particularly aggressive and expansive policy. The majority of the Della Scala’s forces were made up of professional soldiers, primarily foreign mercenaries and, in particular, Germans. There were, however, also contingents from the cities: Verona and Vicenza provided the Della Scala with armed corps of ‘equites et pedites terrestres et forenses [cavalry and infantry both from within the region and outside it]’, and in Treviso provided a large contingent of cavalry, crossbowmen, infantry, and pioneers.42 Perhaps the real novelty of the city-state era was the armed retinue, a sort of bodyguard, commanded directly by the signore. This body of veterans included the most noble and valiant of the German mercenaries, as well as members of the leading Veronese families who were linked to the Della Scala by personal bonds of familiaritas. The military retinue of the rulers of Verona also included many lords from the Po valley area, some as allies, others as mercenaries. Since these were powerful and influential lords, the two roles were often intertwined, but it is, in any case, difficult for the historian to draw a clear line between the two levels of collaboration.43 To summarize: in medieval western Europe, lords, princes, and monarchs 39 42
See Maire Vigueur (), . Varanini (), , .
43
40 Ibid. ‒. Ibid. .
41
Ibid.
Political and Military Bonds · moved towards overcoming a fragmented organization of power. They subdued local forces and reorganized territory into larger economic and political units. In north–central Italy the city-states constituted the dominant structure for the organization of the territories.44 It was the communes, although far from being ‘modern states’,45 which were the protagonists in the process of concentration of territorial, military, and political power. It was, without doubt, a particular and unique process, but one which was, however, carried out in tune with the contemporary European processes of territorial reorganization and the acquisition on the part of the leading princes and monarchs of the means of internal coercion and war.46 Military competition in Italy was characterized by the multiplicity of forces active at different levels. It was not only the major territorial powers, the citystates, and the rural lords, who monopolized arms; there were many warring parties, and all those who could fight did so, providing they had the means, opportunity, inclination, and capacity to place themselves at the head of an armed force and pursue their own objectives or serve the political and military aims of other competitors who recruited them. City-state armies, bands of exiles, groups of mercenaries, masnade of rural lords were all part of a political and military game which was further complicated by the presence of foreign forces, mainly the Angevins, who brought their armies into Italy. In our terms, then, the competitors were those who could take the military initiative, rather than just those who, as ‘states’ with a monopoly of armed force, had the right to make war. A similar intertwining of conflicts between legally and territorially recognized powers and autonomous military initiatives is also seen in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the regional states were formed. In this period, the military scene is further complicated by the arrival of new competitors: the free companies.
. The Free Companies: A Troubled Intermezzo The new element in fourteenth-century military recruitment was the phenomenon of the free companies—large, organized bands, who in the space of a few years replaced the smaller groups and the individual recruitment of mercenaries. This aspect of fourteenth-century European warfare is well known.47 In Italy, the recruitment of large, organized companies was a response to military needs which become more demanding during the fourteenth century as conflicts extended onto a regional and inter-regional scale and tended to last longer than previously. 44 45 47
Chittolini (), , , and (), ‒. Jones (), ‒, ‒; Chittolini (b), ‒. For a general picture: Contamine (a), ch. .
46
Chittolini (), .
· Maria Nadia Covini The precondition for engaging large military forces was the availability of substantial capital. Although weakened by the crisis of the fourteenth century, the economies of cities such as Florence, Genoa, and Pisa were still based on commercial and financial activity. The urban signorie (such as the Della Scala in Verona at the beginning of the fourteenth century and the Visconti in Milan, in particular from , who had taken the place of city-state authorities) inherited the latters’ fiscal systems and capacity to raise loans, which they used to initiate an aggressive policy and an intensive military commitment. The companies first appeared in Italy between and , and from onwards, with the truces in the Hundred Years’ War, invaded the peninsula in force. Numerically, they were an important presence: Fra Moriale’s band (of the Provençal Montréal d’Albarno) with its retinue of merchants, servants, women, and children had an enormous impact on the country, and its efficient treasury and embryonic internal jurisdictional system constituted a kind of ‘peripatetic state’.48 In theory, the free companies were merely a military force for their employers, but in practice they fought independently, maintaining themselves and taking spoils, sacking and plundering without any respect for commitments to their recruiters. Cities and other Italian powers had the financial resources to engage free companies, but the protracted nature of the conflicts resulted in defaults of contract and overdue payment, while the systems of administration and for control of the armies were hardly developed and certainly not efficient enough to keep the companies in check. Around the mid-century, the presence of these large armed bands represented a substantial threat, and contemporary chroniclers testify to their rapaciousness, brutality, and ferocious customs. The Lombard Pietro Azario, both a witness and victim of dramatic events of the times, records many episodes which highlight the greed and unscrupulousness of these paid soldiers who fought the length and breadth of Lombardy between and . He also omits many other events too cruel and too painful for those who were directly affected to recall.49 In the absence of a strong political authority able to limit the sacking and prevent the unrestrained mercenaries from attacking cities and small populated centres, it was central Italy which felt most acutely the negative effects and devastation wrought by the companies. If the growth of states is primarily linked to the ability to direct the accumulation of goods, resources, and money towards collective aims,50 the free companies Guenée (), . P. Azario, Liber gestarum in Lombardia, ed. F. Cognasso (Bologna, ); L. A. Muratori, new edn Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, pt . See and passim. On the humanists’ debate see also Bayley (), ff. 50 Genet (), ‒. 48 49
Political and Military Bonds · tended to disperse these sources of income, removing them from the control of the territorial powers. The uncertain nature of the relations between the mercenaries and the states which employed them lay at the origin of a serious lack of balance between resources, money, population, and territory.51 The effects of the clash of the free companies on a society already weakened by a serious economic crisis are well known. Here I would stress that the activity of the companies also resulted in important changes in the institutional structures and hierarchies of power in the regions of north and central Italy. The bitterness of the conflict and the endemic state of war, for which the free companies were largely responsible, crushed the weaker competitors, forcing them to subject themselves to centres able to express political and military leadership. In the coalitions between cities, the stronger centres, such as Florence (head of the Guelph league), became pre-eminent, whilst the weaker ones were obliged to accept complete subordination.52 Employment of the free companies largely exceeded other traditional forms of recruitment, as not only the military performance of the cives and the rustici declined but also the symbiosis between the wealthy cities and the rural areas with their long and consolidated military tradition faded. Whilst the links between military organization, political institutions, and society had been maintained in the twelfth century, military action was now primarily delegated to forces outside local society, made up, for the main part, of déracinés and foreigners. The utilization of large, unreliable, uncontrollable, and violent mercenary bands led to severe problems in the relationship between the needs of the civilian society and the foreign policy of the states. As far as recruitment was concerned, both during the communal age and in the subsequent period dominated by the Italian condottieri, the free companies represented a negative intermezzo, during which the links between society, politics, and military organization were seriously weakened. From the mid-century onwards, the leading companies transformed themselves into autonomous forces, acting independently of the rulers who had originally hired them. The difficulties in directing and controlling the military actions of the free companies, and the dangers involved in dismissing undisciplined and hungry units, influenced the course of warfare. In a certain sense, the difficulties in restraining the companies made the conflicts more bitter, longer, and endemic. The principal power which fed the growth of the free companies and their degeneration was, without doubt, the Papal State, which put a large number of mercenary bands in the field and recruited others to oppose the former. The end of the wars let loose a military potential which threatened all the states, and the only way 51
Isaacs (), ‒.
52
Luzzati (), .
· Maria Nadia Covini to reabsorb this potential was to stir up new conflicts. At times, the state of war seemed to become permanent and far beyond the objective interests and will of the governments. In , one of the principal antecedents of the War of the Otto Santi between Florence and the Pope was the end of the ten-year struggle between the rulers of Milan and the Papacy, which had left the free companies without employment. Florence felt threatened and encircled, even if the aggressive intentions of the Papal State were possibly weaker than they appeared.53 The proliferation of the free companies was one of the factors which led the Milanese Visconti dynasty to adopt an aggressive and ambitious policy. The Milanese signoria was a focus of political and military initiative, having married the historical, expansive vocation of the city of Milan (already evident in the twelfth century), to the warring inclinations of the signori.54 In just the few years following , the Visconti subjugated most of Lombardy and established a vast and continuous territorial dominion. Subsequently, their sights were turned in the north towards the Ticino region, in the west towards Piedmont, and in the south towards Emilia and Tuscany, and Giovanni Visconti took temporary control of Genoa and Bologna. The territorial ambitions of the Visconti soon came into conflict with the plans of the Papal State. From about , the Visconti armies, made up of Italian and foreign free companies, fought a series of battles with the papal armies and their allies. The Visconti recruited new companies to fight those which had been dismissed and created Italian companies to oppose those made up of foreign forces. New wars financed previous conflicts, new fronts were opened, and conquest moved in new directions. Domestic political needs were subordinated to those of an aggressive and all-embracing foreign policy. In c., the endless battles of Bernabo Visconti seemed to have the sole aim of prolonging the war and creating new reasons for conflict. In the end, this state of warfare exhausted the resources even of a region as rich as Lombardy, while the logic guiding the political decisions of the Visconti dynasty appeared ever less lucid. In the fourteenth century, then, the ambitions of the Visconti state and those of the Papacy gave rise to a vicious circle: one state’s will to conquer initiated a period of war; the expansion worried the other powers who responded by recruiting new free companies to increase their own military potential; the difficulties in controlling and dismissing the companies led to the organization of leagues and armies against the companies themselves, in order to absorb a dangerous military potential left without employment. The Visconti wars, the War of the Otto Santi between Florence and the Pope, and the War of Chioggia were the decisive military events in the years ‒, a period characterized by an extremely high 53
Brucker (), ‒.
54
Tabacco (a), ‒; Isaacs (), .
Political and Military Bonds · level of competition and leading to the formation of the regional states.55 War led to war, conflicts spread and involved the satellite powers, stirring resistance on the part of the states (the republics more than the principalities) better suited to defending their commercial interests than to territorial expansion, but incapable of escaping the escalation of the conflicts and the expansion of others. In a political context characterized by the emergence of powerful territorial blocks, the end of the fourteenth century saw a rapid change in the ways of recruitment. In just a few years from the s onwards, important changes took place in the military personnel of the regional states. In part, these changes occurred within the free companies themselves, as is reflected in the biography of the Englishman John Hawkwood, a famous captain in the mid-fourteenth century and one of the best-known personalities on the Italian military scene.56 Hawkwood served many Italian signori and cities and became the most feared condottiero in Italy. He was a typical soldier of fortune and shared with his companions in arms the worst customs of the companies. Left without employment in , he devastated the area around Florence. In , while serving the Pope against Florence, he betrayed his employer and withdrew his armies. During the War of the Otto Santi, he was responsible for the violent massacre of the population of Cesena. Having entered the service of Florence, however, he remained a loyal captain for many years up to his death, gaining much military success for his masters. The Florentines commissioned his portrait from Paolo Uccello and made an offering of the work to the city cathedral.57 However, the changes in the military organization of the Italian states at the end of the fourteenth century were above all linked to the emergence of a generation of Italian captains who had established themselves in the shadow of the urban signorie. The Della Scala court at Verona had seen the beginnings of the fortunate military careers of condottieri such as Iacopo Cavalli, Cortesia da Serego, and members of the Dal Verme dynasty. In the second half of the century, the grand ambitions of the Veronese signoria declined, freeing a number of able and accomplished captains to enter the service of other states, in particular Venice. Some of these Veronese and Venetian captains made their fortunes with the Visconti in Milan, where they fought at the side of condottieri from the military families and signorie of central Italy, for example the Montefeltro, the Malatesta, and the Ubaldini. In the fifteenth century, other able condottieri, such as Facino Cane and Francesco Carmagnola from Piedmont, Otto Terzi and Guido Torelli from Emilia and Romagna, and Angelo della Pergola from central Italy also served the Visconti. With few exceptions, the condottieri were nobles or minor rural lords from military 55 On the Visconti wars: Bueno de Mesquita (); on Venice and Florence: Cozzi (), ‒; Brucker (), ‒. 56 57 Mallett (), ‒; Contamine (), ch. , section . Ibid.
· Maria Nadia Covini families with a base in the contado and close ties to a city and its ruling classes. The group of the new condottieri is thus linked to the aristocratic feudal tradition of the military organization of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Here, my purpose is less to underline the reappearance of an Italian school (so celebrated by humanists such as Biondo Flavio and Antonio da Cornazzano), than to emphasize the re-establishment in military organization of strong bonds between the city system and the aristocratic and feudal world of the countryside; in other words, between the city as the principal focus of the regional states and the rural signoria as the main breeding ground for military recruitment. The eclipse of the free companies did not represent the end of the mercenary system. However, in the course of the fifteenth century, relations between the condottieri and their masters became easier and were helped by a policy of integration and assimilation. The condottieri were hired on contracts (condotte) which with time became longer, so ensuring princes and republics greater stability in their military forces.58 Using a policy of discipline and integration, many condottieri were persuaded to put down roots in the states they served, and one of the most effective aspects of this policy was the concession of land and feudal rights in return for military services.59 By creating effective bureaucratic structures to organize the administration of the army, Milan and Venice were the most successful in disciplining hired soldiers. This process of disciplining and domesticating the condottieri, which continued throughout the fifteenth century, has recently been reexamined by M. Mallett (referring also to an Italian tradition, which begins with the work of E. Ricotti, whose history of the free companies dates from the mid-nineteenth century, and includes Piero Pieri, the leading Italian military historian, who wrote between and ). A particular merit of Mallett’s study is that it shows the strong links between events in Italy and the general tendency throughout Europe to make the use of contractual armies more stable and reliable and to transform these forces into well-equipped units available to serve both defensive and offensive territorial policies.60
. War and the Formation of the Regional States Between and the major Italian cities and principalities were involved in fierce competition, the outcome of which was the formation of a system of regional states. The dynamics of the system are quite complex, but the main outlines can be discerned. Mallett (), ‒. Ibid. ‒; Mallett and Hale (), ‒. 60 Mallett (); Mallett and Hale (); Pieri (); E. Ricotti, Storia delle compagnie di ventura, st edn (Turin, ). 58 59
Political and Military Bonds · One element able to exercise a powerful influence on the entire system of the peninsula was the Milanese initiative. Thanks to a strong army built around a nucleus of particularly able and reliable condottieri and founded on a considerable money-raising capacity, the Milanese signoria under Giangaleazzo Visconti, count of Vertus and (from ) duke of Milan, renewed the traditional policy of conquest which had characterized Visconti politics from the beginning of the fourteenth century.61 Whilst a policy of coherent and selective expansion is not evident in the fourteenth century, Milanese foreign policy in the years ‒ was directed towards a much more systematic and ambitious political project aimed at creating a kingdom and a powerful territorial state. At the turn of the fifteenth century, the Milanese initiative, lead by the expansionist aims of a signore and strengthened by the city tradition on which it rested, was unleashed and fed the competition on the peninsula. The territorial challenge of the Visconti drew the other powers into military escalation and initiated a spiral of war. The other powers, and in particular the republican states, entered into the wars more reluctantly and with less desire to embark on the creation of a territorial state. The urban and mercantile centres, guided by the diverse aims of an articulate and composite ruling class, were more interested in expansion along the lines of their commercial activity than in large-scale territorial conquest.62 The cityrepublics, such as Venice and Genoa, sought for a long time to remain outside or on the margins of the Italian theatre of war. However, Visconti aggression and the extension of the conflict obliged all major powers, and especially Venice and Florence, to lay aside their anti-military and anti-expansionist tendencies.63 Nevertheless, neither Florence nor Venice were new to expansionist policies. In the fourteenth century, the two rival republics had begun, of necessity if not of vocation, to conquer territory and subjugate neighbouring cities and powers. Threatened by the Visconti and the Papal State, Florence had taken control of Pistoia, Arezzo, Prato, San Gimignano, and Volterra, and in the first years of the fifteenth century it added Pisa, Cortona, and other lands, imposing a new centralized administration and jurisdictional and fiscal reorganization on the conquered territories. Institutional developments towards the end of the century, at least up to the serious defeats in the war of Lucca, brought to power an oligarchy with a greater interest in expansion and conquest.64 Venice conquered Treviso in , removed (in alliance with Milan), the signori of Padua from the political scene, and, from the beginning of the fifteenth century, built up a major state in the Venetian Terraferma which was to last until the end of the eighteenth century. 61 62 63 64
See Bueno de Mesquita () and the observations in Isaacs (), . Tabacco (a), ‒; Chittolini (); Blockmans (). Chittolini (), ; Isaacs (), . Bayley (), ‒ and passim; Brucker (), ‒, and (), ‒; Becker ().
· Maria Nadia Covini These territorial developments overturned the traditional policy of the two republics and provoked a deep rift in the ruling urban classes, since the change was for a long time undermined by supporters of policies aimed at defending mercantile interests opposed to the expense of war.65 In the Papal State, too, the creation of a territorial state was accelerated in the fourteenth century with the territorial and administrative reorganization promoted by Cardinal Albornoz. The strong military implications of this initiative led to a consolidation of papal territory in central Italy, but left intact substantial autonomous areas which were subject to largely independent signorie and urban oligarchies. Although differing in their determination and in their conviction of the need to expand, all the Italian states adapted to the new dimension of the conflict. With each increase in the influence of one state, and with each significant territorial conquest, the other powers were obliged to respond, moving the confrontation to ever-higher levels of intensity.66 In Italy, as in the rest of Europe, war in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries demanded the mobilization of enormous human, financial, and material resources, and the territorial conflict depended on the ability to administer rationally over a long period of time the huge resources necessary to sustain major military campaigns. It thus became imperative for the regional states to have the capacity to compete continuously with the progress of their opponents;67 to equip large, stable, and efficient armies; and to move and quarter these forces for long periods of time even in territories far from home. Logistics and organization were the corner-stones of this capacity; money and financial resources the preconditions.68 The vigorous antagonisms in the Italian state system were sustained by the raising of armed forces which tended to become permanent, and by a parallel increase in the number and quality of military administrations. These constituted one of the essential mainsprings in the construction of stronger and more centralized states even at regional level. In Italy, as elsewhere, war was a prominent activity in the formation of a state: building an army was an effective incentive for locating and taking advantage of available resources, while conflict represented the test bed of the state’s means of coercion and a decisive element in shaping territories and fixing frontiers.69 Although the fifteenth century was not an age of major battles, all states were convinced that it was necessary to raise a standing army, or at least guarantee the possibility of recruiting rapidly a sufficiently large force. In the fourteenth and 65 66 69
Chittolini (), ‒; Mallett and Hale (), ch. ; Cozzi (), ‒. 67 68 Isaacs (), . Ibid. . Guenée (), ‒. Tilly (), ‒. See also Tilly (), ‒.
Political and Military Bonds · fifteenth centuries, the Italian military system was still dominated by the cavalry, and, on the whole, the number of soldiers in the armies did not increase significantly, remaining for the larger states at less than ,‒, men.70 However, with the exigencies of war, the more powerful states increased their military potential by introducing innovations in various aspects of military organization.71 The link between war and state formation is, therefore, particularly evident in Italy, where the process of territorial aggregation also took place at regional level. The political framework which began to take shape at the end of the fourteenth century shows clear elements of ‘statehood’, for example, territorial expansion, the tendency to centralize various functions, the growth of administrative, fiscal, diplomatic, and military bureaucracies, and greater powers of coercion on the part of governments.
. The System of the Italian States The result of the fierce conflict of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was a system of Italian states made up of the leading territorial powers, the regional states, and a constellation of small, autonomous political units, with varying amounts of territory, their own institutions, and the potential to exercise independent political and military authority. These small territorial powers, cities, princes, and minor rulers, whose activity and area of influence was at a sub-regional level, frequently tended to move with the regional rulers, following the foreign policy and suffering the effects of the conflict on the peninsula. As in previous centuries, each major conflict gave rise to a series of secondary wars on a smaller scale.72 Nevertheless, despite their limited size, the minor powers were not always merely satellites of the neighbouring states, but could occasionally act as independent centres of political initiative, endowed with tried and tested diplomatic and military structures which were, in a certain sense, the guarantee of their autonomy. The Italian system is a combination of large, small, and even minute powers, linked to each other by political, economic, and military bonds, as well as by those of patron and client. The following pages discuss the nature and reality of these links. Until the fourteenth century, the system of relations was dominated by the logic of partisan alliances: every power took sides with the Guelph or the Ghibelline party, linked itself to the Church, the Angevin dynasty, or the Empire. In the fifteenth century, we witness a system of political and military alliances Pezzolo (), . Ibid. ‒; Pieri (); Mallett (), ‒; Mallett and Hale (), ‒ and passim; Knapton (), ‒; Covini (), ‒. 72 Bueno de Mesquita (), . 70 71
· Maria Nadia Covini based more on inter-state relations, which included both the major states and the constellation of small satellite powers.73 This network of alliances was founded on formal and regulated diplomatic activity, which was in part entrusted to professional diplomats and politicians, and in part carried out by agents whose role was less official but who were able to move more freely and effectively within the different echelons of power. Florence had at least two levels of diplomacy, that of the Signoria and another, no less efficient or important, which derived from the patronage and personal and family relations of the Medici. The minor powers were linked to the regional states in a multitude of ways, one of the most important of which was reciprocal military aid. In order to define clear spheres of political influence, diplomatic treaties from the fourteenth century onwards included a precise list of the minor powers. Political and military alliances often relied on the medieval institutions of adherenza and accomandigia.74 These old but very flexible forms provided a large variety of formulas regulating the bonds of non-feudal dependence between a power, on the one hand, and their clients or satellites on the other. They applied both to small, local dynasties and to cities or rulers controlling territorial states. The Este of Ferrara used these ties with many of their satellites, while at the same time they themselves were raccomandati to the republic of Venice. From the mid-fifteenth century, during the socalled period of the ‘balance of power’, the reciprocal interdependence of the major states and the minor powers divided the peninsula into spheres of influence and represented an accurate hierarchy of territorial hegemonies.75 The contents of the bonds of adherenza and accomandigia varied, including very different and very flexible clauses, but the military relations, laid down in the form of reciprocity and mutual aid, were a constant element.76 The raccomandato aimed to secure protection and stability in a period of almost continual conflict, while for the major power the network of accomandigie defined a sphere of influence and served the aims of expansion and leadership.77 The form and substance of those examples of the accomandigia in which protection and reciprocal defence are predominant resemble that of another fifteenth-century bond, the contract of military condotta. The accomandigia obliged the weaker ruler to provide contingents of cavalry and infantry in return for help and protection in the case of outside attack. Similarly, when a contract of condotta was stipulated between lords and major princely condottieri, it did not represent merely the establishment of military obligations, but also carried a strong political significance, making it very similar to the bonds of adherenza and accomandigia, and, as such, a specific case of this latter, larger category of non-feudal relations between powers.78 In the major condotte, 73 76
74 Cusin (), ; Fubini (). Soranzo (). 77 78 Dean (), ‒. Ibid. ‒. Ibid.
75
Ibid.
Political and Military Bonds · political clauses far outweighed arrangements to obtain effective and disciplined military support. The solidarity of the respective régimes and links between parties were just as important as agreements concerning recruitment, equipment and payment. The lord of Mantua, Ludovico Gonzaga, served many Italian regional states, but in particular, for twenty years from , the duke of Milan. During this period his salary became increasingly irregular, but in return his military services left more and more to be desired. The condotta must, however, be seen as a guarantee and a foundation for other political, matrimonial, or goodneighbourly ties, which in any case were worth maintaining for both parties.79 The condotta between the duke of Milan and Giovanni Bentivoglio in is another example of the intertwining of considerations of political stability and the need for reciprocal military aid. Bentivoglio had been the effective lord of Bologna for only a few years and aimed to reduce his dependence on the Papacy and remove himself from the control of a number of leading Bolognese families which had supported him. From a strictly financial point of view, the condotta stipulated with the duke of Milan was not very lucrative, but it gave Bentivoglio considerable political advantages. The services of the lord of Bologna to Milan were particularly poor, but this was obviously no reason to rescind a contract which was, above all, an alliance between régimes.80 A number of middle-ranking states owed a large part of their fortune and indeed their survival to their ability to play a military role in the service of larger powers. This is in part true for the lords of Mantua, who manoeuvred ably between one alliance and another,81 and for the central Italian lords, such as the Malatesta in Rimini and the Montefeltro in Urbino, for whom military service represented two important sources of funds: the actual remuneration of the condotte and the income from booty, ransom, and pillage. The state of Urbino and the political and military activity of Federico da Montefeltro have recently been the subject of well-documented studies which illuminate the very particular experience of a state which came into being around a military dynasty, and which, by taking advantage of the opportunities presented, becomes a protagonist in the ‘grand’ confrontation between the states of the peninsula.82 The small size of the Montefeltro dominion and the relative poverty of their territory and resources were in fact counterbalanced by Federico’s diplomatic and military initiatives. Heir to the warring traditions of his family, Montefeltro was subject to the Papacy, but he sought to maintain a relatively distant position from Rome and play the role of arbiter, if not regional leader, in the area between the Marches, Umbria, 79
80 Ward Swain (). Bocchi (). Sestan (), ‒; Ward Swain (). 82 See Cerboni Baiardi, Chittolini, and Floriani (), esp. contributions by Isaacs, Chittolini, and Fubini. 81
· Maria Nadia Covini and Romagna. The lord of Urbino became captain-general of the Italian league formed in , and even fought for the Pope, in whose service he defeated his arch-rivals, the Malatesta. Above all, he was a loyal and retained ally of the king of Naples, Ferdinand of Aragon. In , he became captain of the special league between Milan, Naples, and Florence, and in played a leading role, together with Ferdinand, in fostering the anti-Medici conspiracy of the Pazzi in Florence. His military prowess gave Federico a diplomatic importance which was proportionately much greater than the effective size and presence of the small state of Urbino. The constitution of the Montefeltro state was shaped by these particular circumstances: its fiscal and tax systems remained relatively weak and archaic and the finances of the state were only in small part based on fiscal revenue, the main income being derived from the condotte. Many of the duke’s subjects were professional soldiers in service with their master, and even the local economy bore the stamp of the ‘industry’ of war. At the same time, the military ties between the condottiero and his subjects constituted one of the main elements of cohesion within the small dominion. In this way, a peculiar political creation was consolidated, and it demonstrated a certain robustness and resilience, even when the personal military capacities of the dukes of Urbino waned, and political conditions offered less opportunity for this kind of entrepreneurial military activity. In respect of the links between the regional states and the small dominions of the prince condottieri, the term ‘symbiosis’ has been justly used by Ann Katherine Isaacs in this context. Indeed, for the states it was of vital importance to have available experienced military forces which could be quickly mobilized, while for the condottieri the link to the state and military function were quite simply a raison d’être, a guarantee of survival, and the most solid form of support for their finances and, since military activity involved all ranks of the population, for the local state economy. The availability of armed forces and the ability to play a role as an autonomous competitor were also prerogatives of a number of powerful urban families who had maintained strong rural roots. Such a case is well represented by the Genoean dynasty of the Fieschi, who even in the fifteenth century were able to raise an army of , men in the mountains of the Liguria and use them to inflict damage on the city of Genoa. Notwithstanding the fact that they were one of the leading families of the city and captains of the Genoean fleet, they occasionally snatched territory from the republic and entered the service of other powers, playing a disruptive role in the Italian political game. For years, the Fieschi held the Doge’s forces in the Levant in check, but in they saved their city from the Milanese armies by putting the entire Riviera and much of the hinterland under arms.83 83
Isaacs ().
Political and Military Bonds · In some regions, such as Emilia Romagna, the military traditions of the minor dynasties of rulers, who had feudal ties or bonds of accomandigia to the regional states, were still alive. In spite of their small size and the fact that they were seigneurial enclaves within the territory of a more powerful state, with a limited capacity to act as independent powers, these dominions have earned the title of ‘state’.84 They were ‘states’ because of their sense of their own identity and the autonomous role which they defended so strenuously. Lordships, such as those of the Pallavicini, Rossi, Landi, Correggio, Pio, and Pico, on the edges of the old contadi of Piacenza, Parma, and Reggio were thus wedged between the duchy of Milan and the dominion of the Este. These dynasties, heirs of a consolidated military tradition, kept small armies, raised on their own territories, which they were ready to deploy in defence of their autonomy and the prerogatives of their ‘state’. In order to maintain this military potential, they often became condottieri serving the neighbouring powers, and ‘their activity, which spreads over very diverse geographical areas, is aimed principally at preserving and enforcing that dominion to which they constantly look’.85 Even in the fifteenth century, with the territorial framework defined by the presence of large regional states, there was still ample room for the activities of a certain number of autonomous players. The independence and status of these players was also enjoyed by non-territorial powers, with a somewhat anomalous position within the territorial conception of power that was already dominant. These non-territorial powers included, for example, the ‘stateless’ condottieri (those who had not yet realized every captain’s ultimate ambition to conquer his own dominion, protected by his own military forces). They, too, were centres of power and political initiative, playing a full role in the diplomatic game and listed as powers in peace treaties. In , after the war between Venice and Milan, representatives of the Italian states met at Cavriana, in the military encampment of the condottiero Francesco Sforza, then lord of the Marches and later duke of Milan. It was the condottiero himself who directed the treaty negotiations between the leading Italian powers and was the major beneficiary of the peace. The ambitions of a condottiero could influence relations between powers for a considerable time, unleash an intense diplomatic initiative or cause military activity to drag on, as happened in ‒ when Jacopo Piccinino managed to enter the state of Siena and hold the coalition armies of the Italian powers in check for many months, so serving as the catalyst for diplomatic activity throughout Italy.86 The condottieri enjoyed this position of small non-territorial powers by virtue of their own administrative structures, which were so numerous and well-organized 85 Chittolini (b), ‒. Ibid. . For documents referring to this event, see L. Banchi (ed.), Archivio Storico Lombardo, (), ‒, ‒. 84 86
· Maria Nadia Covini as to be comparable with the administrations of a little territorial state. They possessed a domus with tried and tested chancelleries, small courts, and a secretarial and diplomatic body which carried out its own function excellently and was able to take an authoritative role in the political and diplomatic game of the Italian powers. Despite progress in discipline, such was the contractual power of the condottieri that at times even the strongest Italian states found themselves at the mercy of various captains. In , the condottieri of the duke of Milan exerted considerable pressure to obtain a number of the major cities of the dominion in fief. Threatened by his condottieri (although many were close relations and veterans), the duke of Milan, Francesco Sforza, was forced, in , to bring the peace treaty with Venice to a rapid conclusion. The Venetian chronicler, Marin Sanudo, commented, referring to the new duke’s fears of the plots of and dangers from his captains: ‘And it is said that having eventually concluded the peace, the duke took off his cap thanking God, because he had been relieved of a great burden.’87 Until , there was scope for ‘stateless’, free condottieri to play an independent role in the Italian conflict, and the leading condottieri must certainly be considered not only as the captains and military recruiters of others, but also as autonomous players with their own political and military objectives who frequently placed their own interests before those of their masters. Following the Peace of Lodi (), which fixed a more rigid inter-state framework, the captains’ scope for autonomous action was drastically reduced, and none of the leading condottieri of the fifteenth century, Jacopo Piccinino, Bartolomeo Colleoni, or Roberto Sanseverino (to name just the most famous), succeeded in conquering a stable dominion without already having a territorial base or a strong tradition as a ruler. The exception was Francesco Sforza, but the duke of Milan’s conquests occurred in very exceptional circumstances and, in any case, Sforza was not entirely without a base, even if the dominion in the Marches was weak and threatened. Not only did the other condottieri not conquer territory, they were also obliged, despite their very active plotting, to accept the rules imposed by the states which employed them, with some even falling victims to a process of ‘domestication’ carried to the extreme: the count of Carmagnola was tried and executed by Venice; Tiberto Brandolino was arrested and poisoned by the duke of Milan; Jacopo Piccinino was arrested and treacherously murdered by Ferdinand of Aragon, possibly with the collusion of other Italian rulers; and Giberto da Correggio was barbarously murdered by the Sienese in on the basis of suspicions which were not even confirmed by a mock trial.88 The ambitions of the condottieri were thus reduced by the M. Sanudo, Diarii, ed. L. Muratori, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, xi (Milan, ), col. ,. Cf. Catalano (), ‒. 88 Mallett (), ‒. 87
Political and Military Bonds · successes of the regional states and the establishment of a more formalized system of inter-state relations. At the end of the fifteenth century, however, this system of large and small powers, in which the bonds of alliance, adherenza, accomandigia, and the military condotte represented the network of interconnections and equilibrium on the peninsula, was shaken as it came face to face with the European state system, which it was to confront and to which it was to succumb.
. The Italian System and the System of the European States Throughout the fifteenth century, the Italian conflict had proceeded relatively autonomously and apart from European events, although this is not to say in isolation; indeed it was continuously stimulated and conditioned by political developments and confrontations in the Mediterranean and European areas. The Turkish expansion into the Mediterranean area was one of the elements which most disturbed Italy, and the Ottoman threat was particularly acute following the fall of Constantinople in and of Negroponte in . The Italian states never had a unified strategy against the Turks and never all entered a coalition together, thus provoking the failure of the papal crusades. Indeed, indirectly, and occasionally directly, they sought to take advantage of Ottoman activity to weaken their rival states. When the Turks took Otranto in , many in Florence and Venice rejoiced at the difficulties which this entailed for the southern kingdom. For many European powers, the struggle with the Turks involved of necessity Italy, as is shown by the close relations between the kings of Hungary and Aragon and the rivalry between Hungary and Venice. The western Mediterranean region was also the scene of the conflict between France and Aragon. The grounds for a confrontation between France and Spain dated back to , when Aragon established itself in the kingdom of Naples, and were renewed from to , when the Anjou supported the war of the southern barons. During the fifteenth century, French policy continually interfered with that of the Italian states, and in the southern kingdom, in Genoa and in Lombardy, French ambitions constituted the constant background of Italian diplomatic relations. The absence of a unifying or monarchical initiative is, in fact, directly linked to the dependence of the Italian ‘system’ on that of Europe. The opposing and unstable blocks of linked and allied Italian powers created areas of political cohesion, but each of these areas had powerful ties and interests beyond the peninsula, and none of the political centres presented itself as a unifying element. The south was subject to a Spanish dynasty with Mediterranean interests in opposition to those of many Italian powers, Venice and Genoa in particular. The regions bordering
· Maria Nadia Covini the Alps gravitated towards France and Burgundy. Venetian foreign policy had a sizeable area of activity in the Mediterranean and in the direction of Austria and the Empire (although from the s, it was Venice which pursued the most decisive policy of territorial expansion in Italy, following that of the Visconti at the end of the fourteenth century). The state of Milan also had European involvements, both in view of the broad-ranging economic interest of Lombardy and because Milanese foreign policy sought allies in either France or Burgundy, and saw in the Empire a means of gaining recognition and legitimization for the new dynasty. Moreover, the Milanese also had to be on their guard against the expansionism of the Swiss cantons. The small powers, such as the Este in Ferrara and the Gonzaga in Mantua, also maintained continual foreign ties to France or the Empire, which they underpinned with alliances and marriages, so providing guarantees against intervention from neighbouring states.89 More than representing a point of Italian cohesion and solidarity, the Papacy, which intervened massively in the policy of a number of states, provoked division and the creation of opposing groups. Finally, Medicean Florence, which a sixteenth-century legend saw as the ‘ago della bilancia [the source of equilibrium]’,90 was certainly at times the centre of important diplomatic activity, able to act as the arbiter in conflict and tension, and so gain prestige and influence, but the legend does not, however, reflect the relatively modest territorial and political importance of the Florentine republic, itself conditioned by other stronger powers. All political and diplomatic events on the peninsula were sensitive to the tensions, ambitions and influences emanating from Europe: from the Empire, Burgundy, Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, and Spain.91 The Italian peninsula, which was rich, different, and shrouded in mystique as the capital of Western Christendom was ‘a perennial temptation’ for all European powers.92 However, a series of concomitant circumstances limited and restrained foreign intervention. After the Hundred Years’s War, France and England had to confront internal problems, as did the sovereigns of Castille, while the weak policy of the Empire had little influence on the peninsula. As is well known, these obstacles disappeared by the end of the fifteenth century, and after a century of war, the major European powers intervened in Italy, realizing old aspirations and setting their sights on the weak links in the system: Milan and Naples.93 The weak and fragmented Italian political system, incapable of finding unity and revealing all the fragility of the so-called fourteenth-century ‘equilibrium’, faced stronger states whose armies were not dissimilar to the Italian forces, but were larger, tempered by long and arduous conflict, and supported by 89 91 92
90 Sestan (), ‒, ‒. Pillinini (), ‒. Ibid. ‒; Fubini (), , and passim. 93 Hale (), . Pillinini (), ; Hale (), ‒.
Political and Military Bonds · powerful and resolute monarchs. In , the French took Milan, and in thirty years of conflict the Habsburg–Spanish imperial domination was established which was to last for three centuries and effect, directly or indirectly, almost all of the Italian states. Historians have suggested many ‘causes’ of the political and military defeat of the Italian powers. These include economic considerations, possibly connected to a structural gap between the fast-expanding European economy and that of Italy, and elements of social politics, for example, particularism, the lack of a unifying power, and the limited internal cohesion of the Italian states, which were unable to link effectively to the urban ruling classes and so create a consensus. As Commynes observed, the population in all the Italian states was waiting for an opportunity to rebel, and the French could probably have taken greater advantage of this discontent. Specifically military weaknesses appear to be less significant for the downfall. Contemporary observers saw Italian military institutions and armies as essentially in line with the rest of Europe, at least as regards innovation and equipment, if not size. Sixteenth-century historians attributed it to mercenary activity, but present-day historical writing has assimilated this to other contemporary forms of contractual recruitment which were widespread throughout Europe after the decline of personal obligations.94 Before examining the long-term effects of the Italian Wars, it is worth paying some attention to the moment of impact between the Italian system and the invading foreign powers. This impact had a disruptive effect and, calling into question the regional framework sanctioned by the Peace of Lodi, prefigured new and diverse solutions for the Italian system. A point of particular interest concerns the feudatories of Appennine Lombardy, Emilia and Romagna, which had been relegated to the rank of subject by the regional states, although the latter had made use of their military capacities through the condotte. In the course of the Italian Wars, the Lombard signori became leading players on the political stage once more. As the Empire and the European powers returned to Italy, a situation was created which was particularly favourable to the independent activity of these lords. Francesco Guicciardini was an eyewitness and keen observer of this situation, noting that the signori of Parma and Piacenza ‘in this revolution have had a mind to usurp as many prerogatives and as much authority as possible’.95 However, as with the German imperial cities, which oscillated between the Habsburg Empire, Swiss liberty, and dependence from territorial principalities, 94 See Tilly (), ‒. On Italian wars and military organization, see mainly Anderson (), ch. ; Pieri (); Mallett (), ‒; Guenée (), ‒; Parker (), ‒, ; Puddu (), ‒. 95 Chittolini (), ; more generally, ibid. ‒.
· Maria Nadia Covini this fluidity, and opening-up to new solutions, declined during the course of the Italian Wars, as, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, a regional framework of Italian powers was again established, in which all states were either directly or indirectly subordinated to the Habsburg–Spanish Empire. The Italian Wars were a continuation and an acceleration of the political developments in Italy and, at an institutional level, do not represent a real break. The fifteenth century had seen the consolidation of the regional states and confirmation of the particularism which emanated from it. Foreign invasion led to a very fluid situation open to many possible solutions. In this state of anarchy, expectation, fear, and uncertainty, the minor powers of south Lombardy and Emilia found themselves in a strong position to take part in a political game which became continually enmeshed with military action. For these signori, the Empire and the French king became the new points of reference that allowed them to regain the identity of lord and warrior which had been weakened during the fifteenth century, as a result of having to live within a framework of independent and sovereign states.96 Some signori, such as the Rossi, regained their leading role in the city of Parma, from which they had been expelled. The Italian Wars confirmed this framework. In terms of inter-state relations, however, the Italian contest was progressively destroyed, as the various powers became elements within a larger framework and accepted the logic of a system of European states. Nevertheless, the Italian peninsula’s particular identity, polycentric structure, and regionalism were maintained until the time of Napoleon. 96
Chittolini (), ‒.
Types of Armies: Early Modern Spain Luis Ribot García
. Introduction The emergence in Europe of the so-called ‘Modern Army’, between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, was inseparably connected with the birth and evolution of the ‘modern state’. The army constituted one of the fundamental pillars in the new political fabric, along with bureaucracy, diplomacy, new fiscal procedures, and a whole series of developments. At the root of this transformation lay the assumption, on the part of the king, of a monopoly in the affairs of war. As this principle gradually found acceptance, the remains of the old feudal world died away and more explicit recognition was given to the power of the sovereign over the members of the upper nobility who, with the growth of absolutism, were forced to look to the court to justify their existence, and to guarantee their future. As the sovereign’s monopoly of warfare increased, the ‘private’ wars of the Middle Ages became a thing of the past. Henceforth, war, the rightful preserve of he who personified the state, was to become, by its very nature, public; although that did not always rule out such apparently private motives as dynastic interests. War had become a matter for the state, proper to states or those entities that aspired to function as such, some of which would, in fact, achieve their object as a result. A number of political and cultural factors played an indispensable part in the evolution of armies in the early modern period. They included the transition from private to public or state warfare; the development of the concepts, ‘state’ and ‘public’; the progressive accretion of the sovereign’s rights and sphere of influence; the creation and imposition of state legislation; the elaboration of ideologies to justify each state. Nevertheless, we should not forget that wars, and of course the armies that fought them, evolved as a consequence of the competitiveness that generated so many conflicts in early modern Europe. This rivalry was further stimulated by a series of technical advances (the effective use of fire-power and
· Luis Ribot García gunpowder, new types of weapons, the development of fortifications, and so on) and the increased availability of human and material resources, supplied by the sovereign rulers. The transformations in warfare and armies that arose out of such circumstances were substantial enough to encourage certain historians to defend the idea of the existence of a ‘military revolution’ in early modern Europe. The expression was originally coined by Michael Roberts, who centred the revolution on the period between and , basing his argument on his knowledge of the Dutch army of Maurice of Nassau and the achievements of Gustavus Adolphus with the Swedish army.1 Geoffrey Parker accepts the idea of a military revolution which reached its apogee in the second half of the seventeenth century, but sets an earlier date for its beginning, linking it more closely to the changes produced in fortifications as a response to artillery developments in the fifteenth century.2 Subsequently, Jeremy Black has expressed doubts as to the existence of such a revolution, but, in any case, he considers that the decisive changes in tactics and size of the majority of European armies (France, Russia, Great Britain, Austria, and Prussia) took place during the century immediately after that indicated by Roberts, in other words, between and .3 Leaving aside this debate for a moment, it is, none the less, indisputable that the changes that occurred were of considerable importance. What was revolutionary was not so much the expansion and widespread application of such developments in the eighteenth century, but their beginnings, the initial steps, and, for this reason, Parker’s chronology would seem to be the more persuasive. According to Parker, one of the most outstanding features of the military revolution was the formidable growth in size of the European armies at two key moments: the first during the reign of Emperor Charles V, and the second at the end of the seventeenth century. At the beginning of the s, for almost the last three years of his reign, Louis XI of France managed to gather at his disposal more than , combatants, an enormous number for the period.4 Seventy years later, in the early s, the Emperor Charles V had under his command a total of some , men, a figure which was not to be equalled by any European state until the last decades of the seventeenth century, when Louis XIV of France could count on the services of almost , soldiers.5 But the growth in size of the armies brought with it, and in fact depended upon, a whole series of decisive transformations. For example, permanency became an established feature of the principal army corps; a more efficient bureaucracy was developed, which could see to the organization, control, and supply of large 1 4
2 Roberts (). Parker (, ). Contamine (), ‒; Lynn (), ‒.
3 5
Black (). Parker (), , ‒.
Types of Armies · numbers of men; while a system of military justice to prevent or punish abuses was gradually drawn up and enforced. Behind all these developments stood the figure of the sovereign, personification of the state, the supreme authority in whose name troops were recruited, organized, and paid, justice imparted, and in whose service the soldier fought and died. The development of this new type of armed force, which we know as the ‘modern army’, took shape in different European states as the result of a long and protracted process that commenced with the first murmurings of the modern state in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and did not reach its completion until the eighteenth. Late medieval armies had been based on different obligations, deeply rooted in the different juridical traditions—Roman, Germanic, Anglo-Saxon—and reinforced by feudal-type bonds. These obligations primarily affected the nobles or bellatores, but, in a more vague or general sense, they also touched on society at large. Our knowledge of France, Castile, the Italian States, or England, demonstrates that, in the late Middle Ages, systems of recruitment either already existed or were beginning to appear, a foretaste of those that would be put into practice in early modern times. The Hundred Years War, the unending Italian conflicts, the last stages of the Reconquest and the Iberian wars, and the English Wars of the Roses, all contributed a number of innovations in the composition of armies, which would later serve as a precedent for the initiatives adopted by European states in the centuries that followed. During the lengthy conflict of the Hundred Years War with England (‒), the French army was chiefly based on the feudal service of the nobles and their retainers, supplemented by contingents of archers and crossbowmen supplied by the towns. The armed service, unpaid but of limited duration, to which the nobles were in duty bound, had gradually evolved into a broader form of collaboration paid for by the Crown, although this did not do away with the old feudal rights and duties.6 In addition, certain individuals, and communities that were often religious in nature, were also obliged to proffer particular services to the king, including armed service, but this system was largely ineffective and often not enforced. The same can be said of the arrière ban, although it was an important precedent which, in theory at least, imposed a generalized obligation, at times of great need, on all able-bodied persons between the ages of eighteen and sixty capable of using a weapon, regardless of whether they were nobles or not, vassals of the king, or lay or ecclesiastical lords. Philippe Contamine’s research indicates that this duty to provide armed service, which normally took the form of contributing a certain
6
Contamine (), ‒.
· Luis Ribot García number of men for each parish or feu (household), could be commuted for the payment of a tax. Lastly, there were also volunteers, recruited or rounded up by various means that clearly anticipated systems further developed from the sixteenth century onwards, and foreign mercenaries.7 One of the most decisive events in the formation of the Spanish army which, years later, was to fight successfully in Italy, was the War of Granada (‒). This marked the turning-point between medieval and modern warfare. Isabella I’s forces, which conquered for Castile the last Muslim stronghold in the Iberian peninsula, were made up of continos and guardsmen of the royal household; the retainers and armed bands that followed the nobles; secondary nobles such as the hidalgos and armed caballeros; salaried light horsemen, the men of acostamiento, of humbler origin than the noble cavalry; foot-soldiers distributed among the Castilian concejos (local communities); specially hired culverineers, or handgunners; criminals from Galicia and Asturias given a free pardon in exchange for their service; and, finally, a group of artillery men. Most of these combatants found themselves there as a result of mutual service obligations. This was true not only of the nobles with their retainers, or the caballeros and hidalgos who offered aid in response to the queen’s summons, but also of the acostamiento light horsemen and the foot-soldiers of the concejos. All organization stemmed from the Crown, which, after its triumph in the War of Castilian Succession (‒), could count on the support of a submissive nobility.8 The Castilian army of this period bore a marked similarity to the French army of the second half of the fifteenth century.9 The wars against France, Scotland, and other enemies, forced the English to develop various methods of recruitment. In England, the transformation away from the old forms of feudal service was more complete than in France, and indeed, these had become almost obsolete by the end of the fourteenth century. In fact, ever since the thirteenth century, it had become more and more common to gain exemptions by the payment of a money sum. During the period c.‒c., the majority of troops were recruited by captains in the paid service of the Crown, who in turn established contracts with knights, men-at-arms, and archers. This method, which first appeared at the end of the thirteenth century and was to continue in use in the sixteenth, especially for troops destined for service abroad, favoured the growth and maintenance of military units that depended on the nobility, until well into the early modern period, a fact that distinguishes the English case from that of Spain or France. Nevertheless, during the Wars of the Roses (‒), the urgency of the situation made it impossible to 7 9
Contamine (), passim. See Contamine (), ‒.
8
Ladero Quesada (), ff.
Types of Armies · make such contracts, and the king had to resort to seeking the help of peers, members of his household, and dependants of the Crown. Other systems were also practised, however, such as the use of salaried foreign mercenaries, and a method resembling the arrière ban but put to more efficient use, namely the commissions of array. First created in the thirteenth century, on the basis of the ancient obligation of every able-bodied man to collaborate in defence, the commissions of array built up a reserve, theoretically defensive in character, but in reality frequently used to supply recruits for expeditions abroad in the war against France, and to raise troops during the Wars of the Roses.10 Medieval armies remained in the field only for short periods at a time, no longer than a single campaign which lasted at most four to six months. War, however frequently it occurred, was only a temporary activity. However, during the late Middle Ages, with its ceaseless conflicts and strengthened royal power, it became necessary to count on the availability of permanent armed forces, which would remain on active service throughout the winter months and even in peacetime. The expression ‘permanent army’ is, of course, fairly ambiguous. None the less, we know of the existence of certain units that were kept in service for several years, at least from the early fourteenth century onwards. Often it was a question of garrisons maintained in focal points of special importance, or escorts or bodyguards for sovereigns, a practice which developed considerably after . But it was in France, in the course of the Hundred Years War, that the first really permanent ‘combat’ units emerged. The first hint of such a development came in the reign of Charles V when, in , the war with England was resumed; but it was not until the middle of the following century that Charles VII, within the framework of a general reorganization of the royal French army, established a specially selected unit: the Gendarmerie or Bandes d’Ordonnance (‒). These units totalled , complete ‘lances’ where each ‘lance’, a social and administrative unit that took shape in the fifteenth century, was composed of one mounted knight, and various assistant horse- and foot-combatants. Another creation of Charles VII were the francs archers (), or reserve of bowmen. Every parish had to provide one fully equipped archer, who was to dedicate feast days to training and have a right to certain exemptions and privileges (later texts speak of one franc archer for every eighty or even fifty feux).11 The cavalry of the Ordonnance was maintained and increased in Louis XI’s time, and the francs archers were replaced by a permanent infantry consisting of Finer (), ‒; Contamine (), ‒; Contamine (a), ‒, ‒; Goodman (), ‒. 11 Contamine (), ‒; Contamine (), ‒; Hale (), . 10
· Luis Ribot García bowmen, pikemen, and halberdiers, who were discharged on the death of the king in . After , the francs archers were restored. In Italy, the tendency among the principal states to create permanent military units was already well established when the terms of the League were drawn up, encouraging the French chronicler Philippe de Commynes to write that Charles VII was imitating the Italian sovereigns with his reforms.12 One case of particular interest was that of Burgundy, whose duke, Charles the Bold, recruited Ordonnance companies along the lines of the French model from onwards, followed by mounted archers and crossbowmen and permanent infantry and artillery, thus creating one of the first models of a ‘permanent army’, remarkably advanced in its organization.13 In Spain, the age of the Catholic Kings was the period in which the greatest efforts were made to create a permanent army. In one sense, the Hermandad (military association) of Castilian towns, re-established by the kings between the years and , following the model of the Hermandades or concejo forces of the Middle Ages, was in fact a standing army, although its proper function was the maintenance of public order and the pursuit of wrongdoers. Once the War of Granada was over, the Catholic Kings undertook in earnest the reform of the Castilian army. Between and , a series of ordinances and royal decrees laid the foundations for a military structure of a permanent nature which would, in many ways, serve as a model and pioneer. At the beginning of the nineties, the Castilian cavalry dependent upon the king (the king’s guardsmen, vassals, and the Hermandad), totalling some , combatants, was significantly inferior to the power of the French heavy cavalry. In order to correct this imbalance, in , Ferdinand and Isabella replaced the heavy cavalry of the royal guard with a new unit: the Castilian Guard, which were to be known as the guardas viejas (old guard). Four-fifths of its , combatants were heavy cavalry, while the rest were lanzas jinetas (mounted lancers), direct ancestors of the light cavalry, who rode à la moresque. Of the lanzas that took their places in the Spanish expeditionary force for the Second Naples Campaign (‒), were traditionally armed men, together with no more than lanzas jinetas. Nevertheless, the latter were gradually to predominate, encouraged by the subsequent evolution of the cavalry and the Spanish custom of riding à la moresque.14 The reorganization of the cavalry was rounded off, in , with the reform of acostamiento—the men who had previously been called ‘the king’s vassals’ and were paid for out of the royal treasury—
12 13 14
Mallett (), ff.; Mallett (), . Contamine (), ‒; Contamine (a), ‒; Contamine (), ‒, ‒. Quatrefages (), ‒.
Types of Armies · and in , with the suppression of the unpopular Hermandad cavalry, the burden of which had been chiefly borne by the Castilian vassals. Of more importance, however, were the ordinances that further enforced the principle, already present in the Partidas of Alfonso X and firmly established during the course of the Reconquest, that it was the solemn duty of all people to collaborate in the defence of the realm. The ordinance of October made it compulsory for all Castilians to possess offensive and defensive weapons, according to their economic means. On February a further ordinance set up a military reserve among the whole body of commoners. One in every twelve Castilians on the tax registers, between the ages of twenty and forty five, could be called up to serve as a foot-soldier, giving way to more general summons at times of special emergency. These soldiers received pay for their time of service. According to René Quatrefages, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the military contribution of the towns when called on to assist in the defence of the realm was based on this system. Moreover, before the demographic collapse at the end of the sixteenth century, the doceavo was sufficient to supply the local contingents demanded by the king, and favoured the voluntary recruitment of the tercios.15 In ‒, on the death of King Ferdinand, Cardinal Cisneros, regent of Castile attempted to create a standing army in order to challenge the power of the nobles, the troops being levied according to regional quotas. These were the Gente de Ordenanza, in principle volunteers from the middle classes, who were to receive privileges in exchange. But the opposition of the towns, which had to supply the arms, and of the high nobility, frustrated the cardinal’s plans only a few months after recruiting began.16 The rapid growth in size of the armies at the end of the fifteenth century and throughout the first half of the sixteenth (proportionately much greater than the increase that took place during the last decades of the seventeenth century) was not only a consequence of the widespread existence of standing armies and the swelling of the royal coffers but was also encouraged by the transformations in military techniques and tactics that occurred during the period dominated by the Hundred Years War and the Italian wars. The protracted conflict between France and England revealed the defensive capacity of the English foot archers against the powerful French heavy cavalry, more feudal in character. Already, in , the townspeople of Flanders, armed with pikes and goedendags (spiked staves), had successfully confronted the cavalry of the count of Flanders, an advance warning of the French cavalry defeats sustained at the hands of English archers at the battles of Crécy (), Poitiers (), and Agincourt ().17 The heavy cavalry faced the Quatrefages (), ff.; Quatrefages (), ‒; Quatrefages () ff.; Quatrefages (), ‒. 16 17 Pérez (), ‒. Howard (), ‒. 15
· Luis Ribot García difficult problem of increasing their speed in order to reduce the area of target presented to enemy arrows, while, at the same time, strengthening the protective capacity of their armour.18 The creation of the francs archers was an attempt on the part of the French to counteract the effectiveness of the English archers, who were mainly soldiers recruited from among the yeomen, often as a result of the commissions of array, armed with longbows of Welsh origin which offered a number of advantages over the traditional crossbow.19 But the longbow enjoyed only limited success, compared to that of the pike or lance, several metres in length, which, at the end of the fifteenth century and beginning of the next, was extensively used by closely packed infantry formations to repel the onslaught of heavy cavalry. It is remarkable that such an archaic and simple weapon as a long, wooden spear tipped with an iron point, should have been so important for victory in the early days of what, in the opinion of many, was to prove to be an age of revolution for armies and for the art of war. Indeed, at the end of the Middle Ages, the pike had become the principal instrument of combat for Swiss countryfolk and peasants in their fight against the sophisticated feudal cavalry of the house of Austria. In the battle of Morgarten (), the Swiss pikemen, helped by the mountainous terrain, had inflicted defeat on the cavalry of the Habsburg army. A century-and-a-half later, their successive victories against the army of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, at Grandson (), Morat (), and Nancy () raised their military prestige to its highest point. In the years that followed, a number of companies grew up which sought to imitate the Swiss pikemen, the most successful being the German Landsknechte, extensively used by Maximilian of Austria from the late s onwards. Others often preferred to hire the Swiss themselves as paid mercenaries—the French kings, for instance, particularly after the battle of Marignano ()—or even as instructors, as Ferdinand and Isabella did in Castile. However, the use of gunpowder in combat, and the consequent extension of firearms, was the decisive technical, and tactical, development at the beginning of the early modern period. Some use had been made of small cannon, since the fourteenth century, but the artillery had never been really effective and additionally often proved an obstacle to quick mobility. Nevertheless, in the fifteenth century, the French kings demonstrated their ability to make the most of the possibilities cannon of the period had to offer, and this enabled them to prevail over the English in the Hundred Years War and launch a powerful army into Italy. In the opinion of the British historian, Michael Howard, this was the first authentically modern army, composed as it was of the three forces, cavalry, infantry, and
18
Cardini (), ‒.
19
Puddu (), ‒.
Types of Armies · artillery, which could be deployed in various tactical formations and were formed, predominantly, of men paid from the central treasury.20 However, this opinion notwithstanding, it must be stressed that, although Charles VIII’s army opened a new chapter in the history of early modern European warfare with the invasion of Italy, it still had the medieval characteristics, above all in the predominance of cavalry, two-thirds of the entire force. Perhaps this was one reason why the Italian campaigns were to be settled by a series of defeats inflicted on the French army by Spanish troops, for the most part Castilian, three-quarters of whom were foot-soldiers. The decisive innovation of the Spanish army in Italy consisted in the extensive use of individual firearms by the infantry: arquebuses, effectively protected by pike long enough for the marksmen to reload and fire again. This skilful combination of shot and pike, which was to become more popular in the next century, was further enhanced by the tactical mastery of the Spanish commander-in-chief, Gonzalo Fernandez de Córdoba, in the choice of terrain. The Spanish positions were defended by stockaded ditches which enabled the men to make maximum use of their greater fire power and to put off hand-to-hand combat for as long as possible. Cerignola (), was a prime example of the triumph of defensive tactics over attack, reminiscent of Crécy and Agincourt. The only difference was that now the decisive element was firepower.21 The years that followed saw the development of Spanish tactics in the Italian wars, with the effective collaboration of German Landsknechte, who had already played their part in the victory at Cerignola. The battles of Bicocca () and Pavia () confirmed the superiority of the Spanish infantry, based on the combined force of pikemen and arquebusiers.22 It was at this time that the tercio, the key unit of Spanish infantry during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was emerging. Taking its inspiration from the tightly formed squares of Swiss pikemen, the tercio was structured in smaller, more mobile squares, in which pikemen together with arquebusiers (gradually replaced by musketeers) could successfully combine defence and attack.23 The constantly growing infantry and the increased use of firearms forced important changes in the cavalry. This ceased to be the essential and numerically larger force, and became, instead, an effective auxiliary for the foot combatants.
Howard (), ‒, ‒. Pieri (), ‒; Mallett (), ‒; Puddu (), ‒. 22 Puddu (), ‒; Howard (), ‒. 23 Puddu (), ‒; Quatrefages (), passim; Quatrefages (b), ‒. For Swiss influence on the Castilian infantry, from the time of the Catholic Kings, and the origin of the tercio: Quatrefages (). 20 21
· Luis Ribot García But to make this change possible, it was necessary, first, for men and horses to abandon their heavy armour and concentrate on speed rather than on the force of the charge. The decline of heavy cavalry, accompanied inevitably by important social consequences, gave way to a proliferation of light cavalry, sometimes carrying firearms (arquebuses and handguns). The number of mounted soldiers decreased dramatically in relation to foot-soldiers. During the century that followed Pavia, the ratio of horse to foot was normally one to seven or eight.24 In the Thirty Years’ War, however, the cavalry, better adapted now to the new tactics, increased again until it constituted approximately a third of the total force, moreor-less the same proportion as in Cromwell’s New Model Army.25 Until the defeat at Rocroy (), the tercio was to be an invincible unit in the open field. However, after Pavia and Mühlberg (), open battles were few and far between until the large-scale confrontations of the Thirty Years War. Parker suggests that the fundamental reason for this must be sought in the advances in fortification from the Renaissance onwards, advances which were themselves a response to improved artillery. European battlefields and areas of conflict bristled with castles, walls, and bastions, and warfare gradually became a matter of protracted sieges and defence.26 Technical innovations in fortification also had farreaching effects on the rapid growth in the numbers of combatants, not only because wars became much longer but because more men were needed for sentry duty, to maintain lengthy sieges and occupy conquered territory. However, political as well as technical factors were at work. Simon Adams attaches less importance to technical innovation and improvements in fortification—abundant in Holland and northern Italy, but less common in Germany or England—and considers, instead, that we should focus on the military revolution in its political context. Armies grow, to a large extent, as a consequence of the ideas and decisions of the rulers in each state, whose basic objective is to conquer their enemies as decisively as possible, with the largest supply of forces that administrative and logistical considerations permit.27 Different states saw themselves obliged to put more and more men into the field and, according to the needs of the moment, were forced to resort to every means possible, from the hiring of mercenaries and salaried soldiers, to levying and exerting pressure on the population at large, or resurrecting the old feudal obligations of the nobility. By studying these methods and their consequences, taking the example of Spain as our model, we should be able to form a deeper picture of the different types of army to be found in early modern Europe.
24 26
Parker (), ; Hale (), ‒. Parker (), ‒; Parker (), ff.
25
Adams (), ‒. 27 Adams (), passim.
Types of Armies · . The End of Noble Wars The increase in size of the infantry, and the considerable numerical growth of the armies, entailed a large-scale plebification of warfare: once conceived of as a ‘noble’ activity, proper to noblemen, it now became the almost exclusive preserve of the commons. This phenomenon revealed itself in two ways: the forsaking of war by the nobility; and the consolidating of the soldier’s position and identity, the ‘salaried’ person, committed to active service for a number of years. In the sixteenth century, a time of significant demographic growth, the majority of European soldiers were volunteers, but, later, in the period ‒ when an increase in the intensity of warfare coincided with a levelling-off in population growth—or even a decline in some areas, such as Castile—the different states had to resort to all kinds of methods in order to raise troops for their armies. It was precisely during these years that the different European countries began to develop more formal systems of levying ordinary subjects, the commons, insisting on lengthier terms of service. These were the first steps in the formation of contingents, and the use of conscription, further developed in the eighteenth century, and would form the basis of universal military service in more recent times. In Spain, as in other European countries, nobles, prelates, and liege lords were obliged to do service at times of war. In fact, although the noble cavalry took part in some skirmishes during the first half of the sixteenth century, above all within the Iberian peninsula, their response to the summons became less and less consistent. As Irving Thompson has pointed out, it was easier to use the regular cavalry of the royal guard of Castile and Granada.28 From the very outset of the early modern period, the nobility began to abandon their ties with the militia, although, particularly in the sixteenth century, this did not prevent the younger sons of noble houses offering their services, and hidalgos also enlisted as common soldiers in the tercios infantry, in the hope of making a career for themselves in the army.29 These were the soldiers known as particulares or aventureros, bearing a close resemblance to the so-called ‘adventurers’ or ‘volunteers’ in England, soldati di fortuna in Italy, soldats de fortune in France, but of particular importance in the Spanish armies at the beginning of the early modern period.30 Spain followed very much the same lines as other European states. As Hale points out, evidence that the military caste was becoming more and more civilian was to be seen clearly throughout western Europe.31 In , the Count-Duke of
28 29 30 31
Thompson (), ff. Parker (), ‒; Quatrefages (), , ff., . Puddu (), ‒; Puddu (), passim; Hale (), ‒. Hale (), ; see also ‒.
· Luis Ribot García Olivares tried to make the military obligations of the nobles more effective, setting up a ‘lance’ tax, which, like similar taxes or fines in other countries, granted nobles exemption from service in return for money payments. A few years later, however, the same count-duke, particularly desperate after the outbreak of war with France (), was planning a general mobilization of the nobility. Meanwhile, Cardinal Richelieu had recourse to the ban and arrière-ban in an attempt to re-establish the traditional obligation of the nobles and their retainers to give military service.32 In Castile, a special council was nominated to supervise the enlistment of hijosdalgo. Those with insufficient financial means would only have to offer service in person, while the aristocrats (the great landowners and titled lords) would have to raise cavalry contingents according to their resources. In the years that followed, renewed attempts were made, with varying degrees of success, to raise armed support from among the aristocrats, members of military orders, caballeros, and hidalgos. But although such calls to arms, addressed to the nobility along feudal lines, were frequent enough, we should not be misled. The majority of the nobles, despite all prohibitions to the contrary, preferred to pay replacements to serve in their place. In , a general summons was issued to the caballeros to serve on the battle front in Catalonia, with the prospect of money payments and the promise of being invested with the habit of one of the Military Orders, for all those who served for two years. After a lengthy period of persuasive pressure on one side, matched by equally obstinate resistance on the other, a mere caballeros put themselves forward, some four-fifths of whom were replacements, who were to form the cavalry battalion of the Military Orders. Uprisings in Catalonia and Portugal, both of which started in , led to further attempts to enforce obligatory service among the nobility. In , King Philip IV decided to put himself at the head of his army in Catalonia, and a fresh summons was sent out to all nobles, obliging them to participate with him in the campaign. It is not easy to form an accurate idea of the number of nobles who offered their services in Philip IV’s expedition, but, in practice, it was a largely obsolete measure and of little effect from the military standpoint. On the other hand, a few months later, in January , the nobles undeniably played a decisive role in the fall of the Count-Duke of Olivares, who had been the principal organizer of these mobilizations. However, shortly after Olivares’s fall from power, noble military participation was reduced to service in the battalion of the Military Orders, the costs of which were met by the caballeros and the comendadores of the Orders themselves (the comendador was leader of an encomienda, or territory belonging to a Military Order), although the contingent itself was chiefly composed of replacements. By the mid-seventeenth century, despite numerous unsuccessful attempts 32
Anderson (), .
Types of Armies · to restore personal service, the contribution of the nobility to the army in Spain had become essentially financial in nature.33
. The Century of the Mercenaries In fact, there had always been mercenaries and adventurers in the medieval world. As Franco Cardini points out, knightly adventures are normally no more than a romantic literary adaptation of mercenary service.34 Nevertheless, it was during the late Middle Ages that the number of mercenaries really began to increase. The most direct ancestors of the modern mercenary are to be found among the condottieri and the companies of adventurers which grew considerably in Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and which also appeared in France from the fourteenth century onwards. At the same time, some states made indentures with specialists from different countries. Venice relied on the help of light horsemen from Dalmatia, while, similarly, Charles VIII of France managed to acquire the services of Albanian light cavalry. Vizcaya or Brittany offered reserves of mercenaries employed by the kings of England.35 The rapid growth in the size of armies coincided with a time of marked demographic increase, and economic difficulties for the lower classes in society. Inflation and the scarcity of work in many regions throughout Europe encouraged an increasing number to enlist as volunteers.36 No sixteenth-century European state could do without them. The nucleus of a standing army, when there was one, was of limited size, and it was difficult to levy the population at large when effective systems of recruitment had yet to be developed. The only way of raising the necessary number of men was to have recourse to the labour market, where, as in the Middle Ages, specialists could be found. This to some extent explains the cosmopolitan nature of any army at the beginning of the early modern period. The majority of mercenaries came from the poorer, depressed, less accessible parts of Europe, often from mountainous areas, or regions where the lack of agricultural opportunities forced men to seek a living elsewhere. Among them were the Swiss, for example, armed men from Upper Germany, Landsknechte from Swabia and the Rhine area, Albanians, Dalmatians, inhabitants of eastern Europe, Scots, Irish, Castilians, and so on. As Franco Cardini has observed, in the sixteenth century poverty fed the battlefields of Europe with soldiers.37 The most typical case was that of the Swiss, for the most part woodcutters and shepherds, whose dedication to arms as a profession, apart from economic reasons, was a 33 34 37
Domínguez Ortiz (); Ribot (), ‒. 35 36 Cardini (), . Ibid. ‒. Hale (), ‒. Cardini (), , ‒.
· Luis Ribot García consequence of the fight for freedom waged by the Swiss Confederation, responsible for developing a system of generalized recruitment far in advance of its time. After , the Swiss cantons stipulated that all able-bodied citizens between the ages of sixteen and forty were eligible for call-up, while all those aged forty to sixty were to be responsible for territorial defence. From the age of eight, the young Swiss commenced the training that would turn him into a powerful combatant. When a summons to arms was issued, a rota system ensured the distribution of service obligations within each community.38 When the defeat at Marignano, inflicted by Landsknechte, heavy cavalry, and artillery, reduced the Swiss to a merely secondary role, the cantons became veritable nurseries supplying the whole of Europe with mercenaries, especially the French army. At the beginning of the early modern era, the armies of the principal European states tended to count a growing number of mercenaries among their ranks. Nevertheless, soldiers of this type were always a source of problems. One such difficulty was the excessive cost of converting military activity into a paid profession. The rich states were at a considerable advantage when it came to gaining access to the mercenary market, as is demonstrated, for example, by the army of the United Provinces of Holland which relied heavily on such troops during its lengthy conflict with Spain (‒). Nevertheless, all over Europe, warfare and armies were to be the main causes of a pronounced growth in state finance, from the midfifteenth century onwards. Another difficulty lay in the lack of loyalty shown by mercenaries towards the sovereign or state that paid them. When wages were not forthcoming, the mercenaries refused to fight, and, as in peacetime and during the intervals between campaigns, they constituted an obvious danger for public order and the security of the civilian population. The sack of Rome in at the hands of the Emperor’s Landsknechte, indignant at the delay in the handing-over of their pay, is only one example of how far the wrath of such troops could go. Nevertheless, despite their importance, no army was made up exclusively of mercenaries. The growing tendency to form permanent armed forces meant that some military responsibility fell to the subjects of the state itself, recruited as a result of procedures that differed according to country or period. Sixteenthcentury Spain drew a considerable percentage of its armed units from ‘voluntary’ recruitment, whereby such troops became a special type of mercenary, similar to the latter in so far as they were salaried, but tied to their king not only by the terms of a contract, but also because he was their natural liege lord. A similar case is that of the volunteer infantry companies raised by the French army in areas like Picardy, Champagne, Normandy, and the Languedoc prior to the establishment
38
Barlozzetti (), .
Types of Armies · of seven ‘legions’ in . With the latter, Francis I tried to create a national infantry in a number of outlying regions which might enable him to avoid the everincreasing recourse to foreign mercenaries (the Swiss and the Landsknechte). During the s, the legions paved the way for the emergence of a number of provincial regiments.39 In other European states, too, during the sixteenth century (for example, Savoy in the late s) the combination of mercenaries and national volunteers constituted the basis of the armed forces, supplemented, at times of great need, by appeals to old feudal obligations or the defence militia.40 The widespread use of mercenaries and the growing specialization of different types of combatants, according to their country of origin, lent something of a ‘multinational’ flavour to the armies of the leading European states after the Renaissance. In the Spanish army there were Spanish troops—predominantly Castilian—and men from Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, Lombardy, Burgundy, and Britain, together with Germans and Walloons, normally drawn up in national groups forming their own units, and commanded by officers from their respective nations. The recruitment of such men underwent a series of changes according to the development of each state, and the laws of supply and demand. In Castile, and without doubt in other territories of the Monarchy, the ordinary method, before , was the recruitment of salaried volunteers, or soldiers, which was known as administrative recruitment in so far as it was carried out by a delegate of the administration. Alternatively, troops were raised by commission. The Council of War fixed the quotas to be recruited, designated the regions in which the levy was to be carried out, and specified which recruiting officers were to do so. Each officer received a commission or conducta (a form of letters patent) that justified his official status in the eyes of the local authorities; he was given instructions indicating the procedure to follow, the recruitment area and the number of soldiers he needed to raise; and orders that specified the destination of the levy, and, sometimes, a time limit in which to carry out the recruitment. Armed with these documents and bearing his flag, the officer went the rounds of the places specified in the instructions and, hoisting his flag aloft to the beating of drums, announced his mission. Besides organizing the levy, the officer nominated the subordinate officials of the company, and generally took it upon himself to arrange for the upkeep and billets of his men until the time came for them to be presented for review, after which the company effectively came under the king’s charge, and its members derived their wages from the royal treasury.41 Raffaele Puddu has suggested that, independently of demographic or economic reasons, the plentiful supply of volunteer soldiers in Castile was enhanced 39 41
40 Contamine (), ‒, ‒. Barberis (), ‒, , ‒. Parker (), ff.; Quatrefages (), ff.; Thompson (), ff.
· Luis Ribot García by a factor less prevalent in other parts of Europe. The value system and fundamental outlook of the ruling classes was substantially shared by the lower orders. In Philip II’s time, this made it possible for Castilian society to present a high degree of ideological and religious homogeneity, as long as the main objectives of the Monarchy’s foreign policy could be identified—at least on an ideal level—with the Counter-Reformation and opposition to the advance of Protestantism.42 As Parker has pointed out, for the commission system to succeed it was essential that the existing reserves of manpower available should not be exceeded by the needs of the army.43 But at a time when manpower was abundant, it was always possible to complement the volunteer force of the state’s own subjects with foreign mercenaries. Consequently, in addition to the commission system, it began to be common practice to make a contract or indenture with a military entrepreneur, an indispensable method when the king wished to raise a force of men from beyond the frontiers of his realm, from territories over which he had no jurisdiction. In exchange for handing over a certain number of soldiers in a specified period of time, the military entrepreneur received in payment the sum of money stipulated in his contract. It was a method that worked swiftly, as the entrepreneur normally had his troops prepared already, or, at least, the essential formation. The contractor did not usually restrict himself to recruiting his men, but acted also as their military commander and nominated the subordinate officers of his regiment or company.44
. Military Entrepreneurs and Intermediaries The demographic crisis that began to take effect in some areas of the Continent, in Castile, for example, during the last decades of the sixteenth century, together with the conditions of real penury and intensifying bellicosity at the end of Philip II’s reign, brought to a climax by the Thirty Years War (‒) and the Franco-Spanish conflict (‒), caused the supply of volunteers to dry up and almost disappear in some areas. At the same time of course, the demand for men on the part of the contending states grew as never before. This twofold tension had a double effect. On the one hand, mercenary service enjoyed its finest hour; and the figure of the military entrepreneur, owner, supplier, and organizer of the much-coveted human resources, grew in importance. On the other hand, rulers resorted to every kind of formula to obtain men from within their own borders, from increasingly inefficient attempts to renew feudal-type obligations to more Puddu (), ‒; Puddu (), passim. For the ideals and mentality of the soldiers who constituted the tercios: Quatrefages (), ‒; Quatrefages (), passim; Quatrefages (), ‒. 43 44 Parker (), . Ibid. ff. 42
Types of Armies · coercive methods, which foreshadowed the national armies of the future, based on ‘conscription’ or the compulsory and systematic levying of a certain percentage of the population. The proliferation of military entrepreneurs was not only a consequence of the increase in demand for mercenaries, but also responded to the difficulties experienced in creating and maintaining a bureaucratic apparatus capable of dealing with the administration and financing of armies. There was a need to recruit, transport, control, pay, supply, and organize ever-greater units of manpower, a need which stimulated the development of administrative bureaucracy more than any other factor. However, in the early days of modern states, these bureaucracies were usually inadequate, and it was not uncommon for a private individual, with no role in these administrative structures, to collaborate in the management of affairs that were strictly the preserve of state administration, such as the collection of taxes, or the supply of provisions to troops. At the end of the sixteenth century, the gap between the armies’ needs and the capacity of royal administrators to meet them appears to have grown significantly. The rulers of some states embroiled in the conflicts of the period were forced to delegate far more administrative powers to private persons than ever before. The case of Spain was especially significant. Between and , the Catholic Kings had laid the foundations of an efficient administrative system for the army, paving the way for the creation of the most powerful war machine the first centuries of the early modern period were to see.45 Nevertheless, according to Thompson, between the reigns of Philip II and Philip IV, there was a gradual devolution of power in military administration matters and the management of the state as a whole. Power was offloaded onto private contractors and local authorities, so as to ease the profound crisis threatening the centralized form of state government, which had enjoyed such precocious expansion during the previous century.46 The economic debility of many states was another cause of the rise of the military entrepreneurs, who were capable of advancing the large sums of money needed. By the end of the sixteenth century, the traditional system of paying each soldier his due in person was gradually being abandoned in favour of a more indirect system, by which governments paid private contractors and entrepreneurs to supply the military services which they could no longer afford to organize for themselves.47 Numerous contractors began to operate, raising and maintaining fully equipped regiments which they themselves, in the majority of cases, commanded. During the Thirty Years War the system reached its apogee, with some , entrepreneurs raising troops all over Europe. The units under their charge 45 47
Quatrefages (), ‒. Parker (), .
46
Thompson (), and passim.
· Luis Ribot García could range from companies and regiments even to whole armies, as with men such as Wallenstein, who were, at the same time, both great military entrepreneurs and important financiers, often creditors, of the sovereigns they served. For many, military enterprise could be a source of formidable wealth. Wallenstein is undoubtedly the most outstanding example. In , and again in ‒, he organized an entire army for the Emperor of Austria. Among other important entrepreneurs, mention should be made of the Count of Mansfeld, who served under Frederick V of the Palatinate; the Marquess of Hamilton, who fought in the Swedish forces; or Bernard of Saxony-Weimar, in the service of France.48 It is strange that none of these ‘war-lords’, who could call upon the direct loyalty of their men, ever transformed military power into political power, unlike some of the later medieval Italian condottieri. Perhaps they were prevented by the evolution of the state itself and the considerable prestige of the sovereigns they served. Wallenstein came closest to doing so, publishing recruitment orders in his own name and gradually gaining control of an extensive territory that stretched from Bohemia to the Baltic, with industries and agricultural property that provisioned the imperial army.49 The kings of Spain also employed contractors or military entrepreneurs, but military entrepreneurship had little effect on the larger units of the army, remaining restricted to smaller regiments and companies. In any case, the high costs of the contract system encouraged rulers to endeavour to maintain the commission system as far as possible, even if only in an adulterated form, accepting under-age recruits or ignoring the supposedly voluntary nature of enlistment. A compromise between the contract and commission systems is to be found in what Thompson has called ‘intermediary recruitment’, in so far as it was carried out by the Crown acting through nobles or local authorities. Administrative recruitment by commission, at its peak before , had been largely restricted to the plains of Castile and Andalucia, and, to a lesser extent, Navarre, Valencia, and Aragon. In Galicia, Asturias, and the Basque provinces—which formed part of the Crown of Castile—as in Catalonia, the few troops who were recruited were obtained by other means. For example, some were acquired after the capitulation of bands of outlaws in Catalonia after , others were raised by nobles, who normally put themselves at the head of such troops. From the end of the sixteenth century onwards, intermediary recruitment began to be applied in Castile. Rulers accepted the offers of nobles and important men in the locality, with whom they established contractual relations.50 In some ways, Thompson is right when he says that the official ceased to be a functionary nominated by the Crown and became 48 49
Parker (a), ff.; Parker (), ff.; Anderson (), ‒. 50 Howard (), . Thompson (), ff.
Types of Armies · an entrepreneur whom the Crown accepted. Nevertheless, this did not mean an end to the hierarchical and administrative dependence of the intermediary on the Crown, which frequently took the initiative and made increasing use of nobles, lords, and local authorities to raise forces more effectively when the officials were unsuccessful. Apart from the collaboration of the nobles, the rulers also showed interest in tapping the military potential of the towns, leading Thompson to claim that midseventeenth-century Spain seemed almost to have returned to medieval procedures for raising its armies.51 However, there was a slight difference between the summonses addressed to the city in the past, sporadic and of little effect after the conquest of Granada, and the use of the towns as intermediaries in recruitment, assigned a particular number of men, and obliged by the state, often in peremptory fashion, to produce them. After , the townships of Castile received numerous ‘orders’, particularly the so-called repartimientos forzosos, imposed quotas which they had to fill either with volunteers or by lot or some other procedure.52
. Compulsory Service: Prisoners, Quotas, Militias The more intense pressures of the Thirty Years War pointed up the difficulties of successfully applying recruitment systems that had prevailed in the sixteenth century, and led the Hispanic Monarchy to try out all manner of measures so as to raise soldiers. One of the most important of these was the systematic extension of recruitment to areas which, until then, had scarcely contributed any men. I have already observed that the military contribution of the different Hispanic territories in the Iberian peninsula had been disproportionate from the outset. The soldiers who took part in the Italian campaigns under the Catholic Kings were Castilian, as were the majority of Spaniards in the armies of Charles V and Philip II. The Crown of Castile not only contributed men but also provided the financial support so essential to the Monarchy. The reasons for this lay, in part, in the initial vigour of Castile and owed much to Spain’s special political configuration, where the king was not king of the entity as a whole, but of each and every one of the kingdoms and territories into which it was divided. There was no law, currency, or institution common to them all. The king maintained specific constitutional relations with each of the political entities that formed part of the whole. Consequently, his powers varied from one territory to another; while they were extensive in Castile, they were much more limited in Catalonia, for example, 51 52
Ibid. . Contreras (b), ‒, ‒; Contreras (), ff.
· Luis Ribot García whose laws ensured that its peoples could not be forced to serve outside its borders. By the end of the sixteenth century, it was becoming clear that, in terms of economics and manpower, Castile was exhausted. In order to face this situation, and to limit its repercussions on the Monarchy as a whole, the Count-Duke of Olivares, royal favourite of Philip IV, proposed to the king a series of measures designed to distribute the weight of the Monarchy proportionately among each of its kingdoms and territories, according to their capacity. In so far as the army was concerned, the projected ‘Union of Arms’ never took place, but there is no doubt that other territories in the Iberian peninsula, apart from Castile, increased their military contribution, even if it remained below the desired level. This increase was particularly notable in the Italian kingdoms and provinces of the Monarchy. None the less, recruitment continued to affect the kingdom of Castile more than any other. Between the s and s, the Castilians were to feel, more acutely than ever the pressure of the state’s recruitment drive, forced to adopt all kinds of methods in order to draft the number of men required. Recruiting officers frequently resorted to force or trickery to bring their quotas up to the desired level. The soldiers who were drafted against their will were, in effect, prisoners, and took advantage of the slightest opportunity to desert. Often, in order to prevent their escape, they were locked up in the prisons along the routes on the way to their units. The unemployed, vagabonds, bandits, delinquents, and prisoners were all good material for the recruiters. In exchange for a pardon or an indult, they were forced into the king’s service. But such methods were not exclusive to Castile. During the Thirty Years War, the demand for men well exceeded the supply available, forcing the countries involved to develop all kinds of coercive measures.53 In Scotland and England, the drafting of proscribed men, vagabonds, malefactors, beggars, or gypsies, for service abroad, was employed almost as a form of social ‘hygiene’. Sometimes, the criminals who had enlisted were given a pardon on condition that they did not return to the country.54 Obviously, soldiers recruited in this way were far from reliable and, consequently, even greater value was placed on the ‘expert’ soldier, the one who knew his profession and could count on long years of experience. These were the veterans, masters of their fellow soldiers and coveted by all armies, so much so that it was not unknown for them to pass from one side to the other, attracted by the more lucrative terms on offer. Indeed, it became common for the captured veterans of one side to be invited to fight in the enemy ranks, regardless of their political or religious ideas.55 53 55
Parker (a), . Ibid. ‒.
54
Parker (), ‒, .
Types of Armies · In Spain, in , and probably in other years too, no stone was left unturned in the search for veterans and ex-soldiers; magistrates and royal agents were obliged to draw up lists of those to be found within their jurisdiction and send them to the army, willingly or under duress. The military crisis of the seventeenth century led many states involved in the wars to make use of soldiers from the local militias, as a source of supply for the regular army. In reality this meant abusing the original purpose of these units, which were made up of men who were not professional soldiers but simply the able-bodied inhabitants of their respective territories, armed exclusively to defend those lands in times of danger. Behind such a measure loomed the shadow of a more generalized form of military service and its conversion into a specific obligation of the common man (or member of the third order), the ‘labourers’ of the classical tripartite division of society. The various juridical traditions (Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and so on) had seen military service as a duty of every free citizen, taking a particular form according to each individual’s social status. Under the feudal system, the peasants and inhabitants of the cities could be drafted under the terms, for example, of the arrière-ban, or through the shire militias. The Italian ‘communal’ militias, which remained important until the fourteenth century, were certainly, in part, a response to a particular social and political situation, but their juridical basis, composition, and fundamental character did not differ greatly from that of other units.56 The rise of the first permanent and professional armies did not immediately imply the disappearance of the old, generic obligations, but, with the abundance of volunteers, it was not long before a distinction was drawn between two types of warfare and army: offensive and defensive; an army for active operations, another for the reserve. The example of Spain is one of the most typical in this respect, given that for more than a century until , also the apogee of Spanish military and political power, the Spanish army hardly campaigned inside the Iberian peninsula. The paradox of the most powerful state in Europe being unable to dispose of an efficient defensive force in the very heart of its imperial system, was only resolved much later, with the organization of a defensive reserve. Precedents for the state militias (not to be confused with the urban defensive militias, which were local in character and had existed, in many cases, since the Middle Ages) can be found, to a certain degree, in the English commissions of array, the francs archers, or the armed reserves set up by Ferdinand and Isabella in Castile. But none of these constituted militias in the modern sense of the word. Despite their predominantly defensive character, they were also used and organized, essentially, to supply men for the army. There were some attempts 56
Mallett (), ‒; Lenzi (), ff.
· Luis Ribot García to create militias in the early sixteenth century in Tuscany (involving Machiavelli) and Venice, and later in other north Italian states, but they were never really effective and frequently had to be suspended and reviewed.57 One of the countries with a long tradition of participation by the common people in military duties was England. As early as the s, Henry II had made it obligatory for all free men of the realm, within the island or on the European Continent, to possess certain weapons according to their different levels of wealth. In the centuries that followed, this system was gradually perfected, finally giving way to the commissions of array.58 From the mid-sixteenth century onwards, a defensive militia was organized, drafting all able-bodied men between sixteen and sixty; the parish served as the basic medium for raising troops, and each man had to supply his own weapons according to his economic means.59 These militias were used as the basis for numerous recruitments that aimed to raise troops for the army. In addition, at times of danger, the threatened territory was able to mobilize its own men, often with remarkable success, to repel the danger of foreign attack or suspicious-looking ships.60 Of course, England’s greatest defensive strength lay in her geographical isolation, which, together with the use of militias, and the special characteristics of the English state, goes some way to explaining the late appearance of the standing army. Throughout the sixteenth century and the early Stuart period, troops were mainly raised, as in the late Middle Ages, from mercenaries, contracts with recruiting captains, and the militia bands. Until the second half of the seventeenth century, there was no permanent army. Cromwell’s New Model Army, which formed the essential basis of the Protectorate, could be said to have been a standing army, although it was a revolutionary and, hence, a somewhat unusual force. During the Restoration period, those opposed to a standing army could point to recent experience as one very good reason for rejecting what they saw as a possible route to despotism and dictatorship. Nevertheless, this did not prevent the development of the first permanent units, a process which continued after the accession of William of Orange, and during the Wars of the League of Augsburg and the Spanish Succession.61 In the sixteenth century, the defence of Spanish territory was entrusted to the garrisons of the castles and fortresses strategically situated in border areas or on the coast.62 Irrespective of the suitability or capacity of such troops, it was obvious that they were not strong enough to face rapid attacks, such as the incursions of the Berbers, or the English assaults on La Coruña, Lisbon, and Cadiz, at the end of
57 59 61 62
58 Hale (), ‒. Contamine (a), ‒. 60 Corvisier (), ‒. See e.g. Stater (), ‒. Finer (), , ff., ff.; Fissel (), ; Weigley (), ff. Thompson (), ff., , ‒.
Types of Armies · the century.63 The only really effective coastal defence systems were to be found in Valencia and Granada, the latter dating from the conquest of Granada in , while the former was first organized towards the end of Charles V’s reign (a system of watchtowers, coastal fortresses, patrol groups of foot and horse). Mallorca and some Catalan cities tried to imitate these systems, but with varying degrees of success.64 The second half of the sixteenth century saw a flurry of activity, with attempts to set up militias, but it cannot be denied that at the end of the century, when the English were sacking the coastal towns, there were still no really effective defences along the Atlantic. Despite a series of further efforts, the militia was not to be fully set up until after the third English assault on Cadiz, in .65 Like all other organizations of a similar kind, the Castilian militia required not only supplies of manpower but also economic funding. The various localities or communities had to bear a considerable part of the burden of the costs. The militias were military units of occasional use, created to defend their own particular territory. However, different states tended to make use of them to fill up shortcomings in drafts for the regular army, thus converting them into an immediate precedent for conscription. In Castile, after the outbreak of war with France in , the militias provided one of the most important sources of manpower for numerous levies and quotas imposed by the authorities. However, they were dealing with people forced to serve against their will and far from home, circumstances which could only lead to high levels of desertion and poor performance in the field. From the late s onwards, the king made it possible for the majority of militia men, apart from those enlisted in the fight against Portugal, to choose, if they wished, to exchange personal service for a financial contribution, the payment of a levy known as the composicion de milicias. In , after the recognition of Portuguese independence, the payment of this militia tax became widespread practice throughout the territories belonging to the Crown of Castile, and continued for the remainder of the seventeenth and well into the eighteenth century. The vast numbers who preferred to pay the new tax meant that the militias almost completely disappeared, except along the coast and, particularly, the Mediterranean area.66 The substitution for militias of a tax payment aimed at defraying the costs of other, non-coercive, forms of recruitment, and military expenses in general, gives
Our knowledge of th-cent. garrisons does not permit us to conclude that they had any great military capacity: Contreras (a). 64 Thompson (), ff.; Ribot (), . 65 Thompson (), ff., ff.; Contreras (b), ff., ‒, ‒; Ribot (), ‒. 66 Ribot (). 63
· Luis Ribot García us a fair idea of the difficulties which continued to surround any attempt to universalize military service. A similar turn-around, albeit in different circumstances, had taken place in other states, such as Savoy at the beginning of the seventeenth century, with the introduction of a tax enabling men to commute the militia service instituted in .67 Other countries sought to remedy the inadequacies of such organizations through successive reforms. In Restoration England, the militia was reintroduced in ‒, on the model of Elizabeth I’s time.68 The French case is fairly typical. Although a pioneer of permanent armed forces, France did not have a modern militia available until the reign of Louis XIV (1688). Corvisier argues that this can be explained if we consider that the ban and arrière-ban afforded ample possibilities of raising troops in the provinces under threat; that urban militias were well developed; that there was already a long tradition of militias in those areas or provinces that were particularly exposed or vulnerable (Boulogne, Béarn, Briançon, for instance), and that maritime parishes had already set up militias and look-out systems with watchtowers and so on. Moreover France did not have to confront the particular difficulties that faced the Hispanic Monarchy, which found itself obliged to defend far-flung territories separated by large distances and, at least until , to maintain the vast majority of its troops outside the Iberian peninsula. The ordinance of obliged each province to supply a variable number of militiamen, and gave the intendants authority to levy these men from among bachelors between the ages of twenty and forty. Each parish was responsible for equipping and paying its own men. A total of fifty militiamen from neighbouring parishes formed a company, while a regiment consisted of between fifteen and twenty companies. Militia soldiers were exempted from payment of the taille, but had to take part in compulsory training throughout the winter and on Sundays and feast-days. When they were summoned to serve outside the province, their wages, like those of other soldiers, were paid by the king. In fact, the militias were regularly deployed to make up for the deficiencies in the army on active campaign. Year after year, militiamen were recruited, and after this was done by lot. Nevertheless, the creation of a national militia did not mean the extinction of previous units. The militia that already existed in certain areas and provinces, the ‘small militia’ as they came to be called, were maintained and even extended to other provinces; the local militia and coastguards were similarly reorganized.69
67 68 69
Barberis (), ‒, , ‒. Finer (), ; Anderson (), ‒; Chandler (), ‒; Weigley (), . Corvisier (), ‒; Corvisier (), ‒, ‒.
Types of Armies · . The Origins of Conscription Despite all their practical defects, the militias—or their tax securing exemption from service—obliged the state to maintain localized control over the population eligible for military service. The militia was the forerunner of the conscription system, based as it was on regular and impressed contributions by each district of a number of previously determined quotas, on the basis of registers listing the men liable for service. In fact, the French reforms were to lay the foundations of a system of conscription or obligatory recruitment, based on the militias, which was to contribute important contingents to the army in wartime, as, for example, in the War of the Spanish Succession. Between and , Louis XIV published annual ordonnances de levée, which were unequally distributed among the various circunscripciones (districts). This form of recruitment fell especially heavily on the common people, who could not afford the exemptions and often had to replace wealthier men as paid substitutes. It was added to the traditional systems, and supplemented with the impressed enlistment of vagrants, beggars, and malefactors, and, during the War of the Spanish Succession, with all manner of other procedures.70 Obligatory methods of raising troops were also adopted in Hannover (), Brandenburg–Prussia (‒), and other German states towards the end of the seventeenth century.71 These forms of impressment had begun, some time earlier, in northern Europe. In Sweden, the concept of military service had been fairly widespread since the sixteenth century, and there were local registers listing eligible men, from among whom the soldiers ordered by the king would be drafted. Recruitment was based on the idea of compulsory military service, distributed according to circunscripciones or districts, corresponding to the old rural provinces and displaying a marked communal identity. Indeed, it is probable that some kind of nationalist sentiment following the recent rupture with the Danish Crown, and religious sentiment, as a consequence of the Reformation, contributed to inspire a certain spirit of ‘patriotism’ in the much-admired Swedish army of the Thirty Years War—an army which, none the less, numbered a high number of foreign mercenaries in its ranks.72 This form of conscription in Sweden gave rise, in , to the systems known as Indelningsverk or the Indelta, which continued in modified form as late as . Each rotar or group of farmsteads had to supply one soldier and see to his upkeep. It was incumbent upon the landowners to grant him a plot of land and build him a wooden house, and when he was called up they were
70 71 72
Corvisier () i, ; Corvisier (), ‒. Chandler (), ff. Nistri (), ‒; Cardini (), ‒.
· Luis Ribot García responsible for farming his lands and the maintenance of his family. Similar arrangements applied to officials.73
. The Bureaucratic Revolution The growing tendency to conscript, which began to appear in the late seventeenth century, was, to a certain extent, the result of bureaucratic and administrative developments in certain European states. After the end of the Thirty Years War, a number of countries, particularly France, began to take firmer control of their armies reaffirming their distinctively ‘national’ character. The basic model had been supplied by the army of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, although Cromwell’s New Model Army was also inspirational, based as it was on iron discipline, professional efficiency, and well-preparedness, besides enthusiasm for the cause, qualities which made it the first modern revolutionary army.74 The rise of absolutism, and the administrative improvements carried out in France during the reign of Louis XIV, ensured royal control of the army and the enforcement of discipline such as had never been practised before. The French army became the most remarkable instrument of state power Europe had ever seen.75 One of the fundamental objectives of civil bureaucracy, once it was left in charge of military administration, was to exercise control over the raising of troops. However, although conscription continued, the vast majority of French soldiers under Louis XIV were volunteers, national or foreign.76 The most spectacular result of the improvements in organization was the huge increase in the number of men in the ranks. The figure of , French soldiers, at the end of the seventeenth century, reflects the growth of the state. For the first time since the days of Charles V, the previous ceiling of , was broken, and this time the increase was less the consequence of a combination of factors (such as technical and tactical advances) but almost exclusively the result of developments in state politics. Nevertheless, weapons and techniques of combat had continued to develop since the beginning of the early modern period. The use of powder and shot and artillery gradually became more widespread, together with new types of fortification, built to keep step with improvements in individual and collective firearms. Infantry and cavalry tactics on the battlefield underwent evident change, after Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden demonstrated that artillery could be used to good
73 74 75 76
Corvisier (), ‒; Howard (), ff.; Parker (a), ‒. Wijn (), ‒; Cardini (), ‒. Howard (), ‒. Parker (), ‒; Corvisier (), ‒.
Types of Armies · effect as a mobile weapon in the field. With Maurice of Nassau and the Swedish king, the use of firearms began to prevail over the pike, and this, in turn, led to the reduction in depth of the infantry square (with ten and, later, six rows of marksmen, protected by the pikemen). Despite these changes, the most significant innovation was the appearance of the bayonet at the end of the seventeenth century, which enabled the musketeer to make use of the additional defensive properties of a steel weapon. The use of the bayonet spelt the end of the pike, and, together with improvements in loading and firing techniques—for example, the use of a flint mechanism to fire the musket—was to accelerate progress towards rank formations, so characteristic of the eighteenth century. After Gustavus Adolphus, Cromwell, and the late seventeenth-century tactical transformations, many cavalry formations preferred to set the firearm aside in favour of headlong charges and hand-to-hand combat with steel. The rise of the French army during the half century after the peace treaties of Westfalia and the Pyrenees coincided with a period of crisis in the Spanish state. During the reign of Charles II (‒), recruitment methods continued to be just as varied as they had been at the time of the Thirty Years War, while the state bureaucracy’s capacity for firm control left much to be desired. The lateseventeenth-century Spanish army was in a state of stagnation compared to the huge progress in France and elsewhere. Even England, whose military organization had remained fairly backward until the mid-century, had a more convincing look, as Marlborough’s armies were to demonstrate during the War of the Spanish Succession.
. The Rise of State Armies The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in many areas of Europe, in comparison with the period of the Thirty Years’ War, marked the general decline of the military entrepreneur and of the lieutenants and captains who recruited their own units, in favour of more systematic recruitment, supervised and directly executed by the administrative structures of the state. The number of intermediaries, and the autonomous nature of their powers, tended to be reduced.77 At the same time, mercenary sources began to dry up as a result of the relative prosperity covering a period from the last quarter of the seventeenth to the mideighteenth centuries. There was more work, and wars had become shorter and less frequent.78 States were forced to resort to more precise and better-organized ways of raising troops in order to supply their armies with the requisite number of men. 77
Cardini (), .
78
Ibid. ‒.
· Luis Ribot García Meanwhile, Russia and Prussia, the two emergent powers in eastern Europe, were quick to develop systems of impressed recruitment. In Russia, Peter I imposed the first of his numerous levies in . These levies, either general or partial in nature, were enforced in varying ratios on the basis of population registers (one man for every so many inhabitants registered on the census), and the system was maintained throughout the rest of the century. In Prussia, a system of cantons was drawn up by Frederick William I in . Each canton had to supply the recruits for a particular regiment. An infantry regiment was based on a canton of some , households, while the cavalry regiments drew on smaller cantons of some , households. All able-bodied males over the age of ten were enrolled, and incorporated into the ranks when they were eighteen. After serving for between eighteen and twenty-four months, during which time they received military training, they could return home but, for the rest of their lives, they would remain liable for call-up as soldiers for two or three months a year.79 In both Russia and Prussia, the universal impressment of peasants was reinforced by a rigid social structure based on serfdom, especially in Russia, in which the masters, the landowners, held officers’ positions in the army.80 Unlike Russia, in Prussia the excessive size of the army in proportion to the population, and the need, at the same time, to maintain some kind of workforce, meant that the canton system existed alongside a significant percentage of foreign mercenaries who, under Frederick William, supplied a third of the army’s total force, reaching and stabilizing at around per cent under Frederick II.81 Both Prussia and Russia under Peter I fast became military autocracies in which the army not only dominated society, fashioning its structure and atmosphere, but constituted the most essential element in the creation of the state. This was especially true of Prussia, and indeed the Prussian case is remarkable for the disproportion between the state’s demographic and economic debility, on the one hand, and its extraordinary military strength on the other. The Prussian system as a whole (organization, recruitment, training, supply, discipline, and so on) was a model which many other countries sought to imitate. As far as recruitment was concerned, in the second half of the eighteenth century, Hesse–Kassel and some of the Habsburg territories introduced a canton-based system on the Prussian model.82 Further west, however, progress towards compulsory recruitment and conscription was rather more difficult, and attempts throughout the eighteenth
79 80 81 82
Finer (), , ; Corvisier (), ‒; Craig (), ‒. Anderson (), ‒. Corvisier (), ; Parker (), ‒. Anderson (), ‒.
Types of Armies · century to establish such a system encountered enormous unpopularity. The detailed studies of André Corvisier have provided ample information about soldiers in the service of France in the eighteenth century and their various paths to the army. Apart from foreign troops, acquired by careful negotiation with their states of origin or through regimental lieutenants, the methods of recruitment carried out by officials, which had been so characteristic of the seventeenth century, gradually gave way to a system of ‘personal’ recruitment within each unit. During the six months of winter, when active campaigning was normally interrupted, some of the regimental officers were sent to their places of origin, with instructions to raise there the number of men necessary to make good the wastage and deficiencies that had been incurred in their own unit. The officer responsible was normally a captain with a number of auxiliaries at his disposal, who would recruit his own unit from among the people with whom he had had some dealings in the past. In principle, the soldiers enlisted voluntarily, although it did not always work out like that, especially at times of war. Sometimes, when ‘personal’ recruitment failed to provide sufficient men, the regiments had recourse to collective recruitment—not by companies—in the large cities and other well-populated areas. However, this procedure was not often used in the raising of French regiments before the end of the century. Whenever particularly large numbers of men were needed, or if it was a question of finding foreign soldiers, ‘personal’ recruitment could always be supplemented with more traditional means where no relationship existed between the recruiting officer and the recruit. Sometimes, the work was entrusted to professional recruiters or even agencies. These were particularly active in the cities and, despite legal prohibitions to the contrary, were not averse, at times of special difficulty, to resorting to the standard pressgang methods and deceit. Whenever both systems together proved insufficient, the king would intervene in person to raise soldiers for the regiments. Apart from sending condemned prisoners to the battlefront, the king made ample use of the militias to replenish wastage among his regular troops, obliging each district to supply a fixed quota. Normally, the selection of recruits from among militiamen was done by lot, although there always remained the possibility of sending paid replacements, or of filling the quotas with beggars and vagabonds. The percentage of militiamen, incorporated alongside other soldiers in the regular French army, was reduced from per cent of the total in the War of the Spanish Succession, to per cent in the Seven Years’ War, before the procedure was temporarily stopped in . The unpopularity of recruiting from the militias, and their lamentable performance on campaign, led the French, in , to try out a system of voluntary provincial recruitment under the supervision of the intendants. But the system was short lived, despite important modifications introduced by Choiseul, the minister for
· Luis Ribot García war, in . At the end of the eighteenth century, the lists of the French militia totalled some , enrolled men, from whom , soldiers were drafted annually to serve for a period of six years. In short, there was a recruitment crisis at the end of the ancien régime, as it became difficult to impose many of the systems that had been tried throughout the century, giving rise to an upsurge in the activity of recruiting agencies and traditional methods.83 Setting France aside, the majority of western countries still looked to the welltried systems as the best way of raising troops. The English army was largely made up of volunteers recruited by the regimental officers; criminals released from jail in order to do active service; the poor, beggars, and vagrants sent by the parishes; and, in addition, the foreign units. At times of real need, especially in the navy, it was not uncommon for officers of the levy to take little notice of the rule book and ignore the voluntary nature of recruitment.84 For many armies, foreign mercenaries continued to be indispensable, as in the army of Savoy, for example, the majority of whose troops fell into this category.85 Anderson argues that the armies of the eighteenth century were just as ‘cosmopolitan’ as in the previous century, showing the same propensity to recruit foreigners.86 Of course, as the administration of the army became more structured, and increasingly fell within the control of the state, military life took on a more professional appearance. Discipline increased, although desertions continued to be frequent, and the military activity of the officers, the majority of whom were drawn from the noble classes, was invested with a more professional and institutionalized status, encouraging the formation of academies. Meanwhile, the army gradually began to separate itself from the rest of society, as barracks were extended to all parts of the country, and wives and children were prohibited from accompanying the soldiers as they moved from place to place. In the eighteenth century, many states created or reorganized their militia forces, which nearly always served as a reserve for the recruitment of the regular army. In England, an effective reorganization of the militias was carried out in , with the idea of making home territory more secure in case of attack or foreign invasion. Nevertheless, as military service became more widespread and the permanent units (both active armies and peacetime garrisons) grew, it was evident that the militias would, eventually, fall into decline. This was nowhere more clearly demonstrated than in France, where they were soon to be abolished, following the massive levies of the Revolution.87 Besides the state dependent militias, there were also local militias which exercised a police-like role of more limited scope. In some French cities, for example, 83 84 86
Corvisier (), i, ‒; Corvisier (), ‒; Corvisier (), . 85 Robson (), ‒. Barberis (), ‒. 87 Anderson (), ‒, . Ibid. .
Types of Armies · they would patrol the streets at night to protect the inhabitants against robbers and the outbreak of fire, while in Madrid a similar service was performed by a corps of ‘able-bodied wounded’ (set up by Philip V following the French model and later reorganized by Charles III) and the members of the urban militias established in .88 In eighteenth-century Spain, traditional ways of recruiting volunteers were insufficiently productive and additional methods put into practice, such as the impressment of vagrants and malefactors. The provincial militias of the Crown of Castile, restructured in , ‒, and again in , served as a nursery for the regular army.89 Another solution was to demand that each community provide a fixed quota, which could be filled using a variety of methods, including the drawing of lots, a system that had already been used in the seventeenth century and was known as the quinta. This procedure laid the foundations for the introduction in Castile, in the s, of a system of reemplazo anual (an annual draft of recruits) which, in practice, was no more than a form of obligatory conscription for the entire population of commons, and purported to become the standard means of raising recruits for the army, whenever circumstances so demanded. Every year the number of soldiers to be raised was specified and the task distributed among the various districts, which had at their disposal lists of the men of military age in each locality. The names of the future soldiers were drawn by lot from among those on the lists. This system existed alongside the militia lists, but it proved hugely unpopular and had to be discontinued. Nevertheless, this was the model that was to be imposed in the nineteenth century, when society was readier to accept the idea of universal military service.90
. The Nation in Arms According to Geoffrey Parker, just as the middle decades of the eighteenth century represented the apogee of the ancien régime, so the same period saw the culmination of the military revolution.91 During the last decades of the eighteenth century, the French Revolution triggered off a series of changes decisive enough to be described as a ‘new age’ for both state and army. Since the mid-century, there had been important developments in forms of warfare and tactics, heralding a profound change in the military system of early modern Europe. The spread of light infantry and light cavalry; the increasing mobility and power of field artillery;
88 89 90 91
Sotto y Montes (), ; Borreguero (), ‒. Hellwege (); Corona (), ff. Borreguero (), passim. Parker (), .
· Luis Ribot García the replacement of the infantry line with an assault column, swifter, more mobile, and offering more depth than the old line formation were all far-reaching developments. Furthermore, after the War of Austrian Succession (‒), armies began to be organized into a number of self-sufficient units called ‘divisions’, fully equipped with arms, engineers, and ancillary groups. After , the process was completed with a further revolution in military manpower, when (in August of that year) the levée en masse left more than a million Frenchmen under arms.92 A new kind of society was taking shape, forged by a new type of state, and a new form of warfare in the history of the West. In the context of raising troops, the tendency towards universal military service, clearly foreshadowed in some eighteenthcentury treatises, achieved its fullest expression at the hands of the French Revolution, with the raising of an entire ‘nation in arms’.93 92 93
Parker (), ‒. See also Howard (), ff. Anderson (), ‒.
States and Their Navies from the Late Sixteenth to the End of the Eighteenth Centuries Jaap R. Bruijn
. Navies and Their Size Figures express and explain much about power relations, while numbers of warships are often used to illustrate the size of a state’s naval power. From the late sixteenth century, the traditional galley and battles in the Mediterranean no longer put their hallmark upon naval warfare in Europe. The ocean-going warship was by then being developed and becoming standardized, providing an opportunity for quantifying and comparing naval power. Wars at sea were now the results of internal European frictions, as well as of European expansion throughout the world and of conflicts outside Europe. Warships still retained their earlier purpose as troop transporters and protective escorts, while ramming and boarding the hostile ships remained their main weapons. However, gun battles between individual ships and entire fleets were to be the new trend. A state’s naval power was now expressed in the number of sailing warships at its disposal. The authors G. Modelski and W. R. Thompson have defined rules according to which warships can be counted to compare and examine the relative strengths of the major naval powers.1 The development of a specialized sailing warship was not a quick process. More gunports—an early sixteenth-century innovation— were constructed and the emphasis on naval ordnance on board was continuously increased. In general war vessels became larger. As for the early period—until the mid-seventeenth century—general standards of comparison between the types of 1
Modelski and Thompson ().
· Jaap R. Bruijn ships utilized by the different European states are hard to develop and apply. The typical armed merchantman long continued to take part in naval campaigns. Only from c. is it possible to describe ships as warships according to a minimum number of guns. Such a criterion is not practical for previous periods. Before c. Modelski and Thompson consider any armed vessel owned and maintained by a state to be a warship. This principle is important for an era in which warships were often hired by the state and used as merchant vessels in peacetime, while in wartime vessels were rented by shipowners to states and functioned as warships. At times it was hardly discernible which vessels were state owned and maintained. Hence the application of the principle for figures before c. can never have been fully consistent. After c. line-ahead tactics in naval battles were developed as the efficient way of organizing the broadsides of the fleets. The ship of the line was born and slowly a consensus began to emerge as to the minimum number of guns a ship should carry to be called a ship of the line. Until c. thirty guns was the minimum, between and forty. From then on only ships with fifty or more guns were generally considered as ships of the line, from sixty guns was the lower limit. It had become a universal custom to classify warships in rates, according to the number of their guns. The first rates were the most heavily armed ships. Table provides information about the size of four major navies in the period ‒. These navies were the Spanish (until , the Portuguese included), English/British, French, and Dutch. The total strength of their navies reveals remarkable fluctuations and the individual figures illuminate the rise and fall of naval powers.2 The four navies deployed their activities on a geographically vast scale. Most other navies operated only in restricted areas close to their national territory, for example, the Venetian and Scandinavian navies. Modelski and Thompson studied the size of navies which exerted global seapower and excluded all other states from their research. Their classification of warships is therefore not valid for Table , in which the size of the Danish/Norwegian, Swedish, and Russian navies during the eighteenth century is shown. These figures indicate that between and well over big warships were available for naval activities of all kinds. The numbers have to be augmented with equally impressive numbers of frigates. For example, only the Danish/Norwegian, Swedish, and Russian navies already had thirty frigates at their disposal in , and in no fewer than sixty.3 Ships of the line and frigates were the most expensive moveable public assets in the early modern period, representing enormous capital investments on the part of states. The cost of naval shipbuilding 2
Modelski and Thompson, ‒.
3
Glete (), .
States and Their Navies · T . Naval strength of four major seapowers, ‒
Spain
England
France
The Netherlands
Total
Note: Ships armed with between forty and fifty guns have also been counted as ships of the line. Note on dates: Twenty-five year intervals were chosen, with the exception of (which makes it possible to include the Dutch navy and to combine Spanish and Portuguese naval forces). is well before the explosion of the French Revolutionary Wars with their implications for increasing naval strength. Source: Modelski and Thompson (), ‒.
T . Naval strength of three Baltic seapowers, ‒
Denmark–Norway
Sweden
Russia
Total
() () () ()
Source: Glete (), ; figures in parentheses give numbers according to Modelski and Thompson ()
increased substantially over the years. In the biggest Dutch man-of-war, armed with fifty-seven guns, would cost , Dutch florins (£,), but fifty years later the English Admiralty had to spend £, (, fl.) on the total cost of building and fitting out the very same type of vessel, which had by then become a fourth rate ship-of-the-line. A first rate vessel, armed with more than ninety guns, required an expenditure of £,.4 The bigger the ship, the more she cost per ton, mainly because of the larger and more unusual types of wood for the hull. The cost of maintenance of a first rate for six months at sea added £, to the 4
Elias (), ‒; Ehrman (), ‒.
· Jaap R. Bruijn bill, and a fourth rate £,. During the eighteenth century, warships became even more expensive. Expenditure on warfare was the main entry in state budgets. In the Dutch Republic in c., for example, nearly per cent of the items were war-related; the army required twice as much as the navy. The armed forces would continue to claim a high proportion of the Dutch budget, and during the eighteenth century the army claimed four times as much as the navy. In Britain after the Glorious Revolution of , for example, public expenditure on navy and army remained relatively stable until late in the eighteenth century, both forces claiming almost equal shares. Per head of the British population an annual s. went to the navy!5 Why did state governments spend money on navies? The most pressing reason was that a country’s national and economic interests could be defended when threatened by another. These interests could also be promoted and supported against those of others. Overseas economic ventures might require naval protection. Although safety in western and north-western European waters increased in peacetime, merchant shipping in the Mediterranean and outside Europe often required naval protection. War and conflicts between states were regular phenomena. By and large, the period under discussion was a time during which control of strategically important waters helped to decide the balance of power in Europe and beyond. In his epoch-making study The Influence of Seapower upon History, ‒, the American naval officer and historian, A. T. Mahan, formulated his views on the possession of naval mastery: ‘that overbearing power on the sea which drives the enemy’s flag from it, or allows it to appear only as a fugitive’. He postulated that six elements were the principal conditions affecting the seapower of seaboard countries. These elements were: geographical position, physical conformation including natural resources and climate, extent of territory, number of population, character of the people, and character of the government. Britain scored best on these points, the Dutch Republic ranked second. France, according to Mahan, did not make the most of its opportunities to become a major seapower and to boost national welfare. He wrote in and received a great deal of attention from his contemporaries, who translated his postulations into their own circumstances. Many a naval history study has since been guided and inspired by his ideas. The validity of Mahan’s book is no longer a point of serious discussion. The supposed priority given by Britain and the Netherlands to naval affairs would not have been in line with the simple fact that during the ancien régime both countries 5
’t Hart (), ‒; Fritschy (), , .
States and Their Navies · regularly spent higher or equal amounts of money on the army. Moreover, decisive sea battles and subsequent naval mastery in the sense quoted above were in no way a consideration of statesmen and admirals. But Mahan also indicated production and exchange of products, shipping and colonies as the key to much of the policy of nations bordering the sea. The duc de Choiseul, the leading French minister in the s, was of the same opinion when he wrote that ‘it is colonies, trade and, in consequence, seapower which must determine the balance of power upon the Continent’. Seapower itself, however, was for early modern Europe only the ability to send troops or commodities across the seas that separated a state (and its ally) from the place where they were required, and to prevent the enemy from doing the same, or entering upon an invasion. This vision of seapower required no long-term planning or a naval policy consistent over a sustained period of time. Hence the attention devoted to naval affairs by most governments fluctuated greatly according to period and country.6 Tables and demonstrate that from onwards the total strength of the European navies increased, although not uninterruptedly. This suggests an overall growth in the involvement of state governments in naval matters, as navies tended to become their monopoly. This gradual process was more-or-less completed in the mid-seventeenth century. From then on, until the War of the Spanish Succession (‒), the leading naval powers entered into a remarkable expansion of their fleets. After this war a certain level of naval disarmament began, lasting until the late s when an enormous boom in naval construction took place, decreasing again only on the eve of the French Revolutionary Wars. These four distinctive periods will be studied with regard to the relation between states and their navies. This chapter concentrates mainly upon issues such as the organization, centralization, and monopolization of naval administration, the creation of permanent facilities, and the state’s concern with naval personnel. The focus is on the leading seapowers in the period under discussion.
. Formal and Informal Navies c.–c. Although no large standing navies existed in this period, states were nevertheless able to bring fleets of seemingly countless ships to the high seas. The Spanish armada of comprised ships carrying almost , seamen, soldiers, and others on board.7 In , the Dutch admiral, M. H. Tromp, had more than vessels under his command during the final stage of his successful struggle against another Spanish armada. This implies that state governments were sufficiently 6 7
Mahan (), ‒; Richmond (), ix; Parker (b), . Martin and Parker (), ‒.
· Jaap R. Bruijn powerful to enforce private shipowners to hire their ‘bottoms’ to them in huge numbers when necessary. Their organizational and financial resources were adequate for this purpose, for governments, or delegated institutions, themselves had to bear regular costs of only the few warships of their own. Fleets were mainly used for the transport of troops and the protection of the mercantile marine against hostile forces; the ensuing fight would be a boarding engagement in which troops would be more useful than guns. A big merchant vessel was often better suited to this kind of activity than a warship. Where many merchantmen were hired for longer periods, it is almost impossible and also unnecessary to make a strict distinction between state-owned and private ships. However, our interest lies in how states were able to lay their hands on private ships, how their ships were fitted out, and whether other groups were also entitled to deploy armed forces. During the sixteenth century Spain had no permanent navy, and the state (that is, the Crown) generally used private ships rented voluntarily or forcibly from their owners, at a standard rate for the time spent in the Crown’s service. Royal subsidies encouraged private shipbuilders to construct vessels that could be used for both warfare and trade. In the mid-s King Philip II charged Cristóbal de Barros, an expert in nautical matters, with the task of encouraging the construction of larger ships. Barros administered a huge fund to be loaned to shipbuilders, at a special rate for ships over tons. He argued that -ton vessels were the key to naval strength. Neither royal pressure nor royal subsidies resulted in the armada of , completely composed of large ships, although this expedition had been planned well in advance. No specific agreement was reached between the Crown, private shipbuilders, and merchants over the desirable size of ships for trade and service in royal armadas. Royal decrees were also issued to protect timber supplies and to set up instruction programmes for mariners. Although the replanting of forests was carried out, it had little impact. The Crown regularly had to resort to requisitioning merchantmen for the transport of troops, supplies, and money in times of peace as well as wartime, perhaps because shipowners regularly had difficulty in securing payment for their services to the Crown.8 By and large the Crown, represented by the Junta de Armadas at Madrid, and the other parties, was not satisfied with the existing policy concerning its need for naval power. During the reign of Philip III (‒) several measures were taken to create more options for procuring ships for the Crown. Direct construction by the Crown at the end of the sixteenth century was found to be too expensive. Objections by merchants to over-large ships ran high. From , the Crown began to exercise more control over the shipbuilding industry that was concentrated mainly in the Spanish northern coastal provinces. Bilbao was at the heart of 8
Phillips (), ‒, ‒.
States and Their Navies · this shipbuilding and shipping region. San Sebastian and Pasajes were other important Basque ports. But the Crown did not only regulate sizes and configurations, it even specified the building locations and the sources of materials and labour. In , for example, a royal ordinance laid down for the first time the dimensions for ships used in the ‘carrera de las Indias’. Five years earlier, the Crown had made a contract with a private individual that was to become a model for future royal involvement in ship construction. With the help of a government loan a certain Bertendona contracted to build ten ships. They were to serve in the royal armadas at a specified monthly fee per ton for four years, during which time the builder would repay his loan. The cost of any damage to the ships while in royal service was to be borne by the Crown. Ships still fit for service after the contracted period would be purchased by the Crown. As a result of this policy some kind of standardization in sizes and proportions was reached, and the galleon became more specialized for warfare than before, though it was still not a dedicated warship.9 The ships were constructed either in private yards or so-called ‘royal shipyards’, which were often not permanent installations but served as a royal yard only when a contract with the Crown was in effect. Government officials supervised the construction process and inspected the final result. Government contractors sometimes offered to help with the first levy of seamen and gunners, while the Crown provided artillery and ammunition. Royal officials kept track of all pieces of armament, both on board ships and when stored on land between voyages. The pieces were shifted around, as need dictated. The Crown had a legal monopoly on the production of guns and ammunition but gave contracts to private manufacturers. A royal arms factory was established, for example, in Seville, and a cannon foundry near Santander in was the result of a contract with a founder from Liège in the Spanish Netherlands.10 The Junta de Armadas operated with two main fleets: the Armada de la Guardia and the Armada del Mar Océano, both formally organized in the late sixteenth century. The task of the first was to protect the treasure ships sailing to and from the Americas, the latter was charged with protecting Spanish interests in European waters and consisted of different squadrons for the northern coast, the Atlantic gateway to the Americas, and the Strait of Gibraltar. The monopoly of naval power was truly in the hands of the rulers in Madrid. In the Spanish Netherlands, however, the Crown relinquished some of its powers in this respect. In the duke of Parma recaptured Dunkirk from the ‘northern rebels’, turned the city into a naval port and established an admiralty there. From then on a two-navies 9 10
Rahn Phillips (), ‒, . Ibid. ‒ (with details of a contract in ), ‒; see also Serrano Mangas ().
· Jaap R. Bruijn policy was initiated: a Flemish fleet on the Spanish royal account and next to this regular navy, a rapidly increasing force of privateers. This abrogation of the monopoly of power turned out to be a great success, for huge numbers of hostile merchant vessels from the northern Netherlands fell victim to the Dunkirk privateers during the next sixty years. Parma’s policy was completed by the creation of one comprehensive admiralty at Brussels, a collective board of seven persons with judicial, administrative, and military powers. Admiralties at Dunkirk and Antwerp (mainly for maritime matters) were dependent institutions. Brussels licensed the private shipowners for privateering ventures, Dunkirk acted as the prize court.11 The creation of a privateering navy was, of course, a symptom of the state’s weakness. It was financially unable to maintain an adequate naval force of its own. Its only authority over the privateering navy was the issue of licences and jurisdiction over all prizes, while two-thirds of the proceeds went to the treasurer of the official navy. As in Spain itself, the Flemish navy was composed of state-owned and hired warships. Most came from the Iberian Peninsula and organization was in fact similar to that of Spain. The choice of supreme commander was always made by the king or his regent. Candidates were nominated by the Council of War or its subcommittee the Junta de Armadas at Madrid, or the Admiralty at Brussels. The appointment of captains followed more-or-less the same procedures. Contractors building warships could also nominate candidates for the office of captain. The decreasing numbers of available mariners stimulated the Spanish authorities to institute in a mandatory registration of all men in Spain with seafaring experience, including those working on small fishing boats. Personal information about each man was registered, and it was called a matrícula. The government had to rely upon private contractors for the provisioning of warships. Once a contract had been signed, the contractor was free to deliver the provisions agreed upon, taking any profit he could. Royal officials helped to negotiate the contracts and were responsible for inspecting and either accepting or rejecting what the contractor supplied. In the Spanish Netherlands tenders were officially invited.12 Spain and its overseas territory, the Spanish Netherlands, symbolize the way in which a monarchy with its centre of power in one place (Madrid), with a derivative of a kind in Brussels, organized its naval forces. Collective boards, the Junta de Armadas and the Admiralty Council, ruled all existing naval facilities on behalf of the King, his Governor, or the Archdukes, all of whom retained the final decision in the last instance. In a few ports spread from Barcelona via Cadiz to Bilbao, warships were fitted out. Officials, appointed by and accountable to Madrid and 11 12
Pollentier (), ‒, ‒; Baetens (), ‒. Pollentier (), ‒, ‒; Rahn Phillips (), ‒, ‒, ; Mühlmann (), ‒.
States and Their Navies · Brussels, oversaw local activities. Finance was centrally organized so that state bankruptcies consequently had a direct effect upon the size and quality of naval exploits. Madrid and Brussels both faced growing difficulties in hiring armed merchantmen. Indeed, the Netherlands were driven back to issuing privateering licences on a vast scale. Madrid took refuge in detailed shipbuilding contracts with private individuals and also considered having galleons built on contract in the Baltic during the early seventeenth century. This solution was also employed by other states unable to raise sufficient naval forces from their own subjects. Venice, for example, in hired via its ambassador at The Hague a fleet of twelve armed Dutch merchantmen, fully manned and provisioned for ten months.13 This force was intended to fight against the Turks, and not for the first time. But in all circumstances, the Spanish Crown retained control of the exploits of all warships under its ensign. The picture is different for the Dutch Republic, the young state which gained its freedom from Spain in a protracted struggle. (The struggle with Spain lasted eighty years, starting in : in practice freedom was already a reality in the s.) This new leading maritime and naval power was a confederation of seven sovereign provinces sharing common finances, one army and one navy, together with co-ordinated foreign relations. For such concerted action the provinces delegated their sovereign powers to the States General at The Hague. After initial disputes over greater centralization, it was decided in to create five separate admiralties, a temporary decision that was to remain unchanged until the end of the Republic in . The five admiralties were located in the maritime provinces of Zeeland, Holland, and Friesland, and to avoid jealousy between the cities of Hoorn and Enkhuizen one admiralty was even based in two cities, with the administration rotating every quarter. This decentralized naval organization, split into five partly autonomous bodies, was the outcome of rivalries between the provinces and among cities in Holland, the richest and most powerful of the seven provinces. Each admiralty was ruled by a board of nine to twelve councillors, appointed by the States General and nominated by the provincial States. Co-ordination of activities in this fragmented naval organization was always a problem. It greatly depended on the extent to which political leaders in the States General and the provinces took an interest in naval affairs and on the urgency of the situation. This interest was seldom lacking in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when Europe and the Republic were ravaged by wars, making navies such important assets. The States General ordered the admiralty boards to send delegates to The Hague to receive instructions and discuss matters of common concern. The princes of Orange held the 13
Rahn Phillips (), ; Geyl (), ‒.
· Jaap R. Bruijn title of ‘Admiral General’ but seldom played an active role in naval affairs, since their major interest was traditionally in the army. Only if they had powerful representatives in the navy was there an improvement in the speed and co-ordination of naval affairs. At times the Grand Pensionary of Holland could also wield great co-ordinating influence.14 Lack of centralization was coupled with practical inequality between the five admiralties. Each admiralty was responsible for its own basic income, for which it levied taxes on incoming and outgoing commodities and on ships and carts. But the financial potential of each admiralty district differed, that of Amsterdam being by far the greatest. Admiralty income was spent on convoying the merchant fleet. Money for battle fleets and squadrons was voted by the States General, which rendered the admiralties totally dependent on the efforts of the provinces which had to provide the funds. In this system the three admiralties in Holland were far more likely to receive their subsidies than the other two. This decentralized naval administration with five departments of unequal financial resources suffered at the whim of a few hundred regents in the cities and noblemen in the countryside. In the period until c. most regents were still economically active and keenly interested in war and peace for the sake of their own affairs. Inadequate convoys or successful privateering ventures by the Spanish Netherlands were felt in their own purses.15 This basically encouraged a careful fostering of naval affairs, but in reality there was also a lack of coordination plus conflicting interests between admiralties, cities, and merchant-rulers, resulting in delays in the departure of naval vessels and only partial compliance with the orders of the States General. In particular, after the end of the Twelve Years’ Truce in the war against Spain (), the naval administration was not equal to its job, and neither the States General nor the Prince of Orange was able to intervene adequately. News of the capture of merchantmen by the enemy was the order of the day! After a couple of years, private initiative in several cities offered to improve commercial safety at sea. In the States General had to accept the creation of private local navies in cities like Amsterdam, Hoorn, and Edam for the purpose of escorting shipping to and from the Baltic and Norway. Local boards of directors (burgomasters and merchants) began to fit out a number of heavily armed merchantmen annually. Expenses were covered by special duties placed on the merchantmen involved. A second navy had come into being, lasting longer than envisaged—indeed until .16 Moreover, this navy fell under the authority of the admiralties only with regard to registration of the captain’s name, articles of war, 14 15 16
Fockema Andreae (), ‒, ‒, ‒. Bruijn (), ‒. De Jonge (), ‒, , ; Elias (), ‒, , ‒.
States and Their Navies · and prizes. An independent navy of this kind was badly needed and even rallied in support of Tromp at The Downs in . The naval administration could fall back on only a small standing fleet. Although each admiralty was equipped with a dockyard for construction, repair, and fitting-out, these facilities were still fairly restricted, for the fixed policy was to have as few warships as possible at the disposal of the admiralties. Quite regularly ships constructed on an admiralty slip were sold off after a few voyages. It was taken for granted that any number of ships required for naval expeditions could be hired, as was the custom of the period. The Dutch mercantile marine was the greatest of the day and its owners, spread over a great number of seaports, were mostly willing to hire out as long as their vessels had not yet been chartered by private freighters and an admiralty would pay the current charter price. The state had neither the power nor the intention to enlist private vessels by force and against the will of the owners. The system worked smoothly and was a cheap way of collecting together a naval force when necessary. An example is illustrative. Under the terms of an Anglo-Dutch treaty stipulating joint naval operations against Spain, the Dutch share in an expedition for was to be twenty ships. No admiralty ships were available for this purpose. On May the States General instructed four of the five admiralties to equip the force. May was already late in the season for hiring ships. The bulk of the mercantile marine had already been fitted out in March and April, as usual. The portion of the admiralty at Amsterdam was eight ships, those at Rotterdam, Hoorn–Enkhuizen, and in Zeeland, four ships each. Councillors of the Amsterdam board immediately started successful negotiations with shipowners. The commissioner of the dockyard was able to sign chartering agreements for eight vessels on May, five days after the order from the States General. The vessels’ tonnage was ‒ tons, and the hiring period six months. The owners promised to install an agreed number of guns together with proper galleys and to add extra bunks for the sailors. The admiralty was responsible for manning and victualling. Eight captains were appointed before the end of the month. The recruitment of a great number of seamen in June, the middle of the sailing season, created a problem and it had to fall back on extra soldiers. By and large, all went off in Amsterdam as planned. Even the subsidy voted by the States General was received punctually. The same happened at the twin admiralty of Hoorn and Enkhuizen. In eight to nine weeks, twelve men-of-war were ready for service, riding at anchor at Texel. They were manned by , hands and armed with guns. Naval administrators could be complimented on their success. There was, however, one problem. The other two admiralties failed in their efforts to hire their contingents at Rotterdam and in Zeeland in time, so the fleet for Spain was not complete in mid-July. The admiralty councillers concerned had
· Jaap R. Bruijn to look for their ships elsewhere, in Amsterdam, Hoorn, and Enkhuizen. They did so, reluctantly and after some hesitation hiring their contingent in July; they then discovered that at that time of year there were hardly any unemployed seamen to be found in Rotterdam and Zeeland. Most of the hands were finally recruited in Amsterdam and Enkhuizen. By then it was August, and the complete fleet could finally depart on August.17 This is just one representative example of how the hire of private vessels functioned in practice. Shipowners were very pleased with the expedition of because May and June was apparently a slack time for full employment in the merchant fleet. The shipowners could also provide twothirds of the guns on board, so the state was in this respect, too, dependent on private entrepreneurs. Dutch naval history shows us still more aspects of a kind of partly privatized naval organization. The ‘entrepreneur’ in the navy was the captain. The admiralties had a fixed number of captains in their service, appointed by the States General on the recommendation of an admiralty board. When commissioned, a captain had to organize his own crew and victualling. He only received the name of one or more officers. With their help he had to recruit all his other crew members. Some signed on knowing him from a previous voyage. Force could not be used. It was the established custom in the port concerned and nearby towns and villages to call people together by ‘tap of the drum’ to serve, and also to display placards. Only in exceptional circumstances and at later dates did an admiralty participate in this recruiting process. The state would help the ‘private’ captain in so far as that in periods of very high demand for seafaring labour a temporary embargo was placed on the departure of merchant and whaling vessels. The monthly wages for the ranks were the same for each admiralty, and those enlisted were registered by admiralty officials. Assembling his crew was not in the least financially rewarding for a captain, whereas captains and flag-officers could profit substantially from victualling their ships. The rations were prescribed by the States General and the admiralties paid the captain or flag-officer a fixed allowance per man per day, to be paid after the end of the voyage or campaign. The allowance was supposed to be higher than necessary to cover the expenses, and any surplus was considered a legitimate and substantial source of income for the captain or flag-officer. Hence a command was very attractive indeed, and the bigger the ship and the crew and the longer the journey, the higher the personal earnings. The commanders were personally responsible for the purchase and transport of all provisions, which they arranged themselves with the help of their wives or mothers. An admiralty took no part whatsoever in this important aspect of the fitting-out of ships and fleets. By and 17
Bruijn (), ‒.
States and Their Navies · large this ‘privatized’ victualling system functioned well and efficiently. Suppliers were familiar with it. Serious complaints were few and corruption on a large scale was impossible. The system was maintained until .18 In the federal Dutch Republic and its decentralized naval administration, government bodies were further removed than elsewhere. The private sector was relied on heavily for ships and also for armament. An obvious area for coordinated action such as victualling was the captain’s or flag-officer’s private concern, although within certain limits. The state had also delegated all military activities beyond the Cape of Good Hope to the East India Company, and it was before a Dutch man-of-war was to sail beyond that point. The strong bonds between naval administration and the private shipping world, however, lost their effectiveness once armed merchantmen were supplanted by superior men-of-war. England was to trigger this process. The striking feature of English naval organization was that London was always at the heart of all naval affairs. King Henry VIII’s more lasting achievement was to provide the Navy with a permanent administration. In a body, later to be called the ‘Navy Board’, was formed. It was composed of seven members, each with a specific task. This board was permanent and its members became experienced naval administrators and advisers on naval matters to the king, his Council, and the Lord Admiral. The practical administration of all naval facilities and arrangements was the board’s responsibility, and it became one of the largest departments of the government and also an important industrial enterprise. The Lord Admiral long remained one of the great officers of state, invested with great honours and high rewards. As a consequence of the results of two Royal Commissions to inquire into naval administration in and , relations between the Lord Admiral and the Navy Board changed. In , for temporary and financial reasons, the post of Lord Admiral was superseded by a board. This new board, the Board of Admiralty, was also endowed with administrative responsibilities. It came to represent the central direction of the Navy and was seated in Westminster, while the Navy Board, reconstituted and located in the City of London, was responsible for detailed administration and answered to the Board of Admiralty. Although this new board did not remain unaffected by the following decades of political turmoil, civil war, and republic, the principle that boards were generally more stable authorities than individuals became accepted in England. A permanent secretary as adviser to and servant of the Board was also introduced, so creating continuity.19 From the late medieval period, the Crown had owned several royal ships, 18 19
Bruijn (). Rodger (), ‒; McGowan (); Andrews ().
· Jaap R. Bruijn primarily built and maintained for warfare. The creation of royal dockyards was a consequence of this. The first dockyard was opened at Portsmouth in , a location miles from London. Its great distance from the capital resulted in the installation of other dockyards along the River Thames: at Woolwich and Deptford in the s, and at Chatham in the s and early s, all near to London and with sheltered deep-water channels. These dockyards were equipped with wet and dry docks, building slips, numerous stores, and an array of workshops. A dry dock was of special importance for the maintenance of ships, allowing the hull to be removed from the water. Chatham in particular was redeveloped and expanded in c.. Thus the Crown had a vast and permanent capacity available for the construction of warships. Master shipwrights, appointed to a particular dockyard, submitted designs for new vessels and supervised all construction and other work.20 The entire activity of the dockyards, including the fitting-out of the fleet, was under the supervision and responsibility of the Navy Board. A very high degree of co-ordination could be achieved. The victualling, however, was not managed directly by this board, which only provided storehouses and audited contractors’ accounts. The supply of victuals was farmed out and contracted by one merchant or a group of them. An annual list was compiled each autumn of the number of men to be victualled in the coming year. The contractor had to deliver goods alongside for transfer and storage by the ship’s company.21 The supply of guns did not fall under the control of the Navy Board or Board of Admiralty. Guns were contracted for, tested, supplied, and administered by the Board of Ordnance. This board, dating from the late Middle Ages, was composed of individuals with sufficient technical and administrative skills to supervise the state’s supply of weapons. There was no naval representative among them. Both the army and the navy were supplied by the Board of Ordnance. The explanation for this arrangement was that the same guns were often used for either fortress or service at sea, as in Spain. Inevitably, relations between the Navy Board and the Board of Ordnance were not without certain frictions.22 By tradition the navy owned a relatively large number of vessels, and various names were repeatedly given to new generations of ships. Nevertheless, England was occasionally forced to fall back on temporary warships, the armed and privately owned merchantmen. From as early as the fifteenth century, there was a system of royal bounties, rewarding builders of ships ‘fit for service’ as naval auxiliaries. There was a fairly consistent shipbuilding programme, especially in the reign of Charles I (‒), producing sufficient vessels for some English 20 22
21 MacDougall (), ‒. Pool (), x–xi; Baugh (), ‒. Lavery (), ‒; Rahn Phillips (), ‒.
States and Their Navies · squadrons of the s to be composed of real warships only. On bad terms with his Parliament and driven by his lack of finances Charles I revived an old direct tax on landed property in to raise money for the fleet, the notorious ‘shipmoney’. Controversy over this levy in was part of the ensuing constitutional crisis in England.23 Meanwhile, ideas about the use of guns and fighting methods were changing. Brass had previously been used for the production of guns, but cheaper and lighter iron guns were now introduced. The gun tackle was improved and the size of gun crews increased. These changes and innovations of the second quarter of the seventeenth century, symbolically represented in huge heavily decorated warships like the French Couronne, Danish Tre Kroner, Swedish Vasa, and the English Sovereign of the Seas, culminated in giving priority to broadside above other fighting tactics.24 The new republican leaders of England completed this new direction from onwards. They embarked at once on a major programme of naval shipbuilding, and their naval experts discovered that most of the existing ships could carry far more guns than they were originally designed for. The guns were to be fully employed. Flag-officers and captains were instructed to sail to the attack in line, to fire the guns in broadsides, to keep in line and to close up gaps if a ship became disabled: clearly, there was no place for armed merchantmen in this method of fighting. This new naval policy and resulting fighting instructions compelled England’s opponents—the Dutch Republic in particular—to follow suit.25 England provides us with an example of a highly centralized and controlled naval organization. Although the Civil War caused rifts in naval circles, the navy nevertheless remained intact and was equipped to handle adequately its transformation into the state’s sole fighting arm at sea. Only the royal names of the ships were changed, on ideological grounds. The Charles, for example, became the Liberty.26
. A Race for Permanent Navies c.‒ The disappearance of the hired merchant vessel from state naval power, which took place during the s, s, and s, completed the process of concentrating the monopoly of naval power within the heart of government. Henceforth, the ship of the line with its increasing battery of guns, mounted ultimately in three layers, was the only real fighting vessel. Their numbers were significant, 23 24 25 26
Lewis (), ‒; Marcus (), ‒; Dietz (). Lavery (), ‒. Lavery (), ‒; Capp (), ‒; Weber (); Parker (b), ‒. Capp (), .
· Jaap R. Bruijn though this did not mean that the more lightly armed frigates were of no value. Their existence, however, directly reflected the availability of battleships. An arms race developed between the major seapowers during the second half of the seventeenth century, in which France emerged as a new and very significant player. (See Table .) The three Anglo-Dutch Wars of ‒ were marked by many straightforward naval battles lasting perhaps two, three, or even four days, where the opponents sought to inflict severe losses in ships. Fireships were used on a vast scale. Captains and their crews were encouraged to capture or destroy hostile vessels. Financial rewards were put up for such actions, and regularly increased. These features of naval warfare became universal and were also features of battles in which the Danish or Swedish fleets participated. English national pride was especially injured when the flagship Royal Charles, one of the trophies of the Dutch raid on the Medway in , was given an unduly ostentatious place in a Dutch dockyard. Fierce national pride lay in the various navies, as can be seen when in Tourville, an outstanding French admiral, was called ‘un poltron de tête, mais pas de coeur’, for not pursuing an even more decisive victory at Beachy Head after he had successfully beaten the Anglo-Dutch fleet and destroyed part of it.27 Governments could not continue to construct and fit out ever more, and bigger, ships and fleets in the long term. The building costs of the ship of the line grew rapidly, conflicting with the limit on most countries’ financial resources or their willingness to provide high naval budgets. This happened during the Nine Years’ War (‒) and the War of the Spanish Succession (‒). The state took a step back from the process, as the government of the Spanish Netherlands had so successfully done in the previous period. France in particular gave full reign to privateering ventures, even putting men-of-war at the disposal of private entrepreneurs. But the Dutch Republic, increasingly feeling the burden of continuous naval warfare, also encouraged privateering more persistently and raised the level of financial reward. Duties on commercial and shipping activities could no longer be augmented. The Dutch government and its admiralties had to accept coordination by merchants and shipowners of joint sailings to and from the Baltic, Norway, Archangel, and the whaling grounds.28 However, changes in French policy were the most remarkable. Although Richelieu had begun to build up a French navy from onwards, it had been neglected and fallen off in the late s and s. It was one man, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (‒) who, free from interference by any superior or board other than King Louis XIV himself, provided France with the strongest navy in the world during the s. He began his work in , with the title, intendant de la marine, and 27 28
Jenkins (), . Verhees-Van Meer (), ; Bruijn (), ‒.
States and Their Navies · soon (in ) he was also responsible for financial, industrial, commercial, and colonial affairs. This concentration of power in the hands of one person yielded enormous results but was soon to show its weak side. Colbert had a vision of what seapower might mean for France. More trade would increase the state’s finances and would be at the expense of other countries. The navy would protect trade and the colonies and make use of a reserve of crews from merchant vessels.29 The French Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts gave ready access to the great trading seas, the Channel coast to the North Sea. France would always have to maintain two fleets, but the provision of well-laid-out shore facilities on both coasts and good instructions would make it possible to unite the fleet when necessary and to bring one section round to the other. However, despite the ability of Colbert’s successors, different visions of seapower, lack of money and royal support, together with the priority given to land warfare brought about drastic changes in French naval policy. The idea that the full-sized French fleet would actively seek battle with the enemy was abandoned. The naval budget was cut by per cent in and . Guerre de course, and no longer guerre d’escadre, was the policy. Stateowned ships of the line and frigates were hired out for privateering purposes to private shipowners. Naval officers and administrators, courtiers, and others were encouraged by the state to invest in these ventures. All was done to make the use of state property by private persons as attractive as possible. From an economic point of view this new policy was highly rewarding, but it destroyed Colbert’s vision of French naval power.30 Colbert’s naval infrastructure was more durable than his vision and survived financial and royal whims. At his death in Colbert bequeathed a navy of smaller and bigger ships of the line and galleys, all built in France and crewed by Frenchmen, with an administration based in Paris at the centre of a network of intendants in the outlying ports. Colbert managed to set up a system to solve the problem of recruiting sufficient trained seamen. Although an earlier provision had been made in to compile lists of seafaring men (as in Spain in ), Colbert developed and elaborated a system of conscription, the classes maritimes, forerunner of the later Inscription Maritime. A great administrative structure was created in ‒. Commissioners were sent out to the coastal districts to draw up rolls of the entire seafaring population. When a young man went to sea, his name was entered on the roll and he became liable for service in the fleet. The sailors were divided into classes, each of which was required to serve one year in rotation on board naval ships. The system functioned fairly well and gave extra provisions to those serving.31 The Inscription Maritime set a standard with regard to state control of its seafaring population. 29 30
On Richelieu: Castagnos (); on Colbert: Meyer (); in general: Jenkins (). 31 Symcox (), ‒. Ibid. ‒.
· Jaap R. Bruijn Colbert had to organize naval facilities for construction, repair, and maintenance almost from scratch. The four fortified bases of Toulon, Brouage, Brest, and Le Havre were inadequate from the days of Richelieu. In ‒, Colbert decided to have Brest, Lorient, and Rochefort built or rebuilt on the Atlantic coast and Sète on the Mediterranean. They were established as arsenals for the navy, as well as bases for overseas trading companies. The quest for seapower was indeed state policy. The private interests of two surveyors affected not only the choice of location, but also the desire to keep royal enterprise separate from the maritime business of its subjects and also to ensure its defensibility. Rochefort was to become the principal Atlantic base. Soon, however, it became evident that its site, as well as that of Sète, had been miscalculated. It was then decided instead that Brest should be the primary base. There was no pre-existing community to speak of these new naval locations; the central government did the planning and building and everything happened with astonishing speed; the four bases were all planned within three to five years. By c. their populations had increased to , in Brest and Rochefort, and to ,‒, in both Lorient and Sète. There were vast differences in spatial planning: Brest, for example, had no housing plan until . All four remained metropolitan colonies of Paris. Two societies lived here: one composed of those interested in the opportunities they afforded for work, the other of those who served the state as agents and administrators. The state defined the codes of public behaviour, not the church as was normally the case. The four bases were not integrated into the regional economic and social pattern, for dependence upon Paris kept them separate from their hinterlands and they lacked any impetus of their own.32 The four bases provide excellent examples of state-controlled naval and staterelated expansion. Brest and Rochefort were pure naval bases; on the Mediterranean coast, the port-city of Toulon was enlarged from onwards with a new naval base west of the city. Another interesting feature was the extension of the facilities for the large galley fleet at Marseilles.33 Initially, Colbert organized the employment of foreign master shipwrights from England, the Dutch Republic, and Naples. Training of French ship’s carpenters began, and from the s onwards French men-of-war were often the best-designed ships, outsailing most others. Colbert extensively exploited all the available elements which Mahan was later to postulate as principal conditions for the development of seapower. The volte-face in French naval policy already described was in c. also very obvious in the naval bases: stagnation and decay had the upper hand over new construction and maintenance. 32 33
Konvitz (), ‒; Acerra (); L’Orient Arsenal (). Zysberg (, ).
States and Their Navies · The development of naval bases like Rochefort or Brest was a feature of the great standing navies. In earlier days dockyards used simply for shipbuilding and repair, as at Portsmouth or Chatham sufficed, but could no longer continue. A base now had to fulfil four functions: storage in an ‘arsenal’ of all kinds of finished and raw materials required for the fitting-out of ships (armament included), building sites, facilities for repair and maintenance, and a basin in which the ships could be anchored. Safety and security were guaranteed by moats, walls, gates, and fortifications. A huge labour force was usually connected with a naval base, employed by a single central employer: the state.34 In several countries, naval bases were located quite far from the centre of government, so becoming far-flung symbols of state authority. This was particularly true in France, Brest was within seven days’ ride of Paris, Rochefort four, and Toulon nine or ten. Another example was the new naval base, Karlskrona, in southern Sweden, far away from Stockholm. It was first planned in and the military areas were separated from the public areas. Karlskrona was the idea and choice of one man, Count Hans Wachtmeister (who died in ), president of the Admiralty Council in the then absolute monarchy, an integral part of his successful efforts to rebuild the dilapidated Swedish navy.35 Developments of this kind in France or Sweden were alien to both the Dutch Republic and England. The step towards a permanent instead of a hired navy was quickly and efficiently taken in the Republic because the basic infrastructure was already in place. The Grand Pensionary, John de Witt, succeeded in coordinating the relevant activities of the five admiralties. Three major building programmes of ships of the line and frigates were drawn up and completed between and . The most ostentatious symbol of the new naval policy was the construction of a huge naval storehouse and dockyard facilities on the outskirts of Amsterdam in . At Flushing the old dock area was given a new sluice in , enlarging it so that it could handle about men-of-war. Eleven years later, the facilities at Flushing were further improved with the construction of a dry dock, the first and only one in the Netherlands. Dockyards in completely new locations, however, were not considered. One important change relating to the support for the navy by Dutch society was connected with the permanent navy. The disappearance of the merchant vessel as a man-of-war meant that merchants/shipowners lost the regular business provided by the admiralties. Many of them had been regents and members of admiralty boards as well. A process of aristocratization had meanwhile begun amongst the ruling classes, transforming most regents from merchants into merchant bankers with less active involvement in business. As a consequence of these 34 35
Acerra and Meyer (), ‒. Nordmann (), ‒; Konvitz (), ‒.
· Jaap R. Bruijn two shifts, direct ties between ‘Mars’ and ‘Mercurius’ were loosened. It was remarkable that the influence of naval administrators like the father and son team of De Wildt (‒) increased sharply.36 State and government in England were not fundamentally affected by the birth of the large permanent navy, because it had been in existence since the s and s. The time-honoured system of bounties for building merchantmen to be used as naval auxiliaries was changed so that only the largest East Indiamen ‘mounted with thirty pieces of ordnance at least’ could qualify. State and government were soon to lose all interest in maintaining a supply of auxiliary fighting ships. Administrative structure was already well established and did not differ essentially in this period. The Navy and other Boards were already established and after some relapses into single-handed political leadership, there was a return in to rule by commission. During the previous period, the secretaries of the Admiralty had always had the opportunity to put their mark on the naval administration, thus providing a relatively high degree of continuity and stability, Samuel Pepys in particular was one of these influential individuals.37 The sinew of each naval administration was always money, whose availability depended either upon the whims of absolute monarchs or many-voiced Estates, or on the short-term economic situation and the corruption of tax farmers. This problem was by and large solved in England. One of the unintentional consequences of the political crisis which racked England after William III’s landing in was that the state developed new means to levy and collect revenue, by which the tax-collecting system was extricated from the grasp of financiers. The new Bank of England () offered the government a system of funding, even in years when credit was tight, and the navy could thereafter rely on the availability of money.38 The English navy had for some time been well provided with dockyard facilities, although not always reliably or efficiently supervised by the Navy Board. Sheerness was the only sizeable addition, in c.. The existing yards at Portsmouth, Chatham, Deptford, and Woolwich were expanded and improved. The location and extent, however, of dockyard facilities were also the outcome of foreign relations. In c. the Dutch could no longer be considered England’s major enemy, and France was taking over that role. The value of good dockyard facilities along the Channel and near the Western Approaches increased, rendering Portsmouth the most important dockyard. After two new dry docks and basins were added to its facilities. An entire new dockyard was started at Plymouth. Construction work began in , planned as a single entity. Its docks 36 37 38
On John De Wildt and the navy: Oudendijk (); Bruijn (), ‒. Rodger (), ‒; for a different view of Pepys: Hornstein (), ‒; Davis (), . Brewer (), ‒, ‒. There is detailed discussion in Ehrman (), ‒.
States and Their Navies · were the first in England to be built of stone, all earlier ones being made of timber or impacted mud. A further widening of the scope of English naval activities was eventually to result in the state extending its arm into overseas bases as well. That process was started during the War of the Spanish Succession with Gibraltar and Port Mahon on Minorca.39 The creation of naval dockyards that would meet the four fundamental requirements already mentioned was a universal feature of all major navies. Stateplanned and state-regulated, most of these dockyards were immense enterprises, the largest industrial units in a country, employing workforces of as many as ,‒, men. Far from universal, however, was the policy of a state to gain control of its seafaring population on behalf of its navy in wartime. The same was almost as true for the standardization of professional officer skills. Permanent navies—in most countries also with growing numbers of vessels— demanded more seafaring personnel than ever before. The Dutch navy had , mariners and , soldiers on board on the eve of the battle of Texel in . A full complement of the Swedish navy in c., by then the fourth largest in Europe, would have required , men. In , the biggest navy had to recruit its personnel from among , seafarers in France: Tourville’s fleet of comprised , men.40 At the same time most mercantile marines were expanding. This double claim on a restricted reservoir of manpower resulted in friction. The French government introduced the Inscription Maritime. In Sweden the existing ständig båtsmanshåll system was improved by Wachtmeister in so that it was based on voluntary recruitment in the coastal districts; the båtsmän could be mobilized relatively quickly. Another absolute monarchy, in Denmark, sharply increased the number of Norwegians conscripted into the Danish navy after . One in every five eighteen-year-old boys was forced to go to Copenhagen to serve in the navy.41 England and the Dutch Republic did not introduce or extend systematic recruitment. In both countries the supply of seamen was very much greater than elsewhere. As soon as friction between the demands of the navy and the merchant marine arose and the number of volunteers no longer sufficed, the English administration resorted to the use of press-gangs in maritime districts and on board vessels of any kind, a practice which ceased when no longer necessary. The Dutch government used to put a temporary embargo on nearly all commercial shipping in the spring, or required the delivery of the so-called fifth man of each vessel before it was permitted to sail. But these methods were not regularly applied. 39 For general discussion: Coad (); MacDougall (), ‒; for Plymouth, see also Woodward (). 40 Bruijn (), ; Glete (), ; Nordmann (), ‒, ; Symcox (), , . 41 Glete (), ; Rian (), ‒.
· Jaap R. Bruijn Foreigners were always allowed to serve in each navy, perhaps most frequently on board Dutch ships. But a standing navy afforded only officers the opportunity of long-service employment. Naval officers became a professional class. In most countries the state wanted to extend its control of the entry and qualifications of young cadets and lieutenants. With the exception of the Dutch Republic, rules for apprenticeship were introduced and examinations introduced in most countries during the s and s. In France in particular, entry was soon restricted to sons of the nobility, and effected in the naval bases of Toulon, Rochefort, and Brest. At Copenhagen in a school for Danish or Norwegians cadets was opened.42
. Continuity and Free Play versus Overall State Interference, –c. The Peace of Utrecht in marked the end of the expensive and protracted wars centred round French Louis XIV’s attempts at hegemony. Warships had meanwhile not only grown in number but also in armament and complement. On nearly all sides navies became smaller, most noticeably in France and the Netherlands. Twenty years later, the French and Dutch navies had over per cent fewer ships of the line at their disposal, the British something over per cent. The size of the British navy did not change further, while the French navy was to expand once more from the s onwards. (See also Table .) The Dutch navy continued to decline. British naval mastery, eclipsed in the previous period by the Dutch, was threatened by the phenomenal rebirth of the Spanish navy.43 Against a combined Franco–Spanish fleet British admirals were no longer superior in numbers of vessels. Britain was confronted with this disturbing development during the War of American Independence, and it resulted in a short-lived armaments race in the s. Both in Britain and the Netherlands, representative institutions such as Parliament and the States General together with the provincial States had control of military funding, which guaranteed some kind of stability and continuity in policy. In most other countries, the personal ambitions and ideas of the monarch or an influential minister could mean emphasis on naval expansion or diversion to other fields. France and Spain provide striking examples; Sweden, too, but on a smaller scale. In , King Gustavus III embarked on a rapid reconstruction of the Swedish navy, for which French subsidies were largely responsible.44 42 43 44
Acerra and Meyer (), ‒; Davies (); Ehrman (), ‒; Nordmann (), . Modelski and Thompson (), ‒; Black (). Nordmann (), ‒.
States and Their Navies · In the Dutch Republic the governing bodies maintained a consistent policy towards the navy. The country was financially exhausted at the end of the wars from to . Decades passed before debts were paid off and recovery made. For many consecutive decades too, the five admiralties were not substantially subsidized by the States General, and there was a general lack of incentive to subsidize the navy since the Barbary corsairs were the only threat to Dutch merchant shipping. Neither the members of representative bodies nor the admiralties took a personal interest in naval and maritime matters: a very different state of affairs from the seventeenth century. Not before the power relations in Europe began to change during the s and s did the navy return to the agenda, and then only to become a bone of contention between opposing parties in Dutch domestic policy. Reinforcement of the army and/or the navy was related to a foreign policy orientated either towards France or Britain and also to the position of the Stadholder. In this context there was little state influence upon naval matters except for the introduction of controls on the training of naval officers. In c., later than in any other country, rules for examination were formulated and training colleges founded at Amsterdam and Rotterdam.45 The development of naval organization in Britain differed little from that in the Netherlands. By the structure of the naval administrative system in both countries was well established and would remain fundamentally unaltered. The method of maintenance and operation, however, differed greatly. Government and Parliament in Britain were fully convinced of the necessity to retain a strong navy at all times. Although the degree of importance attributed to the navy could vary and might influence the level of the annual budget, adequate funds were always available for all normal expenditures. Furthermore, the financial condition of the British government was healthy, unlike the Netherlands, which allowed the naval administration to produce better results. Regardless of the régime (Whig or Tory), governments were willing to spend increasing amounts of money on military matters and warfare. Expenditure by navy and army in the Nine Years’ War was £ million, in the Seven Years’ War (‒) already as high as £ million. During the eighteenth century, ‒ per cent of annual expenditure went either on current spending on the navy and the army, or to service the debts incurred to pay for earlier wars. Civil expenditure hardly existed, and in practice mainly meant the domestic expenses of king and court.46 The British government now had available permanent organizational structures relating to ships, stores, guns, and officers, as well as victuals for its seapower. After , victualling was entrusted to salaried commissioners. This was the start 45 46
Bruijn (), ‒, ‒; Bartstra (). Brewer (), ‒.
· Jaap R. Bruijn of the Victualling Board, and the provisioning of the fleet was no longer carried out by contractors. The seven commissioners received detailed instructions and met regularly as a board in London, heading an extended organization. Care of the sick and wounded had been the responsibility of temporary commissioners in wartime from onwards. After the War of the Austrian Succession (‒) the commissioners remained and a permanent Board of Sick and Hurt was established. Instead of naval hospitals run by contract, permanent naval hospitals were founded. The hospital of Haslar at Portsmouth was partly occupied in and completed by ; another hospital near Plymouth partly in use from was finished in . The hospitals symbolized a new regime in treating sick seamen under professional care and in isolation. Haslar was for many years the largest brick building in Europe, costing over £,.47 One important aspect of seapower remained outside the control of the state and the naval administration: the manpower on board ship. A great reservoir of trained seamen had always been available in Britain, but the problem was how to mobilize it for the navy. Solutions had been sought ever since . Voluntary registration was tried unsuccessfully, while compulsory conscription was rejected by Parliament in . Merchants were not interested in making it easier for the navy to ‘steal’ their manpower. Above all conscription ran against the grain of the constitution, being reminiscent of royal tyranny.48 The naval administration was thus forced to continue its inefficient recruiting system well into the nineteenth century. One other aspect deserves mention. High-ranking naval officers, when not on active service regularly became members of the naval administration. The highest positions were on the Board of Admiralty, either as senior naval lord or as First Lord. Both positions were awarded for largely political reasons. This process had begun in , and after some intervals it became a normal feature for a former officer, in the position of First Lord, to become a member of the cabinet. The cabinet handled the central direction of the nation’s affairs and also the overall supervision of naval operations. Naval as well as army officers took their place in both Houses of Parliament. In ‒ between and per cent of the total membership of the Commons were officers. One in every three to four was a naval officer. Political animosity often divided the officers’ corps to a great degree, in particular on the eve of, and during, the War of American Independence.49 Relations between state and navy in France can be characterized under three headings: capriciousness, segregation, and perfection. During the War of the Spanish Succession warfare at sea was not a serious French priority and the fleet Baugh (), ‒; Rodger (), ‒; on the relation between Navy Board and Board of Admiralty, c.: Middleton (). 48 49 Baugh (), ‒. Rodger (), , ‒; Brewer (), ‒. 47
States and Their Navies · soon fell into decay. After the Peace of Utrecht lack of financial means and warweariness, almost universal in Europe, completed this process. In no less than ships of the line could be counted, while twenty years later there were a mere . The interest and influence of a few secrétaires d’État à la Marine only lay at the root of an extensive programme of shipbuilding and some reorganization. Such a programme, however, was closely linked to the question of how long they would remain in favour at the royal court. The Comte de Maurepas, for instance, who for a decade had influenced a naval revival, was dismissed in , not because of any particular failing, but rather because of the growing influence of new factions at court and the wretched condition of naval finances. Such events resulted in inconsistency and shifts in naval policy. Just one feature of this inconsistency might be a sudden lack of naval officers.50 The unpredictability of the availability of finances must also come under the heading ‘capricious’. Students of French naval history point to segregation as the greatest weakness in French naval organization. ‘La marine se caractérise par l’absence de tout organisme chargé, non pas d’administrer, de gérer la flotte, mais de définir ses missions et les moyens à mettre en œuvre, de concevoir et diriger les opérations’. In other words, it was typified by the failure to bring forward naval officers with sea experience to positions of administrative responsibility.51 Paris and Versailles, with their representatives (the intendants) in the naval bases were one world; the naval officers, their ships and squadrons belonged to another. No naval officer ever became an administrator, nor did the king or his secretaries have any knowledge of ships and the sea. There was no French Anson, Hawke, or Middleton. Moreover, each naval base was an entity in itself, directed by the intendant, who was individually responsible to the king for his administration. The appointment of the duc de Choiseul in as secretary of the navy was important in this respect. More than any previous minister he was able to link naval to foreign policy. He also succeeded in generating some degree of national sympathy and financial support for the navy. He further elaborated Maurepas’s policy that the French navy would no longer endeavour to equal the British navy on its own, but only in combination with the navy of another state. As a result of the Bourbon treaty of the joint Franco-Spanish fleets became a formidable opponent for Britain. In , one of Choiseul’s successors tried to reduce segregation on another level by issuing new instructions for the administration of the arsenals and dockyards in the naval bases.52 The third characteristic was perfection. French naval administrators succeeded in organizing naval construction to perfection, and they tried to do the same with 50 51 52
Pritchard (a), ‒; Acerra and Meyer (), ‒, . Quotations are from Acerra and Meyer (), ; Pritchard (a), . Acerra and Meyer (), ‒.
· Jaap R. Bruijn the education of their naval officers. French constructors were in the forefront of naval ship design and construction for most of the eighteenth century. This resulted from their recognition of the need to increase the social status of shipwrights and was most obvious in c., when a naval shipwright’s occupation was deemed to meet the necessary criteria for classification as a profession. Furthermore, constructors were introduced to a general mathematical culture. The first school was opened at Toulon in , quickly followed by one in Paris. Although this policy experienced some vicissitudes, it was completed with the establishment of a corps of naval engineers in , known as ingénieurs-constructeurs de la marine, and with the establishment of a new school: l’Ecole des élèves ingénieursconstructeurs.53 Naval construction had indeed reached perfection. Traditionally, the naval administration retained a strong influence on both the recruitment and education of its naval officers. The education programme was very detailed and relatively theoretical. The navy, however, attracted no members of the influential noble families, but mostly poor provincial nobles. The rules of promotion were never clear, but in practice it was very slow. The corps consisted largely of older officers until Choiseul introduced measures to rejuvenate it. His administration also dramatically revised the teaching programme. Young cadets were to have practical experience, concentrate more on mathematics and hydrography, and to be educated in scientific reasoning. However, this increased state interference in the naval officers’ corps, laid down in perfect and detailed ordonnances, never fulfilled these expectations. In wartime, the navy was unable to function well without the officers bleus, considered second-rate officers from outside the navy.54 Whatever the assets and shortcomings of the French navy, the French state had at its disposal a surprisingly large and well-equipped fleet in the War of American Independence. No fewer than ships of the line featured when France participated in that war in . Its ally, Spain, put a fleet of ships of the line to sea. The rebirth of the Spanish navy was the most striking feature of the period. Both in France and Spain, the navy was always of secondary importance in the context of the armed services as a whole. The army was far more important during the great wars of c.. However, the ambitions of two Spanish ministers, José Patiño (‒) and the marquis de la Ensenada (‒) resulted in a first-rate navy, which during the last years of Ensenada’s rule even held pride of place in Spanish politics and finances. At a later stage, during the s, two other ministers, Julián de Arriagas and Pedro González de Castéjon, introduced a number of further reforms. Britain was considered Spain’s main enemy, particularly in the 53 54
Pritchard (b). Acerra and Meyer (), ‒; Taillemite (), ; on the officers bleus: Aman ().
States and Their Navies · western hemisphere. From the portfolios of Navy and the Indies were controlled by a single individual in the King’s council. Any reorganization of the navy was always initiated and directed by the state in the person of the minister concerned. Neither Patiño nor Ensenada restricted themselves to the reorganization and updating of existing institutions, rules, and customs, and were also keen to introduce new British and French ideas. Hardly any part of the navy was left untouched by this wind of reorganization and reform: the administration at Madrid, the naval bases, shipbuilding, officers, and the lower ranks. The Bourbon family on the Spanish throne and its French advisers often lay behind these initiatives. An interesting reform (for it can be considered as such) was the installation of an Admiralty (Almirantazgo) in . Under the formal supervision of an admiralgeneral, a board became responsible for the political and administrative direction of all naval affairs. Members of the board included high-ranking officers. The Board of Admiralty in Great Britain had probably served as a model for this reform. In practice, however, the secretary of the Admiralty (Ensenada) was soon to take all business into his own hands and be promoted to minister (indendant). Power concentrated in one person, who had to remain in favour with the court, was again the hallmark of the Spanish naval administration.55 More lasting and far-reaching was Patiño’s decision to create three separate naval districts around El Ferrol, Cadiz, and Cartagena. In locations were selected for very extensive naval facilities. At El Ferrol everything was built from scratch. The fleet was also divided into three squadrons. It took the rest of the century to dig and construct basins, arsenals, slipways, and other facilities for shipbuilding and repair on behalf of the continuously growing fleet. Owing to inconsistency in policy and lack of finance, adequate stocks would always be a crucial factor in the operations of these well-laid-out naval bases.56 A naval shipbuilding tradition was almost non-existent in Spain. In the first instance Patiño had to order warships from abroad. Ensenada introduced British methods of construction and recruited British shipwrights. From , three British constructors directed the yards at El Ferrol, Cadiz, and Cartagena. It is likely that a new balance at court favoured a switch to French methods, when in a French constructor was charged with the general direction of operations. A school of naval constructors was immediately founded in . Later, in , Spanish constructors themselves carried all responsibilities for design and building; they had almost achieved perfection in the quality of Spanish warships.57 Patiño also founded a school for naval cadets because there had hitherto been 55
Mühlmann (), ‒.
56
Ibid. ‒, ‒.
57
Ibid. ‒.
· Jaap R. Bruijn no form of education or examination for officers. He wanted to give the state full supervision of the professional and social quality of its future officers. Colbert’s system was his example, not the generally open British system. In the Real Compañía de Caballeros Guardias Marinas was opened at Cadiz. Patiño introduced a programme of theory and practice; he aimed successfully at the entry of sons of noble families. As in France, but only later during the s, the inferior position of naval officers in relation to naval administrators began to change. In the naval bases leading naval officers were assuming greater responsibility. Also in line with French naval training the emphasis was placed on a ship’s safe return from a campaign and the avoidance of risks.58 Patiño and his successors were faced with the problem of finding enough seamen to man the expanding navy. The old recruitment system of the Matrícula de Mar in parts of northern Spain was extended to all coastal districts. All seamen and fishermen had to be registered. An administration was set up, but it was a long time before the system was fully operative. Those concerned were uncooperative, while naval shipboard life was unattractive, the pay low and irregular, and the end of the enlistment never certain. With coercion and privileges, formulated in several regulations, the naval administration tried to create a reliable system, guaranteeing sufficient hands when necessary, but the system only became fully operational in , when , men were registered.59 In the s, most naval administrations were prepared for the arms race then underway. The basic facilities required for more shipbuilding and larger fleets were available. The human factor would always remain difficult. One country, however, had not recognized the signs of the times: the Dutch Republic. It is worth concluding this chapter with a brief study of Dutch developments.
. The Belated Dutch Reaction and the Human Factor, c.‒ The Dutch Republic woke up with a start in c., when it became embroiled in a full-scale war between Britain, Spain, and France as a result of the American Revolution, while previously ‘real’ war had seemed to the Dutch rulers a thing of the past. Endless discussions about extra funds for the navy and/or the army had necessarily to reach quick conclusions. Nationalist feelings ran high when Britain captured Dutch vessels. Soon the two political parties branded each other as the scapegoats for the weak state of the country’s navy. A surprising revitalization of the naval administration was the consequence of all this wrangling. Little construction in the admiralty dockyards had taken place before , and 58
Mühlmann, ch. .
59
Ibid. ch. .
States and Their Navies · then largely of frigates. No fewer than thirty-six ships of the line and fifty-four frigates were launched between and . Huge provincial subsidies were voted and paid, but the capacity of the naval dockyards was unequal to the construction programme and private yards were brought in. A completely new naval base was also designed, later known as Den Helder naval base, at the most northerly tip of the province of Holland. Digging and building works were started in the s. Naval forces were ordered to sail to Asia to support the declining power of the East India Company.60 The number of naval officers was increased, and in the race for the balance of power at sea the Dutch navy had again become an ally not to be ignored. The revitalized naval administration had itself to face serious plans for greater centralization. Five autonomous admiralties began to be considered an archaism. The Grand Pensionary even called the arrangement a monster. In , a single central admiralty council at The Hague was proposed. However, the vested interests of the three maritime provinces with their own admiralties were too strong to make such profound change acceptable. Greater co-ordination was achieved only in with the creation of a so-called Department for the Navy, connected with the court of the Stadholder at The Hague. Its members were the leading naval administrators of Amsterdam and Rotterdam and three leading flagofficers. This department could make suggestions, take initiatives, and give advice,61 so giving naval officers official and prominent places in Dutch naval administration for the first time. But this innovation did not essentially change the earlier procedures. The human factor was the major concern of authorities in other countries. Were sufficient hands available for the seemingly ever-growing fleets? More, and larger, ships had to be manned and officered. Such concerns were even felt in Britain. Proposals for a general register of seamen were put forward and discussed in Parliament in , but without result. In Spain, the authorities overplayed their hand when large-scale recruitment of immatriculados was accompanied by violations of privileges. This resulted in flight and desertion.62 French secretaries of the navy were publicly worried about the inadequate numbers of seamen registered and tried to improve the standard of naval cadet training. Entry by members of social classes other than the nobility supposedly addressed the shortage of officers, but it was easier to increase the output of the dockyards than to solve the human factor.63
60 61 62 63
De Jonge (), ‒; De Jonge (), ‒. Prud’homme van Reine (), , ‒. Bromley (), xvi, xxxix–xli; Mühlmann (), ‒. Acerra and Meyer (), ‒, ‒, .
· Jaap R. Bruijn . Conclusion The nature of intra-state conflicts and the growing interest in shipping and trade forced governments to pay attention to the availability of adequate naval strength. Initially, navies were assembled on an ad hoc basis, with the state relying on private entrepreneurs. But the birth of the ship of the line during the s and s and the introduction of line-ahead tactics in battles put an end to informal navies. The monopoly of naval power was then transferred to state-run standing navies. Only in wartime was part of this monopoly delegated to commissioned privateers. The Dutch Republic was the last country to enjoy locally organized navies before the practice ceased in . The Dutch Republic was also the only country which did not offer naval protection to its citizens in far-away countries, and which had a decentralized naval organization. From about onwards, state institutions became increasingly responsible for all aspects connected with a navy. Facilities for construction, maintenance, and repair of ships were established or improved and enlarged. Arsenals formed an integral part of such dockyards or naval bases, which employed great numbers of skilled and unskilled workers. The state also wanted to ensure its officers were fully qualified; examinations and some kind of training—later in schools—were introduced. Victualling, ordnance, and medical care were other concerns of naval administrators. Most states were constantly seeking ways to ensure sufficient seamen were at their disposal. Countries such as Spain, Sweden, and France established some form of conscription. All seafaring people were registered. Registration, however, could never dispel all worries, for either the system did not work sufficiently well, or the seafaring population was simply too small. English and Dutch naval administrators believed more in the free play of supply and demand on the labour market. They also lacked the legal instruments for conscription. When necessary, as in wartime, impressment or embargo were introduced, which usually provided sufficient national and foreign seamen. Entry, training, and the examination of naval officers were only hesitantly or belatedly subject to state intervention. A stable and consistent naval policy was another feature of both administrations, the English in particular. Experienced English flagofficers were admitted into the Board of Admiralty and became cabinet ministers. The naval administrations in France, Spain, and Sweden often suffered from the whims of kings and ministers, while the army always took pride of place. Those administrations were more successful in running dockyards than fleets at sea. Was Mahan right after all, when he pointed to the character of governments as one of his six elements affecting seapower? He did not mention corruption and other kinds of abuses, but these were certainly features of all administrations during the ancien régime.
States, Roads, War, and the Organization of Space Jean Meyer
. Introduction It is a truism to say that states—medieval city-states or nation-states—always ran up against the major problem of space. However, geohistory, so dear to the heart of Fernand Braudel,1 is far from having yielded all the secrets of its primary evidence. Here, for all the barbarity of the term, I shall speak of the ‘differential permeability’ of space. Space takes many forms—land, river, road, and sea. It is in the inadequacies and complementarities—indeed, the oppositions—of these very diverse elements that one of the most acute problems encountered by states of all kinds between the fourteenth and the nineteenth centuries is to be found. Perceiving space intellectually in its dual macro-military and micro-military (as well as in its macro- and micro-political) manifestation and measuring it in the concrete details of its lines of defence, its relief models, and its maps (at first nautical charts), changed the very concept of the state, gave it the contours of its imagination, real or envisaged, and as a result modified its very essence. Communicating views and transmitting instructions comprised the hidden but essential part of every business transaction and determined governmental efficiency. News and men came and went, and made journeys, more quickly—and often by different routes—than produce: the isochrones of transmission speed2 are not those of the flow of light, luxury goods, nor even of the flow of heavy and voluminous produce. From the Brownian movement of the occasional couriers of the dukes of Burgundy taking the quickest way on horseback or on foot, to structured networks on land or at sea, there was a world of difference—worlds which were juxtaposed and only occasionally overlapped. 1 2
Braudel (), i, ‒. Ibid. i, ‒; Sardella ().
· Jean Meyer These tremendous differences in speed were not to be found at sea. Despite the use of frigates, news hardly circulated faster than goods: the immense, primordial advantage of the sea, but one which could also be a handicap. I shall begin by putting forward an elementary topography of routes. It can be established according to two principles: the geographical service-area and its possible use. There were direct routes linking large towns only, leaving to one side small towns and villages, like the Roman road, taking the shortest way. Routes royales (king’s highways) were of this type, radiating out from the capital to sensitive areas. Coexistent with, and complementing them, were the service routes, threading their way through the bends of the precautionary defences in narrow passes which were by nature major obstacles to heavy artillery, the supreme weapon of kings.3 Tracing these lines on the flat surface of a map resolves nothing, however, for everything depended on what the route actually was. There were entire networks accessible virtually only to transport by draught animals: horses and, above all from the sixteenth century onwards, mules and camels. The Ottoman network was one such, or that of Greece in the time of the first Baedekers or Guides bleus.4 Contrasting with these were roads accessible to carts, where, broadly speaking, northern Europe with its four-wheeled wagons, equipped since the sixteenth century with a mobile front-wheel axle unit, could be differentiated from southern Europe with its two-wheeled carts, the object of intensive study by geographers in the inter-war years.
The modern state favoured this third type, following the example of the Roman Empire. The Spanish state centred its network first on Toledo, then Madrid.5 The clear advantage of river and sea over land can be gauged. The sea was the realm par excellence of heavy artillery and heavy transport. The river’s advantages were readily apparent by contrast with roads encumbered with land frontiers. The chronological development of communication networks and, even more, the means of blocking them, still have to be taken into account. Fortresses are a good example. In little-developed states, navigable routes were of paramount importance. The conquest of Turkish Hungary from to was only achieved thanks to a flotilla of river galleys and the intensive use of boats for transport. A site dominating a rocky outcrop on a bend of a river, like the citadel of Buda, blocked everything. It would have been pure folly on the part of either the Turks or the Austrians 3 4 5
Contamine (), ‒, ‒, ‒, ‒. Béquignon (): cf. guidebooks of Greece today. Braudel (), i, ; Menendez-Pidal (): cf. Cavaillès ().
States, Roads, War · to depart from the only possible supply route: an indication of the inferiority of the unorganized Hungarian territory in the modern period by contrast with the tightly linked network of Roman roads of Pannonia in the second century . The modern state’s endeavour, rational in theory although not always in execution, was directed to the systematic organization of the land in such a way as to make it as accessible as possible to its couriers and its armies with their supplies and, above all, their artillery, however minimal. Hence the roles of fortified sites— much debated because of the failure to take chronology into account. The development of traffic networks constantly created an extremely powerful tool for the penetration of areas to varying degrees. The creation between and of the famous ‘iron ring’ protecting France constituted an essential act of the state, as much in the magnitude of the expenditure (about one-tenth of total expenditure, excluding the outlay required of the frontier towns) as in the importance of the results achieved. Even when breached, the line saved France during the War of the Spanish Succession. One could not in effect go beyond it, not only without the risk of being isolated but also, above all, without abandoning heavy artillery, which could not use the relief routes. Thus the fortress marked and created the frontier line, literally barring the invasion route. In the ‘road’ network of the seventeenth century, the fortress was an obstacle—if not insurmountable, then one requiring time and money, and at the least a cause of significant delay. On the other hand, the huge expansion of the European road system (above all, the French) in the eighteenth century, mean that henceforth—at least in part of Europe—fortifications could be outflanked, ignored, put into parentheses, and the advance continued. The period of latency inherent in the human spirit remained. Possibility was one thing, perception of it quite another. The need to plug the gaps between fortified towns was undoubtedly quickly felt. From the end of the seventeenth century there were continuous lines of field fortifications: the Brabant line in , Lauterbourg and Wissembourg of major importance throughout the eighteenth century and the Revolution. They were even found in the New World with the Frontenac line.6 The armies of the Revolutionary Wars still kept to the old strategy of strongholds: sieges still held an important place. Napoleon turned the difficulty round and the fortress became a deadly trap. In other words, there was nothing static or one-way about the relationship between state and land, and it was above all an intellectual relationship. A system of blocking the land mass, initially military, could become political, even when its own value was reduced or had disappeared. There were four phases to this process: 6
Bluche (), ‒.
· Jean Meyer . . . .
immediate durable efficacity; virtual inefficacy, but not felt; inefficiency put to use; but transmutation of its existence into frontiers as a result of long-term trends.
Other systems were to come afterwards which followed the same rhythm, indeed rediscovered it, as Verdun rediscovered in a role which had been denied it in . This underlines sufficiently that, in a disciplined study, the worthy isochronal maps drawn by historians, especially French historians, cannot be compared with each other.7 Do they apply to ships, waterways, land routes, goods, or, finally, men and—still more—news? These are the only primary materials for a differential and resolutely comparative geo-history, in the context of the passing centuries and changing techniques. Still more importantly, man in the past was much more closely dependent than the man of today on time and the seasons. Distance, and its difficulties, was not the only cause: ‘But on the return journey [from the baths at Cauterets] such wondrous and great rains came . . . that the rivers swelled so much that the Gave-Béarnois which, on the outward journey, had only been feet deep, [was] so huge and raging’ that the bridges which had been swept away blocked the route, so that Margaret of Navarre and her retinue had to seek shelter in Notre-Dame-de-Sernace,8 whence, to pass the time, the composition of the Heptameron. I note, moreover, that some individuals did attempt to cross and were drowned; others journeyed via Aragon, Roussillon, and Narbonne; yet others went to Barcelona and took ship to Marseilles or Aigues-Mortes. Some came from the west but returned by the Rhône valley. Can the importance of this detour and the loss of time (in ) be measured? A single courier moved more easily. Seasonal dependence was no less, however. The route between Paris and Vienna that took one and a half months in summer sometimes required very considerably more than double the time in winter. With the appropriate changes of horse, a courier could cover between and km in the seventeenth century . . . if all went well: the average speed of travel varied between and km per hour. The length of the day in turn influenced the duration of a journey: for the postal service, a maximum of to hours in winter, more than in summer. This meant, on a relatively well-maintained road (and they were rare), a distance of ‒ km per day in winter, km in summer. Transport of heavy materials broadly doubled the journey-time. Europe was complex: one would need to draw a whole series of adjustable maps; some for bad weather, 7 8
Mager (), ‒; Fierro-Domenech (). Navarre (), ‒; Braudel (), i, (mistral of April ).
States, Roads, War · others for good; some for when rivers were rising, others for when the water-level was falling, with the Rhône acting as a kind of borderline case. The required combination of journey-time by road (mule-track) and by river was affected by this. From Lyons to Paris via Roanne between and days were required, this on a marked and very well-travelled route. Sure-footed mules were less subject to variation: from Lyons to Genoa via the Mont-Cenis they took between and or or days. Either ‒ days to transport goods between Paris and Genoa, or, roughly, for ships to sail between Martinique and a French port . . . To go from Paris to Lyons required on average half the time needed to reach Guadeloupe from Nantes. It was the same for the world at large, regions where good or bad seasons held sovereign control over all movement. The monsoon of the Indian Ocean was an imperative factor. Hence, to use the felicitous expression chosen by Admiral Bellec for the title of his book, the ‘lure of the high seas’.9 In these conditions, delays in the transmission of orders or the despatching of reinforcements dragged on into months and years, even if ready cash was available. The same applied to the time required for the circulation of capital assets, transmission of funds or of letters of exchange. Time was ‘viscous’ and, more seriously, its viscosity was variable and, most often, unpredictable. Whence virtually insoluble problems: should ambassadors be granted a broad margin of independence, or should they be kept on a short rein, even in rapidly evolving situations? Philip II’s indecision was to a large extent the result of this uncertain control of distances. Much could depend on the interception of a courier: it was not simply a manoeuvre revealed but much rather the suppression or diminution of the ‘central’ response. Have all the consequences been drawn from this? Awkward questions have to be asked, some of them important. The narrowness of the south Atlantic between Lisbon and Bahia, or even between the mouth of the Congo and Bahia, was surely the key factor explaining the prime importance of Indo-Brazilian slavery from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, as well as the underlying reason for the Dutch failure to found a Dutch Brazil? The difference in the level of marine technology between Holland and Portugal—which undoubtedly existed, but at a later date—does not adequately account for these events. It is an interesting question: two opposing maritime powers with limited population (less than million in both cases) could become paralysed, in a specific sector, one exploiting technological advantage, the other the conquest of distance, in other words, favoured by the geographical situation. And surely ultimately the close seasonal interrelationship of European trade in the Indian Ocean with the monsoon cycle enabled the prolonged survival of the kingdoms of the Indies. The states of the 9
Bellec (), ‒.
· Jean Meyer modern period could only control the seas at arms’ length, and the lands beyond in a still more limited way. Was Spanish predominance in the sixteenth century, like that of France in the next, not linked to this marginal dissolution of control over geographical areas, above all in populated regions? Many French revolutionaries believed France to be overpopulated, and the whole of French diplomacy in the eighteenth century, indeed of the late seventeenth century, rested on the notion that these ‘reasonable’ limits had been reached if not surpassed. In the treaties with Piedmont, for instance, the fixation with a frontier following ‘falling wates’ stood out. To recapitulate: control of the land area was inherent in the very nature of the state. In this respect, small states had the considerable advantage of a potentially more efficient organization. Maritime states had both the advantages and the disadvantages of the sea: always transient, requiring an administrative machine that could bear the full brunt of constant competition for technological superiority, a very restrictive transport system, for the means of measuring longitude and even latitude were such that the ocean was an immense emptiness, with routes infinitely more imperative than those of our own days. There were two sorts of continental states: . Military states, that is, Empires (Ottoman or Russian) which stretched from a central kernel by more-or-less concentric circles, reaching at their greatest extent into the empty spaces (similarly, for French Canada). . European states which, by contrast, could only with difficulty exceed dimensions of more than , km, in the context of partial and irregular control of the land-area. Beyond that, they fragmented into types of confederation, of which the Germanic Holy Roman Empire was the most striking and the functioning of which was not, when all is said and done, as bad as it has often been made out to be.10
. Communication and Transmission Decision-making centres were not purely political. The new order had its focal points. And when the intellectual content—which the state could not dispense with—the places where ideas were weighed and considered were few and far between, then men had to do the moving. They had to return to the sources. Correspondence—in Latin—was evidently totally indispensable. ‘Republics of letters’ or sciences were initially composed of exchanges of ideas. This could not suffice. The education of princes, and still more that of élites, demanded the ‘Grand Tours’ (Wanderjahre, Kavalierstouren), veritable tours of Europe for political education that lasted for years. From East Prussia to England, aristocrats, artists, 10
Behar (), , ‒.
States, Roads, War · scholars of the sciences and the humanities spent their adolescence seeing everything that was to be seen: not just the intellectual and/or university centres, but also technical centres (Holland, Venice), noting on their travels the state of the fortifications and the power at their disposal. Accompanied by their tutors, between the ages of fifteen and twenty, young men encountered Europe on long tours embellished with various facts. The kings of France, more restricted, made their tours of France. Marie de’ Medici spent three years showing her son, Charles IX, to the whole of France.11 Besides his campaigns in the north-east, Louis XIV twice made a tour of the kingdom. This sketches a fascinating geography which no one has ever really attempted to determine. Bossuet knew scarcely more than the Dijon–Metz–Paris triangle with, of course, circles spreading out around these three points. Racine went as far as the south of France.12 The Dohna travelled to Holland, France, England, and Italy. In northern Europe of the seventeenth century, future sovereigns were literally inspired by Holland and England, as much and more than by France and Italy.13 At the foot of the social ladder, a waver like the hero of La bague aux trois doigts (The Three-Fingered Ring), Simon of Fontaine-Saint-Martin (Maine) travelled throughout one part of northern France in a lengthy tour that was at once, and in its own way, companionable, touristic, professional, and artistic.14 It was in no way a privilege of aristocratic families like the Lohndorff and other Eulenbourg, nor even an urban privilege, like that of the glazier Ménétra, but an immense phenomenon, impossible to measure, but at any rate massive. Claude Lorrain or the great Poussin, whom we think of as French painters, were, in reality, primarily Italian painters. Conversely, Italian military engineers left their stamp upon many urban landscapes of the sixteenth century. This, then, is the backdrop of modern Europe, created in part by the state, in part independently of it, on occasion opposing it, and which it attempted, for its part, to make use of. Even the isolation of villages was relative, making its mark on only one part of life, essentially the choice of husband or wife. The difficulty of travelling across the land was always counterbalanced by the importance of long journeys, on foot above all, by horse when possible: the difficulties of penetrating the open countryside were determined by the slow journeys of men. For man went everywhere. There is no need to recall the pilgrim routes, for instance, short, long, or in-between. The urban organization of sixteenth-century Rome was first conceived in terms of the great pilgrimage churches: a fair part of European urbanism derives from this. We should not delude ourselves, however. Although the huge shifts from a 11 12 13
Reinhard (), . Racine, ed. Picard (‒), ii, ‒ (letters of ‒). His ‘Flemish campaigns’ might be added. 14 Bepler (), ‒; Dönhoff (), ‒. Fillon ().
· Jean Meyer banking family like the Platter15 to St Benedict Joseph Labre (‒) had an enormously fertile role, they also had serious counterbalances. The sheer length of journeys, along what were still tracks and footpaths rather than roads, had to be reckoned in months and years. Now the state needed rapid intelligence: in this way a huge section of movements of opinion eluded it. But reaction speed becomes the major factor in surprise, and thus of success: monetary speculation, like exchange rates and successful military campaigns, is based on this. It was essential to know the land and everything which transformed it. Not, indeed, that the state refrained from drawing on the sources of more slowly gathered intelligence, sometimes close at hand, the dormant networks of contemporary espionage. Capuchins and Jesuits, mendicant orders or not, regular or secular clergy, were an integral part of the intelligence series of the Papacy, the Austrians ( Jesuits), and the French. Richelieu’s éminence grise was a Capuchin, the renowned Père Joseph du Tremblay.16 Emperor Leopold I’s successes were due in part to ‘his’ Jesuits. L. Bély has revealed the role, hitherto entirely unknown, of the pastor Jurieu as the head of Anglo-Dutch intelligence against Louis XIV.17 Transference of technology lent itself to this particularly well. Industrial espionage in relation to matters maritime was a sport played by the whole of Europe. The , surviving drawings and plans of warships from all the maritime nations throughout the eighteenth century are not the product of chance.18 The state thus drew on all sources: speedy networks for fleeting intelligence, as well as slow and often passive sources. Retroaction played its part: every improvement in speed obtained by these means gave better control of ‘space’, especially at sea. We return to the study of all military campaigns, but not limiting ourselves to battles alone. Battle was merely the chance culmination of an immense preliminary effort that stretched over years and across huge spaces. Making ready an army, to fight on land or at sea, was first a question of having money at one’s disposal, thus networks for its collection and centralization, and of translating it into an instrument of power, based on a whole industry that had had to be created, thus of organizing the ‘space’ with its operating locations and its long-distance heavy transport. The use of intelligence followed this: the slowness of its transmission of the enemy’s vision, its spasmodic (indeed sporadic) switchback character went hand in hand with the soundness and credibility, so difficult to appreciate, of knowledge thus acquired. Despite the use of modern methods (submarines, dirigibles, and aeroplanes), the battle of Jutland unfolded in almost complete fog on either side.19 But the difficulty of crossing the ground, added to surveillance by 15 16 18 19
Måczak and Teuteberg (); Bepler (), ‒; Dönhoff (), ‒. 17 Bluche (), ‒. Bély (), , , ‒, ; (), ‒, ‒. Copenhagen, Royal Archives. Brezet (). It was the same with land battles.
States, Roads, War · the forces of law and order, was not without advantages. The very length of diplomatic negotiations (take the Congress of Westphalia or that of Utrecht) favoured these slow processes of change, relatively independent of the ground (without reckoning that some might hope to witness the brutal reversion of the balance of power). Slowness could be a safety factor, or an obstacle impossible to reduce significantly or, by contrast, a factor of surprise. Every state thus needed to put a barrier across its space, to make use of the safety-time ‘buffer’ necessary to take countermeasures and, above all, to anticipate the enemy’s movements by quick, reliable, and well-organized intelligence networks. It needed both light and heavy lines of communication (that is, both orders and the movement of heavy materials). The model had been supplied long ago by that admirable organizing force the Roman Empire, taken up by the Byzantine Empire, then again by the Arab and Ottoman Empires. Hence the role of geo-politics. Scattered Empires are vulnerable. Communication between Spain and the Low Countries required travel across France if time was of the essence. Despite the use of codes, security, even in peacetime, was far from assured. Seasonal hazards were to give a very changeable flexibility to that distance-time relationship. Only the speed of a horse remained the same and it was in this sense—and this sense only—that Napoleon could say that his troops could move no faster than those of Caesar. This overlooks a little too hastily the fact that this speed was only possible on a road network which was well defined and well maintained. This body of constraints meant that the action of statesmen was a reaction to guesswork and instinct. In wartime the march of the enemy army remained broadly unknown: unexpected battles abounded. Hence the absolute necessity of securing one’s own army against surprise: the cavalry was only a long-distance rapid-response arm (at least when there was guaranteed feed for the animals); it was primarily a covering force to raise the alarm, and woe betide the man who omitted preliminary ‘scouting’. In these conditions, the size and the physical and human (economic) contribution of a state were to become the major factor determining the sound operation of a system, or its general disfunction. In a Europe that was fragmented by natural circumstances, where natural obstacles and seasons, possibly reinforced by man, were a permanent challenge, a state was weakened by being unduly large. For the despatch of orders from a capital to a location more than , km away, and their acknowledgement, required an extendable reaction period, depending on the seasons, which gave those who implemented them a very wide margin for interpretation or inactivity. Conversely, in the eighteenth century, a state that was small and without natural defences, assisted by financial weakness, had virtually no hope of survival. Things were different in Mediterranean and eastern countries: the broad expanses of the steppes lent themselves to raids and had certain similarities with
· Jean Meyer the sea. The great loess plain stretching from the Ukraine to Orléans has been a region of shifting frontiers until the present day. As for deserts, they had to be conquered first: even at the very end of the twentieth century, during the Gulf War, tank squadrons behaved like fleets at sea. Supply lines for these masses was the great problem, however. This was as true for the Hungarian plain (with the Danube, at once the communication line and supply conduit) as for the vast steppes. Long ago, Vidal de La Blache noted down the advantages and drawbacks of this region on a superb map. From the black chernozem soils of the Ukraine to the loess of the Paris Basin, prehistoric man cleared the first forest. Once it had disappeared, it was no longer easy for it to take a permanent hold. Mounted troops surged from east to west all the more easily since these corn-covered plains offered every opportunity for fodder and provisions. Until our own day, this zone and its extensions into southern Germany and Hungary have been the geometrical locations of the great majority of battles, the stakes of frontier transfers. That is to say, the ideal dimensions of states depend on an indefinite number of factors which vary with time and place. Hexagonal France, derived from the initial pentagon formed by the course of the four rivers (Scheldt, Meuse, Saône, and Rhône) was too large for the modern period: at least that was the opinion of the officials of the secretariat of state for foreign affairs. Once the Lorraine enclave was actually reattached, the great problem was no longer rectifying the north-eastern frontier so that it would be militarily effective, rectilinear, in so far as all reciprocal enclaves would disappear. There were negotiations throughout the eighteenth century on the basis of mutual exchange: the process was stopped by the French Revolution. Without it, the frontier would have been located slightly further north than it is now, above all in Lorraine and where it abuts Alsace and the Palatinate, clearly outside the limits of the first treaty of Paris (). This would have been the culmination of Louis XIV’s policy of agreements. Given their resolutely aggressive stance, and taking account of the flagrant violation of earlier treaties, these agreements were in fact no more than an offensive-defensive policy intended to stabilize frontier security. Vauban, like the Grand Condé and like Colbert de Croissy who had initiated this policy, giving rise throughout Europe to a (legitimate) wave of indignation and the unjustified fear of permanent French expansionism. Whenever the frontier was fixed, it took concrete form through the building of fortresses.
. Fortifications and Frontiers ‘Defensive walls replaced men in part.’ The saying is well known but yet not entirely true. There is a possible typology of fortresses. Simplifying considerably, we can distinguish:
States, Roads, War · . frontiers of the Roman limes type, common in the modern period (the Austro-Turkish frontier, the successive frontiers of concentric circles of the Russian Empire facing Islam); . scattered fortresses that were also places of refuge and bases of operations in states that were not homogeneous; . finally, the fortresses of the great, homogeneous dynastic and nation states. In the first case, it was a question of establishing, over and against vast spaces, narrow lines of surveillance that were both continuous barriers and cordons sanitaires, linked together behind a more-or-less hazardous natural object, giving tangible form on the ground to a natural boundary, half-natural, half-artificial, which could operate as a braking-device. The limes was, as it were, an ‘alarm bell’, the theory being to utilize the peasant soldiery easily mobilized on the spot. Hence the double limes facing each other, at once Turkish and Austrian, permanently established at the beginning of the eighteenth century, which was to last until the First World War and in proved to be the geological fault-line which came into play once more thanks to the break-up of Yugoslavia, with Catholic Croats against Orthodox Serbs, and so on. So, too, the successive Russian limes: a very provisional limes along the River Kama at first, then, centred on Orenburg, that of the River Ural facing the Kazakhs; north-west-south-east of the mouth of the Dnepr (Sea of Azov), starting again with the Terek (), that of Azov to the Terek dating from the years ‒; finally, doubled, from onwards, by that of the Kouban, extended in two successive lines in and ? thus rejoining the line of the Terek. Lines punctuated with small wooden forts, on the model of that described by Pushkin in The Captain’s Daughter. Inferior little forts, but sufficient in the face of raiding parties. Only a big army, which could not pass unnoticed, constituted a real threat. Information and defence were thus complementary. The first AustroTurkish limes of the kingdom of Hungary in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was of a different character. Along the Bakony mountains, already partly protected by Lake Balaton, along the Györ, there had at all costs to be a provisional holding line capable of extended resistance, enabling the mass mobilization of the hinterland. Roads over mountains and through valleys had therefore to be barred, preventing the movement of siege artillery. For a state such as Brandenburg, whose total area in equalled that of Denmark, but which was scattered between the Rivers Rhine and Memel and in fact consisted of a succession of larger or smaller enclaves, there was no point in a policy of this kind. The citadels here were isolated fortress-islands (except perhaps in Silesia, at the mouth of the Bohemian passes), or granary-fortresses, safe places of refuge, and storehouses expressing the assertion of sovereignty all the more strongly the smaller the enclave they dominated. The mobile army had to make
· Jean Meyer use of these bases which were as much offensive as defensive. In these great plains of northern Europe, the only exception after was the Dutch ‘barrier’, with Netherlandish garrisons placed along the border with France, in Austrian territory (Furnes, Ypres, Warneton, Hénin, Tournai, and, further back, Namur and Termonde). Their role was in the first place political, producing a de facto mechanism for the alliance between Holland and Austria, of, nevertheless, rapidly decreasing efficiency. Their psychological effect is difficult to measure, for behind Holland and Austria the long shadow of England could be discerned. These were not the constituents of a limes but political alarm bells. Then there was Vauban’s famous ‘iron ring’. It did not have to delude anyone: it was not at all the same kind of thing. Beside the sea (which is always forgotten), these were anti-invasion emplacements—such as there were in the south of England. Le Havre was primarily the bolt across the possible road to Paris. Here it is important to distinguish between contemporary fantasies and reality. De Ruyter’s exploit dominating the mouth of the Thames from to June has obsessed—and undoubtedly wrongly obsessed—both military establishments and historians. For there was no cause for the immense panic unleashed in London. No fleet could sail up the Thames, still less the Seine, for the all-too-obvious reason that no warship of sufficient tonnage would have found sufficient depth, and the narrowness of the river made it possible to block its entrance by means of just a few batteries. Nevertheless, the—extremely expensive—attempt to transform Le Havre into a naval base (‒) was a dramatic failure, not registered by contemporaries. Vauban, flying in the face of all good sense, still dreamt of it in , and the Ponts et Chaussées (civil engineering department) again at the end of the eighteenth century. Elsewhere, fortification was primarily designed to protect the large shoreline privateer ports (tidal ports capable of speedy transformation into privateer ports: above all, Dunkirk and Saint-Malo, sometimes at enormous expense). As for the naval bases, coiled, far from estuaries, in the heart of deep harbours, they were naturally ultra-fortified. Prince Eugene of Savoy’s failed siege of Toulon in demonstrated their efficacy. As for mountainous fortresses, the frontier only existed on a map. In the Jura, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, these were isolated strongpoints placed not simply to gain time, but to block the pass permanently. The prototype—admirably successful—was the virtually impregnable citadel of Salses dating from the early sixteenth century, the substantial guarantor of the territorial integrity of the Iberian peninsula. The issue along the whole north-eastern French frontier was entirely different. Originally, the extent to which possessions and enclaves overlapped, made in-depth fortification essential. All Louis XIV’s policy aimed to establish, as far as was possible, a ‘linear’ frontier, that following the treaty of Nijmegen (): Furnes, Courtrai, Hénin, Ath, Binche, and Charleroi were exchanged for Condé,
States, Roads, War · Valenciennes, Cambrai, Cateau-Cambrésis, and Maubeuge (not reckoning Charlemont and the Meuse salient). The ‘iron ring’ was thus disparate, Vauban taking over ideas from his master and rival, the Chevalier de Clerville. A ring which, moreover, incorporated existing fortresses, modernized to a greater or lesser degree, new fortresses (Neuf-Brisach) and, where necessary, new towns (Belfort). However, the concept of a continuous line is clear, even if, opposite the Ardennes or the Rhine, they were content with operations-bases for watching, on the one hand, the fords across the Rhine and, on the other, where the forests of the Ardennes opened out. In places, nature made it possible for this continuous line to be crossed, with the canals of northern France, which were only really completed with the Aire canal (), or the Wissembourg–Lauterbourg lines (land lines at this point). This is an example which reinforces R. Dion’s theories: this line kept watch over the two ends of the Bienwald (a forest) leaving two narrow passes, one between the Rhine and the forest, the other between the forest and the Lower Vosges. The primary role of the line in the north-east, however, was to protect the capital, Paris. Gallia clausa (‘France enclosed’), the expression used in the series of historical medals commissioned by Louis XIV, was no empty phrase. It was the lapidary expression of a policy. French history as required by Louis XIV was that of the military closure of the frontier. Roads were to be blocked with staggered barriers and the maximum time gained. Once a fort was taken, it remained to make a breach, that is, above everything else, to seize places beside and behind it. Even after the capture of Lille, the Anglo-Dutch invasion attempt foundered at the line, just as during the Revolution. The stake aimed at can be more accurately measured: nearly per cent of the total expenditure from to , which has no parallel anywhere else. This was clearly also the choice of internal policy. Every fortress contained a citadel. It was the last refuge if the town was taken, but it was also, and sometimes above all, a means of maintaining surveillance over populations that were restive to a greater or lesser extent. Marseilles, Lille, Bordeaux, and Strasbourg fitted this pattern. The same motives are to be found at Stralsund in Sweden. At BerlinPotsdam the garrison numbered over , men, without counting other lawenforcing forces, which, despite the growth of the town, still accounted for per cent of the total population. Paris, on the other hand, had scarcely , men for a larger population (, in ). Louis XIV refused to fortify Paris (): France was to be defended on her frontiers and not at Paris. Vauban’s great (indeed, immense) project—which would have cost astronomical sums, completely at variance with his recommendations for the economy—to fortify Paris by extending the outer city walls so that the city could not be subject to bombardment (taking account of the range of
· Jean Meyer cannon of the period), and by doubling them by a series of moles, but this scheme had never been approved by the king. Paris fortified would have been too dangerous at the level of the kingdom’s internal policies. Moreover, defence of the city would have required the maintenance of an army, or the upkeep of a system of town defence organized by neighbourhoods which had demonstrated its potential both in the course of the wars of the League and during the Fronde. Disarm civilian France: this was the golden rule, the primary ingredient of internal policies. We will meet it elsewhere. In the eighteenth century, however, Vienna was too close to the Turkish border for her defences not to be maintained: in , they had moreover held out by a whisker. Venice, protected by natural defences, defended the Terra Ferma by the network—or the line—of her eastern frontier, where Palma-Nova had been an exemplar of modern fortification in the sixteenth century. Holland withstood the excellent Spanish army and its tercios of the second half of the sixteenth century thanks to its fortified towns: water played a major role in this, controlled and directed by the great scientist Stevin, founder of hydrostatics. Many other instances could be cited. As one would expect, the state of preparedness of these lines or strong points was linked to the enemy’s supposed capabilities. On the border with Iran, Turkey merely employed the quasi-medieval technique, reinforced to a greater or lesser extent, of its strongholds, veritable blocking fortresses which included those of Dogubnyzit and Güzelsn. The Turkish military engineers, probably trained in the French school, on the other hand, seriously threatened Vienna so that Austrian propaganda accused France of direct participation, through the intermediary of engineers, in the siege of Vienna (which was not true).20 One of Spain’s great advantages lay in the massive protection afforded by the Pyrenees: bases like Salses were all that was required for the Spanish army to concentrate its efforts on northern Italy during the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries. These fortresses eventually produced specialized units: in France, that of the ingénieurs du roi (royal engineers), the equivalent of our engineering corps, with its specialist school (Mézières) and recruitment of specialists by competition. Thus the modern French state rested on two great pillars: the Ponts et Chaussées, founded in by the intendant des communes et des finances, Daniel Trudaine, and the École de Mézières, founded in , forerunner of the École Polytechnique, and named the ‘Central School of Public Works’ (École centrale des Travaux Publics) on March but was renamed ‘Polytechnique’ on September by Gaspard Monge (who had belonged to the teaching staff of the École de 20
Waissenberger (); Bluche (), ,‒.
States, Roads, War · Mézières). For a fuller picture, we should also mention the school of diplomats in Strasbourg, the creation of Colbert de Torcy at the beginning of the eighteenth century, which trained a fair number of the overseas diplomats of the eighteenth century and of the Revolutionary period. Concern with ‘space’ was one of the components of this school’s curriculum. Finally, in , the school of naval engineering, established at Paris, completed the education of naval engineers, the ‘land’ engineers amongst whom still remain little known. To mark out on the countryside the outlines of fortifications or new communication routes, and to trace consequent shifts in the contours of towns, was to shape the terrain through the action of the state—and this was still more true of the canals. To transform the countryside, it had to be known and therefore represented. This representation took two forms: . relief maps in their two forms, Swedish and, above all, French; . general and local cartography. Admittedly, the relief maps of the Louvre Gallery, placed in position during the reign of Louis XIV were reserved first for the education and information of the king, then for specialists, while foreigners had only limited and supervised access.21 The accumulation of this information eventually constituted an exceptional body of documents: during the Regency their value was reckoned at several million livres. But these relief maps came into widespread use: in the eighteenth century every important French town had them. As for cartography, there is no need to emphasize its importance. Bossuet made considerable use of it in the Dauphin’s education. The German princes often collected maps. Whence the interest of modern states in mathematics and the sciences in general. Both glory and utility required the prince to patronize scholars as well. Both Louis XIV and Louis XVI had cabinets de physique at their disposal of which only scrappy fragments remain.22 Louis XVI even dreamed of building a special pavilion at Versailles devoted to the naval education of the Dauphin (who died in ): shortage of funds prevented him from doing so. Technological development inevitably had repercussions on the ideas of both politicians and of specialists. One of the major experiences of the modern period was the transformation not only of the vision of the world but also of the land and indeed the oceans. Admittedly, the art of fortifying a town owed much initially to Italian towns and Renaissance engineers,23 and, more specifically, to the Venetians. Palma in Majorca, with its urbanization derived from military practice and its pre-Vauban fortification (which Vauban merely improved), succeeded the Cretan fortifications, Nicosia, and Heraklion. It was not fortuitous that the Turks 21 22
Saint-Simon, ed. Truc (‒), v, (visit of Pierre le Grand). 23 Charles (). Gille ().
· Jean Meyer took eighty years to reduce Heraklion at the time of the so-called ‘Cretan War’ of ‒, a logical war fought along a clearly outlined route, where the Dardanelles, with its repeated battles (in , , , and ), marked tactical victories which were strategic defeats. Mention should also be made of the anchor points of the Venetian fortresses in mainland Greece (Monemvasia, Malvasia, and so on) which were milestones on maritime routes as much as fortresses. As in French Canada, the wall took the place of manpower in part. First Rhodes, then, above all, Malta, with its enormous progressive accumulation of stores, barred the central Mediterranean. Malta even constituted a state; the only known instance of the fortress-state: the decisive victory of marked the limit of naval expansion by the Turkish Empire. To take the subject further: every defensive system is above all dissuasive. The fortress was often infinitely more valuable through the simple fact of its existence than because of its capacity for effective resistance (which varied with its provisioning and the size of its garrison). It was a kind of chronological screening filter for the real power of the state, an indicator of its financial capacity. A small state was capable of maintaining some positions; only a big and compact state could create lines of fortifications generating long-lasting political frontiers. The time when a constantly improved town wall constituted the full significance of independent towns like Nuremberg and Strasbourg was over. It was also only a large state that was in a position to make use of its fortifications not only as a defensive obstacle but as the springboard for attack (Ausfallsbefestigung). Strasbourg undoubtedly marked the edge of Gallia clausa: it was seen in the Empire as the gateway to Germania. A warehouse on the route of attack, a convenient concentration-point, and a logistical rear-guard point, the fortress was, paradoxically, a tool for penetration into enemy territory. But only for large states. The springboard effect, however, could only be operated at a certain distance: it was soon diminished. This was the real goal of the forts on the coast north of the Maghreb; Islam blocked them, in a manner exactly like the Venetian fortresses of the Peloponnese. Clinging to the mountainside constantly haunted by the spectre of malaria and other epidemics, poorly supplied, subject to famine, these fortress-relics had in fact lost the greater part of their usefulness. They were Mediterranean, for they were linked to the existence of galleys. In Mazarin’s attempt to control the growth of the eastern Mediterranean from Naples to Sardinia, the Tuscan forts had played a major but very fleeting role.24 Their upkeep was more a matter of prestige. But, besides these vegetating fortresses, the Barbary towns were a formidable tool, less as a stronghold on the route than as a stockpile for masses of artillery, proof against anything, on the seafront at Algiers, Tripoli, or others along the sea-coast. 24 This policy of Mazarin’s, as yet little known, seems to have consisted of surrounding the eastern Mediterranean with French bases from Catalonia to Messina.
States, Roads, War · Fortresses, and the roads which joined them to each other and to their hinterlands, thus marked out the territory of the space and delineated the frontiers of Europe, in ways that were varied but also often extremely restrictive. Their construction, like that of capitals and royal towns, in fact caused reservoirs of materials, sometimes to the detriment of the preceding political configurations, to such an extent that their destruction was not unpremeditated. Fort-Louis, which blocked a convenient ford across the Rhine, was built from the stones of the old Ottonian and imperial palace at Hagenau, at the price of building a canal between town and fort. Has the economic impact of such construction projects been adequately calculated? Once founded, the fortress or fortified town left its mark on the environs, creating its own market, its favoured reservoir of supply, big or small; as a garrison town—together with its state-run markets and its intermediaries (manufacturers of armaments and dependent merchants)—it organized supply systems specializing in cavalry remounts, in the supply of corn and hay, arms and munitions, which sometimes transcended frontiers and interfered with the communications network. The Jewish community of Alsace, and also that of Metz, specialized in cavalry remounts for the French army. Short of corn, the administration of the Trois-Evêchés (Metz-Toul-Verdun) dictated the price of cereals on the left bank of the Rhine. This gave rise to a fiscal geography, an invisible means of organizing the territory of the state. The Austrian army of Hungary and its limes were supplied by the domains of the great nobles of Bohemia and Austria, who were among the titled lenders to the Habsbourg state: a complex system which guaranteed the nobility permanent participation in the state. Northern and eastern France absorbed a very substantial part of state expenditure: probably in the region of per cent of the whole. From Richelieu onwards, the ancien régime French state acted like a pump sucking funds out of Paris and expelling them towards the outlying provinces. While Alsace, a rich country, once it had been recovered and (only after the s) the disaster of the Thirty Years’ War overcome, received this government manna as a welcome bonus, the poor region of Lorraine found at least relative prosperity, with significant consequences, in the army and its local expenditure. This was not without damaging consequences. The municipalities had to spend considerable sums on building barracks, payment for which necessitated a specific municipal surcharge. The same phenomenon operated to the advantage of arsenal-ports with still larger reservoirs of human and primary material resources, for arms factories remained by far the most important industrial establishments before the industrial revolution. These markets, above all that in timber, crossed political frontiers, giving the Baltic states and Russia their strategic importance. The state thus created a type of new or transformed town. This town might
· Jean Meyer sometimes grow up besides the pre-existing town, sometimes be superimposed upon it, or indeed be founded entirely from scratch (as with Neuf-Brisach, Belfort, and Sarrelouis). With the exception of the ports (Brest, Lorient, Rochefort), their development was to all intents and purposes very limited: Belfort quickly reached its maximum around , inhabitants; Neuf-Brisach, too close to the old Brisach, remained a kind of military village; only Sarrelouis developed further. But nothing rivalled the expansion of the new maritime settlements. In Brest numbered , inhabitants, Rochefort as many, thus catching up with the old town of Toulon. Lorient reached a population of ,. In the interior Versailles numbered more than ,, a distinctive phenomenon of ancien régime France with its double-headed capital, Paris-Versailles. The same phenomenon was to be found in Spain with Cartagena and Le Ferrol and in Sweden with Karlskrona, founded from onwards, to say nothing of St Petersburg, built at a huge cost in human life on the marshes and islands of the Neva. Michelet summed it all up, speaking of Brest: ‘the might of France at the extremity of France’. As much could be said of Plymouth or Portsmouth. It will be observed that, by its very existence, this protection of the modern state on its frontiers created entirely new means of action and influence. Fortified systems ‘hardened’ frontiers; but behind and, above all, around them, they had an unparalleled assimilating effect. They were the staging-posts of state action. Especially in France, undue emphasis has been mistakenly placed on the importance of the capital. Only ‒ per cent of the country’s population lived in Paris, compared with per cent in London. In both the maritime provinces and the frontier areas (particularly of the north-east) fortified systems made it possible to control the inhabitants, who had become more dependent than in the provinces lying in-between.
. Roads and Control of the State Interior Almost everywhere, the road in the eighteenth century was still little more than a mere track, winding in the course of the seasons along sometimes very sketchy lines. Only river crossing-points and certain sections of mountain roads had diagrammatic form or precise points of integration both on the ground and on maps. With the strengthening of the power of the state, the route royale (king’s highway) was, first of all, postal and military. With a thoroughly tried and tested system of post horses (for a veritable cavalry travelled along European roads, very different from the Chinese networks: the comparison is instructive), it was a question of enabling the rapid flow of couriers, but also, at least along the vital military axes, the slower movement of artillery and munitions and supply trains for the army. Now the weight of cannon (above all, siege cannon) made it essential to
States, Roads, War · strengthen old bridges still in use and to construct new ones, around which new urban localities sometimes grew up. Artillery was unsuited to narrow roads and angled medieval gateways. The route royale had to be safe, and as little inconvenient as possible. And so, for a period, two logical approaches were superimposed: . the old, economic approach, based on the juxtaposition of river basins which, grafted onto the estuaries of the Vistula, indeed of the Neman and the Duna (for the export of wood) stretched as far as the Rhône and, partially, to the Po; . the new military, statist, and innovatory approach, which was based on the road. Undoubtedly, these two both interfered and blended with each other: from the eighteenth century until c., the states’ main endeavour was to overcome the shortcomings of nature and join together river basins. This was easy in the great plain of northern Germany because of the layout of Urstromthäler (that is, the great valleys carved out by the action of glacial waters at the foot of the moraines corresponding to the different levels of retreat of the great Scandinavian ice-sheet of the Quaternary era, whose characteristic zig-zag outlines are cut once more by rivers today). Prussia found these canals to be one of the major constituents of its great unificatory axis in the seventeenth century: the Netz-Vistula Canal (‒), the Spree having been blocked in the Finowkanal between the Oder and the Spree was dug (‒) to the north of Berlin, overtaken by the Friedrichkanal between the Spree and the Oder at the level of Frankfurt an der Oder, and the Plauerkanal (‒) between the Spree and the Elbe a little to the north of Magdeburg (the Weser remained isolated). Especially after the devastation of the Seven Years’ War, this was all accompanied by a policy of systematically draining the marshland, and thus of exploitation by the agricultural colonization of Frederick the Great: another form of control and of the statist transformation of the land. Similarly, Russia proceeded to the constitution of the Marie network gradually enabling the export of iron from the Urals (one of the largest European producers of the eighteenth century, exporting above all to England) via the Russian Baltic ports, joining the upper Volga to the Duna, towards Riga, and to the Neva, with a network that was gradually extended at the beginning of the nineteenth century to connections with the Dnepr and thus the Black Sea. In England, the intense canal-building enterprises of the period ‒ were dependent on private initiative. In France the first canal whose summit-level was to cross the ground between the Loire and the Seine was the Briare Canal, begun in , overtaken by the Orléans Canal in . The most famous scheme was the Midi Canal, the grandiose masterpiece of the engineer Riquet (‒). The joining of the
· Jean Meyer various sections of the canals of northern France (Canal de la Deule, part in , part in ; Canal de Neufflisse, ‒) were only partly completed under the ancien régime: the Saint-Quentin Canal at Forginies () and the Canal Crozat only linked the Seine to the Oise. The Somme–Nord junction, for the transport of charcoal from northern France and imported naval timber was only carved out in . The Loire-Saône link, from Digoin to Chalon-sur-Saône, was finished in , the Canal de Bourgogne in (Yonne, near Migennes-Saône, to Saint-Jean-deLosne). If the Canal du Midi was financed by licensed individuals, the system of French canals was the work of the state. The Restoration and the July monarchy, even at the time of the rise of the railways, made an enormous effort which depended on the unification of the national market. Thus the army participated in digging-out the Canal d’Orléans. The increase in transport power was slow, especially in the eighteenth century, but it created a new and little-known geography, whose truly revolutionary character is indicated by G. Minard’s map (‒).25 Paris features conspicuously there as the great centre of French consumption. As for the ‘royal’ (and also politico-military) ‘route’, it competed with the traditional lines of communication. Thus Alsace traditionally centred on the Rhine and upon the routes parallel to it running north–south. The French military line of communication (route) made use of the Trois-Evêchés enclaves (the Metz–Toul–Verdun area) then went via the Saverne pass. This was the route taken by Louis XIII’s armies in the Thirty Years’ War. It was constantly improved and became really utilizable at a commercial level from the s onwards. Thus an east–west route took shape, crossing the Rhine and coming out in southern Germany. Metz was the start of the divergent Metz–Trier–Mainz route, along the Moselle. For throughout the eighteenth century and into the Napoleonic period, the French armies operated in the areas of the Rhine and the Danube. A completely new geography was developing, with a parallel improvement in the routes crossing the Alps. In France the logic of the state operated in an east–west direction according to a double line of force: the naval Paris–Brest link; and, overland, simultaneously Paris–Lille and Paris–Strasbourg. It is self-evident that this policy was grafted onto the old Roman axis along the Rhône. We can therefore speak of a policy for the control of space for the whole of Europe, already apparent in northern Italy with Leonardo da Vinci’s plans for canalization. Political annexation made it possible to extend existing networks: the first treaty of Polish partition lay at the origin of the Brombergerkanal between the Vistula and the Netze (‒). The landscape favoured these enterprises to varying degrees. The most favoured country of all was Holland. The density of urbanization, 25
Pinon (), .
States, Roads, War · and the ease with which canals were dug out, enabled the country, from the midseventeenth century, to set up the first regular inter-urban transport network for passengers, operated by horse-drawn barges—a network whose regular timetable filled travellers with admiration. But it was the eighteenth-century French transport system along the route royale which aroused the surprised admiration of Arthur Young. Outside the great rivers originating from afar, southern Europe by definition did not lend itself easily to the establishment of extensive and coherent navigable systems. On the Danube, the deep antagonism between the Christian and the Ottoman worlds cut across the economic and military reality of the river. It was only with the Austrian river steam companies in the first half of the nineteenth century that an outline of interrelated waterways was established. The best illustration of this is to be found in the writer Grillparzer’s Reise nach Griechenland ( Journey to Greece) of . In this context it would be interesting to compare his notes on his travels to Italy (), Germany (), England and France (), and, finally, to Greece (), for he records in the most minute detail variations in means of travel at both the chronological and geographical level. It is unusual to find the role of the state better highlighted than in this gradual control of the land. It is habitually asserted that the major period of transformation in communications geography dates from the railways. That overlooks the fact that in eighteenth-century France, the pioneer in this area, the route royale enabled journey-times to be reduced by over half, almost three-quarters of a century earlier. Journey speed had doubled: as much as that later achieved by the railway. The modern state kept a tighter grip on the land in that it did not allow an increase in the tonnage carried. For, to our eyes at least, both the frequency of land transport and river traffic remained relatively mediocre. Whatever the case, this enormous progress was translated above all into a superior intellectual mastery of ‘space’.
. The Role of the State in the Intellectual Mastery of ‘Space’ Let us look again at the French example. The map was initially a nautical one that outlined the coasts with their natural landmarks. Then the interior of the mainland was filled in. It is significant that there is scarcely a map worthy of the name for the country as a whole before the mid-seventeenth century. France lagged behind Italy, Holland, and Spain. Are we to believe that there were no parallels between the despatch of an intendant to a province at the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV and that of Carolingian missi dominici ? These were veritable expeditions into a land supposedly known but in reality largely unknown. Travel on horseback was the best policy. In his volume, Dames célèbres, Brantôme shows us both Catherine de’ Medici and Diane de Poitiers with their entourage of finely
· Jean Meyer dressed ladies, cheerfully riding all day long until over sixty years of age. They were experienced horsewomen. The ancien régime smelt of horse; the state of the past was closely bound to the horse.26 As soon as books of instruction for princes developed a little, they always had an important section on horses and equestrian skills. A court was also, and perhaps first of all, a stable. Moving from the concrete aspects of horse-rearing, we now broach the abstractions of cartography. At first very sketchy, based on travellers’ evidence and doubling as useful guides indicating post houses and inns, maps became mental representations. The state, indeed the nation, took concrete intellectual form in a voluntarist, political cartography that was increasingly scientific. More-or-less systematized with Henry the Navigator (‒) and his ‘Cape Sagres University’, with a naval focus . . . enabling the great discoveries to take place.27 In France this liaison between the state, science, and technology resulted in the first, almost complete maps of Nicolas Sanson and his sons (map of France of , France described in several maps of , and, finally and above all—and this is revealing— the map of French gabelles). Here, too, competition between states played a part. Holland, in effect, taking over from Portugal, had an almost total monopoly, cut into the last thirty years of the seventeenth century by both the English and the French.28 The more soberly decorated French maps also aimed to be more scientific. Sanson went beyond simple topographic description: he included the main boundaries of the better-known ecclesiastical entities and, to some extent, those of administrations. This was not done without huge mistakes. As for astronomical accuracy, that remained very inadequate. One of the principal concerns of Louis XIV and Colbert was to have scientifically prepared maps available for use. Hence the close interweaving of astronomy (which fixed the major reference points giving exact latitude and longitude on the earth; planometry, and cartography). Astronomers turned into map-makers: the state paid them. Thus JeanDominique Cassini emerged. He was at first professor at Bologna (), then superintendent of the fortifications of the Papal States (), then regulating engineer (ingénieur régulateur) of rivers. Colbert recruited him in by dint of a great many material rewards. This was a major facet of the technology transfer policy practised by Louis XIV in all spheres. It produced a whole dynasty which, at the head of the Paris Observatory completed in , supplied a full set of maps of France for political use. Teams of world-famous scholars, like the Abbé Picard and Philippe de La Hire, were assembled there.29 The Paris–Dunkirk meridian was taken as the point of departure for all French maritime cartography. This was the 26 27 28
Brantôme, ed. Vaucheret (), , , , ‒. Bellec (), ‒; Chaunu (), ‒, ‒, ‒. 29 Meyer (), ‒. Bluche (), ‒, ‒, .
States, Roads, War · major work of the Académie des Sciences. This example was followed throughout Europe, and it was the French Jesuits who supplied the first map of China covering the whole of the territory, at the request of the Chinese Emperor. The French map was constantly improved in the course of the centuries that followed, resulting in the late eighteenth-century masterpiece, the celebrated ‘Cassini’s map’, a document of inestimable worth for historians, and one which was originally a working tool for politicians. This was a huge undertaking: trigonometry made it possible to speed up the task of measuring, which was completed for the whole of eastern France at the end of the reign of Louis XIV, between and . In his Eloge de La Hire, Fontenelle relates how the king was affected by this new look at the country. Addressing himself to the cartographers, he observed to them, in essence, that they had shrunk the kingdom by a third. This conveys the precise extent of the mental revolution which the ‘sketch’ of assumed. For, ultimately, the longitudes of the French coast(s) had to be restored to their true locations, whereas previously they had been located much farther out into the Atlantic. This also contributed to a diminution of the sense of a France too big to be conquered. But in , right in the middle of the War of the League of Augsburg, the Académie des Sciences finally published the Carte de France corrigée par ordre du Roi sur les observations de l’Académie des Sciences, a title which set the académiciens implicit seal of approval on the work. It was a sign of the times that atlases and maps now grew in number in the libraries of individuals, beginning with those of the servants of the king. The royal collection bears witness to this.30 It was no longer a question solely of geographical maps on a global or continental scale, but of specialized maps of countries, or indeed of provinces or regions. The concept of Europe, rather than that of the state to which one belonged, became visual, although it did, moreover, mean that representations distorted true perspectives for a while. The concept of the river basin, so vital to the economic life of the states, was so imperative that they managed to indicate on maps lines of mountains divided by completely arbitrary rivers. One can legitimately enquire whether this description did not contribute to the creation of an obstacle in people’s minds that raised these so-called mountains to the level of unsurmountable obstacles. They replaced the sea monsters, obstacles which had greatly hindered the great discoveries at the dawn of the modern world.31 For anything high was terrifying (Madame de Sévigné), and the young Racine drew the contours of the valley of Port-Royal like a veritable mountain— far from the humble reality of the matter. This exaggeration, at once cartographic and visual, of rivers and mountains (forming ‘natural’ frontiers) came to distort political ideas. Now we know that the 30 31
Bacou and Séguy (), ‒. Meyer (‒), ‒; Bellec (), ‒.
· Jean Meyer notion of a ‘natural’ frontier, although it was the basis of Mazarin’s first instructions for the negotiation of the treaty of Westphalia,32 had never been held by more than a minority of the royal entourage. The mind-set in fact remained dependent on that of the classical milieu and, more precisely, of the beginning of Julius Caesar’s De bello gallico (Gallic Wars): ‘Gallia divisa est in partes tres (Gaul is divided into three parts)’ and what followed. The outlines of rivers on maps haunted politicians. Despite Louis XIV’s conquests, eighteenth-century history books continued to see France as enclosed by the four medieval rivers (Scheldt, Meuse, Saône, Rhône): for a period the visualization of the élites and that of the politicians were very different from each other. However, between dream and political reality there intervened the concept of linear frontier cartography in the north-east and that of the frontier determined by rivers, that is, along a river as a dividing-line, introduced by the clause of the treaty of Utrecht fixing the FrancoPiedmont frontier. Whatever these defects in vision (long-held or resulting from the map itself ), they were only the dross inherent in the new, and imperfect, intellectual mastery of the land. In this fascinating period of transition, one goes from the cumulative images of a Merian, admirably illustrating—visually—the Germanic areas (and infinitely less well, the French, with the exception of Paris)33 to the maps of Cassini. They in their turn, despite—and because of—their constant improvement, were inadequate for the specific needs of state administrative departments, civil and military. Ever more detailed maps were required, initially of borders and around fortresses. Relief-maps were joined by extraordinarily detailed records, which were in some ways reminiscent of true plans de feux (‘plans of hearths’). These were the work of the ingénieurs du roi, topographical specialists, who reproduced and made use of the work of astronomers. The latter worked more than ever on a global scale: their problem was that of taking a bearing quickly and easily, especially at sea. Maritime longitude and latitude were part of the essentials which allowed control of the seas worldwide, and, thus, indirectly, of European wars. Domination of the seas meant world domination. In the eighteenth century, naval fleets put their pride and proof of their efficacy to the test in the great voyages of circumnavigation, which constituted the final stage in the totality of nautical investigative voyages. Beside them, frigates were used for setting chronometers (mariners’ timepieces), and the Indian Companies used the reports of their commanders to establish great atlases, like the famous Neptune oriental. Recording the shoreline was undertaken everywhere on a very large scale, by naval stations in particular: analysis of possible landing beaches; systematic 32 33
Mignet () (memorandum of Jan. ). Merian ().
States, Roads, War · sounding of depth at sea with a view to possible commercial or military use. This was, for instance, the prelude to the Egyptian campaign in . Science and politics were tightly interwoven to a greater or lesser extent: science was in part the servant of natural political ambitions; the navy, and, to a considerably lesser extent, the ingénieurs du roi were in return servants of astronomy and other sciences. When, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the era of circumnavigations was over, naval expeditions in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean were motivated by interdisciplinary scientific research, in which scholars and sailor-scholars lived together on the ships, not without frequent problems and collisions. Some sovereigns, such as Louis XVI, controlled such activities strictly, as enlightened amateurs (Louis XV, for instance, ‘specialized’ in natural sciences). To offset the limited accuracy of nautical clocks, direct routes were sought to the Indies and the Far East, especially in the Indian Ocean, such as the ‘Grenier route’ from the île de France to the Indies, or that of the counter-monsoon bypassing the Indonesian archipelago. The principle was based on maintaining the same longitude (much more difficult than adhering to the same latitude, a practice well known to the Vikings and to the Portuguese and the Spaniards of the great discoveries). This was arrived at by the two processes of astronomical observation, of ‘lunar distances’ and the satellites of Jupiter, involving difficulties which are not hard to imagine. Thus from maps on a :, scale of the environs of fortified places to nautical charts (from which the fantasy islands resulting from errors of observation gradually disappeared) a new world became apparent, the direct or indirect work of states of all kinds. This silent revolution is explained first by the material improvements in measuring the true extent of the land, but still more by revisions—with soul-searching moments—in the way in which the world and its extent, by land and sea, were apprehended. Hence the need for specialist bodies which still remained versatile: astronomers, travellers, naval officers, scholars, scientific academies and societies, royal engineer-topographers, and often town planners and architects. A Balthasar Neumann was both a military engineer and architect of splendid south German baroque churches. At the summit of the state, a proportion of the leading officials of the French or English type became technical specialists. The principal reforms of the French navy in the second half of the eighteenth century were, for the most part, the work of premier commis Truguet, ennobled as a result, whose son was one of the greatest admirals of the nineteenth century, serving all the régimes in succession, included on this account in the famous Dictionnaire des girouettes. For the Truguet were first and foremost in the service of the state, an entity above all régimes detached de facto from the masters of the day. The Truguet’s vision of distance was planetary. This is only one
· Jean Meyer instance among many. The Truguet had their counterpart in all the large—and often not so large—states.
. Conclusion The state was instigator, instrument, and servant of the sciences of distance: the twentieth century confirms this every day. It supplied the money, the material— increasingly costly, which it alone was capable of supplying—it fed the trade of specialist craftsmen in Paris or London. What is more, it shaped the resources, whether material (land and naval arsenals, observatories, strongholds, and so on) or human (academies, engineers, architects, scholars, and so on). It directed research as servant-master, sometimes sensible and utilitarian, towards the service of its prestige and its propaganda, as well as its ambition. Here, and long before, what is useful rejoins the cutting-edge of fundamental research. The Danish scholar, Olaf Roemer, measured the speed of light accurately for the first time; but he was also one of the cartographer-engineers responsible for the construction (ultimately abandoned because of the costs of the wars) of the Eure canal together with the unfinished Maintenon viaduct, designed to carry water from the Eure to Versailles. It was in the course of the ten years spent in France that he secured a place in the history books; his recall by his own king in did not give him the opportunity for action on the same scale.34 This close inter-relation was not without drawbacks. One episode deserves attention in this context. Since the reign of Louis XIV the navy had advocated a link between the Canal du Nord and the Oise, in other words, Paris. The ‘practising’ engineer ‘on the ground’, Laurent, from the Anzin company, had proposed, and begun, a basic canal tunnel which would have permitted a speedy passage with few locks. Just a few kilometres remained unbuilt. As is well known, Turgot’s arrival as Controller General was expressed in economy measures. Turgot appealed to Dupont de Nemours, who asked the famous Abbé Bossut, emeritus mathematician and examiner for the competitive entry to Mézières. This report criticized the project harshly, arguing that a tunnel km long was costly and useless: basing his comments on the contemporary state of knowledge of hydrodynamics, the Abbé concluded that it would be impossible for the barges to move forward, since the friction of water against the edge would create a complete blockage. The contemporary mind boggled. This was neither the first nor the last time a specialist report erred and reached an absurd conclusion. This was a typical instance of the opposition, frequently experienced in France, between overtheoretical science and undertheorized practice. Neither the Napoleon Canal nor 34
Bluche (), ‒; Daumas (), ‒, .
States, Roads, War · even the Canal du Nord completed in the course of the first Monnet Plan took up the idea of a base canal. This has sufficiently underlined the disadvantages of statist practice in relation to distance. Science has never progressed in linear fashion: it is also made through obstacles surmounted (or not). Technology does not go at the same speed as pure science. As a result there are premature inventions or those which cannot be exploited at that point in time, temporary blind alleys. Politics, which did not have the requisite competence and acted as a result of the impulsion of intellectual or financial ‘lobbies’, or simply from economic concerns or calculation, inevitably committed errors. The Laurent affair is one example. What the practitioner knew to be possible on the ground and at that point in time, admittedly with a very great deal of money, the scholar—in the pure sense of the period—judged it impossible, in this case wrongly. Were the politicians wrong to put their trust in the scientist rather than the man on the ground? In reality, my question is a matter of mentality: the interesting fact (and a sign of the times) is that the politicians did believe the scientist. This did not prevent Louis XVI from having brief recourse (in ) to Laurent de Villedeuil, son of the ousted engineer, as Controller General of Finances. But it was too late for the original scheme. In sum, the modern state, from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, was confronted with the major problem of distance. Space on land was poorly controlled: it had to be improved so that men, news, and merchandise could penetrate and overcome it with ease. These permanent improvements, however, favoured the various types of means of communication very unequally at different periods: from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries improvement in the control of distance-time overland was spectacular, while relatively weak at sea, and average for river transport and its extensions. In the last case it impinged above all upon the quantitative. All played a part, however, thanks to, and by means of, the state, in the move towards the unification of national markets. This was essentially to the advantage of England, France, the Low Countries, and Germanic Europe (especially Prussia). Hence the homogenization—entirely relative, however—of trade areas. In a concept of a completely different order, each state was compelled to protect itself. That was even its principal raison d’être. Fortresses sometimes stressed frontiers; they were part of the geographical and urban countryside of the period. However, policies on this point were very varied, in relation principally to the financial might and geographical and geopolitical configuration of the states: limes, ‘iron rings’, border posts, isolated fortresses acting as storehouses and refuges, and barrier towns were so many adaptive variants. To build roads and frontiers, fortresses and capitals, an increasingly precise conceptual apparatus had to be available to enable an apprehension (in the highly ambiguous dual meaning
· Jean Meyer of the word) of the world and of ‘space’. This alone enabled the military and statist domination of the European land and sea mass. Consequently, the state relied, in a series of retrospective effects, on the scientific movement of which it was, simultaneously, instigator and profiteer, the accelerator and, at times, the brake. Resulting from this was, first, map-making of ever-increasing accuracy and a part-scientific part-empirical apparatus for the measurement and understanding of space: relief-maps, maps of all kinds and on every scale, at the disposal of large states only. However, the essential perhaps lay above all in the mental mastery of spaces, in the appreciation of space–time relations, which determined everything else. They presupposed the passage of concrete record to abstract materialization on a two-dimensional map, the replacement of ‘photographic’ evidence as presented by Merian or Gomberville by the flat map. This visual abstraction transformed everything, beginning with the conditions of military campaigns. It operated on at least two planes: that of the commanding élites, generals, and politicians, who had to adjust to the map, just as sailors to the nautical chart long before; also that of ‘popularization’, whether professional (which has often been emphasized) or administrative (urban and rural tax assessments henceforth on a mathematical scale; anticipation, for example, of road networks according to maps). Since for a long while it continued to remain imperfect, the famous :, map was the cause of considerable additional expenditure in the construction of railway networks. The modern state and its advance were therefore also the consequence of this very specific intellectual dynamism. It has been described as a true mental revolution on a par with the conquest of accurate time: in all spheres, the modern state was impelled by the necessity of leaving the era of approximate time to enter that of measured time and space, subject to mathematics and geometry, in short, grasped in a series of mental operations which could not be more familiar to us and accordingly appreciated all the less. It was in reality an infinitely difficult victory, with the play between interactions and retrospective actions glimpsed with such difficulty and—with more reason—anticipated, some possibly foreseeable, others entirely unexpected. Fortresses and roads determined frontiers; the way in which the space–time factor was used contributed to defeat or to military victory—all in a general atmosphere of progress, in other words instability. This had repercussions on administrative and political methods, often out of kilter with the brutal drives of innovation, foreseen or unexpected. What was dramatic in these confrontations was that the retrospective loops only permitted a very inadequate realization of the prophetic policies dear to the enlightened despots of the eighteenth century.35 Hence politicians’ enthusiastic interest in the sciences. Perhaps 35
Koseleck (‒), ‒, ‒.
States, Roads, War · no period placed scientific issues so close to power as the first half of the seventeenth century, whether the Stevin in Holland, or the entourage of Henri IV in France. But that is another story, still more difficult to write, for among other topics, it would have to include the education of princes, and in its essentially comparative dimensions, and to cover, too, the real importance, quantitative and qualitative, of the true ‘decision-makers’.
Men, Money, and Means Jan Lindegren
. Introduction The outcome of most wars in the long run has depended on the resources in men, money, and other means which the different sides have been able to muster. There are of course cases where other factors have been more important, but even then resources have played a vital role. This very general statement takes into account both quantitative and qualitative aspects, and it is of course impossible to analyse them in depth for the whole period ‒ and for all of Europe. Therefore some restraint is necessary. In this chapter the emphasis is on the early modern period preceding the Napoleonic era. My argument rests on a detailed analysis of the resources of the Danish and Swedish states in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and from this vantage point I will try to broaden the perspective both in time and space. When it comes to the resources of war, something must also be said of the relationship between the quantitative and qualitative aspects. At first hand it might be tempting to eliminate the latter and concentrate on the numbers. But a closer look at the problem shows that this is impossible: not only are people, money, and means very different from one another; there are of course differences within these categories which cannot be ignored. This is also true for the seemingly most simple category of money. Money assumed many guises, a fact that, in my opinion, was a key problem, if not the key problem, of the early modern states.
. The Problem In the latter part of the fifteenth century Louis XI, king of France, posed a new question to his fellow princes in Europe, when, contrary to custom, he built up and maintained a huge standing army even in times of peace. This was greatly
· Jan Lindegren deplored, even by his own chronicler, Bishop Thomas Basin, who wrote that at the end of his reign Louis XI raised to , the effective number of his cavalry and raised in Normandy in place of the Francs-archers . . . , foot soldiers called pikemen and in all the kingdom he raised proportionate numbers so that although they remained peacefully at home, he ordered that they should be paid five francs a month as ordinary wages. In addition, he brought from Germany , to , foot, Swiss whom he maintained in idleness in the kingdom for several years, even until his death, for although their pay was regularly paid to them, one cannot remember any campaign in which they were employed.1
The creation of the standing army and especially a permanent infantry—the cavalry continued to be recruited from the noble class—was, as Philippe Contamine remarks, nothing less than a scandal in the eyes of the French king’s contemporaries.2 It did not seem so to his fellow princes who more-or-less immediately followed this example, as the figures in Table clearly demonstrate.3 The problem that confronted princes and states was how to raise, and maintain on a yearly basis, the necessary troops and, of course, how to finance military operations. To manage all these new administrative and bureaucratic structures and new methods of political and financial control had to be created, and there were profound changes in other areas of society. Together this amounted to no less than a reshaping of the whole power structure or, in other words, the birth of the early modern state. My aim here is not to consider the state-building process as such but instead is confined to examination of the problem of raising, maintaining, and deploying troops, which was crucial to the process and indeed a central concern of princes of the period. War was not only a way to spend resources; it was also a system of redistributing resources both within and among states. Perhaps the most important feature of war was that it provided an ideological foundation for taxes. Without wars, or at least the threat of war, the princes of early modern Europe could not legitimize taxation. Armies and navies could not function unless they were
2 Cited in Contamine (b), . Ibid. ‒. Cf. Jeremy Black’s criticism of this Table: Black (b). Black argues that Geoffrey Parker has used unreliable sources for the figures and that those for France in and and for Britain in are too high, those for Russia in probably too low. Black’s critique could also have included the Swedish figures for and . Contrary to what the Table leads one to believe, the standing army was established well before in Sweden: cf. Nilsson (), ‒, ‒, for the establishment of this army and an international comparison. In Sweden had an army of c., men: this figure should also be approximately correct for . That for is approximately correct if only Swedish and Finnish nationals are included. Some , foreign soldiers under Swedish command are omitted. These and other similar comments are, however, of minor relevance to my argument. 1 3
Men, Money, and Means · T . Sizes of European armies, ‒ [Spain]
[The Netherlands]
, , , , , , , ,
[—] [—] , , [—] , , ,
[France]
[England]
[Sweden]
[Russia]
, , , , , , , ,
, , , [—] , , , ,
[—] [—] , , , , , ,
[—] [—] [—] , [—] , , ,
Source: Parker (b),
furnished with resources which in one way or another relied on taxation. Thus an administration capable of solving these tasks was a necessity for the armed forces. To a not insignificant degree, the military revolution assumed a civil guise in the form of a new, larger, and much more efficient administration. For the majority of army and naval officers and for the new office-holders in the civilian administration, war, or rather taxation for war, had become an economic necessity. Since in most cases these individuals also made up the bulk of the social, economic, and political élites in their respective states, inter-state war had also evolved into a social necessity. Understanding war as a redistributive system and as an ideological foundation for exploitation may be important for explaining why wars came about. The scope of this chapter is, however, the kinds of resources available for war and thus the costs of war. To a large extent the ability to wage war can be seen as a question of potential, even if it is quite obvious that this can in no way be equalled with actual capacity. In this respect the resources of a state consisted fundamentally of the number of its inhabitants and their ability to produce a societal surplus. The questions are simply: how large were the populations of different states during the period? How much did they produce?
. People There are some problems inherent in giving an exact answer to the question of population size in both Scandinavian states. According to the latest assessment, which happens to be my own, Scandinavia had about . million inhabitants in c., and the size of the population was roughly the same in both states. A century later the situation had changed considerably. There were then almost two
· Jan Lindegren Swedish subjects to every Dane, and the total population had risen to about million. On both occasions the total population of Scandinavia was about oneseventh that of France. These figures, however, do not include the populations of the Swedish provinces in Germany and the Baltic area nor the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, where the Danish king had a considerable and growing influence as ruling duke in half of Schleswig and Holstein. As Sweden acquired one province after another, the population rose from about . million in c. to million in in her provinces. At the same period the populations of Schleswig and Holstein are believed to have been about . million.4 However, demographic development during the seventeenth century was very dramatic indeed. As Figure shows, there was a big shift in the s, mostly as a result of the Swedish acquisition of a large slice of Denmark as well as some parts of Norway by the terms of the Peace of Copenhagen in . In this way about . million Danish subjects became Swedish. The extreme hardships Denmark suffered in the war with Sweden in the s were also a factor. The population of what remained of Denmark was reduced from over , in to less than , in . About , people had died during the decade, mostly from epidemics which, however, must be attributed to the war.5 Some forty years later the Swedish state was struck by a catastrophe of the same order. As a result of epidemics in the wake of a number of severe crop failures, , of Finland’s population of , died in ‒, and in the same period another , died in Estonia. As Livonia and parts of Sweden proper were also to some extent affected, we may conclude that more than . million of a total of million died just before the outbreak of the Great War of the North (‒).6 The pattern of these two catastrophes—even that inflicted by the war—can be described as normal for pre-industrial society, although unusual in their severity. As the very young and the very old were the primary victims, after the crises the adult population had fewer mouths to support than before. They were therefore, economically speaking, temporarily better off. This was why society could overcome even catastrophes such as these. However, there was also a novel demographic phenomenon, which can be seen only very indirectly in the graph (Figure ): the massive losses of soldiers in the wars.
The soldiers The need for soldiers was dependent on the strength of the armed forces, the frequency of wars, and the losses in war. In the mid-sixteenth century war became an almost permanent state in Sweden. In Denmark, however, peace 4 5
Lindegren (), ch. . 6 Lassen (). Jutikkala (); Pali (), ‒.
Men, Money, and Means · 2.00 1.80 1.60 1.40 1.20 1.00 0.80 0.60 0.40 0.20 0.00 1620
1640
Sweden
1660
1680
1700
1720
Denmark
F. . The population of the Scandinavian states, – (in millions) Source: Lindegren Note: The figures for Denmark and Sweden include those for Norway and Finland, respectively. The graph is based on my own population mode, which takes into account both war losses and their demographic consequences. The difference between these figures and earlier population assessments is very small for Denmark with Norway. They are, however, substantial when it comes to Sweden (although not Finland), as in my view Sweden had some per cent more inhabitants in the seventeenth century than has hitherto been believed .
was normal and war abnormal. Whilst Sweden had only years of peace from to , Denmark had . Furthermore, Sweden was often engaged in two or even more wars at the same time, so that on average there were . wars in progress every year during the whole period. The annual average for Denmark was about . wars. The distribution of the Swedish wars over time, as well as the powers involved, is shown in Figure . As almost all Denmark’s wars were fought against Sweden, only one is not recorded in the graph, the ‒ war against the Holy Roman Empire. During the seventeenth century wars in northern Europe gradually changed in character. The wars of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had mainly been local affairs between Sweden and her neighbours. Warfare in this period was limited to minor campaigns in the border regions. During the
· Jan Lindegren seventeenth century, however, the intensity of warfare grew considerably. Campaigns were organized on a grand scale, involving attempts to occupy large slices of enemy territory, and they tended to be fought between Sweden on the one side and a coalition of neighbours on the other. The situation was very similar to that of France and her adversaries. The almost permanent state of war obviously made the Swedish need for armed forces greater than that of Denmark. However, as the wars and warfare itself took on a new character, these differences gradually diminished. At the end of the period both Sweden and Denmark had huge armed forces at their disposal. But Sweden was undoubtedly the power that initiated the build-up of armed forces in the Baltic area, while Denmark and other powers in the region reacted to Swedish expansionist policies and the military threat the country exerted on her neighbours. As early as the s Sweden’s armed forces were made up of over per cent of the entire population. This level was maintained until when the king, Gustavus II Adolfus, managed to unite the political élite behind a very expansionist policy, which entailed—inter alia—a reorganization of the army and the recruitment systems, as well as a very rapid increase in numbers. Swedish plans drawn up in that year projected an army of , men in peacetime, which should be compared with the wartime army earlier in the decade when the country had only managed to raise about , men. Although the plans in themselves are extraordinary, the actual development was even more so. After only a few years the strength of the armed forces had been raised to , men, which represented well over per cent of the Swedish and Finnish populations. During the following century the proportion remained about the same, with the exception of the Great War of the North, when the proportion was almost per cent. It is very interesting to compare the Swedish plans of and the subsequent development with Danish plans for war made four years earlier. In Denmark and Sweden, having waged war against one another, concluded the Peace treaty of Knäred. The Danish war effort relied both on easy access to the German market for mercenaries and on relatively large financial resources. The first was guaranteed by the fact that the Danish king was also a ruling duke within the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire and, as such, could not be denied the right to recruit troops in the Empire. Denmark’s financial resources were, however, even more important. This way of waging war was common in the sixteenth century, but it had its drawbacks. It was easy to recruit troops and to lay them off, but very expensive to maintain them for longer periods. The costs very soon proved too high for the Danish state, as a result of which it could not afford to hire a sufficient number of mercenaries for an extended period. After initial Danish successes the war soon came to a standstill because of growing financial problems. Even so,
Men, Money, and Means · 5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 1560–4 Civil War
1585–9 Sea Powers
1610–14 German Principalities
1635–9 Habsburg
1685–9
1660–4
Brandenburg/Prussia
Russia
Poland (Saxony)
1710–14 Denmark
F. . Swedish wars, – (annual average, in five-year periods)
the Danish government concluded that the war had gone rather well and that, if combined with a small militia, this system was adequate for Denmark’s military needs. The plan was that this militia should consist of , men. As the militia had proved itself totally useless in the preceding war, one can conclude that the country had not yet established a standing army, but that it did, however, have a permanent navy at its disposal. There were huge differences between the Danish plan, which was not even fully realized because the militia was not brought up to full strength, and that of Sweden in . After a series of military setbacks (or, more accurately, catastrophes) during the fifty years that followed, it became increasingly evident that Denmark could not survive without a large standing army. In a few years during the s the Danish armed forces were built up from almost nothing to a formidable level that was to prove more than a match for Sweden during the great wars of the s. To do this Denmark had, however, to rely heavily on the German mercenary market. About per cent of the army consisted of foreigners. Nevertheless, the proportion of Danes serving in the army and the navy rose to the Swedish level of per cent. This was also the case during the Great War of the North. The military solutions applied in Denmark were quite different from those of Norway, where building up a militia was sufficient. By the end of the seventeenth century, however, this
· Jan Lindegren militia comprised a considerable number and had at the same time a reasonable military ability, as there was a body of professional officers who trained them regularly. During the Great War of the North the pressure from this Norwegian army, which at the end of the war had grown to well over , men, was a considerable threat to Sweden, binding large numbers of troops in the border regions. The many Norwegians in the Danish navy, including the proportion of the population for whom military service was compulsory, was nearly per cent. Several factors make it extremely difficult to compare these Scandinavian figures with those of other European states. The military strength of a state, even when one is only interested in the sheer numbers, is not easy to measure. Moreover, the population figures for all of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries cannot be called anything other than unreliable. During the eighteenth century, prior to the French Revolution, the ground for comparison gradually improves. The material presented by André Corvisier indicates that the armies of the period usually constituted about ‒. per cent of the population of the major states.7 The navies, which were manned by a very large number of men in some states, are excluded from these figures. On the other hand, the figures do include foreigners serving under the flag of another country. In the case of Prussia this has quite absurd consequences. The Prussian army of is, for instance, said to have made up one-fourteenth, or well over per cent, of the entire population. If this figure is scrutinized more closely all kinds of mistakes become apparent. The Prussian forces, for instance, include the North-German–British army of Prince Ferdinand, totalling almost , men. Corvisier has also underestimated the population of Prussia by about per cent. Lastly, if the very substantial number of foreign soldiers in the Prussian army are also taken into account, it transpires that no more than just over per cent of King Frederick II’s own subjects were doing military service.8 The thesis of a so-called ‘military revolution’ put forward by Roberts and Parker seems to be endorsed by the graph in Figure . This was originally put forward by Michael Roberts on the basis of Swedish evidence. Roberts maintained that such a revolution took place in the early seventeenth century, with its centre in Sweden. Geoffrey Parker later revised this thesis somewhat by pointing to the Spanish military achievement during the sixteenth century. In my opinion Figure strongly suggests that Roberts and Parker have a good case when it comes to the ability to raise troops and to maintain them. Their respective arguments were based to some extent on the numerical development of the armed forces, even if other aspects predominate. Jeremy Black has recently presented a general Corvisier (), . Lindegren (), ‒, gives further details. See also below, Chapter , where similar figures to those I have presented are given for Prussia. 7 8
Men, Money, and Means · 4.0 4.0
3.5 3.5
3.0 3.0
2.5 2.5
2.0 2.0
1.5 1.5
1.0 1.0
0.5 0.5
0.0 0.0
1475 1475
1525 1525
1575 1575
1625 1625
France France Russia Russia
1675 1675 Spain Spain Sweden Sweden
1725 1725
1775 1775
F. . Percentage of population in the armed forces, c.– Sources: (for the forces) Parker (b), ; Black (), –; Lindegren (), ; Mankell (b), nos. – (for Sweden, ); (for the populations) Henry (); LiviBacchi (); Kriedke (); Lindegren (); Historical Statistics of Sweden (); Suomen taloushistoria. III (). Note: The figures for the Swedish forces include only native Swedes and Finns; before naval forces have been omitted for lack of evidence. For the other states the curves only show the proportion of the army to the population, so that they are of course not fully comparable to the Swedish figures. More importantly, the non-Swedish figures also include foreign troops. The population figure is uncertain for the period pre-c.; moreover, the figures become increasingly unreliable the farther back in time one goes.
challenge to this thesis, maintaining that the period after was crucial, although also admitting that important changes had taken place in the late sixteenth century. He also claims that the Roberts–Parker thesis is shown to be incorrect if one examines the sizes of the armed forces.9 The graph shows him to be right in the cases of France and Russia, as well as Prussia and Denmark, which should not be overlooked in this period. But prior to this, first Spain, then Sweden, had in fact experienced this allegedly post- development. Two crucial steps can be discerned in the development. The first was the establishment of the standing army, which in the case of Sweden did not occur until the mid-sixteenth century. The second took place in Spain during the reign of Philip II and in Sweden 9
Black (b).
· Jan Lindegren about half a century later under Gustavus II Adolfus. The changes that took place in Sweden during his reign undoubtedly amounted to nothing less than a revolution. Interestingly, the gradual Swedish disengagement from European war politics in the eighteenth century still left the country with a proportionately very large army. This is even more true of the Danish state, which probably kept a larger proportion of its inhabitants in arms than any other state in Europe and at the same time pursued a very successful peace policy. The relationship between army sizes and population also indicates an almost self-evident fact. To be able to compete with bigger states, small and sparsely populated states had to have armies of adequate strength, which meant, inter alia, that they had to be able to transform a far larger proportion of their inhabitants into soldiers. However, coalitions and treaties could offer even quite insignificant principalities security without requiring them to be armed to the teeth. But these principalities were not actors in the international state system. Instead they played the role of bystanders. The burden of recruitment did not depend only on the size of the armed forces; losses were even more important. Losses in war have often been equated with battle losses.10 This is perhaps understandable since until recently the study of war has very much concentrated on the big battles. An occasional battle could kill thousands and even tens of thousands of men, as in some of the more renowned battles of the eighteenth century. Yet there is every reason to believe that the importance of battles, as well as the notion of battle deaths, is misleading. A thorough investigation of war losses during the pre-Napoleonic era is necessary to determine the burden of recruitment, as well as for the light it sheds on the nature of war and warfare. I have recently concluded such a study of the Swedish war losses ‒, and on this basis it has also been possible to calculate the Danish losses in the same period. Lack of source material makes it impossible to investigate Swedish war losses prior to . On certain rare occasions some evidence still exists, of which the most well known is the disastrous battle of Kirchholm in . There almost an entire Swedish field army of , men was annihilated by a Polish force of heavy cavalry only a quarter of its size. As a result of the army reforms initiated in , however, there is source material not only for the few extraordinary moments of glorious victory or catastrophic defeat, but also from the new advanced and bureaucratic army administration. Since that body did large quantities of paperwork, the losses from onwards can be calculated from these sources. I shall present the results of this investigation briefly. During the period ‒, Sweden lost . million men in the wars. The distribution of these losses 10
See e.g. Levy ().
Men, Money, and Means · 120
0.7%
100
0.6% 0.5%
80
0.4% 60 0.3% 40 0.2% 20
0.1% 0.0%
0 1640–9 1660–9 1680–9 1700–9 1620–9 1630–9 1650–9 1670–9 1690–9 1710–19 1710–9 total war losses (by decades) yearly losses % of total population
F. . Swedish absolute war losses (ooo) and relative war losses (expressed as a percentage of population), – Note: The figures include only native Swedes and Finns.
over time, as well as the average yearly loss as a percentage of the total population is shown in Figure . The Great War of the North was the most costly in both absolute and relative terms. However, the wars of both the s and the s were unusually costly as the fighting in these decades was concentrated in just five years compared to eight years in the s, ten in each of the two following decades and the first two decades of the eighteenth century. Comparable data is not easy to find, with the exception of those relating to the Danish state, which I have calculated, and the losses sustained by Castile during the Spanish wars ‒. In ‒ about , Castilian men of a population estimated at million lost their lives in wars.11 On average , men were raised for military service in Castile each year in the last half of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries.12 The annual average loss of soldiers amounted to . per , of the total population in ‒, or about . per , for the period ‒. Considering that the Castilian recruitment level was almost the same in the period before as afterwards, it is reasonable to assume that the yearly losses in the period ‒ were, on average, roughly per ,. As I have already indicated, it is impossible to establish reliable figures for Sweden Parker (c), , , gives ‘perhaps ,’ as the number of men lost and estimates the population at . million in . Luard (), . 12 Parker (a), ‒. 11
· Jan Lindegren in ‒, but an informed estimate is that the annual Swedish war losses for this period were also about per ,. (See Figure .) Wih the loss of soldiers on average amounting to between and per , of the total population, it might not seem too heavy a burden. But this is a premature conclusion. If the losses are viewed in the context of the available men, that is those who had survived childhood and reached the age of twenty, it can be stated that about per cent of all adult Swedish and Finnish men died in wars during the period ‒.13 The corresponding figure for adult Castilian men dying in the the Spanish wars of ‒ was per cent. The losses of Denmark and Norway are in themselves interesting. The Danish losses in ‒ were of nearly the same order as those of Castile. This is noteworthy, as Denmark was involved in wars for only about one-fifth of the period, while Spain was constantly involved in wars of one kind or another. The small difference obviously reflects the fact that the relative cost of competing in international wars, measured in soldiers’ lives, was higher in a small country. The differences between Denmark and Norway are, in turn, a reflection of the difficulties experienced by the Danish state in establishing firm control over Norway. This was eventually achieved at the end of the seventeenth century. Before then Denmark played the role of Castile within a state whose parts were fairly loosely bound together. This phenomenon, common to most European states, was interestingly not to be found within the Swedish state. The realm comprised Sweden and Finland and, at least from the s or s, the state had as good a grip on one part as the other. The reason why firmer Danish control over Norway after is not revealed in Figure is largely military. The Norwegian army was not tested in warfare to anything like the same extent as the Danish, and it did not therefore have to face losses of the same magnitude. After developments in Sweden and Denmark in many ways mirrored one another. This was also the case in relation to war losses. The explanation as to why ‘only’ per cent of the total Danish adult male population perished in wars compared to per cent of the Swedish is that Sweden, with the help of the English navy, forced Denmark out of the Great War of the North for nine years, during which time Sweden lost the additional per cent. How, then, were all these soldiers lost? A widespread misunderstanding is that most soldiers died in action, that they were killed in the big battles. In his work, War in the Modern Great Power System, ‒, Jack S. Levy, for instance, relies on 13 This is based on the assumption that the Swedish and Finnish populations of can serve as a model for European populations in the th and th cents. In the male age group ‒ years constituted .% of the total population of Sweden and .% of that of Finland: Statiska Centralbyrån, Table A ; Suomen taloushistoria, ed. T. K. Vattula (), Table .. In other words, -year-old men constituted almost exactly % of the total population.
Men, Money, and Means · 0.35 0.30 0.25 0.20 0.15 0.10 0.05 Sweden ‒ 1620–69
Denmark
Norway ‒ 1670–1719
Castile
F. . Lost soldiers as a percentage of the population in Sweden, Denmark–Norway, and Castile, – (yearly averages)
earlier estimates of what are called ‘battle deaths’. The precise meaning of estimates of what are called ‘battle deaths’. The precise meaning of this term is somewhat uncertain, but in most instances it seems to be quite literal. Most war losses in the Swedish armies, however, did not occur on battlefields. Of the . million native Swedish and Finnish soldiers who died ‒, about per cent died as the result of different kinds of actions in the field, the most famous of all being King Gustavus II Adolfus himself. An additional per cent were killed or mortally wounded during sieges, such as King Charles XII. Another per cent perished while prisoners of war. The remaining per cent, however, died as a result of the normal hardships of war. Obviously, officers (and kings) did not have to bear the same hardships as the common soldier. On average a commissioned Swedish officer lived about eight years during the Great War of the North, compared to three or four years for the rank and file. The officer was also much more likely to be killed in action than the common soldier, which in some ways is evidenced by the fate of the aforementioned kings. A more telling example of the relationship between the hardships of everyday life and the perils of the battlefield is the story of men recruited into the Lifeguard Regiment in . They were a small part of a detachment of men from two other regiments belonging to a small Swedish field army operating in Livonia and Kuria. After a series of adventures this detachment eventually joined the main Swedish army, then in Poland. Since it was too far and too dangerous to send the detachment back to their regiments, the survivors were drafted in to the Lifeguard Regiment. These veterans, in turn, were what was
· Jan Lindegren left of recruits sent from Sweden in . So much for the background—let us now return to the new soldiers of the Royal Swedish Lifeguards. They were assigned to the grenadier major’s (chief of the grenadier battalion) own company. This was one of the army’s most active élite units. In the standard attack of the Swedish army the grenadier battalion of the Lifeguards was at the front, and at the head of the battalion was the grenadier major himself (the king and a staff colonel) and his own company. As a result, the men saw a lot of action during the following years, and yet of them (as well as the king) were alive seven years later. The situation during the Great War of the North was not different from other wars. During the Thirty Years’ War soldiers of the Swedish expeditionary force in Germany14—usually about , men—also lived three to four years. The total losses of this force were , men, and in a normal year about a quarter of the force died. Some years losses were much higher, as in , when per cent died in just six months. At the end of this war the losses were relatively small for a number of years, with the exception of the very last. (See Figure .) The overall picture is in fact typical. In the first phase of a war—Sweden joined the Thirty Years War in —the losses were usually very heavy because of epidemics. At that point a large number of soldiers were either unused to warfare or unused to the microbes of the new war theatre, or perhaps both. After a while— but at a huge cost in human life—the soldiers acquired resistance to local diseases, as well as a better understanding of how to survive in the army. They had become veterans. However, the veterans were invariably too few and had to be continually reinforced with new troops, which, in turn, had to bear the main burden of losses. This meant that the losses were to a large extent dependent on the size and frequency of reinforcements. Varying military and political objectives and policies, as well as the generals’ personal abilities, were only of minor importance in the long run, although there can be no doubt that the heavy losses of must be explained by the fact that Sweden did its best to concentrate troops in Germany to strengthen her positions in the peace negotiations, which it was known would soon be concluded.
Two kinds of ‘Swedish’ troops operated in Germany in ‒. First, the Swedish expeditionary force (native Swedish and Finnish troops); secondly, German (or mostly German) armies under Swedish command. The former were in every respect a part of ‘Riksens militie af Svensk och Finsk Nation’ (Swedish National Army). In terms of finance, recruitment, and military and political aspects, these two kinds of troops—Swedish nationals on the one hand and enlisted foreigners on the other— were separate, although modern historians have largely failed to consider this. During the war Swedish (and Finnish) nationals always made up a relatively small part of the so-called ‘Swedish’ troops in Germany and, as most of them were garrisoned in Baltic coastal towns, they were of course even more insignificant in the field armies. 14
Men, Money, and Means · 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1630
1633 dead
1636
1639
1642
1645
1648
death rate
F. . Annual death rates and proportion of dead in the Swedish national forces in Germany, – Source: Lindegren (), Note: Losses have been calculated in two ways: first, as a percentage of the forces in Germany on Jan. each year, plus reinforcements sent during the year, less troops sent home dead; secondly, as a percentage of the dead of the mean strength of the expeditionary force (death rate). The mean strength itself is the average of the strength at the beginning of the year and at its end.
In sum: war losses during the early modern period depended on the forces’ size and the length of time they were mobilized. A permanently mobilized troop lost on average between a quarter and a third of its strength every year. The way the troops were used—whether they belonged to field armies or were garrisoned— was ultimately unimportant.15 Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that 15 Garrisoned troops in peace time or during peace-like conditions were far better off. The annual average death rate among the Finnish troops garrisoned in Livonia and Estonia in ‒ was . per ,, ranging from . to . (calculated from information in Laidre, , Tables ‒). This death rate was about three times higher than the national average for males aged ‒ years in the s: Statiska Centralbyrån, Table B . As the troops were garrisoned in towns, one has to take into account the differences between towns and rural areas. Early th-cent. death rates from the former were about % higher than in the latter: Statiska Centralbyrån, Table B . If these figures hold good for the th cent., they indicate that garrisoned troops were twice as likely as ordinary townspeople of the same age to die during peaceful conditions. However, these fairly high death rates were insignificant compared to annual war losses of ‒ per ,.
· Jan Lindegren the situation in the Swedish armies differed much from that in other armies. Why should it? Wars were, after all, conducted in much the same way by all the states.
. Money Besides soldiers the states also needed ‘danari, danari et poi danari [money, money, and yet more money]’ for their warfare as Marshal Gian-Jacopo Trivulzio explained to Louis XII, king of France, in when he was asked what he needed for the campaign in Italy. No one has ever put it better, and his words were to be echoed countless times by almost every commander from the lowest to the highest during the early modern period. Wars were immensely costly, and the war coffers were in most cases far too empty. The problem of raising and distributing money for the wars was, however, far more complicated than it at first appears. It was by no means only an economic question of the amount of resources, dependent on both surplus production and its socio-political distribution. It was also a question of the kinds of resources and how they should be made available for warfare. In fact it is not an overstatement to say that the financing of war was crucial to the early modern state and that it must be regarded as one of the key factors, or rather the most important factor, in determining its development. The economy Looking at both these Scandinavian states in the early seventeenth century and earlier, there is no doubt that Denmark had far greater economic potential than Sweden. Denmark was by then a well-integrated part of the European economy. Danish agricultural production thrived on the rising international prices of the sixteenth century. Denmark was also well situated for the markets of northern Germany and the Netherlands. The Norwegian part of the state was even further integrated in the international economy. Norwegian dried fish had been a very important commodity on the international market since the Middle Ages. As a result of the Reformation the demand for dried fish diminished somewhat during the sixteenth century, but at the same time Norwegian timber and planks came to be an even more important product on the market than dried fish had ever been. Sweden, on the other hand, was not integrated in the European economy at all. Exports and imports were quite insignificant. In the mid-sixteenth century more than half the exports were made up of agricultural products, mainly butter and hides, a third of iron and copper and the remaining per cent of wood products. The overall value of exports was quite small, about . million riksdaler. The volume of trade stayed at about the same level for the rest of the century, although a
Men, Money, and Means · 2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0 1559
1576
1590
1613
unspecified
agriculture
copper/brass
iron
1637–42
1661–2
1685
forestry
F. . Value and composition of Swedish exports, – (in millions of riksdaler) Source: Lindegren (), .
profound change in the composition of exports was under way, with metals soon replacing agricultural products. This very interesting development resulted from two remarkable phenomena. The first was the establishment of the kronohandels (Crown trade) system during the latter part of King Gustavus I’s reign (‒). This system may be regarded as a reaction to the rising international prices for agricultural products. To obtain international hard currency the king organized a trading system designed to export a substantial part of the taxes which the Swedish and Finnish peasants paid in kind. However, this system turned out to be increasingly inefficient and was eventually abandoned during the reign of King John III (‒). To put it more accurately, the trade in agricultural products was replaced by trade in iron and copper, which were obtained through extensive assertion of regal rights and by the establishment of various Crown monopolies. From the s these policies were accompanied by systematic attempts to promote the Swedish mining industry.16 This was the second phenomenon, which long remained a predominant part of Swedish economic politics and eventually became an enormous success. Planned effort resulted in Sweden more-or-less forcing its way into the international economy during the s and s. (See Figure .) The value of exports 16 For the kronohandel system and its implications for Swedish state finances: Odén (). The ‘hard cash’ aspects are developed by Lindegren (); cf. Odén (); Hecksher (), ‒.
· Jan Lindegren increased from about . million riksdaler a year to a sum six times that amount or more in about two decades. This was made possible by international demand for Swedish metals, as well as an influx of Dutch capital. Nevertheless, it was an astonishing achievement, and one that, according to my calculations, meant that the foreign trade sector grew from ‒ per cent of total production to ‒ per cent. However, as imports evolved in parallel with exports, and even surpassed them, the balance of trade remained negative. In other words, trade in itself did not generate a surplus of hard cash that could be used for war finance. The importance of this trade was rather that it put Sweden and, above all, Stockholm on the international map and thereby made it possible to draw bills of exchange on the Swedish capital. Linking Sweden to the international, Dutch-centred financial system was a prerequisite for Swedish involvement in the Thirty Years’ War in . Since the linkage was then still relatively weak, enormous difficulties had to be overcome to transfer money from Sweden to the war theatre.17 In contrast to Sweden, Denmark had long been well integrated into the European economy. The Danish balance of trade was positive, with an annual influx of about million riksdaler or perhaps more at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The Sound toll, and customs and taxes from Norway, meant that another . million or more riksdaler poured into the Danish economy. In this respect Denmark resembled Russia and Poland. An abundance of ‘hard cash’ resulted, inter alia, in the preservation of an outdated political and administrative structure. There seemed to be no need to modernize Denmark along the lines evolving in Sweden and some other European states. The Danish state had sufficient financial means to obtain an army almost overnight on the German mercenary market, which made an institution such as a standing army seem unnecessary. The standing army was only the tip of an iceberg, involving new administrative and fiscal structures, as well as a new political framework leading, in most cases, to increased power for the prince and decreased power for the existing, traditional political élite. The Danish aristocracy did its best to stop their kings’ plans, and they were long successful. However, the blissful financial situation of the first part of the seventeenth century came to an abrupt end in the s. The international market for Danish products more-or-less disappeared overnight, at the same time as the war thoroughly devastated the country. As the crisis on the international market for agricultural goods hit Denmark, it had to try hastily to copy Swedish economic policies, that is, to utilize non-agricultural products. During the first phase of absolutism, such policies were pursued with great vigour. The solution to the acute problem of obtaining adequate means in ‘hard cash’ was solved by a sophis17
For this theme: Ekholm (); Nilsson (); Nordlund ().
Men, Money, and Means · ticated system of levying customs and tariffs on Norwegian production and trade. Most important was the closing of the Norwegian grain market to cheap Polish and German rye and barley. This was achieved by prohibitive customs, and forced the Norwegians to buy Danish grain at a very high price. Since they were very dependent on imported grain—which has been calculated at about one-third of total Norwegian food consumption,18 the quantities were great, despite the relatively small size of the population. The utilization of Norway as a Danish grain market, together with more intensive taxation and customs on the trade in timber and planks, ensured a sufficient influx of ‘hard cash’ in Denmark. But the days of plenty were over, and in just a few years Denmark had been forced into the same situation as most contemporary states, characterized by a desperate and constant lack of money. In this position the economic needs of the state and its élites were unsuited to the character of production. An overwhelming proportion of production was destined for more-or-less immediate consumption. These products did not appear on the market, or at least not on the international market. Consequently, in most cases it was impossible to sell Swedish products outside Sweden. However, as the states had to have access to international ‘hard cash’ to hire soldiers, and for other reasons, there was a constant lack of silver and gold. Mercantilist (or perhaps bullionist) theories were bound to be formulated in such societies, and they had already appeared in the Middle Ages. In such societies necessity compelled ‘danari, danari et poi danari’ to become the paramount economic interest of the states, which went to almost any length to obtain bullion. I see this as a sound solution, although economists such as Eli Heckscher have condemned it roundly.19 The words of Count Per Brahe, steward of the realm in Sweden in the midseventeenth century are well worth recalling. He once remarked somewhat acidly that times were different from the Middle Ages, and the king could no longer live on hens, eggs, and suchlike, but had to have gold and silver. The societal surplus Economic conditions were by no means the only source of restraints or opportunities for states. A society’s economic strength, its ability to produce a social, or perhaps a societal, surplus was equally important. But how can this surplus be measured at a time when national statistics were unheard-of in most places? In the absence of any Gregory King outside England, recourse must be made to solutions other than contemporary statistics or statisticians. I believe the socio-economic structure can be used at least outside England and the Netherlands, as a rough way of assessing the societal surplus. The key question is simple: how many people and how large a proportion of the population could be fed outside the agrarian sector? 18
Fossen ().
19
Hecksher (‒), ii.
· Jan Lindegren The answer to this question can be given with sufficient accuracy for most of Europe. In mid-seventeenth-century Scandinavia the non-agrarian population was about per cent in Sweden and Norway, per cent in Finland, and per cent in Denmark. This roughly indicates that the relative production of societal surplus in Denmark was twice that of Sweden and Norway, which in turn was twice that of Finland. However, a number of factors have been taken into account: the large proportion of the Swedish and Finnish populations who were soldiers, the living conditions of the non-agrarian population (they were definitely better off in Denmark than elsewhere), and lastly the transfer of resources from Norway and Finland to the capitals Copenhagen and Stockholm and, in the Danish case, the transfer to Copenhagen of international resources by way of the Sound toll and resources emanating from Schleswig and Holstein. This assessment of the societal surplus can in the case of both Scandinavian states be combined with another more direct indicator by utilizing the possibilities of the Danish taxation units, tunder hartkorn (barrels of ‘hard’ grain, that is, rye and barley), and the Swedish national taxation system, in which the land rents and taxes of most peasants were recorded. In this way I have arrived at the assessment set out in Table of the societal surplus in Scandinavia before the Danish economic, political, and military disasters of the s and on the brink of the outbreak of the Great War of the North in . The distribution of the surplus The economic form and size of the surplus can together be regarded as the economic potential of a state. In the Scandinavian case there is no doubt that the potential of the Danish state was far greater than that of the Swedish state in the period prior to . If the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein are taken into account, which they must be as they contributed large amounts to the state finances, the Danish potential even in still more than matched that of Sweden. However, it is obvious that the ability to produce a societal surplus is hardly the same as an assessment of the resources that the early modern state could utilize. By the mid-seventeenth century the Swedish state had already exercised a military capability for thirty years that went far beyond that of the Danes. To understand this, it is necessary to take into account the ability of the state to centralize, or at least use locally, the surplus to its own advantage. First, let us take a more traditional view of the state finances of Denmark and Sweden. Much work has been directed towards attempts to measure the incomes of states of this period, and Scandinavia is no exception. Such assessments are available for a number of years in the seventeenth century. (See Figure .) The implications of these assessments are, however, most unclear. One major problem is that what is reckoned as ‘state income’ varies both over time and, even more, among states. The first impression is that the resources of the Danish state were
Men, Money, and Means · T . Societal surplus in Scandinavia (expressed in millions)
c. c.
The Swedish state
The Danish state
Sweden . .
Denmark . .
Finland . .
Norway . .
larger than those of the Swedish at the end of the seventeenth century. This is hardly the case. Instead, the difference between Denmark and Sweden mostly resulted from the fact that military costs are accounted for to a much greater degree in Denmark than in Sweden—hence the corresponding levels of income. In Sweden the so-called knektehållet,20 that is the main part of the Swedish infantry, is reckoned neither as a resource nor a cost. Even so, it is obvious that both the Danish and the Swedish central powers had substantial economic resources at their disposal at the end of the seventeenth century that were twice the size they had been before . Furthermore, both states became increasingly independent of foreign resources of all kinds. More interesting than the picture of the state finances given in Figure is, of course, the proportion of the societal surplus which the state could control centrally. In Sweden the state could exert control over ‒ per cent of this surplus, or about . million riksdaler, during the decades before . At the end of the century this proportion had risen to about per cent. By then the Danish state had also gained control of per cent of its societal surplus. During what was in many ways a process of intense military and political competition, both states had in fact become mirrors of one another, even though the economic, social, and political preconditions differed widely from country to country (although not between Sweden and Finland). But before Denmark had not yet embarked on this path. The Danish state was still to a large extent organized along medieval lines, which among other things meant that the central government could not control more than per cent of the societal surplus, even though the Crown demesne was huge. The Crown in fact sold a large portion of its lands in the s, reducing the area of Crown demesne from to per cent of all land.21 But this 20
The term knektehåll means that a certain area, a county, was obliged to recruit and maintain a fixed number of infantry soldiers. Officers, all the cavalry, as well as most of the civil servants, were paid within the framework of the indelningsverk (elder and younger). With the introduction of the knektehåll the army became a predominantly enlisted body, whereas previously it had been composed principally of conscripts. For correction of some of the common misunderstandings relating to these terms: Nilsson (), . 21 Lindegren (), . I have included the land of the so-called selvejer (literally, ‘self-owner’), ecclesiastical and Crown land as Crown domain. In these categories represented , , and % of the total Danish land area, figures which had changed to , , and % in .
· Jan Lindegren so-called kronogodsudsalget was more than offset by a new taxation system that in practice confiscated most of the revenues from private land ownership in Denmark.22
. Means People and money were unquestionably the most important resources of the early modern states, but other means were also at their disposal. With regard to the ability to wage war two extremely important factors can be discerned. The first is linked to the productive structure and was of crucial importance to a state’s potential to raise troops on its own territories; the second is also linked to production and deals with what are perhaps the most basic prerequisites for warfare, the ability to feed the men and horses of the new mass armies. Poverty as a resource In the eighteenth century the agrarian economist Arthur Young pointed out the importance of the poor. Without poor people there could be no rich, and without rich people there could be no culture and no humanity worth speaking of. Hence the importance of the poor. Long before Arthur Young detected the economic value of the poor, however, their military value was widely appreciated. It is no secret that the princes of early modern Europe tried to recruit the poor into their armies, people who were regarded as burdens to their respective communities. The princes conceived of armies as consisting of beggars, vagabonds, thieves, murderers, and others that society in effect wished to be rid of. The implication is that a favourable socio-economic structure in this respect would be one in which the societal costs of raising men for the armies were small. Or, to put it differently, where the socio-economic obstacles encountered when using the potential resources were small. The supply of beggars, vagabonds, murderers, and the like was all too small for the needs of the new large armies, even though it is easy to be led into believing the opposite when reading contemporary lamentations on the allegedly universal disorder. There was, however, an abundance of other kinds of poor, or rather economically marginalized individuals, and most soldiers in early modern Europe were recruited from these much larger socio-economic strata. Modern research has shown that the armies of ‒ were mainly recruited ‘from three broad areas: the mountains, the towns and the war-zone itself ’.23 The soldiers of the Alpine villages, the Highlands of Scotland, the regiments of the 22 This holds good only for the kingdom of Denmark. In Norway, where kronogodudsalget also took place, the reverse was true. The value of the land was grossly underestimated by commissions, which unsurprisingly it transpired were made up of the buyers: Rian (). 23 Parker (b), .
Men, Money, and Means · 3.5 3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0 Sweden 1624
Sweden 1633
Denmark 1642
Sound tolls etc.
Subsidies
Provinces
Loans etc.
Denmark 1661–75
Sweden 1677
Denmark 1680–99
Sweden 1697–9
Taxes etc.
F. . Centrally disposable means (in millions of riksdaler) Source: Lindegren (), Note: The Danish incomes of Schleswig and Holstein are categorized as provincial rather than tax income. Only net transfers from the provinces are regarded as incomes in the Swedish case.
dukes of the Lüneburger Heide and other similar places have long been famous, but that towns and war zones were such important recruiting areas is regarded as somewhat surprising.24 In fact, these and other findings can very well be explained. The availability of marginalized individuals varied according to time and region. As a general rule, the more advanced the economy, the larger the marginal strata of the population. The ‘three broad areas’ already mentioned are each a clear indication of the propensity of the early modern state to recruit marginalized groups into their armies. But the different areas represented different types of marginalization. The town-dwellers must be seen as a symptom of economic and social change. As the economy became more advanced, the agrarian proletarian or semiproletarian population increased. A great many of them poured from the countryside into the towns and, above all, into the rapidly growing metropolitan areas of Europe. It was these groups, formerly farm-hands and day-labourers, who after a short while—more-or-less willingly—joined the ranks. For one reason or another, they exchanged their new hard life in the towns for the even harder life of the armies. From an economic point of view the loss of their labour hardly impinged on society, because they were not part of the regular work-force. 24
Ibid.
· Jan Lindegren Recruitment in war zones represented another kind of marginalization as a result of the war itself. The strain on the agrarian population in the war zones was enormous. They had to put up with the constant passage of armies and, worst of all, billeted at their expense for months at a time. Not only did soldiers and their needs have to be met, but also horses to be fed—no mean task, given that a horse normally eats about ten times as much as a man and, when there were two horses to feed, they consumed as much in terms of price as three men.25 Considering these facts it was not surprising that many men gave up farming and instead joined the armies. To a somewhat lesser extent, the same strains that were at work in the war-zones can be observed in areas with big forts and garrisons. The third kind of marginalization is at the same time both the most well known and the least.26 The ‘upland pastoral villages have traditionally been the nursery of armies’, as Geoffrey Parker puts it, but, of course, the interesting question is why. The common feature of the ‘upland pastoral villages’ and other similar recruiting areas is that their inhabitants produced only a small surplus. Their lords could therefore not appropriate much, and thus the loss of a man to an army was not a big loss to the lord. In some cases, as the examples of Scottish clan regiments and those of the Lüneburger dukes show, soldiering could be turned into a new form of appropriation. But ‘pastoral’ soldiering (that is, soldiers from agrarian areas with cereal deficits) was not dependent on whether or not lords tried to use the system to their own advantage. Instead, it had its origins in the organization of production, and the most important factor was the division of labour between the sexes. In ‘pastoral’ economies, as well as the peasant economies ‘proper’ on the vast cereal-producing plains, there was a traditionally fixed division of labour between the sexes. However, the critical factor was that whereas the ‘pastoral’ women could take over tasks performed by men, the same was not true for the plains-dwellers. The former combined their cattle-raising with a large variety of other activities, and to all but a tiny fraction of pure pastoral groups, the most important was growing cereals. Their fields were fairly small, on light soils, so that ploughing and other tasks were relatively easy work which women could do. This was not the case on the plains, where hard clay soils and much larger fields made it very difficult to substitute female for male work. In other words, the men of the ‘pastoral’ economies were not essential for the survival of the rest of their community. The women could, in most respects, subsist, even if a large proportion of the men were absent. The loss of these men’s relatively small surplusproducing capability was compensated, though not totally, by the fact that adult men were at the same time the biggest consumers. This was also the case in the Van Creveld (), . What follows attempts to condense an argument (‘a theory of marginalization’) I first put forward in in a report to the th Nordic History Congress in Reykjavik, Iceland. 25 26
Men, Money, and Means · predominantly cereal-producing areas, but there was no way here to compensate for a severe loss of male work: without ploughing, there can be no sowing and no harvest. The loss of the necessary male work-capability in such a society amounted to nothing less than a catastrophe. Moreover, if this happened, the lords lost all their dues. One effect of this kind of difference within the early modern peasant economies was that the lords of the rich grain-producing areas of Europe opposed policies that involved the recruitment of soldiers on their own estates, if this threatened the viable work-force. One such example is the opposition of the Danish nobility in the early seventeenth century to the creation of a strong army. As there were not nearly enough beggars, vagrants, and so on to be found in the Danish countryside, the army had to recruit its personnel from the essential agrarian work-force. At the same time the Swedish nobility almost welcomed the extraordinary conscription system that was introduced. In most areas of Sweden and Finland farming was of the ‘pastoral’ type, and it was possible to recruit an astonishing number of men. In ‘non-pastoral’ areas there were ways of circumventing the conscription system to ensure a sufficiently large male agricultural work-force. However, increasing the size of the army also provided good opportunities for the Swedish nobility. The new army, as well as the requisite and rapidly growing bureaucracy, created numerous new offices. In fact there were far too few of the Swedish nobility to fill all the new positions, which led to a massive ennoblement of commoners on the one hand and the immigration of foreign noblemen on the other. It is significant, however, that the expansionist policies pursued by Sweden were not opposed by the nobility at the outset. This eventually changed, as the wars proliferated and as the nobility had to bear an everincreasing burden of war. The resources of the theatre of operations The theatre of operations was in itself a very important resource. During the early modern era natural and economic conditions of the theatre of operations imposed restrictions on the conduct of war. Mountainous areas, such as the Alps, and forests like the Black Forest were notoriously unsuited to warfare. To traverse the Alps or the Black Forest with an army was extremely difficult and dangerous, and, if possible, other solutions were adopted. Locations such as Flanders and the Po Valley were by contrast renowned as the best battlegrounds, Flanders being considered the very best of all. The division between good and bad battlegrounds was determined by the differing potential for subsistence by an army in any region. In a densely populated, rich agricultural area, even a large or a very large army, could easily subsist for long periods. The poorer the agriculture, the harder subsistence, which meant smaller armies and shorter stays. This all stemmed from the fact that food for men and
· Jan Lindegren fodder for horses had to be procured locally. As a result of transport problems it was impossible to move food on land for distances longer than those which could be covered in a couple of days.27 Fodder transport was even more problematic. The seasons for warfare were dictated above all by the fodder situation. When there was fresh grass at hand, armies could move around and fight each other; when grass was lacking and one had to rely on hay and oats, which under favourable circumstances could be obtained but usually had to be transported, it was very hazardous to do anything but try to find the best winter quarters possible. These were the general restrictions on warfare up to World War I. Transport facilities were too undeveloped to allow more sustained warfare, except in some special cases when there was access to sea or river transports.28 Thus there were good, mediocre, bad, and totally impossible battlegrounds scattered all over Europe. There are interesting differences between the very best battleground, Flanders, and an average theatre of operations, say Poland. In Poland agricultural yield was normally about fourfold, in Flanders about twice that amount. This means that six or seven times as many non-producers could be fed in Flanders as in an area of equal size in Poland. Moreover, as a much larger proportion of the land was cultivated in Flanders, the difference was even greater. One could therefore expect that at least ten times as many non-producers could be fed per hectare in Flanders as in Poland, that is, ten times as many soldiers. The implications for warfare were that an army in Flanders needed only a tenth of the area it would have needed in Poland. As a result, warfare in Flanders could develop into complex manoeuvering around strong fortresses, while warfare in Poland had to be very mobile. Armies had to move around constantly in search of food and fodder, which was not the case in Flanders.29 The economics of war worked in such a way that states with poor agriculture were spared, whilst those with rich agricultural areas were most severely affected. However, if an army had to traverse or, still worse, for some reason operate 27
Until World War I it was impossible for armies to subsist unless they could find their food and fodder in the immediate vicinity. Before the introduction of railways and motor vehicles, the transportation capacity of an army was far too small to allow it to carry more than a tiny proportion of its needs. The Franco-Dutch War of was one of the most successful of all pre-th-cent. campaigns, viewed from the perspective of supplying an army from the rear. Even then, the French army procured % of its provisions locally. Van Creveld (), ‒, esp. ‒. 28 Van Creveld declares that there neither is, nor can there be, any exception to this general rule. In principle I am inclined to agree, although I have stumbled across one, viz., the Swedish winter attack on Norway, when an army of , men drew from the resources of the whole of Sweden for its subsistence. All food and fodder were transported from Sweden. Swedish historians have ignored the logistical problems this posed, and their solution, concentrating instead on the circumstances of the king’s death. See Lindegren (). 29 Conduct of the war in late-th-cent. Flanders has sometimes been criticized by Swedish historians (esp. Generalstaben, ), but this view was unjustifiably, if entirely understandably, coloured by the appalling losses in Flanders in the First World War.
Men, Money, and Means · permanently in a poor agricultural region, the devastation was bound to be terrible. The army had to take everything it could find, even if the local peasantry starved to death as a result. Nevertheless, it is most likely that the army itself suffered still more from starvation. This was not at all the case in fertile areas, where both civilians and armies fared better. So the princes and generals of Europe took war to the rich plains of Europe and did their best to avoid the inferior agricultural regions. In this way the economics of warfare could become an asset or a liability. For Sweden it was most certainly an asset, for Denmark and (even more so) Poland, a liability. Sweden was composed almost entirely of thinly populated regions with relatively poor agriculture. Furthermore, even in the regions where agriculture was productive, there were still forests interwoven with small plains, which resulted in a low population density and made the country unsuitable for warfare. In Denmark and Poland, on the other hand, there were numerous areas with both relatively productive agriculture and a dense population. As a result, Sweden could attack her neighbours with a reasonable hope of success, while attacks on Sweden were both costly and somewhat pointless. This situation was exploited by Sweden during the century ‒, but as a result of the expansion that then took place the situation gradually changed. With the acquisition of Estonia, Livonia, and Pomerania, it became possible to wage war in Swedish provinces. Still more important in this respect was the acquisition of Scania from Denmark, which eventually made it possible to take the war into Sweden itself. In the wars after , Scania, not surprisingly, became the main target of Danish attacks and its defence the main priority of both the Swedish army and navy. The main naval base was moved from Stockholm to Karlskrona—not only, as is commonly argued, to secure an ice-free harbour, but equally to counterbalance the threat of the Danish navy to Scania.
. War and Resources To make war, to use the resources of men, money, and means on warfare was, of course, immensely costly. It is, however, very complicated to assess the costs of war. The costs in men and money could trigger developments in a variety of fields, which may perhaps be viewed as gains in a longer perspective. Nevertheless, cost assessment is of interest, even if there can be no definite answers. I will discuss some aspects of the demographic, social, and economic effects of war. Loss of soldiers I have already stated that . million native Swedish and Finnish soldiers died in active service ‒. This means that per cent of all men reaching the age of fifteen during this hundred-year period died as soldiers. What
· Jan Lindegren effects did these kinds of losses have? First of all, the demographic distribution of the sexes changed dramatically. In the parish of Bygdeå in northern Sweden, for instance, men were lost in the wars between and . At the beginning of this period there were about men and women aged between and years in the parish; at the end, their numbers were and respectively.30 The manpower losses sustained by Bygdeå in this period were, however, per cent higher than the national average for the same period. A more detailed picture of the development in Bygdeå is given in Figure . The losses had, as is clearly demonstrated, a profound impact on the parish. Of these, the most serious was undoubtedly that a steeply rising number of women could not marry. My calculations indicate that there were . single women to each single man in . The ratio had risen to . in . The decreased number of married couples eventually led to a fall in the number of new-born. On the basis of this demographic evidence it would seem obvious that Swedish society could not have borne this war burden for long.31 Extraordinarily, however, this conclusion is overhasty: Sweden’s resources were sufficient to cope with almost another century of war before the political will to engage in European great power politics and wars was broken. To a large extent, the burden of military recruitment and casualties could be borne by local peasant society because of its inherent flexibility. As bad times were always imminent, there had to be mechanisms for different sorts of catastrophes. One such can be regularly observed immediately after severe epidemics with high mortality rates. Almost without exception, numerous peasant marriages took place. Death made room for new couples to take over a great many peasant holdings. In itself this phenomenon is a clear indication that under normal conditions a considerable number of young people were waiting for the opportunity to take over a farmstead, both enabling them to marry and compelling them to do so. In the case of Bygdeå approximately per cent of the men between and were married in .32 As more and more men died in the wars, an ever higher proportion of the remaining men married. In this way the loss of soldiers was 30 Cf. Lindegren (), ‒, . The figures given in my dissertation on the changes in the adult male population, which also appear in several publications of Geoffrey Parker and one by M. S. Anderson, must be revised on two counts. First, I made a methodological mistake when estimating the male population of , overlooking adult non-soldiers who died at home during the period ‒ but never appeared in any sources. I estimate that there were such persons. Secondly, the population model was both too simple and also in some respects misconstructed. Consequently, I missed about adult men in my estimation of the population in . The revision, undertaken here, is based on a detailed demographic model, which I have developed and discussed elsewhere (Lindegren, ), as well as the national Swedish and Finnish population statistics assembled annually from . 31 This is the conclusion of Parker (c), n. , based on my research on Bygdeå. 32 It must be stressed that this figure is an approximation. However, the proportion is identical to that in the national statistics of .
Men, Money, and Means · number 700
ratio 4 3.5
600
3 500 2.5 400 2 300 1.5 200 1 100
0.5 0
0 1620
1624 men 15–59 women 15–59
1628
1632
1636
1640
women/men single women/single men
F. . Adult men and women in the parish of Bygdeå, –
compensated until the marriage rate among adult men had risen to about per cent, in the late s. The rate could not then rise further, because in effect every man aged or more was married. In practice some men, of course, married at a younger age, while some of the older men were unmarried or widowed. The consequence of this adaptation to hard times was that the number of new-born children did not diminish. But at the end of the s the losses had become too great. As a result, new losses of soldiers led to a decrease in the number of married women, with a subsequent decrease in children born. In Bygdeå the losses of soldiers resulted in a slowly diminishing population. However, one has to remember that the losses were very substantial. According to the population model I have used, which is based on the Swedish national statistics of the s, yearly losses of more than . per cent were bound to lead to a situation with decreasing population after a period of about thirty years. If the losses were higher, the depopulation process started much earlier. Losses between . and . per cent could be borne by means of a higher male marriage rate. Adaptation of this kind depended on the social conditions: since these varied from region to region, the possibilities for adaptation must also have varied. Devastation The devastation of the Thirty Years War is well known. The population in Germany is commonly held to have decreased by per cent in the countryside and per cent in the cities. In some parts, for instance Pomerania—
· Jan Lindegren the main base for the Swedish expeditionary force—the reduction has been calculated as ‒ per cent.33 However, this figure for Pomerania is oddly incompatible with the same author’s statement that the population of Swedish Pomerania decreased from , to ,.34 In peacetime the population should have increased by .–. per cent a year, about ,. If these figures are correct, the demographic cost to Pomerania of the war was a population loss of about ,. The losses in Pomerania resulted from the fact that for almost twenty years the territory had to maintain a large garrison consisting of a considerable part of the Swedish expeditionary force in Germany. The average strength of this garrison was , men, , of whom were Swedes and Finns.35 In addition, different field armies at times operated in the area. In the latter part of the s Pomerania was one of the main theatres of operations. In all, the area saw about ten years of warfare ending c.. After that Pomerania was completely devastated, so that it was no use even to contemplate driving the Swedes out of their coastal stronghold.36 The total combined service time of all Swedes and Finns stationed in the Pomeranian garrison was about , years. In that time almost , soldiers died, which implied that a soldier lived on average three years and four months before he died. However, this group was only a small part of the total number of soldiers who had lived off Pomerania since the Emperor’s troops came to the area in late . A rough estimate is that the total combined service time in Pomerania for all troops was about , years from until the end of the war, from which it can be extrapolated that , soldiers died there. The relationship between military and civilian loss of life seems to have been about one civilian to each soldier. Roughly speaking, every four years of military service in Pomerania took the life of one civilian. There is no doubt that Pomerania was thoroughly devastated during the war, nor that the post-war population was much smaller than it had been earlier. However, it is still very much open to question whether this holds good for all of Germany. The traditional picture of population decrease (from to million, according to modern research) must be challenged on methodological grounds. Instead, the population probably increased slightly between and from
34 Franz (), . Ibid. . This computation is based on Mankell (b), nos. ‒, , , , , , , , , , , a, , . Another , Swedes were garrisoned in nearby Mecklenburg, mostly in the city of Wismar. 36 The last major attack on Pomerania launched under the command of General Gallas, ‒, turned into a catastrophe on the brink of victory because opportunities for subsistence were so poor. See e.g. Mankell (a), ‒. 33 35
Men, Money, and Means · to ‒ million.37 From a demographic viewpoint these figures do not contradict the picture of very severe destruction and heavy casualties brought by the war. On the contrary, the population of should have been about million, or per cent larger than it was. Yet even these figures in fact suggest a total population decrease of .‒ million during the war.38 It would be easy to believe that this new set of German population data tells a story about the development during the war that is different from my discussion of the military and civilian losses in Pomerania. This is not the case. If the losses in Pomerania—one soldier for every three-and-a-half years of service and one civilian for each soldier—are typical for the entire war in Germany, it would mean that about . million soldiers, of whom the majority were Germans, and as many civilians were lost as a result of the war.39 War economy The case of Pomerania and its fate during the Thirty Years’ War is worth pursuing from yet another angle. The demographic losses of the region resulted mainly from the economic strains of more-or-less permanently upholding thousands, or even tens of thousands, of soldiers. In the wake of these hardships, which were followed by malnutrition, or at times by starvation, death rates increased as well as migration to other regions. On the whole the notorious abuses to which the peasantry were subjected had a marginal demographic impact. Death and desertion of course meant that fewer babies were born. The key factor was the relation between military demands for food and fodder, local production and consumption needs, and the opportunities of obtaining goods from outside the region. In Pomerania, the Swedish infantry needed on average about riksdaler monthly for each soldier and twice as much for the cavalry.40 Foreign soldiers were, and still are, often regarded as more expensive than Wehler (), . These figures hold true for a ‘normal’ population increase of .‒.% per annum. 39 These figures are based on the following assumptions: () ‘normal’ annual population increase was .%; () the population in was million; () the population in was . million; () on average , soldiers were operating in Germany during the war; () of these, ‒% were Germans; () one soldier died for every . years of service; () one civilian was lost for each soldier. 40 It is very difficult to establish real maintenance costs of soldiers. Accounts of what was given to some infantry regiments in Pomerania in cash and (mostly) in kind indicate an average cost of . riks daler per month per soldier (calculated from scattered information in Arkiv till upplysning om svenska krigens och kirgsinrättningarnas historia. III [hereinafter SKA ], no. , pp. ‒; Lundkvist (), ‒; Nordlund (), , ). However, some costs are not included in these accounts, and evidence for Henrik Burt’s regiment, ‒, suggests that about half the maintenance the regiments had at home, within the framework of the so-called elder indelningsverk (military allocation system) was transferred to Germany: Krigsarkivet, Stockholm, Regementsräkenskaper, Supplement, vol. a. This amounted to . riksdaler a month for every infantryman and . riksdaler for every cavalryman, if my assumption is correct. In a plan for the disposition of the Swedish army in peacetime, the chancellor of the realm, Axel Oxenstierna, maintained that Sweden should have considerable 37 38
· Jan Lindegren Swedish soldiers, at least to the Swedish state coffers. However, this was true only of the initial phase of recruitment and formation, which had to be met from domestic sources. Maintenance of existing troops was almost identical, since consumption requirements did not differ greatly.41 The cost of maintaining the Swedish expeditionary force in Germany can be estimated at about . million riksdaler yearly.42 Taking all factors into account— Pomerania’s role as a Swedish bridgehead, the way to and from Germany, the non-Swedish units of the garrison, and the periods when hostilities were taken into the province—it seems reasonable to assume that about the same amount had to be disbursed to troops in Pomerania. However, not all these resources originated in Pomerania. According to Axel Oxenstierna, the costs of the garrison in Pomerania, in the event of peace in , could be estimated at , riksdaler a year, , of which had to be acquired in the province while the rest had to be sent there.43 During the first phase of the Swedish presence in Pomerania, with the exception of ‒, efforts had been made to treat the duchy as gently as possible.44 This policy stemmed from Swedish hopes of gaining the province in a future peace. More than half Swedish military costs in Pomerania at this period seem to have come from outside areas. The garrisons of enlisted men at home. The average monthly cost of each soldier in these garrisons would be . riksdaler (Rikskansleren Axel Oxenstiernas skrifter, ed. Stuffe et al., , ‒), presumably the total, all-in cost for a foot-soldier in Germany where the chancellor himself had been staying since . Cavalry costs are even harder to grasp. On the basis of regulations from (SKA , nos. , and ,, pp. ‒, ), it can be calculated that the average recorded cost of the infantry was . riksdaler and of the cavalry ‒. riksdaler per person per month. Somewhat earlier, the cost of maintaining cavalry in the field was assessed as % higher than that of infantrymen: SKA , no. ,. 41 The Swedish conscription system kept the costs of manpower to the state lower than if it had had to enlist them. The cost of maintaining foreign troops seems in practice to have been only slightly higher than that of Swedish troops. From Nordlund (), , , one can conclude that the cost of Thomas Karre’s infantry regiment of enlisted men was only % higher per soldier than that of David Drummond’s regiment of conscripts. This difference is probably wholly explained by the fact that the officers of the latter regiment were partially paid within the framework of the elder indelningsverk. 42 The number of men in the force has been calculated as the number at the beginning of the year, plus half the dead and half the reinforcements sent out, less half the men sent back home. The assumption, of course, is that the men who died during the year lived on average half a year, and that both reinforcements and the men sent home spent half a year in Germany. Thus the average strength of the expeditionary force can be calculated as ,, of which , were infantry and , cavalry. 43 Rikskansleren Axel Oxenstiernas skrifter, ed. Stuffe et al. (), . This document must be seen as presenting one argument among many in an ongoing controversy between the chancellor and the Riksråd (home government), led by his brother Gustav, then recently appointed steward of the realm. Axel Oxenstierna wanted to pursue the war in Germany, while those at home wished to extricate Sweden from the conflict. Nevertheless, the document shows that a policy of war could only be followed by economic loss for Sweden. The aim of this particular document was probably to demonstrate the importance of Prussia for military finance, an argument promptly disregarded by the Riksråd, who returned Prussia to the Poles. 44 Ekholm (), ‒; Nordlund ().
Men, Money, and Means · most important of these was revenue from Prussia, which at that time was occupied by the Swedes. However, this source of revenue was lost in a treaty between Sweden and Poland in . At almost the same time, Pomerania became a main theatre of operations, with a consequent massing of troops in the area. Of course both the Swedish and the Habsburg field armies brought some money with them, which was used to some extent in Pomerania; further resources were also sent from Sweden. The situation during this period is inadequately documented, but there is every reason to believe that the years ‒ were the worst for Pomerania. During the last decade of the war the Pomeranian garrison seems to have been able to count on approximately , riksdaler annually in French subsidies.45 At most, a sum of the same order came from Sweden or her other Baltic provinces.46 In other words, no more than a third, probably less, of the money and resources consumed by the troops in Pomerania was brought in from other areas. On average the province had to pay at least . million riksdaler a year. Obviously, they could only afford to pay so much at the cost of far-reaching devastation. It seems reasonable to assume that the capacity to produce a societal surplus in Pomerania was about the same as in Denmark, so that the total societal surplus in the province can be estimated at ,‒, riksdaler before the war and perhaps , after it. Military costs of this magnitude for two decades meant constant overexploitation. A surplus of several hundred thousand riksdaler was appropriated for military purposes each year, and the result was continued devastation. The peasant population decreased by . per cent a year from to , or, to put it another way, the production capacity fell by that much each year. War and resources The case of the Swedish war losses was exceptional. There is, to my knowledge, no parallel in early modern history of a society for a century losing per cent of all men in wars. The exceptional is, however, important for the understanding of the effects of war losses. In most cases early modern society could adapt to losses of soldiers by rather insignificant alterations in marriage behaviour. The number of unmarried men diminished somewhat, from a very high to a high proportion by twentieth-century standards. Although the Swedish losses were too great to be met entirely in this manner, the economic and social repercussions were surprisingly mild. This must be explained by the fact that the soldiers were mainly recruited in areas where women could replace men in Lundgren (), gives much scattered information on French subsidies to Sweden from onwards, when France contributed a total of . million riksdaler to the Swedish war effort in Germany. The bulk of this, . million, was used by the main army and its commander-in-chief. Of the remaining million, half seems to have been used by the Swedish civilian apparatus in Germany and the other half by the garrison troops. However, the annual sum of , riksdaler is merely an informed estimate in the absence of a modern analysis of the war finances for ‒. 46 This is merely a hunch of mine, as yet unproven. 45
· Jan Lindegren agricultural work. These were areas with comparatively little arable land under cultivation, and consisting mainly of light soils. Thus, the systems of military recruitment were well adapted to the social and economic conditions of early modern Europe and, on the whole, these systems tended to be designed in such a way that their impact on society was as small as possible. The effects of warfare as demonstrated by the fate of Pomerania were by no means typical. Similar developments can be found elsewhere, not least in Germany during the Thirty Years’ War, but there is every reason to believe that the impact of these occasional disasters on the source material and historians’ subsequent analysis is far greater than their actual influence at the time. Most wars were fought within the economic limits of what early modern society could withstand. This also applies to loss of life. Since warfare was shaped by the need to find food and fodder for men and horses, the peasants who had to deliver these commodities were looked upon as resources. Without a sufficiently large and rich peasant population all warfare was impossible. In most cases neither war losses nor devastation had a great impact on early modern society. However, this is not true of war itself. The ability to fight wars, organize armies, and so on changed society most profoundly. War was impossible without a new kind of state, and the state changed society in almost all respects. Counterparts to the development in Scandinavia, with its fierce competition between Denmark and Sweden, can be found all over Europe during the seventeenth century. However, as the populations of these states were quite small and their resources therefore very limited, they had to resort to extreme solutions to compete within the framework of early modern European war. Interestingly, both states evolved a capacity to centralize the resources available that was quite impressive. Of equal interest is the fact that both these states, which were designed for large-scale war, faded out of the European competition at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
The Growth of State Control. Practices of War, ‒: Ransom and Booty Philippe Contamine
I
n its current form, and seen solely from the perspective of the principles, laws, rules, conventions, and national or international agreements,1 war, particularly as viewed by the states of western Europe, appears a fundamentally public enterprise, in which combatants are forbidden to take as booty anything belonging to civilian populations or the enemy in arms. Moreover, it is clearly established that prisoners of war can only be prisoners of the state, whose fate is determined by the governments involved. The combatants themselves are not to be party to this decision, regardless of their role in the process of capture: ‘in the modern conception of law, prisoners of war, legitimate and disarmed enemies’ are in the power of the enemy government, not of the individuals or bodies who had captured them.2 As a result, one of the primary motivations for warfare down the centuries (the search for personal profit other than that paid in recompense by the employer-state) disappeared, assuming, of course, that such prescriptions are respected—in fact, ‘unfortunate mistakes’ continue to be made on the margins, or even at the heart, of the system, especially in relation to spoils. At the same time, one of the main apprehensions of combatants and non-combatants alike supposedly disappeared, that is, the fear of economic loss as a consequence of what was taken by the victor, and, even more, as a consequence of the payment of ransoms intended to save the lives of those who had been defeated and secure their freedom. Ransoming in particular has become a practice associated with crime, although examples from the late twentieth century have demonstrated that some states, while not publicly admitting to it, did not hesitate to use this means if they thought it in their interest. 1
Schindler and Toman (); Rousseau ().
2
Berthelot (n.d.).
· Philippe Contamine The evolution of norms and practices relating to ransoms and spoils in the context of warfare is a remarkable manifestation of the growth of states from the military viewpoint, although this factor is still somewhat neglected by historians. During the medieval period, the war-lord, in the true sense of the word, gathered relatively autonomous forces under his command, who put themselves at his disposal because of obligations weighing upon them, or in exchange for what might roughly be termed financial advantage, for a particular defensive or offensive enterprise. These forces, occupying subordinate positions, took upon themselves the risks involved in the venture, but they also expected to participate fully and directly in its profits. Gradually, primarily for reasons of efficiency and, secondarily, for reasons of humanity (to ‘civilize’ war), a system developed which led to the state taking control of an increasingly regulated and integrated military machine and all its operations (arms and equipment, training and exercises, upkeep, care, duties, punishments and rewards, career structure, and ultimate discharge). This all led to the familiar concept that a ‘soldier’ (no longer a combatant or warrior) was a soldier ‘twenty-four hours a day’. Military society thus became a ‘perfect’, complete, or ‘model’ society, dependent upon the state in all areas of activity. Within this framework, the arrangements concerning war gains can be used as a primary theme to follow and retrace this evolution—one which was slow and varied according to country and state. Space and the author’s research interests necessitate an emphasis in this chapter on the case of France, viewed through a number of concrete examples, since practice here plays a role quite as important as that of theory.
. The End of the Middle Ages: The Golden Age of Private Ransom The emergence and dissemination of the expression ‘prisoner of war’ imply some acknowledgement of a specific status: the phrase is documented from at least the fifteenth century, either in its French3 or its Latin form ( prisonarius guerre).4 In his famous Arbre des batailles, written in Avignon in c.‒ and dedicated to King Charles VI of France,5 the Benedictine Honoré Bovet, or Bonet ( fl. ‒ to c.‒), a canon lawyer, refers several times to the problem of ransom and booty, adopting the thinking of fourteenth-century Italian jurists—among them Giovanni da Legnano ( fl. early fourteenth century–), author of the Tractatus de bello, de represaliis et de duello, written in for Cardinal Gil Albornoz—while at the same time rearranging and amplifying it. For Bovet, following a tradition going back at the latest to the eleventh-century Peace of God, non-combatants A[rchives] N[ationales], Paris, XI a , fo. ; Commynes, ed. Mandrot (‒), ii, ; van Auswaarden (), ‒. 4 5 Van Caenegem (), . Bonet, ed. Nys (). 3
Ransom and Booty · and their possessions were to be immune from the effects of war. Any man who acted differently was no better than a looter. This is how the hero of the Jouvencel, a didactic and literary evocation of over thirty years of military experience, composed by Jean de Bueil in ‒ proceeds (in an idealized manner, of course): returning from a ‘foray’, the Jouvencel orders that ‘all the common people’ captured on this occasion are to be gathered together and freed without ransom, since they are ‘tributary’ people (in other words, they pay tribute) and not ‘defensive’ people (that is, they were not engaged in defence and accordingly exempt from taxation). Only the nobles and warriors are kept prisoner, as well as the inhabitants of walled towns, who had personally waged war against the Jouvencel.6 This being said, anything a combatant can gain from his enemy en juste guerre (in just war) is fair game and he has the right to keep it. According to the laws of Antiquity, a man taken prisoner in a just war became a slave (Bovet refers to the captor’s serf ): the captor had the right either to put him to death, or to sell him in the market like a horse. However, Bovet asserted that such a practice should not exist among Christians: it would be a manifestation of great ‘inhumanity’ to sell as an animal one’s Christian brother, who had been freed from slavery, in other words, redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. In line with other writers, Honoré Bovet brings to the fore one of the main characteristics of ‘modern’ war in the West: the absence of all enslavement. The following examples reveal the differences between the later medieval and ancient worlds. According to the chronicler Jean Froissart, after their victory at WestRoosebeke on November , the French entered Kortrijk unchecked: the looting and slaughtering began without Charles VI attempting to put a stop to them. Upon their departure, not only had the town been pillaged and destroyed, but several knights, squires, and men-at-arms had taken with them a number of young men and young women ‘as if they were serfs’. It can be assumed that these ‘fair children’ were not meant to become household slaves, but to be redeemed by their parents.7 In , during the War of the Public Weal, the French captured ‘poor people’ from the enemy in the vineyards next to the abbey of Saint-Antoinedes-Champs, near Paris. They were sold as booty, at the rate of four per écu—an insignificant sum. In Antiquity, once they had become slaves after capture, they would have been put to work in the service of their master; at this date, however, their ‘masters’ did not buy them in order to set them to work but to obtain from them, their families or companions a ransom greater than the purchase price.8 The advice given by Michel d’Amboise in the mid-sixteenth century must therefore be taken as an academic hypothesis or a mere intellectual game: 6 7
Bueil, ed. Favre and Lecestre (‒), ii, ‒. Froissart, ed. Luce et al. (‒), xi, .
8
Roye, ed. Mandrot (), .
· Philippe Contamine If you capture any of your enemies, you must not kill them wantonly, but instead subordinate them and set them to plough your lands . . . If they are kept and forced to cultivate the fields, by their constant labour, you will be able to harvest and gather a vast quantity of fruit. Several kings have adopted this practice, including a certain Muslim prince of the Turks who . . . struck down and reduced to slavery, sincerely believing that without labourers he could not feed his army and also that, by selling them, he could pay his soldiers.9
Nevertheless, later medieval authors insisted on the narrow judicial dependence of prisoner upon master: ‘Since he gave his faith to his master, he is his slave and his serf to do with as he pleases’.10 For Honoré Bovet, not only is the captive to be spared, but he should benefit from a ‘courteous’ imprisonment, and his ransom should be ‘courteous’. In other words, it should not result in depriving himself, or his wife, his children, his relatives, or his friends of their inheritance. Once his ransom was paid, he should still have enough to live on. Texts from the period suggest that a ransom equal to five or six time’s a prisoner’s annual income was considered a maximum.11 This does not mean that in the last two centuries of the medieval period, within the French political sphere, there are no examples of prisoners obliged to pay their ‘master’ burdensome and even exorbitant and ruinous ransoms for their freedom. A true contract, sealed and signed, was made between captive and captor: if the contract was not respected (if, for example, the prisoner, freed upon his oath to raise his ransom, did not settle the matter in time and return to his master by the time appointed), he could be tried (for instance, before the Parlement of Paris), or the dispute could lead to a judicial duel; alternatively, the wronged individual could, following appropriate procedures, stage a public humiliation of the prisoner, who was deemed to have failed in his moral and juridical obligations.12 At first sight, in this entire process, the state (the employer, in whose name and under whose authority the war was prosecuted) was not directly concerned: resulting from the joint behaviour of two individuals (the captive pledging his ‘faith’, the captor receiving it), the problem apparently fell within the province of private law or, more precisely, international private law, since it could just as well involve two adversaries who were subject to different legal systems. However, a more careful examination reveals that the interplay of private and individual initiatives was not uncontrolled, and that a number of rules and practices led to the intervention of communal and/or public authorities. It can even be postulated that at the end of the Middle Ages, as in the late Roman period, the prince had a theoretical right to all gains of war. As Bovet put it: ‘since 9 11 12
10 Amboise (), . Bueil, ed. Favre and Lecestre (‒), ii, . Froissart, ed. Luce et al. (‒), viii, . Keen (); Contamine (); Allmand (); Contamine (); Allmand ().
Ransom and Booty · a soldier is in the employment of the king or other lords, the prisoners and other captured goods should belong to the lord from whom the hired man-at-arms receives his pay’.13 He adds that ‘all booty should be in the king’s gift’, and he should divide it up according to his pleasure among those who, in his opinion, had helped him win’.14 However, this formula is ambiguous since, while it underlines the king’s pre-eminent right, it requires him at the same time to redistribute all or part of the booty among his men. Setting aside the fact that some communities or categories of combatants did not habitually take prisoners, I shall focus instead on the decision of the prince, leader, or council of war. Before a pitched battle, the commander-in-chief could order that no enemy prisoners were to be taken, or that they should be captured only when victory had clearly been won. Thus we read in the battle-plan drawn up by John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy, on September , as he was preparing to face the Armagnacs near Paris Item, it was ordered that no one, no matter what his rank, be bold enough to take prisoners on the day of the battle, until it was fully seen that the field was won, and that, if any be captured, the one who had taken him be promptly killed if he refused to give him up.15
The same drastic provision was made again on the Burgundian side before the battle of Cravant ( July ).16 When a fortified town was captured, its defenders could also be put to death by order of the commander, or commanders, of the assailants. Thus in , when Joan of Arc had captured one of the English fortresses surrounding Orléans, Saint-Loup: ‘Shortly afterwards, those of the fortress wanted to surrender to her. She did not want to receive them in return for a ransom and said she would take them in spite of themselves and redoubled the assault. And straight away, the fortress was captured and almost everyone put to death.’17 Once the enemy had surrendered (for example, after the capitulation of a town), the commander could order that prisoners be put to death for specific reasons (as an act of retaliation, for example) or on general grounds (prisoners considered to be traitors, rebels, or guilty of lèse-majesté). Here are a few examples: Bertrand du Guesclin, at least in the final phase of his career, did not hesitate to have Frenchmen who had reneged hanged, whereas the English were merely ransomed. To put an end to quarrels among his own troops over the ownership of prisoners, he might order prisoners to be put to death: his companions in arms, regardless of their opinion of this loss, had to comply.18 13 16 18
14 Bonet, ed. Nys (). Ibid. Monstrelet, ed. Douët-d’Arcq (), . Cuvelier, ed. Faucon (), i, .
15
Schnerb (), . 17 Cagny, ed. Moranvillé (), .
· Philippe Contamine In , the French captured two fortified towns in Anjou: the English defenders were put up for ransom, in agreement with the ‘arrangement’ made with the victorious commanders; whereas all French speakers, who had surrendered without guarantee into the hands of these same commanders, were hanged.19 The same process took place after the capture of Montereau from the English by Charles VII in ,20 and also when the fortress outside Dieppe was captured by the Dauphin of France, the future Louis XI, in : for good measure, he ordered that some of the English who had insulted him during the assault be put to death.21 In , the French were fighting in Catalonia: during a skirmish, they happened to capture a certain number of prisoners who later tried to escape. The order was then given to those who still had prisoners to bring them to the lodgings of the prévôt de l’armée, who decided to have twenty or thirty hanged as an example, because they had wounded Frenchmen and insulted lords and captains.22
Deliberate slaughter of prisoners was decided upon at the highest level, as for instance in , when a number of Burgundians were captured at Douai. Louis XI arrived in the course of these events, had all the prisoners handed over to him and a number executed (the foot-soldiers), in order to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies still fighting in the region.23 In the fifteenth century, the surrender of fortified towns (called at the time compositions or appointements) included clauses relative both to those surrendering and to their prisoners—clauses which undoubtedly presupposed the existence of a princely right which was superior to individual rights. An article of the treaty of surrender of the city and castle of Caen to Charles VII, on June , stipulated that ‘all the prisoners of the said city and castle shall be released from all the pledges and promises they made to the English’.24 In the same way, in the act of surrender of the fortress of Montguyon near Jonzac (), it was stipulated that the men of the garrison were to leave behind ‘all prisoners and captives’ they might have.25 At times, the composition was more advantageous to those defeated: according to a letter sent by Jean de Châtillon, lord of Troissy, to the inhabitants of Rheims on July , the Burgundian knights and squires, under attack by Charles VII and the Maid of Orléans, had left the city of Troyes ‘their bodies and belongings having been saved’; after the vehement intervention of Joan of Arc, they were, of course, forced to give up their prisoners but, in compensation, they 19 21 23 25
Cousinot, ed. Vallet de Viriville (), ‒. Chartier, ed. Vallet de Viriville (), ii, . Commynes, ed. Mandrot (‒), ‒. Chartier, ed. Vallet de Viriville (), ii, ‒.
Gruel, ed. Le Vavasseur (), . Leseur, ed. Courteault (‒), ii, . Hunger (), lxxx–lxxxii. 20
22 24
Ransom and Booty · received a mark of silver for each of them (or grams, the equivalent of about livres tournois).26 The commander could order an exchange of prisoners, reimbursing in exchange the captor of a captive thus freed. He could also use a prisoner to secure a military advantage, such as the surrender of a fortress: on January , Jacques de Clermont, esquire and bailli of Caen, gave a receipt to the receiver-general of Normandy for the sum of , écus owed him by Charles VII, who had an English prisoner of Jacques de Clermont’s handed over to him, then proceeded to free the prisoner in exchange for the surrender of the city and castle of Gisors.27 To what extent was the confiscation of a prisoner by the king the result of the application of an acknowledged right, or of mere pressure which it was difficult for a subject to resist, no matter what his interest, reservations, or rank? One case is sufficiently famous to have given rise to an extensive literature. Henry VI of Lancaster, acting as king of France—in fact, the duke of Bedford—wanted to obtain from Jean de Luxembourg, whom he considered under his indirect command, the Maid of Orléans, who had been captured by Jean’s men on May beneath the walls of Compiègne. The Lancastrian régime eventually resorted to a clause also noted by Christine de Pizan in Le livre des fais d’armes et de chevalerie (), by which the king of France could redeem any prisoner, regardless of his ransom value, on condition that he pay , francs to the prisoner’s captor. This rule may have dated from the reign of Charles V: indeed, during the battle of Cocherel on May , a knight from the Beauce, Guy le Baveux, took prisoner and put up for ransom a Norman knight of the Navarrese party, Guillaume de Graville, for , francs (or , florins; this variant is sometimes found in the documentary sources). The latter, freed to raise his ransom, left his two sons as hostages. These sons (in exchange for lands no doubt valued at , francs which were given to Guy le Baveux) came under the control of the king of France. The French king, faute de mieux, used them as bargaining counters to secure the release of Brumor de Laval, a prisoner of their father, Guillaume de Graville. Yet Charles V was apparently furious about de Graville’s release; if he had been able to recover while there was still time, he would have had him executed for his ‘faults’, as guilty of lèse-majesté. It is not difficult to imagine that, in order to prevent the repetition of such a mistake, the formal , franc rule (the ‘law, usage, and custom of France’) was then introduced, although apparently only applied once, to the case of Joan of Arc.28 However, the stipulation is mention by Balthazar Ayala in as current in France, England, and Spain.29 In practice, of course, many prisoners 26 27 28 29
Quicherat (‒), iv, ‒; Cousinot, ed. Vallet de Viriville (), . B[ibliothèque] N[ationale], Paris, MS Clairambaut , no. . Goldmann (); Cuvelier, ed. Faucon (); Tisset (), ‒. Ayala, ed. and trans. Westlake (), fo. v, p. .
· Philippe Contamine were recovered by the public authorities for smaller sums: in c.‒, two French men-at-arms received only écus from the royal treasury for handing over to the constable of France an English partisan whom they had captured and who was later given to the prévôt of Paris for trial.30 In some circumstances, a captive was automatically deemed to be the king’s prisoner of war. In , some Scottish men-at-arms, in a trial before the Parlement of Paris, pleaded against the Prévôt Guyot, assisted in this instance by the king’s prosecutor, over the fate of an Englishman taken prisoner in Paris. The Scotsmen believed the Englishman was theirs, ‘since enemy prisoners belong to those who take them either in the city or outside’, unless they are taken on the walls: their advocate maintained that this had been decided for Paris and Amiens. It was also the practice in Calais, England, and the neighbouring marches. The Scotsmen none the less recognized the possibility of another usage in France but held that, if it existed, it could affect only the subjects of the king, and not the Scotsmen themselves, nor the king’s allies. On the contrary, declared the king’s prosecutor, the prisoner should belong to the king: for, although moveable goods taken from the enemy belonged to those who captured them in bello, in actu belli, in expeditione, the situation was different in a walled city. Enemies found there were deemed spies, and the king’s interest was to bring them to trial. Another argument advanced then made use of the formula expressed by Honoré Bovet: since the Englishman concerned was taken in Paris by soldiers paid by the king, he belonged to the king.31 Another idea put forward was that, if he was taken in a town ‘according to the law of war’, he belonged not to the king but to the captain of the town.32 At the conclusion of the battle of Bulgnéville ( July ) in which René, duke of Bar and Lorraine, was defeated, René himself was claimed by Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy (considered the commander-in-chief ) through his representative, Antoine de Toulongeon, marshal of Burgundy, and despite the violent protests of Antoine de Vaudémont. In exchange Philip the Good offered to the captor (a certain Martin Frinard, bailli of Hal in Hainault) the sum of , livres, curiously the same sum as for Joan of Arc.33 The king was clearly in a position to break contracts (again, in exchange for compensation?) made privately between prisoners and captors; thus, at the end of the ‘German campaign’ of , the duke of Guelders secured from Charles VI the release without ransom of prisoners of the French. Admittedly, this was not a reciprocal exchange, since the duke alleged that he had made an agreement with the German fighting soldiers he had hired by which he had formally granted them possession of prisoners.34 In the middle of 30 33
31 32 Gruel, ed. Le Vavasseur (), . AN XIa , fo. r. Little (), . 34 Le songe du vergier, ed. Schnerb-Lièvre (). Contamine (), VIII, n. .
Ransom and Booty · the War of the Public Weal, an agreement was made on June between Louis XI, on the one hand, and the dukes of Bourbon and Nemours, the count of Armagnac, and the lord of Albret on the other, according to which each of the two sides would release its prisoners.35 The same process took place at the conclusion of the war, with the treaty of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés ( October ).36 Here, too, it must be assumed that private agreements between prisoners and captors were nullified. Solidarity among fighting men on the same side was regularly and even systematically encouraged by those in command. Measures were taken to ensure this solidarity. In , the capture of Luxembourg brought the Burgundians considerable booty: according to Olivier de la Marche, the sum of , florins was taken from the sum total of the booty, before any distribution, to be used to pay for the ransom of a Burgundian lord taken prisoner some time before.37 When Bordeaux was captured by the English in , seventy men-at-arms from the compagnie d’ordonnance of Poton, lord of Saintrailles, were taken prisoner, among them three nephews and relatives of Poton, as well as ‘several other noblemen of great houses’, from whom ‘great and excessive ransom’ (as the formula goes) was demanded. At Saintraille’s request, Charles VII, in full agreement with his military commanders, took the initiative ‘for the good of the public domain’, and in consideration of the fact that ‘leaders and war captains [should help each other] willingly when anything happens to them in the course of war’, of granting Poton a quarter of a month’s pay, which the companies whose captains accepted this arrangement would pay him. In fact, at least two captains consented to the arrangement: Jean de Bueil and Pierre Louvain.38 What the king wished is clear; none the less, it is remarkable that he did not think it was his right to impose this levy by his authority alone. After the battle of Castillon in , the English within the town of Castillon, in accordance with an appointement concluded with the French captains, and their lives having been saved, surrendered to the mercy of the king. The plan had been to gather together prisoners and goods in Castillon (estimated by some at , livres). But everyone attempted to take individual advantage of the opportunity. Winners and losers came to complain to the king, who ordered an inquest in order to divide the spoils more justly.39 During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there were numerous examples of gifts granted by the kings of France to help one of their hired men-at-arms, vassals, or subjects pay his ransom: it was one of the principal moral obligations of the ‘good prince’. None the less, there is no evidence that any king automatically or by contract accepted responsibility for the possible ransom of combatants in his service. 35 37 38
36 Commynes, ed. Lenglet du Fresnoy (), ‒. Ibid. ‒. La Marche, ed. Arbaumont and Beaune (‒), ii, . 39 Contamine (), ‒. BN MS Duchesne , fos. ‒.
· Philippe Contamine The Jouvencel treatise already mentioned was intended to curb the individualistic and anarchic behaviour of soldiers in relation to ransom and booty, by emphasizing the role of the captain of a company, representing public authority and interest. According to Jean de Bueil, first, a captain had the right to take any prisoner for himself by paying his captor the amount of the ransom demanded from the prisoner; secondly, no man-at-arms could demand a ransom from a prisoner without the knowledge and consent of his captain. Indeed, a man must obey his captain in all things; it may be that the captain has rights over the said prisoner; above all, the prisoner may be of such a kind that neither the captain, nor the prince in whose name war is being waged, nor the ‘public domain’ in defence of which war was undertaken, can permit his release (if, for instance, he is a traitor, spy, guide, and so on). In short, in all matters, the public domain is to be preferred to any private good.40 The values of some ransoms were set as a result not of individual negotiations, but of a decision by those in authority: in , at the surrender of Pont-Audemer, Jean, count of Dunois, lieutenant of Charles VII, set the ransom of an English captain of the fortified town at , écus, that of each manat-arms at écus, and that of each archer at écus.41 At sea, during the Hundred Years War, agreements made between the warring parties could set in advance the level of ransoms for fishermen and their boats.42 The commander was also able to free on his sole authority some of the captives: in , the captains and nobles captured by the French in the town of Eu were taken to Dieppe to be put up for ransom, whereas ‘all of the men-at-arms who were not noble went away freely with a stave in their hands, without taking anything else with them’.43 Charles V’s definition in his ‘Regulation concerning the admiralty’ of December , of the prerogatives of the admiral of France, led, or should have led, to a perceptible tightening of royal control, since all prisoners captured by a ship of any outfit (armed by the king, or by any other individual or group involved in the king’s wars) were to be brought before the admiral of France or his lieutenants. He (or they) had then to determine whether or not the prisoners might legitimately be ransomed. By law the admiral had a claim to a tenth of the ransom, plus the right to grant safe conduct: indeed, no prisoner could be freed without his knowledge and formal consent; moreover, the admiral could seize the prisoners of high status, at least if those holding them were men of little account. A financial record had to document the sale and division of everything taken. This meant that when this document was produced the king was in a position to identify all prisoners taken in war or at sea.44 40 41 43
Bueil, ed. Favre and Lecestre (‒), ii, ‒. 42 Escouchy, ed. Du Fresne de Beaucourt (‒), iii, . Mollat (), . 44 Wavrin, ed. Dupont (‒), iii, . Black Book, ed. Twill (), ‒.
Ransom and Booty · . The End of the Middle Ages: Regulation of Capture and Division of Spoils By right, the king of France claimed all landed property taken in the process of conquest. He also claimed, more-or-less systematically, all artillery pieces and even the munitions stored in a town or fortress which had previously surrendered to him. By law, the king could have obtained more, but this was not what we might call his ‘professional ethic’. In , when the duchy and county of Burgundy were occupied after the death of Charles the Bold, the responsible military authorities, Georges de la Trémoille, count of Ligny and lord of Craon, and Charles d’Amboise, count of Brienne and lord of Chaumont, wrote to Louis XI offering simply ‘to give him his share of booty along with theirs’. The king answered this proposal by saying that he would leave them half the money they found (and all the wines in the ducal cellars); he ordered the other half to be used either ‘to have the fortifications on the border with the Germans repaired’, or to be sent to him.45 In general, however, the king and his commanders were preoccupied with the just division of spoils among all the combatants. In c., Geoffroy de Charny, wishing to restore morale within the ranks of French knights, who had been badly damaged and suffered great losses, sharply criticized men-at-arms, motivated above all, when they captured a fortified town, by the desire to ‘win spoils’ and acquire ‘great gains’. The same was true on the battlefield; as soon as they seized anything at all, he asserted, their one objective was to find a safe place to keep it, at the risk of losing the day: ‘one must dread gain which causes loss of honour, life, or wealth’.46 When a town was taken by assault, troops could be seen running back and forth, dispersing spoils, and laying themselves open to the blows of either enemies or the envious. ‘Make profit in unison’, says Eustache Deschamps at the end of the fourteenth century.47 ‘Have the entire army share the booty’, repeats Robert de Balsac a century later.48 A proscription from is still more specific: In order better to wage war and to avoid men-at-arms starting to pillage and to take prisoners, the said captains, men-at-arms, and others were ordered that everything taken in the said war was to be brought together and reckoned as booty, and each man would have his share without holding anything back.49
Thus in the fifteenth century, not only was booty something to be distributed as widely as possible (but not in the most egalitarian manner, far from it: for example, the first men to enter a fortress taken by assault easily claimed a quarter of the gains),50 but prisoners were similarly to be shared. By contrast, for Geoffroy de 45 46 47 50
Louis XI, ed. Vaesen and Charavay (‒), vi, . Charny, in Froissart, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove (), ‒. 48 49 Contamine (), . Ibid. . Ibid. ‒. Bueil, ed. Favre and Lecestre (‒), ii, .
· Philippe Contamine Charny, in the preceding century, although booty was to be held in common (to such an extent that both those who participated in a chevauchée and those who remained behind to guard the fortified town were to benefit from it), captives seemed to have remained in the hands of individuals or were shared among a small group of combatants who had previously entered into a partnership agreement. The problem—one of discipline—was thus to avoid concealment, to sell publicly the goods obtained, and to divide the profit according to rank (in practice, according to a scale). In , a group of men under the authority of the count of Armagnac were to share out the ransom of twenty-one prisoners: this group corresponded to payes, and each paye was to receive francs. In this fashion, Guillaume Raymond de Durfort, who was reckoned at . payes, received francs from the count of Armagnac.51 After the capture of Luxembourg in , the unit of account was the paye (in other words the amount of the monthly wage): the official proceeds of the sale (for, as always, there was some concealment), given the number of combatants, provided an amount of . florins per paye. A knightbanneret ( payes) thus received florins, a knight-bachelor ( payes) florins, a man-at-arms ( paye) . florins, and an archer (half a paye) . florins.52 Roughly speaking, the amount corresponded to a bonus worth one month’s wages. Hence the practice sometimes documented by which each combatant was to come to the place where the booty was divided up with the military equipment (of a manat-arms, archer, and so on) he had on the day the booty was taken. Hence also, of course, the relatively well-documented presence, at least from the fifteenth century onwards, of a public butinier (Beutenmeister, ‘booty-master’) for each company. The rules for dividing booty were especially precise when it came to war at sea: the regulation of the French fleet in prescribed two men to be appointed to each ship responsible for collecting the spoils, ‘plunder’, and profit, all of which was later to be divided ‘according to rank’.53 We have seen that in the fifteenth even more than in the fourteenth century, the prisoners’ ransom constituted part of the booty. Jean de Bueil mentions three standard solutions: first, each combatant could profit individually from what he himself captured (this was called ‘good practice’); or, secondly, several combatants could become partners, ‘put booty together’, for a particular undertaking or campaign (a practice widely attested by the sources); or, finally, any booty could belong to the whole company (or even to the army) for the duration of a given encounter or war, and the sharing-out of gains could be very rigorous (‘down to the smallest lacing-tag’), or less so. Clearly, Jean de Bueil recommended this last solution: it was for the captain to lay down the rules before any specific operation; 51 52
Documents sur la maison de Durfort, ed. Peña (), ‒. 53 Contamine (), VIII, pp. ‒. Murimuth, ed. Thompson (), .
Ransom and Booty · everyone had to respect them, even if they claimed not to have heard about them. For the company’s ‘public’ or ‘general’ welfare, the captain ‘has the authority to put the booty of the company in common each and every time he wishes, and such an amount in common as he wishes’.54 Thus in the French politico-military of the late Middle Ages, the king (prince) undoubtedly had the theoretical possibility of keeping for himself all war gains, inasmuch as he was the employer of his troops (things were probably different when it came to nobles carrying out feudal service at their own expense, but this practice was unquestionably disappearing). In fact, the king’s reaction was to yield all, or almost all, live or inanimate booty (as long as it was moveable wealth). None the less, it was his responsibility to facilitate exchanges, to preside, or appoint someone to preside, over the distribution, retain control over the release of prisoners, and lay down rules which more-or-less ensured the preservation of solidarity and order in his armies. Intervention by the sovereign power was probably manifest more evidently in the fifteenth century than the fourteenth. Although the public sphere of action in the midst of war-related activities tended to grow, it was impossible to take full advantage of everything permitted by written law. As for the Church, although it recommended that the victors offer thanksgiving in the form of a Te Deum, processions, pious foundations, or even votive offerings (the golden spurs given to Our Lady of Kortrijk after the Flemish victory of or the war armour presented to the abbey of Saint-Denis by Joan of Arc in ), it never claimed for itself any part of the booty and did not wish the tithe principle to be applied to the gains of war. This is probably very different from the practice of pagan antiquity.
. The End of the Middle Ages: Comparative Elements Should we believe that in the sphere of ransom and booty, the French monarchy was ahead of its neighbours, whether friends or enemies? In fact, the reverse is rather the case. In many ways, the English practice was for the king to intervene more insistently, regularly, and with greater authority. The great military regulations of Henry V, which took up stipulations going back to the reign of Richard II, specified individuals and goods which could not legitimately be considered as gains of war. They also specified which enemies the king of England was at liberty to redeem from their captors in exchange for reasonable compensation (political leaders, enemy captains, but also traitors). Above all, in the late Middle Ages, the king regularly claimed part of the winnings obtained by his soldiery: . per cent of an archer’s, . per cent of those of a man-at-arms, and per cent of a captain’s. 54
Bueil, ed. Favre and Lecestre (‒), ii, .
· Philippe Contamine These profits were meticulously recorded and were deducted from the amount paid to the combatants by financial officials. In this way the commanders could, if they wished, keep track of the military activities of their men. On the same principle, an English captain received a third of the gains of his men-at-arms, and a third of a third of the gains of his archers. As for the men-at-arms, they had a right to a third of their archers’ gains. During the fourteenth century, a captain obtained not a third, but one-half of the war gains of his men-at-arms, if he compensated them for the horses they had lost.55 An indenture of war dating from the beginning of the reign of Henry IV, made between the king and Thomas Berkeley has survived: the latter committed himself to serving for a quarter-year with men-at-arms ( bannerets, knights, and squires) and archers on seven barges and seven balingers. The king had to satisfy himself with one-quarter of the booty.56 Like the king of France, the king of England contributed to the payment of ransoms for his men. In a contract of between Edward III and a number of lords of the Empire (such as the duke of Brabant and the count of Hainault) the king even committed himself to obtaining their release and that of their men in case of need, including payment of ransoms.57 This custom was probably specific to the Empire and central Europe.58 Like the Burgundians in the time of John the Fearless and Philip the Good, the Flemish communes, and the ‘ancient leagues of upper Germany’ (the Swiss cantons), the English sometimes made a conscious decision not to take prisoners, at least not before victory was secured. In , the army of Gaston IV, count of Foix, laid siege to the town of Guiche; the arrival of the Anglo-Gascon relief was announced, and the rumour spread that the relieving force had decided not to take any prisoner, but to put them all to the sword until the English had obtained victory.59 But the same text declares—and here we see everything that is contradictory about war—‘that they had combined together in companies to acquire booty’, in the hope of becoming rich through the ‘good prisoners’ they envisaged capturing. In fact, the English monarchy attached great importance to what could be gained from prisoners and booty during the Hundred Years War and later, perhaps because they had plenty of opportunity to do so. In a way, the English monarchy may be seen as a predatory state,60 as was the Castilian monarchy and Ottoman Turkey. On the other hand, the English were accused, whether fairly or unfairly, of being hindered by their greed from ransoming their own people.61 Their behaviour was certainly different when they fought among themselves during the Wars of the Roses in the second half of the fifteenth century: not only were civilian populations and their 55 57 59
56 Bean (), ‒; Contamine, , VIII. Smyth, ed. Maclean (‒), ii, . 58 Sumption (), . Girardot (), ; Grodzinski (), . 60 61 Leseur (‒), i, ‒. McFarlane (). Juvénal, ed. Lewis (‒), i, .
Ransom and Booty · wealth spared but, according to Commynes, ordinary combatants were released without ransom.62 In Perugia, Florence, and the Papal State, the condottieri and their men were to give their prisoners to the authorities employing them in exchange for a relatively low level of compensation. The same rule held true for hired men-at-arms in the service of the city of Metz. This, of course, made the final exchanges easier: in , at the conclusion of the siege of Metz, the écorcheurs (supposedly in the service of Charles VII and René of Anjou) gave back all their prisoners, just as the city of Metz returned all of its prisoners. This means that the individual rights any écorcheur could hope to have over a prisoner were not respected (perhaps there was a system of compensation or indemnity); whereas for the prisoners taken by the forces employed by the city, the problem was posed differently, since they had to give them up to the ‘Seven of war’, who in turn paid compensation of sous per prisoner, and additionally left them the prisoners’ equipment and horses.63 In Venice, the practice was as follows: the booty was divided into two parts, moveable wealth belonged to the combatants, immoveable wealth to the state, which received along with it per cent of moveable goods. Prisoners remained the property of those who had captured them. In practice, lower-ranking prisoners were sent away, once stripped of their weapons and horses. This apparent magnanimity is unexpected, but can be explained by an element of anticipated reciprocity, as well as the fact that neither Venice nor the condottieri had the means or the will to keep them. Only individuals of some importance were ransomed, and it was the responsibility of the condottiere to obtain this ransom.64 However, Venice also practised another system, probably more appropriate to war at sea and enemies captured by the crews of state galleys. According to the Livre des faits du Maréchal Boucicaut, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Venetians seized a Genoese galley with French lords aboard. Boucicaut naturally sought to have them freed in exchange for a ransom, following the ‘practices of France’. But he could not achieve his aim before peace had been concluded, for the customs of the Venetians were such ‘that during their wars, the prisoners they take are never delivered, until the war, which can sometimes last the whole length of a man’s life, is ended’.65 According to Commynes, the Italian custom was to strip the ordinary masses of the defeated of their equipment and let them go without demanding a ransom.66 One might think that the end of the Middle Ages—supposedly a period of transition—served as an intermediate phase between the feudal and chivalrous central Middle Ages, when war was an individual affair, and the modern period, 62 64 66
63 Commynes, ed. Mandrot (‒), ii, . Contamine (), VIII, . 65 Zug Tucci (). Le Livre des fais, ed. Lalande (), . Commynes, ed. Mandrot (‒), ii, .
· Philippe Contamine during which states, in the name of raison d’état, took undisputed control of the whole process. However, there is evidence to contradict this logical evolution: we have only to recall the young Francis of Assisi, a prisoner of the comune of Perugia for a year (‒), and freed only at the end of the conflict, just like any twentiethcentury prisoner of war. In the same way, the most important prisoners at Bouvines, regardless of the circumstances of their capture, were said to be prisoners of the king and allocated among a number of fortresses. One of the registers of Philip Augustus thus lists prisoners of distinction, including counts and bannerets: Jean de Nesle was put in charge of guarding the count of Boulogne; Barthélemy de Roye was in charge of the count of Flanders; and Robert, count of Dreux, was responsible for the earl of Salisbury.67 Of the booty captured in during the sack of Constantinople, half was given to the Venetian state (probably to be redistributed among its troops) and the other half, estimated at , marks, was divided at a rate of marks per knight, per mounted sergeant, and per foot-sergeant,68 just as it might have been in the fifteenth century. According to Philippe Mousket’s Chronique rimée and other sources, at the time of the capture of Avignon in , the papal legate received half the booty—perhaps to finance the army or repay lenders? The other half was given to Louis VIII, who kept for himself all the minted currency.69 At the battle of Saintes in the French seized knights, ecclesiastics reputed to be very rich, and sergeants. As after Bouvines, they were all presented to Louis IX, who had them taken to different castles in the kingdom.70 After the same king’s capture of Damietta (), and on the advice of Robert, patriarch of Jerusalem, it was decided to set aside the wheat, barley, and rice (in order to survive a possible siege); all the rest was taken to the hôtel of the papal legate under penalty of excommunication. Then the problem of distribution was raised. Jean de Valéry suggested following the practice of the Holy Land: one-third to the king, two-thirds to the crusaders. But the king apparently wished to keep all the wheat, rice, and barley: only , livres parisis were shared out, and it is not known whether the king kept a part for himself.71 We should also note that Louis IX assumed responsibility of all his companions taken prisoner by the Sultan.72 Thus, everything points to the fact that the circumstances of the Hundred Years War forced the kings of France, in order to obtain the ever more uncertain help of their subjects and paid troops (particularly nobles), to renounce the role they might have hoped to play at an earlier date. There was a decline in public prerogatives, at a time when the French monarchy, in spite of the thundering discourse of its legists, was forced to make concessions. 67 70 72
68 69 Baldwin (), . Contamine (), VIII, . Petit-Dutaillis (), . 71 Le Nain de Tillemont, ed. Gaulle (), . Joinville, ed. Wailly (), . Richard (), .
Ransom and Booty · . The Modern Period: Persistence of the Private Appropriation of Booty More than ever, unauthorized pillaging, pilfering (what French vocabulary from the late sixteenth century onwards referred to as Dame, Damoiselle, or Princesse Picorée), and the ‘legitimate’ capture of booty (the ‘fair name of booty’, as the poem accompanying Jacques Callot’s famous series of engravings, the Misères de la guerre, puts it without irony) continued to be practised and constituted a major motivation of those who fought. Italy in particular was for many years an appetizing prey. This explains in large part, besides political motives, the persistence of French wars beyond the Alps. The victorious conclusion of a battle could yield a large profit. In , the battle of Ceresole was said to have been worth a booty of , francs, ‘as much in coin as in silver dishes and other riches’, more than fourteen or fifteen artillery pieces (given to the king), over ,‒, pieces of armour called corselets, ‘to such an extent that equipment costing écus in Milan was worth only or sols tournois for the finest’.73 Even more fruitful was the sack of cities, whether this operation was allowed or not—one could hardly dare say ‘controlled’—by the commanders. The word sac, of Italian origin, was introduced into French around the end of the fourteenth century: ‘To put the city a saqueman, that is to say, to run through and pillage’.74 From the sack of Rome in to that of Antwerp in (which was said to have yielded million ducats, of which million were liquid assets), the sixteenth century differed little from the thirteenth, marked as it was by the pillage of Constantinople. The situation seemed to change from the seventeenth century onwards, at least in the West (despite serious breaches, such as the pillage of Bergen-op-Zoom by Lowendal’s soldiers in ). In his biography of Bayart, the ‘loyal servant’ estimates the booty from the sack of Brescia in at million écus, adding that this great windfall was a military catastrophe, since, having become rich, most of the French went home, judging that they had made a fortune for themselves and their children.75 In , the pillage of Milan continued for ten successive days without ‘there being any order of command to have the sack stopped’.76 The commanders might have preferred a war indemnity, a substantial financial contribution in lieu of punishment, but the common soldiery exercised pressure to the point of demanding the ‘quarry’,77 like a pack of hunting dogs. There is yet another example, dating from : the sack of the town and castle of Vico, near Sorrento—an action carried out Du Bellay and Du Bellay, ed. Bourilly and Vindry (‒), iv, . Le Livre des fais, ed. Lalande (), . 75 La très joyeuse . . . histoire du . . . seigneur de Bayart, ed. Roman (), . See also Florange, ed. Goubaud and Lemoine (), i, . 76 77 Du Bellay and Du Bellay, ed. Bouvilly and Vindry (‒), i, ‒. Ibid. ‒. 73 74
· Philippe Contamine by forty men-at-arms, each man having acquired, with official sanction, , écus in the process.78 While they developed medieval theory and practice, rules relating to the distribution of booty were merely more precise. Bearing witness to this trend are the Instructions de toutes manières de guerroyer tant par terre que par mer et des choses y servantes,79 written by Philip of Cleves, lord of Ravenstein, probably in c., as a result of his long military experience beginning in the years ‒. The work was widely circulated in a fair number of manuscripts and finally printed in , proof that the validity and utility of its content was still recognized.80 It was the responsibility of the marshal of the army, he says, to know ‘all the booty, whether it be prisoners or inanimate booty’. Of this booty, a tenth was reserved for him (the captain also had a right to one-tenth of the rest). We should note that the marshals of France did not benefit—or no longer benefited—from this arrangement at this date. Indeed, until the s they could lay claim to the animals taken by the paid men-at-arms, in particular the horses, leaving the donkeys and goats to the maîtres des arbalétriers (masters of the crossbowmen) of France; they also claimed armour and horses found in fortresses ‘taken by siege or otherwise’.81 Later the king of France deprived them of this right in exchange for higher wages, without any real intention of benefiting from it himself, so that from the reign of Charles V only the Admiral of France, among the great military office-holders of the kingdom, had an official right to a share in the booty. In any case, according to Philip of Cleves (adopting Burgundian practice), the marshal of the army, assisted by the sergeant, was to preside over the collection and division of booty. If a town was on the point of being taken by assault, it would be publicly declared that ‘everything was to be brought together as booty’ and that this booty would be shared among those who took part in the assault, as well as those who remained behind in the reserve. Each company was to choose a butinier. He would take an oath to fulfil his task conscientiously, without hiding anything, and would give to each his ‘share and portion . . . according to his status and the order of rank’ established by the prince. The primary responsibility of the prince is seen here: to set the rules of the game fairly, as a kind of external referee. In the case of a raid, the participants would also choose a butinier on their return, responsible for making an inventory of prisoners, horses, and other livestock. Once this had been done, a trumpet was sounded and the horses and ‘inanimate booty’ put up for sale. As for the prisoners, those for whom it was judged impossible to obtain any ransom were disposed of. The captain’s advice would be followed in relation to the others. In any case, as Jean de Bueil
78 80
79 Du Bellay and Du Bellay, ‒. Clèves (). 81 Contamine (). Vatican Library, ms lat. , fos. ‒.
Ransom and Booty · recommended in the century before, no prisoner was to be freed unless the captain had granted him safe conduct. In war at sea, the admiral had the same role as the marshal of the army; he also had a right to a tenth. He had also to decide whether or not any specific booty was ‘fair’ game. At the latter end of the sixteenth century, Saint-Luc’s Traité de la guerre () quoted several excerpts from military rules and regulations. Generally speaking, soldiers were forbidden to strip the dead and pilfer baggage before victory was secured. It was ordered that all booty be entrusted to a responsible individual ‘so that it can be divided among all loyal people, according to each one’s office and salary’. A regulation is quoted, probably relating to the garrison of a border town: of the ‘mass’ of booty gathered, the commander would take a tenth as his ‘first right’ and dispose of it as he wished (in other words, he might redistribute it as a reward). What remained would be divided into equal payes, among all those who had participated in the endeavour. Thus, a captain had a right to payes, a lieutenant to , an ensign or gentilhomme to , a sergeant to , and a soldier to . As for the sergeant-major, he would receive a half paye for each company engaged in the affair. If it was a maritime operation, or if the men were transported by sea, each captain of sailors would have a right to payes and each soldier to half a paye. Even the commander who drew up the plan received a specific award: an additional paye, to be added to the portion he received because of his rank. Finally, so that everyone should know about this rule, it was to be posted in the guardrooms of the town.82 Thus, ever since the division of the spoils of Byzantium in —at the latest—and until the end of the sixteenth century, the idea of a division according to rank remained exactly the same. But the system may have become more complex as it was set down in written form. The relative egalitarianism of the division is none the less striking in a society so aristocratic in other areas. It should be noted, however, that a military regulation from about the same period brought the captain’s share up to a third,83 that is, a proportion identical to that permitted by later medieval English indentures of war. In any case, nothing was to be given to the king of France, either in law or practice. Sixteenth-century military thought was none the less sensitive to the risks represented by an insatiable and disorderly quest for booty. ‘Great armies’, wrote Gaspard de Saulx, lord of Tavannes, ‘are ruined in a short time by a lack of money or supplies, or because of illness, discontent, need, or the booty of soldiers’, giving the example a ‘thousand horsemen of the arrière-ban’ defeated by imperial troops ‘because they were more preoccupied with booty than with keeping watch’. Indeed, for Gaspard de Saulx, it was once the booty had been collected that the
82
BN MS français , fos. v–r.
83
BN MS français , fo. .
· Philippe Contamine risks began to increase—in particular during a retreat when, ‘hindered by booty and prisoners’, an army was all the more vulnerable.84 It may be noted that, unsurprisingly, experts inspired by the Roman world— present in people’s minds well before the advent of Humanism and the Renaissance—contemplated radically putting into question private appropriation of booty. In his Instructions sur le faict de la guerre (), Raymond de Beccarie de Pavie, lord of Fourquevaux, noted that the wars of his day impoverished not only defeated princes (because they ran the risk of losing all or part of their lordship), but also the victors, because they handed over the booty to the soldiers. Of course, he had in mind the king of France, but also some other western sovereigns (would he have said the same of the Great Turk, or the king of England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, or the Viking leaders at the time of the Scandinavian invasions?) Since this prevented war from being a directly profitable undertaking (war did not feed war, contrary to what the Directoire was much later to wish), it also resulted in people being ‘less careful to keep the order of war’. The standard example of this was Guinegatte (), where the francs archers’ quest for booty led to the French rout. By contrast, Romans had expected the booty to be put in common and shared out by the consul, according to his wishes. Hence the role among the Romans of the quaestors, whom Fourquevaux judiciously compared to the généraux de finance of his own day. Into their hands ‘were consigned all the booty and all the ransoms that were taken, which things the consul used to help pay his people, and to aid the wounded and sick, and to meet the costs of the army’. In other words, there was a whole system of reinvestment and capital reinjection, which tended to render even domestic taxation superfluous. Even the pillage of a city did not lead to disorder: ‘all spoils were placed in the centre’, so that they could be distributed to each man according to his rank and ‘virtue’. Hence, the legionaries had no reason to fall out of line, and at the triumph the consul could present to the Roman people the prestigious and spectacular fruits of booty (this did not exclude division after the ceremony), as well as the long line of chained and enslaved prisoners.85 In , Guillaume Joly, lieutenant-general of the connétablie and maréchaussée of France, and a lawyer in the Parlement of Paris, published his Traicté de la justice militaire de France, dedicated to Henri de Montmorency, Constable of France. For Guillaume, since booty was a concern of human rather than natural law, customs relating to it could differ according to time and place. Like Fourquevaux, he referred to Roman practice, permitting booty for private individuals in a single case: ‘when they won it from a new enemy, the war having begun suddenly, and in 84 85
Tavannes, ed. Michaud and Poujoulat (), , , . Fourquevaux, ed. Dickinson ().
Ransom and Booty · the context of an encounter which fell within the established conventions.’ In a different situation, the booty from daily raids was ‘brought back all together and divided by lot equally to each one after some portions had been set aside and reserved, without defrauding either the sick, the wounded, or those who happened to be absent because of their responsibilities and necessary business’. In other circumstances—the sack of a city or the defeat of an entire army—each soldier was required to bring back to the treasurer or quaestor everything he collected. This booty was then sold, and the product of the sale was used for paying the troops. If there was a surplus, it was repaid into the treasury. In short, booty was ‘used for the profit of the whole republic’. After this exposition, drawn from a reading of the classical histories, one might expect the author to recommend adopting similar rules, since they were so judicious, so advantageous to the state and to the ‘common good’. Yet this is not the case, for he says: It is more fitting for us, being under a full monarchy (en pleine royauté), to follow the great way of this universal right of all men, according to which what is taken from the enemy freely remains the property of him who takes it first, so that it cannot be taken from him later. In this, even if there is less delicacy and subtlety, there is more magnificence and generosity in not lowering public dignity, by not shaving off a bit from everything, to the point of making one’s booty the booty of one’s people. Furthermore, a Frenchman could not permit someone to come and tear from his hands what good fortune and endeavour had once acquired for him, and which must remain his property because he had shed his blood, and a stimulus to risk even more in the future. Consequently, we can resolve that our right to booty, for this last reason, is more honourable and natural than theirs, or at least more fitting to the scope of our polity.
Joly thus emphasized magnificence, generosity, and liberality, monarchic virtues par excellence, yet he also pointed out the inability of these same monarchs to change the mentality of their troops. At this date, the right to booty was still part of the fundamental rights of the ‘free’ French soldiers. Simply, in conformity with earlier thinking, Joly recommended strict respect for military discipline: ‘as long as we enforce our regulations in order to prevent disorder, and to keep people from running after spoils before victory is completely assured.’ Joly added two other references to sixteenth-century ordinances: any soldier who during the capture of a fortified town did not follow his ensign (his company’s flag) but went off to pillage ‘or to make any other gain’, was to be stripped of his rank and banished from the army; a soldier was not to abandon his ensign during a campaign, under penalty of ‘passer sous les piques’; he was not to go on a raid without his captain’s leave. Here Joly clearly did not go as far as Fourquevaux, who suggested the death penalty for any soldier who, in a town taken by assault, began to pillage before the general had signalled with his trumpets ‘so that everyone
· Philippe Contamine could hear it was time to take booty’, so that, if such a cry was not heard, ‘each one should control himself and prevent himself from pillaging, under the same penalty’.86 The persistence of the rule of booty can only be explained by the conditions in which the soldiers lived—dangerous, difficult, and sometimes intolerable—and also by the frequent delays in the payment of wages by a state unable to meet its obligations in full or on time. The sack of a city, along with the inconceivable tumult, horrors, and cruelties in its wake, was seen by the beneficiaries both as a reward and as something owed to them. In theory, other sovereigns showed themselves to be less generous than the king of France. In Spain, Balthazar Ayala explains, the king had the right to a fifth, a third, or even half of what was captured, and even to the whole in the case, for example, of what was captured by the crew of a ship entirely financed by him. In this case, there was nothing for the admiral (who otherwise had the right to oneseventh of what did not belong to the king—we have only to recall what Christopher Columbus awarded himself in ), nothing for the general (whose share could be either a seventh or a tenth), and nothing for the sailors or soldiers except out of royal generosity.87 In fact, the situation was not as far as one might think from that of France: during the long war of Flanders, for example, if a city was able to avoid being sacked by paying an indemnity, either the whole or part of this amount was distributed to the soldiers.88 In Spain, too, the rules for the appropriation of booty were as follows: land, towns, and the vanquished sovereign (Francis I) were the Spanish sovereign’s. The defeated general, enemy ensigns (worth écus a piece, the sum given to those who had captured them), and ammunition went to the victorious general. The artillery major had the artillery by right. As for the rest, men and goods belonged to those who seized them. If the supply administration wished to have at its disposal supplies which had been captured, it had to purchase them.89
. Ransoms in the Modern Period: Gains Diminishing with State Control A cursory reading of sixteenth-century sources suggests at first glance practices analogous to those of the late Middle Ages. The few examples set out in Table suffice to make the point. Indeed, the chevalier Bayard is said to have earned , francs from his prisoners during his military career—a sum which, Fourquevaux, ed. Dickinson . 88 Ayala, ed. and trans. Westlake (), fo. v. Parker (, b). 89 Quatrefages (b), . Other examples concerning booty are collected together in the rich and perceptive study: Redlich (). 86 87
Ransom and Booty · T . Some ransoms in the s and s Date
Prisoner’s name
Ransom value
Teodoro Trivulzio Lord of Jamais Marshal of Florange François de Scepeaux, lord of Vieilleville Cornillon Lord of Villebon Martin Du Bellay
, écus a , francs b , écus c , écus d , écus e , écus f , écus g
Sources: a Du Bellay and Du Bellay, ed. Bourilly and Vindry (‒), iv, . b Florange, ed. Goubaud and Lemoine (– ), i, . c Florange, ed. Goubaud and Lemoine (– ), ii, . d Scapeaux, ed. Michaud and Poujoulat (), . i Ibid. . f Du Bellay and Du Bellay, ed. Bourilly and Vindry (‒), iii, . g Ibid. iii, .
following the traditional chivalrous model, he distributed liberally to those of his party who were in need.90 In exactly the same way as in the late Middle Ages, the defeated individual gave his pledged word personally to his captor. In , Prospero Colonna, ‘to save his life, pledged his word’ to the lord of Aubigny.91 There was still a risk of being killed during bitter quarrels between several individuals all claiming simultaneously to have received a rich prisoner’s word of honour.92 Later, with or without a hostage (for one could be a prisoner upon one’s pledged word, as Arthur de Richemont had been at the beginning of the fifteenth century), the defeated individual was often released in order to go and collect his ransom. As Guillaume Joly writes, sending prisoners home on their honour was ‘as if they themselves were put into their own keeping’. A prisoner of war thus released put himself under the same obligation, according to the same author, of ‘religiously upholding his war oath, following the example of Regulus, so famous for loyalty of this kind in ancient histories.’ 93 All this implies that the system could really function only among people of honour: practices relating to the rank and file were necessarily different. The king could help pay his subjects’ ransoms, just as the subjects could make a contribution towards his. After the disastrous French defeat at the battle of Pavia (), the Regent Louise of Savoy was said to have given most of the captives ‘money to pay their ransom’.94 For politico-military reasons, the king’s commander could 90 91 93
La très joyeuse . . . histoire du . . . seigneur de Bayart, ed. Roman (), ‒. 92 Du Bellay and Du Bellay, ed. Bouvilly and Vindry (‒), i, . Ibid. iii, . 94 Joly (), fo. r. Du Bellay and Du Bellay, ed. Bourilly and Vindry (‒), ii, .
· Philippe Contamine order a massacre of prisoners, thus depriving his men of their gains: in , after the capture of the castle of Peschiera, the vanquished offered , ducats for their redemption, but Louis XII, despite the entreaty of several French lords, had them hanged on the spot.95 From this point onwards, the concept of bonne guerre (buena guerra, goutte krich, ‘good war’) was fundamental, in opposition to ‘bad war’. It is a concept which began to be formulated, to spread and compel recognition, from the second half of the fifteenth century onwards.96 A ‘good war’ was, among other things, one in which civilian populations and their possessions were spared and those who surrendered were not executed. Take the case of Thérouanne, in c.: Anne de Montmorency and the French captains, judging there was no way to defend the town, requested capitulation (agreement to surrender), which was granted to them. The old Spanish regiments then entered the town through a wide breach, shouting ‘Good war! Good war!’. The French then attempted to surrender to them, and not to the Germans, who by contrast threatened to massacre them. In this instance the Spanish thus took the majority of the prisoners; they demanded a ‘reasonable’ ransom from those who appeared to have the means to pay, robbed the poor soldiers and sent them home, providing them with a safe conduct.97 In an episode in , the French and Swiss killed imperial soldiers because they were irritated by the ‘bad war’ waged by the latter at an earlier juncture. In , despite the pledging of good faith, Giovanni di Medici ordered Swiss soldiers who had put themselves at his mercy to be killed in the Spanish camp. By way of reprisal, the Swiss obtained from their leader, the Admiral of France, Guillaume Gouffier, lord of Bonnivet, the right to ‘wage bad war’. It lasted three weeks. Martin and Guillaume Du Bellay, who mention the event, add that if things had continued in this way, it would have been the end of the war and to the benefit of the French for, according to them, ‘the Spanish fear war more than any other nation and go to war more out of greed, than from any other motive’. However, negotiations concluded with the re-establishment of ‘good war’.98 The great sixteenth-century novelty, probably a product of the Italian condotta, was the introduction of a generalized system of prisoner exchange, in which the states took control of the process through their official representatives and, alongside this, there was a considerable, even radical, decline in the importance of ransoms in individual motivation and behaviour. A concrete example allows us to grasp the course of such operations. In , with the aim of introducing, or reintroducing, the practices of ‘good war’, the marshal of Brissac, knight of the 95 96 97 98
Florange, ed. Goubaud and Lemoine (‒), i, ‒. Contamine (), XIII, . Gardot (), . Rabutin, ed. Michaud and Poujoulat (), ‒. Du Bellay and Du Bellay, ed. Bourilly and Vindry (‒), i, ‒.
Ransom and Booty · Order of Saint-Michel, royal governor and lieutenant-general of the French king in Italy, asked the enemy commander, Don Ferrante Gonzaga, lieutenant and captain-general of the Emperor in the same theatre of operations, to put an end to capitulations. Gonzaga responded that this was difficult to achieve, especially in relation to ransoms, given that French lords and gentilshommes going to war did not disdain subordinate positions in the gendarmerie (that is, the compagnies d’ordonnance). Thus, two or three gentilshommes held a single archer’s position between them. Consequently, if they were taken prisoner, following a practice well established since the second quarter of the sixteenth century,99 they demanded that the sum of their ransom be calculated in relation to their wages, which was of course ridiculously low. Thus they escaped lightly; risking less, they could show themselves to be more courageous. On the other hand, Italians, Spanish, and Germans of equivalent social standing were much more concerned with their rank and status and would have found it repugnant to enlist in such a lowly rank. Their ransoms were consequently much more substantial. Brissac’s response is enlightening: ‘treatment according to good war’ would result in linking ransom to salary in such a way that ‘officers’ (we should note the term) would have to pay a ransom proportional to their wages, whether they were gendarmerie captains, lieutenants, ensigns, guidons, and cornets of cavalry.100 In other words, the price of an active combatant had to be based on his wages or salary, not on his personal fortune. This obviously implied acceptance by both sides of their respective rates of pay, probably because the scales were comparable. Just as with ‘good war’, reciprocity was an important motive. Since in this interminable conflicts, setbacks inevitably alternated with successes and victory with defeat, it was important to define a modus vivendi and follow it. Two years later ( August ), Brissac and Gonzaga adopted the following provisions. If they were taken prisoner, captains, lieutenants, ensigns, guidons, and marshals of the gendarmerie (heavy cavalry) were to pay a quarter’s—that is, three months’—wages (plus, in all likelihood, the cost of their upkeep during what was normally the very short period of their captivity). As soon as the ransom was paid, they were to be released. This was probably the origin of the expression ‘to give no quarter’, that is, not to capture a defeated enemy, in other words, to massacre him.101 The maîtres de camp (officers commanding an infantry or cavalry regiment), infantry, cavalry, and artillery generals, colonels, brigadiers, governors, private maîtres de camp, commissaires généraux et particuliers of 99 101
100 Gardot (), . Boyvin, ed. Michaud and Poujoulat (), . Alembert and Diderot (), .
· Philippe Contamine war and of artillery, artillery marshals and quartermasters; captains, lieutenants, ensigns, sergeants-major of foot-soldiers, gunners, commissaires of cavalry; auditors, secretaries, or doctors in the service of princes’ lieutenants general; private secretaries, treasuries, muster-masters, controllers of war, reparation, ammunition, and supplies; commanders of fortresses and gentilshommes serving the lieutenants general were all only to pay one month’s wages. Men-at-arms, archers, members of any unit of household cavalry, footsoldiers, corporals, sergeants, and quartermasters, once robbed, were to be released without ransom. Only military earnings were to be taken into account.
These stipulations defining ‘good war’ were retroactive. ‘Small fry’, soldiers of the rank and file, ‘inferiors’ taken prisoner since the beginning of the war were to be released without ransom. The stipulations were to be permanent, although they might be revoked after a ten-day period, and valid throughout Italy. However, they would not apply in the cases of pitched battle or towns captured by force. In other words, only the much less profitable small-scale or guerilla warfare, or guerre guerroyante (using an expression going back to the fifteenth century), was involved.102 In these capitulations (Fourquevaux uses the word chapitre103 in the same way), nothing was said about two crucial points: who paid, and who received, the ransom? Can we be sure that each individual had to procure his own ransom, perhaps with the help of his superior(s) or companions in arms? Can we be sure that the proceeds of these ransoms were given to the captors, rather than confiscated by the commander in the name of the state in order to benefit, for example, some sort of pooled fund, destined to help with the subsequent release of other prisoners? There was probably a difference between these small ransoms, probably seen to by the generals and captains, and large ransoms with which, just as in the Middle Ages, the prisoner’s family was clearly involved.104 During the siege of Metz on November , François de Guise wrote to Margrave Albert of Brandenburg, proposing the release of two of his men captured in the course of an engagement. He was to release them as soon as Brandenburg had sent to him, through the intermediary of a trumpeter, the sum of one month of the mens’ wages. On the other hand, Guise asked for the release of a man-at-arms and an archer against payment, once again, of one month of their wages: l. s. d. for the man-atarms, l. s. d. for the archer.105 Where did Guise obtain this amount? Who was to receive the money paid by Brandenburg? 102 103 104
Boyvin, ed. Michaud and Poujoulat (), ‒. Fourquevaux, ed. Dickinson (), fo. v. Guise, ed. Michaud and Poujoulat (), .
105
Ibid. ‒.
Ransom and Booty · In more important cases, the stakes were inevitably higher and negotiations more difficult. In July , there were meetings in Brussels between Sébastien de l’Aubesine, abbot of Bassefontaine (in the diocese of Troyes), counsellor and maître des requêtes of the household of the king of France, Henri II, and two counsellors of Philip II of Spain. The latter were particularly demanding, claiming a year’s wages (rather than a month’s or a trimester’s) for the ransoms of soldiers, ensigns, lieutenants, and infantry captains. As for the ‘children of good families’, they were no longer put up for ransom in accordance with their wages, or even their own personal fortune, but that of their father. One was judged to be worth , écus, ‘which is an intolerable charge’. Exchanges were out of the question. Prison conditions were harsher than among the Turks. It was therefore probably in the king’s interest to help secure their release.106 Thus, the king of Spain received the complaint of Jacques d’Angennes, lord of Maintenon, who maintained that the ransom demanded by Francisco Orthus was too high, on the grounds that his father was lord of Rambouillet, a gentleman of the king’s chamber and guidon of the Constable of France, with an annual income of , écus— an amount which was nevertheless to be revised upwards if it transpired that Angennes’s father had died in the meantime.107 In this instance, the , écus were to be received by Orthus himself (and his possible associates) and not by the king of Spain. Jacques d’Angennes and his relatives had to obtain this money; it would not be automatically provided by his employer, the king of France. As in the Middle Ages, prisoners attempted to hide their identity in order to avoid a heavy ransom. Their coats-of-arms were used to unmask them.108 The ongoing interplay of private bargaining did not prevent sixteenth-century peace treaties from being regularly preoccupied with the fate of prisoners. For example, the treaty of Cambrai, on August , specified in Article that all prisoners of war taken on land or at sea either before or after the treaty of Madrid () were to be released without ransom in the two months following ratification of the peace. There were two significant exceptions; one concerned subjects of the kingdom of Naples who had served against the Emperor and been taken prisoner by imperial soldiers (they were to be considered rebels, not ordinary prisoners of war), the other exception concerned those whose ransom had already been agreed and who had therefore to settle it. Private undertakings and everything indicates that neither Francis I nor Charles V felt they had the right to cancel them.109 Similarly, the truce of Vaucelles ( December ) stipulated that ransom was to equal a year of the prisoner’s income, including wages, salaries, pensions, and stipends. Each prisoner was to make his own declaration without delay, 106 109
107 Ibid. ‒. Gardot (), . Du Mont (‒), iv, .
108
Guise, ed. Michaud and Poujoulat (), .
· Philippe Contamine under oath, ‘in good faith and upon his honour’. He was to submit a declaration in his own hand, and sealed with his seal bearing his arms. If it was not honest, it was the responsibility of the prisoner’s prince to correct it. Representatives from each side were responsible for collecting and exchanging the declarations. This was all to be carried out between the date of the truce and January. The cases of three dukes (Bouillon, Montmorency, and Arscot) were reserved for later examination. As for the treaty of Cambrai, the conditions did not relate to prisoners who had already reached agreement with their captors over their ransoms.110 Honour, recourse to the written word, an armigerous seal: everything indicates that such an agreement did not concern the common soldiery, who had probably already been freed, simply because of a lack of what would later become prisoners. The treaty of Vervins was made between Henri IV, Philip II, and CharlesEmmanuel, duke of Savoy on May . On this occasion prisoners of war were to be released without ransom in exchange solely for payment of their expenses during captivity and excepting, once again, all those who had already come to an agreement over their ransom. None the less, they could, if they thought the sum excessive, appeal to the prince of the country in which they were detained, who was to arbitrate the matter.111 Thus at the beginning of the seventeenth century—and Grotius merely recognizes this112—private appropriation of ransoms and booty appears to have remained the dominant practice. The French monarchy would have found it demeaning to transform itself into a predatory organization. Louis XIII stated this formally in January : The king, wishing to prevent differences and disputes which might occur during the war which is being waged against the king of Spain, concerning booty and prisoners which will be taken from the enemy, His Majesty has declared and declares, wishes, and intends that all booty and prisoners which will be taken during and on the occasion of the said war belong to those who make the said captures, and it is forbidden that anyone should take them [booty and prisoners] away from them or deprive them under penalty of disobedience and other greater penalties, should this occur.113
During the modern period, people fought for ‘the hope of booty and glory’,114 just as they had in the Middle Ages for ‘honour and profit’ (that is, individual glory and profit). At the very end of the seventeenth century the marshal of Villars, preoccupied—as he put it—with fattening his ‘calf ’ (the château of Vaux-le-Vicomte), divided the booty into three parts: one-third for the soldiers, one-third for the officers, and one-third for himself.115 110 113 115
Du Mont, iv, . Corvisier (). Bély (), .
111 114
112 Ibid. v, , col. A. Haggenmacher (). Boyvin, ed. Michaud and Poujoulat (), .
Ransom and Booty · However, especially in relation to prisoners, the shift in practice was clear-cut and decisive because of the generalization of cartels (the cuartel general of Spanish sources), which punctuated seventeenth-century conflicts. These cartels were planned to last for a certain length of time (three times, for example, or the whole length of the war). Exchanges were to be general and rapid (ten to fifteen days after capture) and to be made among individuals of equal rank. Stripping prisoners of their clothing or forcing them to enlist were both forbidden. Chaplains, doctors, surgeons, and other medical personnel, women, children under twelve, postilions, messengers, servants, and valets could not become prisoners of war. Even the daily upkeep of prisoners was planned (in , for example, for common soldiers sous a day, plus their ration of bread: all of this was made public and paid for, at the appropriate juncture, by the authorities responsible for the prisoners). If one protagonist-state had more prisoners than the other, there was a remnant which was redeemed, according to a rate which sometimes corresponded to one month’s salary and which, in , went from l. s. for a soldier to , l. for the commander-in-chief, the marshals, and so on.116 A cartel of between the French and the Spanish set the ransom for a soldier at l. s., for a sergeant at l., a lieutenant l., and a captain l. In , the amounts were respectively: l. s., l., l., l. A cartel between France and the United Provinces on November , established slightly different equivalents: two rank-and-file soldiers for a sergeant, twelve for a captain, forty-eight soldiers for a colonel, seventy soldiers for a brigadier.117 The treaty between France and England set the ransom for a marshal of France at , l., that of a lieutenant-general at , l.118 This system of taxation was still in use in the second half of the eighteenth century: It is current practice among powers at war to agree to exchange prisoners of war, or to pay their ransom according to their rank. The convention passed on this subject bears the name of ‘cartel’. A soldier’s ransom is judged there to be or l., and that of a general or marshal of France, , l.119
A treaty of between France and England established rates of francs for a soldier, sixty soldiers for a marshal of France or an admiral, which came to just , francs, not a large sum and indicating a clear tendency towards a bilateral lowering of the prices at which commanders were estimated.120 Yet two problems remain: • Who paid? In the Spanish army, captains (using their secret funds?) could perform this function within a period of twenty-five days. There was also a role for the state: after the failure of the Armada (), Philip II had to redeem every soldier and sailor taken prisoner by the English and the Dutch for florins. In 116 118
117 Duchhardt (), esp. ‒, ‒. Contamine (), . 119 Berthelot (n.d.), . Alembert and Diderot (), .
120
Berthelot (n.d.), .
· Philippe Contamine , the Spanish government estimated the cost of redeeming all soldiers captured by the Dutch at , florins.121 • Who profited? A regulation by Louis XIV on September indicates an obvious evolution. It explained—but this was not new on the theoretical level— that it was up to the king alone to ‘dispose of prisoners and to give them their freedom, either unconditionally, or by exchange or ransom, and to tax them at such a rate as seems good to him’. Nevertheless, continued the document, leaders, officers, and the rank and file who took prisoners disposed of them as they wished, ‘for their own use, and to the detriment of public welfare’. If instead, all prisoners were given up to the king, ‘following the ancient regulations and customs of the kingdom’, and not ransomed in an underhand manner, they could be used as bargaining counters. The release of prisoners of quality in particular constituted ‘a notable loss to the state and to the service of His Majesty’. None the less, the king recognized that the victors had rights over their captives and deserved a reward proportional ‘to the quality of those they captured, and to the ransoms and quarters established in the past’. Thus the king, while demanding that prisoners of war be given up to him through his intendants, intended to pay their owners a bonus—although only a modest sum, and apparently only related to officers: livres for a cavalry colonel, for a captain in the light cavalry, for an infantry captain.122 At this juncture, everything points to the fact that in France prisoners of war had become, or were about to become, true prisoners of the state, kept by the state itself (implying costs and a more-or-less complex form of organization). The monarchy did not seek to gain any real economic profit from these prisoners. Its goal was above all to neutralize them. Strategic imperatives had prevailed. As for the soldiers of a state who were taken prisoner, the state could not simply lose interest in them: it had to obtain their release in whatever way possible, and on the best terms. In Spain, at least, such prisoners continued to receive their salary (less the cost of their daily upkeep), while their wives continued to receive their usual allowance. The problems associated with captivity lie within the framework of a broader process by which the state gained control over all aspects of its soldiers’ lives: training, active service, illness and wounds, retirement. In exchange for security (or at least theoretical security, for even in the eighteenth century and in the bestorganized armies the system had many flaws), military personnel who had in some ways become civil servants and were transformed into state employees (although employees prepared to risk their lives and ‘die for the fatherland’) had 121
Parker (), ‒.
122
Corvisier ().
Ransom and Booty · lost much of their freedom—and in particular, the freedom to dream of large profits and rich ransoms in the midst of the lottery of war. ‘It can happen that a wise, valiant, and virtuous man captures in some engagement a prisoner of such great power both in land and lordship, that he will become, and remain, wealthy all his life, and even his successors [will remain so].’123 These words of Ghillebert de Lannoy, inspired by the reality of the fifteenth century and already less applicable at the beginning of the modern period, could not even have been formulated in the eighteenth century. From this time onwards, making a fortune at war was not normally conceivable other than by means of the favours and rewards granted by the prince: the marshal of Richelieu demonstrated a lack of scruple when he built the famous Hanover pavilion thanks to the proceeds of his plundering.124 Vattel’s manual of , a work reprinted several times in the course of a century, supplies the thoughtful expression of enlightened opinion in the mid-eighteenth century. For Vattel, a state waging just war ‘has the right to retain its prisoners, if it judges necessary, until the end of the war’. When it releases them, the state also has the right to demand a ransom, ‘either as compensation when peace is made or, if the war continues, at least to weaken the finances of the enemy when it returns its soldiers’. Furthermore, ‘the state is obliged to deliver, at its expense, its citizens and soldiers who are prisoners of war, as soon as it can safely do so’. It is thus not surprising to note that, in , the monarchy of Louis XV set aside the sum of million to redeem French prisoners at the conclusion of the Seven Years War.125 Vattel continues: ‘In the past, prisoners of war were obliged to redeem themselves; moreover, the ransoms of those whom the soldiers and officers could capture belonged to them. Modern practice conforms more closely to reason and justice.’ As for booty, Vattel distinguishes between conquests (towns and land taken from the enemy, which necessarily belonged to the state waging war) and moveable goods. Certainly, the latter also by right belonged to the state, the sovereign, since his soldiers were but ‘instruments in his hand to uphold his right’, since he maintained and paid them, and since all their actions were performed in his name and for him. Nevertheless, ‘the sovereign can give such a share of booty as he wishes to the troops’. This is what happens today, says Vattel, ‘with the exception of the artillery and munitions’, and supplies, which are retained to meet the needs of the army. Finally, he notes that pillage had given way to a system of contributions which obliged the enemy country to make organic provision, in whole or part, for the upkeep of the occupying army, and for all the costs of war. This only goes to show that, beyond all the more-or-less symbolic concessions, the state kept for itself the largest part of the profits of war, whether during the war or at its conclusion.126 123 125
124 Lannoy, ed. Potvin (), . Delmas (), . 126 Ibid. . Vattel (), , .
The Modern State and Military Society in the Eighteenth Century Bernhard R. Kroener
T
his chapter takes us to the heart of a controversial topic of research. Did the early modern state create a military instrument commensurate with its ambitions in the realm of power politics, or did the exigencies of martial rationality increasingly militarize the machinery of power in the states of Europe from the sixteenth century onwards? Are we in fact, as Mirabeau caustically put it with reference to Prussia, dealing with armies which created their states?1 ‘The discipline of the army is . . . the womb of all discipline.’ This terse statement by Max Weber sheds light on the view, put forward for a long time, that the rationality of power of the European states with a monarchic constitution should be regarded essentially as the product of a process of military disciplining first tested within the framework of armed power.2 The French King Charles VII tried out a form of individual disciplining in the compagnies d’ordonnance, long before absolutist monarchs set in hand any widespread ‘social disciplining’ of their subjects. It is thus quite possible to give plausible reasons for the appearance and success of the first mass armies of the early modern period, for they opposed organized mobility and combat discipline to the ethos of individual combat of their knightly adversaries. Weber had indeed particularly emphasized the social impact of military discipline, when he stated that ‘the greater or lesser role which the discipline of thoroughly trained armies played in the conduct of war had quite as durable an effect as the political and social constitution’. However, he believed there was no real modern instrument for social disciplining until the advent of large-scale industrial enterprise in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The parallelism of the two 1
Kroener (), .
2
Weber (), .
· Bernhard R. Kroener fundamental historical processes of the modern period—the development of a modern rationalized organization of power and the emergence, following comparable structural principles, of capitalist economic systems—meant that historians have increasingly turned their attention to the correlation between the state, the economy, and society.3 Gerhard Oestreich, who coined the term ‘social disciplining’ (Sozialdisziplinierung), has attempted to modify the effectiveness—sometimes overestimated, especially in Prussian historiography—of the early modern military and bureaucratic state (by which I mean primarily the efficiency of the relevant institutions) by means of a study of the more strongly intellectual–moral and psychological structural transformation of political, military, and economic man by social disciplining.4 The correlation between the constitution of the state and that of the army, and between the armed forces and society, is undoubtedly an essential characteristic of the rise, maturity, and fall of the early modern state. If the undoubted importance of military power in this context was at times distinctly overestimated by earlier research, German historical writing in recent decades has taken an opposing view. There seem, however, to be two explanatory models, based primarily on AngloSaxon and French studies. Both essentially recognize the importance of the military in the process of state formation but have radically different theoretical approaches. On the one hand, a distinction that is primarily geopolitically oriented and thus more horizontal is made between États à prépondérance civile and États à prépondérance militaire, as found in the states of Europe in the eighteenth century. The contrasting model follows a line of reasoning which places greater emphasis on the structural transformations within the power élites, distinguishing vertically between different levels of interaction—the individual sphere (microlevel), the group level (mesolevel), or the reality of society as a whole (macrolevel). In this way, the structural transformations inherent in early modern European society as a whole can be examined more comprehensively than was possible in the past.5 The range of such explanatory models can be investigated in a particularly illuminating fashion in the areas of tension in the activities of early modern states. The eighteenth century, which saw the military systems of the major European powers perfect and transcend the structures of the ancien régime, is an especially suitable period for study. However, as soon as we try to define the target group among the military on which the state exerted influence, we enter uncertain ground. In recent decades, 3 5
4 Schulze (), . Oestreich (), . Corvisier (), ‒; Reinhard (); cf. Reinhard ().
The Modern State and Military Society · military history has produced varying definitions of the term, ‘military society’. Earlier research, with a highly personalized approach to history and following Frederick the Great’s dictum that the spirit of any army lies in its officers, dealt primarily with the development of the officer corps.6 Modern research into social history has by contrast, over the past thirty years, provided an increasingly discriminating methodical set of tools by means of which it is possible to conduct research more intensively than in the past into the realities of life for the lower strata of the military in the early modern period.7 Thus recent interest has gone beyond the framework of observation—considered unduly narrow—which examined only direct combatants and now also focuses on those members of the military temporarily or permanently removed from service. Invalids,8 veterans,9 the wounded and sick,10 prisoners of war,11 deserters and other delinquents12 have been defined as an integral component of military society and subjected to increasingly intensive scrutiny as part of the research strategy of modern social history. As research succeeded in shedding light on these marginal elements, largely neglected in the past, it also revealed the limits of the early modern state in its efforts to achieve comprehensive social disciplining and regimentation. This also made it possible to outline more distinctly the connections and interfaces with other fields of historical research into the lower classes. Against this background, new perspectives also open up for military historical research oriented more sharply towards social history. By widening our outlook to include camp and garrison society, women and widows, concubines and prostitutes, soldiers, children, sumpters, drummer boys and orphans, dealers and sutlers, landlords, regimental school teachers and chaplains, the whole range of a differentiated system of social and relational life becomes clear. Increasingly associated with this broad approach is the insistence that this is acknowledged as an integral component of research into social history and an indispensable component for an understanding of the period. This is a clear rejection of the traditional restriction of military history to the combatants as a largely self-contained social formation. Once we realize that the modern state was primarily a ‘war state’, we cannot ignore the conclusion that military society was a central object of state welfare and an important factor in the economic balance of payments and the social constitution, at least of the major powers on the continent of Europe. Early modern social history is thus bound to fall short if it fails to assess correctly the role and importance of military society. This chapter is thus necessarily based on a correspondingly wide definition of ‘military society’. 6 7 10
Demeter (); Tuetey (); Redlich (‒); Barker (). 8 9 Corvisier (). Les Invalides (). Bois, (). 11 12 Moerchel (). Corvisier (). Kroener (forthcoming).
· Bernhard R. Kroener . Social Stratification in Military Society: The Officers The term ‘officer’ did not become widespread, at least in German-speaking countries, until the threshold of the seventeenth century. Initially, it covered all members of a military unit with authority to command. Thus, the distinction between commissioned and non-commissioned officer, which, in Prussia for instance, was not abolished until the Articles of War of July , lay less in social distinction than military function.13 Thus, during the consolidation phase of monarchic absolutism, the officer class possessed a remarkable degree of professionalism. Even during the Thirty Years’ War and still suffering from the immense losses of manpower during the European wars of Louis XIV’s reign, performancerelated social mobility in the European officer élite was far greater than in the eighteenth century.14 The exclusion of the nobility from the political decision-making process and its displacement by middle-class lawyers from the councils of the early modern state resulted in inevitable social compensations, based on romanticizing concepts of the armed nobility as a class privileged to defend their country.15 Thus, in France, the designation noblesse militaire served initially (in the first half of the eighteenth century) as a term of political polemic before it was sanctioned in bureaucratic and administrative practice in , in accordance with the wishes of its protagonists. In contemporary eyes, it was by no means a pleonasm. On the contrary, the term noblesse militaire expressed in a polemical way the view that members of the noblesse de robe performed their services to the state with the pen rather than the sword, which was not in keeping with their estate.16 As officer rank became a birthright and the community of officers came to be regarded as a class of social equals, as an ‘officer corps’, an increasing number of the criteria for selection and promotion were no longer primarily based on the requirements of military service. This development took a similar form in all the European military powers of the eighteenth century, although at different times and with varying degrees of intensity. Conditions in Prussia and France typify the extreme poles of this process. Louis XIV, with the traumatically internalized experience of the Fronde still uppermost in his mind, domesticated the military nobility by assigning to them, in the mesh of state functions, a place which, compared to that of the nobility of office and high finance, was of distinctly less importance. It is true that it was the privilege of the second estate to carry the sword. However, the monarch rewarded personal bravery by elevation to the nobility, thereby proving beyond doubt to his nobility that he was not just first among equals, but also the source of 13 14
Helbing (‒), esp. , ; Wohlfeil (), esp. ‒. 15 16 Kroener (a). Kunisch (). Corvisier (), .
The Modern State and Military Society · aristocratic quality.17 What is more, under Louis XIV war began to be directed from the cabinet, with a consequent increase in the bureaucratization of war and ultimately also a deliberate upgrading of the rival military administration.18 The appointment of a civilian secrétaire d’État de la Guerre, who was as involved in strategic planning in the Conseil d’État as the army intendant in the council of war at the front, made it unmistakably clear to the military nobility, even in their traditional field of activity, that ultimately they too were no more than a cog in the machinery of the monarchic state. This tension between privilege of birth and functionalization was the cause of the nobility’s reaction which was ultimately to change completely the face of both the army and the state.19 Conditions in Prussia were completely different. Here, too, the starting-point of developments lay in the intensely felt experiences of individual rulers. The hostilities of the Thirty Years’ War and the resulting population losses of up to per cent made it quite clear to the Hohenzollerns that a militarily weak state at the geopolitical centre of Europe had scarcely a chance of asserting its sovereignty vis-à-vis the great powers.20 The Great Elector wanted to ensure that Prussia was never again the object of European political ambitions. Within a few generations, this assessment became a guiding principle of the dynasty, which developed a fatal dynamism of its own as a result. However, in a territorially fragmented, economically weak, and sparsely populated state, the qualitative leap from plaything to player that this entailed could only be achieved by building up oversized armed forces, whose maintenance was in turn to necessitate the comprehensive mobilization of all available resources. Only in this way would Brandenburg become eligible to join other major powers and experience economic and demographic growth. At the end of the Thirty Years’ War, the social and economic situation of the Electorate was catastrophic. The state had only a few cities, whose economic infrastructure lay in ruins. Especially in the core regions, the mediate nobility (those directly subordinate to the sovereign), many of whose members were likewise highly impoverished, sought to secure their social status by means of an institutionalization, guaranteed by the sovereign, of the existing agrarian structure, based on the principle of Erbuntertänigkeit (by which the farmers’ dependence on the landowners was inherited).21 There were thus the foundations for a coalition of interests between sovereign and nobility, although one which varied in intensity in the different parts of the Electorate. Unlike France, Brandenburg–Prussia Bluche and Solnon (), ; Bluche (b), ‒. André (), ff.; idem (), ‒; Kroener (); Baxter (), ‒. 19 Chaussinand-Nogaret (), . 20 The memorandum written in his own hand by the Elector Frederick William in June is particularly revealing: Opgenoorth (), i, ‒; Hüttl (), ‒. 21 Birtsch (), ; Büsch (), ‒. 17 18
· Bernhard R. Kroener possessed neither an aspiring middle class, which could have contested the nobility’s influence by serving the Crown, nor a higher nobility, whose economic and political power could have become dangerous to the monarch. Only against this background is it possible to explain the feeble resistance offered by the nobility to the allodification of feudal estates decreed by Frederick William I in .22 With this step, the traditional concept of fealty founded on vassalage was merged with the ethos of public duty of the noble, or ennobled, officer and civil servant. It was thus possible to cushion the natural and long-standing tension between the sovereign and his primarily class-oriented nobility by means of the socially appropriate institution of the officer corps. This institution was more suited than any other to reconcile the traditional value concepts of the nobility (such as personal service, the notion of honour, and the exclusive right to bear arms) with the monarchic absolutist perception of the state.23 Thus, in the eighteenth-century Prussian officer corps, economic security, social acceptance, and the acknowledgement of aristocratic value concepts produced a specific esprit de corps based on a personal relationship of loyalty to the king which did not achieve this degree of intensity in any other European state. The eighteenth-century Austrian officer corps occupies a position midway between those of France and Prussia. As with the armirte Reichsstände (armed imperial estates, such as Bavaria, Saxony, and Hanover), military service did not possess the social attraction for the Habsburg nobility that it did in Prussia. On the contrary, service in the higher echelons of court or in the sovereign’s administration, or performing functions within the local representative assemblies ranked far higher, in terms of aristocratic social prestige, than serving in the army.24 The house of Habsburg’s virtually inherited right to the imperial crown and Austria’s politico-military hegemony in Europe—a role that Vienna could play at least until the end of the Seven Years’ War—led many members of the imperial nobility to join the ranks of the imperial and royal Army.25 The territorial diversity of the Habsburg lands enhanced the attraction of military service for many who dreamt of the traditional internationality of the caste of the European warrior as an emblem of the golden age of the aristocratic way of life. At the same time, a commission in the imperial army brought social advancement that should not be underestimated, especially for members of the poorer landed gentry from the remoter provinces. Moreover, the sporadic campaigns against the Turks, at least until the mid-eighteenth century, held considerable appeal. Against the background of a rekindled consciousness of old aristocratic virtues, they offered young 22 23 24 25
Heinrich (), ‒; Wohlfeil (), ‒. Papke, i (), ‒. Preradovich (); Allmayer-Beck (), ‒. Neuhaus (), ‒.
The Modern State and Military Society · noblemen from all over Europe a chance to fight independently in battle, and considerable freedom from increasingly regimented warfare, thus corresponding to romantic and transfigured ideas of Christian chivalry.26 In comparison with the socially more homogeneous Prussian officer corps, the proportion of middleclass officers, even at the level of the middle staff officer corps, was exceptionally high in Austria, Bavaria, and the armirte Reichsstände. Precisely because military service, socially prestigious, was not regarded as the exclusive domain of the nobility, greater social openness was possible.27 The different processes by which the military élites of the European powers came into being, and the resultant differences in social structure, inevitably pose the question as to the impact of this process on the degree of professionalism developed by military commanders in the eighteenth century. Professionalism, as then understood by the military, meant primarily that the conduct of commanders was geared to service within the framework of methodical warfare. This necessitated the training of a military élite which accepted the principles of ‘orders and obedience’ as central behavioural patterns. However, with the exception of a few rare charismatic leader figures, the officer issuing orders could only claim authority if rank-specific requirements were standardized and basic military knowledge was universally accessible and binding. Only under these conditions was it possible to create an officer corps which could satisfy the demands of increasingly regimented warfare and in which promotion criteria were transparent and accepted by everyone. Given these ideal requirements, the degree of professionalism achieved by European armies by the eighteenth century reveals both what European military society had structurally in common, as well as its extreme differences. It almost certainly provides an answer, as far as individual states are concerned, to the question posed earlier, namely, whether the eighteenth century was already, as Michael Howard has casually stated, the age of ‘professionals’.28
. Institutes of Military Education as a Measure of Military Professionalism The methodical conduct of warfare taking shape in Europe since the late seventeenth century gave rise to specific theories of warfare, mastery of which supposedly guaranteed success on the battlefield. There was thus inevitably an insurmountable contradiction between military command quality as an acquired rather than as an inheritable skill. The scope and intensity of training of the officer 26 28
Kroener (), ‒. Howard (), ‒.
27
Zimmermann (), .
· Bernhard R. Kroener class is thus crucial in any assessment of military professionalism in the states of eighteenth-century Europe. Indeed, almost all major European powers and some medium-sized imperial states had, at least nominally, their own institutes of military education. Not every institution with the title école militaire served as a military academy or officer school. Rather, there was a broad spectrum including, for instance, privately run military orphanages and boarding schools for members of the impoverished landed gentry.29 It is striking that even the armies of Louis XIV possessed a distinctly higher degree of professionalism than their adversaries. In this context, the incipient bureaucratization of warfare was organically linked to increasing functionalization in the military élite. Thus, when Louvois created the compagnies des cadets gentilshommes in , he was guided by the idea of a realistic military training in the field. After his death, however, they became less and less important and were disbanded in .30 Thus, in France an important institution for the training of new officers disappeared at the time when the first officer schools were being established in other European states. This is a good example of the anti-professional intensity of the réaction nobiliaire, which rapidly gained influence after the death of Louis XIV. While it brought the revival of a backward-looking aristocratic ideology a sizeable step further, it did considerable harm to the proficiency of the French Army, as the wars of the eighteenth century were to prove. The proponents of this ideology were convinced that a martial spirit was an innate ability and could not be an acquired skill. They therefore believed that scientific training of the aristocratic young officer cadet was not merely a waste of time but a deliberate insult to his self-confidence.31 The training of cadets started in Brandenburg by Frederick William I, the ‘Great Elector’ (‒), did not initially serve primarily military requirements. Its purpose was above all to exert pressure on the recalcitrant East Prussian nobility. By bringing up his children in the royal residence, where they came into contact with the basic principles of centralized government, he ensured that this domestication was at least passed on to the next generation. When this had produced the desired success, Prussian rulers started to place a greater emphasis on military requirements of cadet training. Not until the nobility of Brandenburg–Prussia had come to accept service as an officer as an exclusive social privilege was it possible to dispense with the social disciplining associated with the training of cadets. What now was primarily then, the establishment of a more-orless comparable educational level came to seem much more important, especially as far as the poorer officer cadets were concerned.32 Thus, in a professional community of equals, the training of cadets meant, on the one hand, that the 29 32
Fritze (), . Poten () iv, ‒.
30
Mention (n.d.), .
31
Kennett (), .
The Modern State and Military Society · recruitment of new officers was secured by means of a welfare measure taken in the well-understood self-interest of the state, and, on the other, a first attempt to achieve a certain equality of opportunity within the military career structures. The establishment of European cadet training schools and military academies, founded at around the same time, thus illustrates clearly that (regardless of their pedagogic and military value) endeavours were being made, against the background of the requirements of methodical warfare, at least to standardize the initial intellectual level of the class of military commanders. In France, the École Militaire was not established until , and then significantly at the instigation of the non-military middle-class financier Paris-Duverny. Even at this date, however, a military training based on an art of war that was becoming increasingly scientific in response to the dictates of an age of enlightened rationality, met with fierce resistance from the traditionalist aristocratic opposition. It was ultimately successful in enforcing an extension of the curricula with the objective of imparting to the students a general capability to serve in the military and the administration. Behind this was the hope of giving the descendants, especially of the less well-to-do provincial nobility, at least a headstart in their competition with the more favoured members of the noblesse de robe.33 In December (in other words, roughly when the École Militaire was being founded in Paris), Empress Maria Theresa created a Kadettenhaus (Cadet Training School) with an attached Pflanzschule (Nursery) in Vienna. This was a second attempt, for only a few years earlier the endeavour to found an Adelige Militär-Akademie (Aristocratic Military Academy) had failed miserably.34 The wealthy nobility of the Habsburg monarchy were obviously as unwilling as the French to sacrifice their prerogative—guaranteed by virtue of birth into their estate—of army service as an officer to a professional training. The Vienna Cadet Training School, on the other hand, was designed to provide the sons of impoverished nobles and of experienced Oberoffiziere (commissioned officers) with a sound training for military service (and, exceptionally, for the civil service).35 However, by contrast with the École Militaire, the resultant Theresianische Militärakademie was even to survive the fall of the monarchy at the end of the First World War. The secret of its success lay primarily in Josephinism, which succeeded, at least to a limited extent, in conducting not only a holistic training of the soul, mind, and body as called for by the philanthropists, but also a specialized performance-directed military training. Thus, while the cadet training schools in Prussia and Austria laid the foundations for professional training, similar efforts in France came up against the reactionary forces of the aristocracy, who, in their 33 34 35
Bien (); Kroener (), . Allmayer-Beck and Lessing (), ; Leitner von Leitnertreu (), i (), pp. xlvii–xlviii. Maria Theresia und ihre Zeit (), ‒; Allmayer-Beck ().
· Bernhard R. Kroener defensive battle against the noblesse de robe, very pointedly took as their bearing an antiquated image of a cavalier. However, everything that was achieved as a consequence of the cadet training schools in Austria and Prussia failed, as in France, when an attempt was made to revive the knightly academies on Enlightenment precepts. Both the Académie des nobles, created by Frederick the Great and the Adeligen Militärakademie in Vienna were only short-lived.36
. In the Shadow of the King’s Mercy: The Social and Economic Foundations of the Officer’s Existence The personal relationship of loyalty between monarch and officer also meant that no officer could expect remuneration which would downgrade him from a servant of the king to a wage-earner. However, as a result of this attitude subalterns, in particular, eked out a meagre living which was scarcely better in material terms than that of their non-commissioned officers. Only when they assumed command of a company did the life of an officer become a lucrative business. Since the system of company housekeeping, common in Prussia until the very end of the eighteenth century, gave the officer the responsibility for supervising the procurement of ‘small items of clothing’—to which were added in the eighteenth century meat, money, and, until the end of the Seven Years’ War, recruitment—an infantry captain with business acumen could, under Frederick the Great, easily earn up to twenty times as much as a first lieutenant.37 Admittedly, this cannot be compared to the more problematic practices involved in the purchase of commissions, but it did mean that the candidate for a company commander’s post had to prove to the Crown that he had sufficient funds at his disposal to maintain the ‘company housekeeping’ system. The social homogeneity and comparatively modest economic position of the Prussian nobility meant that they did not consider additional mechanisms of social delimitation necessary, such as the proponents of the réaction aristocratique in eighteenth-century France demanded with increasing vehemence. In Prussia, a captain was installed in a vacant company commander’s position on the basis of seniority, and he had to purchase the company’s arms from his predecessor. This relic from the age of free-lance mercenaries cost around thalers in the infantry during the reign of Frederick the Great. This was not a sum that every Prussian Junker could raise as a matter of course, witness the fact that a first lieutenant, even after several years of service, only earned around thalers a year.38 It is thus quite possible to describe the 37 Jany (), iii, . Duffy (), . Ibid. ; Otto Büsch states that this figure was as high as , thalers during the reign of Frederick William I. The increase in the size of the army, mass production, and monetary devaluation were probably responsible for this difference. Büsch (), . 36 38
The Modern State and Military Society · Prussian practice as a modified form of purchasing positions, albeit one with less inherent socially explosive force. In the Austrian as in the French army, the purchase of commissions was customary until the second half of the eighteenth century. In this system, the proprietors of regiments were allowed to appoint officers up to the rank of captain, whereas the Crown reserved the right to fill officer positions from staff officer upwards. The result was a gradual increase in the average age of subaltern officers, although not to a comparable extent in all European armies, especially during the long period of peace in the second half of the eighteenth century. In France and Austria, unlike Prussia, the reason why officers remained for such a long time in the sought-after ranks, especially that of captain, was that an officer desirous of promotion first had to buy the commission from the previous incumbent by concordat and convention.39 These examples graphically illustrate the seminal importance of army funding for the nationalization of the military instrument. Whereas the Prussian state was able to reduce to a tolerable level the amount of money its officers had to contribute themselves, the public finance situation in Vienna and Paris, always precarious throughout the eighteenth century, did not permit such far-reaching state control of military appointments. The methods employed differed in detail, but they all placed a tight straitjacket on any development of the corps of military commanders based on professional status and aimed at achieving a higher degree of professionalism. At the same time, however, the rationalization of war and the concommitant increasing reduction in the importance of private sector elements also meant that it was time to bid farewell to the traditional forms of aristocratic mercenariness. Foreign observers have, as a rule, failed fully to comprehend the dimension— going way beyond practical and military requirements—of the direct personal bond of loyalty, eliminating all intermediate powers, between monarch and officer in the Prussian Army. The king, as primus inter pares in a military society characterized by aristocratic norms, was the crucial reference figure for the entire state. The Prussian provinces, which were exceedingly heterogeneous in their historical identity, economic situation, legal traditions, and even their confessional ties, were in urgent need of such an identity-giving figure, which was found in the shape of the monarch as the roi-connétable and reacted upon the national awareness of the population in the form of the ‘king’s uniform’ (that is, military uniform) as a symbol of mercy and duty. Thus, both France and Austria attempted to copy individual components of the Prussian military constitution—especially against the background of the military successes of Frederick the Great’s armies— 39
Zimmermann (), ; Kroener (), .
· Bernhard R. Kroener without realizing that it was a self-contained system based on certain social and economic preconditions, individual elements of which could not simply be applied to other societies with different conditions. Whereas the French army reformers of the late eighteenth century sought primarily to copy the tactical–operational principles of the Prussian Army and instruments of its military justice, the Austrians tried to find out more about its specific inner solidarity and the social acceptance of the officer corps. However, given the structural incomparability of the two aristocracies, all such attempts inevitably never progressed beyond superficialities. Thus, the Military Reform Commission, set up by Maria Theresa between the Second Silesian War and the Seven Years’ War, concluded ‘that interest is unable to guide these men [the officers] to this intention [attachment to their profession]; thus, the only way to achieve this is to award them special privileges, decorations, and the like’.40
. Non-Commissioned Officers and Tension between Officers and the Rank and File Ever since the emergence of early modern mass armies, non-commissioned officers have formed the connecting link between the officer corps on the one hand and the mass of rank and file on the other. Since they were vested with authority to command, they belonged until the end of the seventeenth century to the prima plana of the companies, together with the commissioned officers. When it became a noble privilege to occupy commissioned officers’ positions, it became necessary to distinguish between officers and non-commissioned officers, with the result that the latter, apart from a tiny handful of exceptions, found it impossible to rise higher in the military hierarchy. Their ambiguous position between the officers and the rank and file meant that while they became the confidants of the men under their command, they were also servile slave-drivers. In the Prussian Army, non-commissioned officers were usually recruited from the native population.41 However, it is remarkable that, especially in the second half of the reign of Frederick the Great, there was a distinct increase in the number of foreign soldiers from the lower urban middle class, many of whom were promoted to the rank of non-commissioned officer. The cantonal system, with its increasingly extensive exemptions, obviously caused a sustained reduction in the number of those sufficiently mentally agile to perform the tasks of a non-commissioned officer in the Prussian provinces. According to the regulations, no soldier was promoted to the rank of noncommissioned officer unless he had served four years in the regiment. This 40
Allmayer-Beck (), .
41
Jany (), i, .
The Modern State and Military Society · requirement underlines their primary task.42 To a far greater extent than the officer, whose social position created an unbridgeable gulf between him and his subordinates, the non-commissioned officer represented the authority of the Crown. Given this experience, the number of non-commissioned officers on the establishment of a Prussian company had been raised to fourteen, whereas the Austrians believed that they could make do with only six per company.43 Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the French army even had sixteen men of noncommissioned officer ranks in its infantry companies.44 As for the abilities demanded of a non-commissioned officer, beyond a basic knowledge of the military profession, there were distinct differences between expectations in the Prussian army and what was expected in the French. They allow us to draw conclusions as to the average level of education of the two populations. Under Frederick William I, the army looked primarily for ‘a brave and sensible chap’ and attached less importance to his being able to write, for the king did not think highly of ‘pen-pushers’. This changed little in the first few decades of his son’s reign, for the heavy losses suffered in the Silesian Wars had to be replaced quickly and did not permit unduly high expectations. In his Political Testament of , the king wrote: They must all be old soldiers, and I will never tolerate a student or a young man, unless he is from the nobility, to be presented to me as a non-commissioned officer, because a brave soldier who is fit for war will gain the respect of the ordinary soldier, whereas a scribe possesses neither a stentorian tone of voice nor the strength to withstand the strains of war.45
Since an urban middle class such as existed in France could scarcely start to develop in Prussia, even in the eighteenth century, because of the prevailing economic conditions and because the more productive western provinces were not subject to the cantonal system, the non-commissioned officer corps recruited its members from the poorer craftsmen who were to be found in the small market towns and rural areas of the central and eastern provinces. An intellectually agile élite of military subalterns, receptive to the ideas of an approaching new era, could hardly emerge on this breeding ground. Lifelong compulsory military service in Prussia made it necessary to provide the older non-commissioned officers, no longer fit for war, with a suitable civilian occupation, provided that they could read and write. Recent research has proved that the cane-wielding retired non-commissioned officer as a village schoolmaster should be consigned to 42 44 45
43 Marwitz (), . Duffy (), . Encyclopédie méthodique (‒), i, ‒. Politische Testamente der Hohenzollern, ed. Dietrich (), .
· Bernhard R. Kroener the realm of fiction, as the consistories and aristocratic church patrons usually managed to protect their privileges when it came to filling posts for schoolmaster and choirmaster. However, the state compensated for these deficiencies by assigning the older non-commissioned officers to menial administrative positions. They were thus to be found as minor clerks, employees of the state tobacco and spirits monopoly and as customs and excise inspectors. The prospect of a lifelong regular job in the service of the Crown turned non-commissioned officers into state officials whose parade-ground voices and devotion to the state remained trademarks of the lower-ranking Prussian–German civil servant until well into the twentieth century. The position of non-commissioned officers in France developed in a totally different way. Like their Prussian counterparts, they were almost totally excluded from further military promotion, but the principle of voluntary enlistment in the French army meant that the Crown had no special obligation to look after the welfare of retired non-commissioned officers. The vast majority came from the lower urban middle class. The requirement, established in , that all noncommissioned officers should be able at least to read and write supplied the French army with a sizeable number of mentally agile subordinate leaders in the decades preceding the Revolution. Usually billeted in towns and cities, in a petit bourgeois milieu (the social environment from which they themselves originated), they became increasingly critical of the social reality of the ancien régime.46 Professionally trained, in close contact with the soldiers entrusted to them, but with no chance of promotion or future prospects, they formed the nucleus from which the corps of commanders of the Revolutionary armies and those of the First Empire arose.47
. The canaille: The Lower Military Classes Nineteenth-century historians have handed down to us a gloomy picture of the fate of soldiers in the European armies of the ancien régime. However, on closer inspection, this picture sometimes displays brighter aspects that are astonishing and totally unexpected. A critical search for the causes of these distortions soon reveals the limits of any attempt at realistic reconstruction of historical events. The invisible chains binding the historian’s perceptive capacity to his own age are all too apparent in historical writings assessing the realities of everyday life in the military society of the early modern period. The image of universal conscription (a natural child of the Revolution), the ‘coming-of-age’ of the middle classes, and
46
Corvisier (), ii, .
47
Scott ().
The Modern State and Military Society · the national search for an identity always required, in the nineteenth and even the early twentieth century, a dark background against which it could shine all the more brightly. This was found in the figure of the eighteenth-century soldier, impressed by brutal recruiting officers to serve as the slave of a prince. From the dregs of society, he was predestined from the very outset to a life of privation and draconian punishment and to spend the final years of his existence as a beggar and invalid. Modern socio-historical research has since made significant adjustments to this picture, which had been shaped primarily by current political interests. In this area, too, comparison of the conditions in France and Prussia sheds some light on the different forms of recruitment, service, and the life and fate of the lower military classes in the European ancien régime. From the mid-seventeenth century onwards, standing armies were as a rule raised in two ways, centring on what claimed, at least, to be voluntary enlistment. In France, the relevant ordonnances initially (that is, towards the end of the seventeenth century) prescribed a three-year term of enlistment. In the early eighteenth century, this was extended to six years, and by the end of the century it had increased to eight years. Thereafter the soldier could re-enlist for a shorter period.48 The increasing perfection of deployment in line meant that ever more time was required for training. In , an elderly officer in the French Army wrote: ‘les recrues des campagnes ne sont bons qu’après six ans d’exercice.’49 In this respect, conditions in the armies of the major European powers were largely similar. The increase in the size and the simultaneous significant improvement in living conditions, including those of the poorer classes, meant that voluntary enlistment became increasingly unsatisfactory, especially in France. Not only in Prussia, but also in Sweden, Spain, and France, a system of state-controlled levies was developed, the principal purpose of which was to replace at short notice the manpower losses which rose rapidly in times of war. The arbitrary form of the method used—casting lots—and the fact that the militia men were viewed as second-class soldiers meant that, in the eyes of the public, this form of temporary military service became an intolerable burden.50 Nevertheless, it was not possible to dispense with this form of conscription. Thus, in times of war, up to one-third of the French army consisted of members of the militia reserve.51 Because of their low level of training, these rank-and-file men were more at risk in battle and therefore had a greater tendency to desert than the longer-serving, recruited soldiers of the line. 48 Corvisier (), ; Code militaire (), i, ; Encyclopédie méthodique (‒), iv, (ordonnance of June ). 49 50 L’antilégionaire français (), . Girard (), ‒. 51 Corvisier (), .
· Bernhard R. Kroener A total of around two-thirds of all French soldiers came from the country, although the proportion was much higher in the cavalry.52 This overrepresentation of the rural population resulted in part from the generally superior health of the soldiers recruited there. Moreover, especially in times of war, many soldiers joined the army through the militia units provided by the rural population. On the other hand, the regiments’ recruiting detachments themselves preferred to operate in towns and cities, since it was far more difficult to detach a recruit from an intact village community than from the urban lower classes, whose members tended to be more easily uprooted.53 In this respect, an interesting phenomenon can be observed in all European armies since the Thirty Years’ War. It is obvious that military service was sought in particular by those who had lost the protection of their social group—protection which they hoped (usually with justification) to find again in the military company. It is thus not surprising that the proportion of the French infantry in the eighteenth century recruited in towns and cities was significantly higher than that of town- and city-dwellers in the total population. Around one-third of the recruited soldiers came from urban areas, where social rootlessness and poor living conditions made them more willing to join the colours. Analysis of recruitment by region reveals that the poorer provinces of France provided a high proportion of recruits from the country.54 A distinct increase in willingness to serve can also be observed as one progresses from the centre to the periphery. Thus, for instance, in the généralité of Auch in the mid-eighteenth century only , of a total of , inhabitants were prepared to volunteer for military service, whereas in Alsace , of a total population of , were recruited for the king’s troops.55 An above-average number of the inhabitants of the north-eastern frontier areas of France joined the army in the decades following the end of the Thirty Years’ War, as a result of the constant perception of intense threat, a greater concentration of garrisons, and (frequently) the weaker economic structures of these areas as a result of their geographical location on the periphery of France. Let us finally cast a glance at the social stratification of the European armies. The extensive study by André Corvisier on the French army from the late seventeenth century to Peace of Paris in has not yet been followed by comparable studies on the armies of the other major European powers. Nevertheless, on the basis of other detailed studies published in recent years, we can venture the cautious conclusion that the nineteenth-century idea that most soldiers in the armies of the ancien régime were vagabonds and the scum of contemporary society is no 52 55
Corvisier (), i, . Babeau (), i, .
53
Babeau (), i, .
54
Corvisier (), i, ‒.
The Modern State and Military Society · T . Ratios of military personnel to total population in major European powers in the eighteenth century France
Prussia
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
Austria
:
Russia
: early th century
:
:
:
Source: Kroener (),
longer tenable in such sweeping terms. The bulk of the soldiers were undoubtedly farm workers and semi-skilled labourers from the urban crafts with a perceptible emphasis on those trades for whose skills there was a demand in the army.56 In Prussia, for several reasons, the augmentation of the army took a distinctly different course to the one it took in France and Austria. Brandenburg’s exposed geopolitical location—‘the kingdom of borderlines’, as Voltaire was later maliciously to remark—had traumatically internalized the disastrous consequences of the Thirty Years’ War. The demand that the Electorate should never again become the object of European political ambitions and should instead become an active member of the community of European states meant that, for want of other assets with which to conduct foreign policy, the army became the vehicle of the state’s continuing ascent.57 Unlike France, whose demographic strength enabled her to become the strongest military power on the continent without major administrative effort, Brandenburg was compelled to make optimum use of her personnel and material resources to enlarge her armed forces with the help of a continually refined administration.58 An overview of the ratios of military personnel to total population in the major European powers of the eighteenth century is set out in Table . The fundamental decision by the Hohenzollern rulers to enhance Brandenburg’s international status with the help of the military but not necessarily, as the example of Frederick William I cogently illustrates, by martial means meant that they were initially compelled to gear their economy and administration to the requirements of the armed forces. This resulted in an increasing social militarization, primarily as a result of acute demographic pressures.59 56 59
Corvisier (), i, ‒. Anderson (), ‒.
57
Baumgart (), .
58
Schmidt (), ‒.
· Bernhard R. Kroener In the year of the death of the Soldier King (Frederick William), , the Prussian army comprised just under per cent of the total population (excluding the military population, that is dependants of soldiers). In no other European state, with the exception of pocket-size German principalities such as Saxony– Hildburghausen, did the army constitute such a dominant social factor. If there had been any further increase in the numbers of military personnel, the Crown would have risked national economic collapse. Thus, when Frederick the Great came to the throne, he found himself in a foreign-policy dilemma. Brandenburg– Prussia could either remain a medium-sized German power, despite her independence from the Empire, or would have to succeed, by exploiting the tensions in Europe, in annexing an economically strong and, above all, populous neighbouring province. Frederick’s invasion of Silesia was thus based primarily on a rational power calculation unclouded by considerations of political or international law.60 With the incorporation of Silesia, Prussia accomplished the qualitative leap to join the concert of major European powers. Let us return now to the first few decades of the eighteenth century. As in France, recruitment into the Prussian army was based on enlistment and levy. However, in France the militia was only called upon in wartime to augment the personnel of the regular army, whereas economic pressures on the Prussian state compelled it to permit the compulsory conscription of its subjects in peacetime. When Frederick William I decided to double the size of the army from , to , men, the regimental recruiting detachments conducted virtual man-hunts in the provinces of the monarchy. In the frontier regions—and Brandenburg–Prussia consisted almost entirely of border areas—the population started to flee to neighbouring countries. Craftsmen left the towns and cities, and the factories, which had been established with such effort and produced most of the articles urgently required by the army, suffered serious losses in production.61 It became almost impossible to hire skilled foreign workers (whose knowledge was essential), as they were afraid they would be conscripted into the regiments of the Prussian king. The requirement to double the size of companies by means of Überkomplette, that is, doubling their authorized strength by engaging additional recruits, resulted in regimental press-gangs indiscriminately abducting young men from Sunday church services, inns, and universities. This led to riots in various regions of the kingdom, especially in the west, which in places might even be described as uprisings.62 Given this situation, the Crown decided to carry out a fundamental administrative channelling of the domestic practice of conscription. Between and , the king issued a large number of regulations governing the various aspects of conscription. These regulations, known collectively as the 60 61
Mittenzwei (), ‒; Schieder (), ‒. 62 Schnitter (), ‒. Jany (), i, ff.
The Modern State and Military Society · ‘cantonal system’, acquired an importance which extended beyond Prussia. Proceeding on the fundamental conviction that the absolutist state possessed the right to enlist the services of every one of its subjects, including the nobility, the Crown reserved the right to decide where the individual subject could produce the greatest social benefit. Accordingly, Frederick William I stipulated that in Berlin primarily ‘loose people of low extraction, such as cobblers, tailors, and the children of such common people’, but not ‘the children of my true servants, nor those of other men of means or public servants, or people living off their own means, as well as merchants, manufacturers, and labourers who are required for the warehouses’ could be conscripted.63 The Prussia army, like the French, sought primarily to conscript the inhabitants of rural regions. Thus, the economically more developed western provinces were to a large extent spared the obligation to provide conscripts. Historical research has long debated the significance of the cantonal system and its influence on the day-to-day lives of the population.64 The system of conscription regulated by the cantonal constitution undoubtedly represented a certain improvement over uncontrolled recruitment. Although the soldiers had a lifelong term of service, this was made to appear less onerous by the initial nine-month, and later even tenmonth, exemption from service. Moreover, especially in rural areas, it meant that the soldiers were released from patrimonial jurisdiction, thereby gaining a certain independence from the landowners’ authority. It is true that their subordination to military justice was lifted after the Seven Years’ War, so that it is not really possible to speak of the ‘emancipation of the peasantry by conscription’. Nevertheless, the cantonal system did undoubtedly provide the peasants with a form of protection, as the Crown had quite rightly realized that ‘the cantons make the regiments immortal’,65 as Frederick the Great once effectively expressed it. Throughout the eighteenth century, the Hohenzollern rulers sought to maintain the fragile balance between the economic requirements of the state, the economic safeguarding of an aristocratic caste drawn into the civil service, and the preservation of the rural population as a vital reservoir of recruits. Despite this intensive employment of the indigenous population in the army, Prussia could still not totally dispense with recruiting abroad, even after . Whereas the percentage of foreigners among those enlisted was just under per cent in peacetime, this figure was reduced by around one-third to per cent in times of war because of the deterioration in conditions.66 Ibid. i, . For examples of the very different positions adopted: Bleckwenn (), ‒; Büsch () (a study of fundamental importance). 65 Politische Testamente der Hohenzollern, ed. Dietrich (), . 66 Kroener (), . 63 64
· Bernhard R. Kroener Whereas native soldiers were discharged to their home villages, foreign recruits remained in their garrisons, where those unlikely to desert were given an opportunity to become ‘off-duty guards’ and improve their pay by working at home or as day labourers. The company commander was allowed to retain the pay of soldiers on leave, and the Crown assumed that he would use this additional income to conduct his foreign recruiting campaigns and to purchase small items of clothing (linen, leather, and so on) for the company, the procurement of which remained his responsibility. This activity of the company commander, for which he alone was responsible, was a relic from the era of freelance mercenaries and military entrepreneurs. It became known as ‘company housekeeping’, and provided company commanders with a supplementary source of income. Thus, the position of captain and company commander became the first in the military hierarchy which enabled the officer to do profitable business. Some company commanders were able to use their position to make an annual ‘fortune’ of up to , thalers, roughly equivalent to the net income of the estate of a medium-sized Junker.67 —no wonder even generals and regimental commanders retained their ‘personal companies’. It is true that the Crown checked the equipment and condition of the companies in its annual reviews. Nevertheless, company housekeeping was a system which covered almost all spheres of the soldier’s life, and consequently presented the officers with plenty of opportunities to enrich themselves unduly at the expense of the soldiers entrusted to them. In the eighteenth century, the state administration was undoubtedly not yet in a position to issue rules and regulations governing every aspect of the provision of supplies to the individual soldier. The Crown thus tried to make a virtue of necessity by putting forward the additional income to be earned from the position of a company commander as an incentive for the subaltern officers. In other crucial fields of absolutist state activities, however, the practices of company housekeeping proved to be very restrictive.
. The Reality of the Soldier’s Life: Marriage and Secondary Occupations If a soldier wished to marry, he required the approval of his company commander, who, by giving the soldier permission to marry, also assumed a certain responsibility for the livelihood of the nascent military family. Many company commanders charged their soldiers for such permissions, demanding a sum amounting to roughly per cent of a soldier’s monthly pay, thereby forcing a large number to 67
Kuczynski (), ii, .
The Modern State and Military Society · cohabit. When a war broke out, most military families had to stay behind in the garrison. In the case of married couples, the loss of the breadwinner was eased by the payment of a small ‘bread allowance’, whereas the dependants of unmarried soldiers faced an uncertain fate.68 The Crown sought to control this abuse by issuing a plethora of ordinances. For, as a rule, this practice resulted in soldiers marrying at a considerably higher age, which in turn had an impact on the number of children. On average there were . per family of every soldier. Given the shorter average life expectancy of soldiers, this figure was already lower than that for other groups in society. The precarious economic situation, especially of the military population, was the reason why many soldiers on leave engaged in a secondary occupation. This led to repeated complaints by town and city authorities, since the soldiers, who were not obliged to join a guild, competed with the local craftsmen, especially tailors and cobblers, who were very dissatisfied. For the country towns of Prussia, most of which were economically weak, a garrison generally implied a significant increase in turnover, especially in the food, beverages, and tobacco sectors. Thus, the innkeepers who, for instance in Potsdam, had to accommodate up to six soldiers, were granted the right to brew beer. In the eighteenth century, in particular, beer soup was a vital component of the basic diet of large sectors of the population.69 On the other hand, there was a shift in the supply of unskilled labourers to the disadvantage of the urban lower classes. Broom-makers, basket-weavers, tinkers, hawkers, and all kinds of callers exhorting people to buy their goods were all occupations to which soldiers were particularly suited. In the course of the eighteenth century, primarily in fortress cities where the soldiers were usually already quartered in barracks, it became common for textile-weaving firms to put out work to the soldiers. Thus, in Breslau in , for instance, the Heymannsche Fabrik had some of its spinning work done by the soldiers of the Glatz fortress. In the twelve companies of the Regiment Fouqué alone, spinning wheels were installed. The fifteen companies of the Regiment La Noble had wheels, and even in the Artillery Company von Traubenthal there were three spinning wheels. Twenty-seven breakers and carders completed this operating unit.70 However, we should not overlook the fact that a sizeable number of this total of , spinning wheels were operated by women and children. Nevertheless, the figure is still remarkably high, and one explanation is that fortresses frequently lodged invalid soldiers who, grouped together to form garrison regiments, only performed menial tasks. In their ample free time they sought to supplement their
68
Kroener (), .
69
Schulte (), ‒.
70
Menge (), .
· Bernhard R. Kroener meagre half pay with this work. Sometimes soldiers even set themselves up as small businessmen and employed several labourers, frequently including the children of soldiers. In this connection, a local administration complained, although this was undoubtedly an extreme case: ‘The soldiers who own spinning mills should not keep people in such servility and not make them work at night.’71 It is not surprising that a capable soldier, serving as an off-duty guard in a town or city, could earn a supplementary income roughly equivalent to that of a schoolteacher. Any attempt to assess the reality of life in military society of the eighteenth century must thus also include this picture of the soldiers’ extensive economic activities, which could cover a period of ten months a year. By comparison, the monotonous military training, characterized by brutal treatment, as described by intellectuals outside military society such as Bräker or Laukhard, took up only a comparatively short period of time. These negative aspects of company housekeeping must also be seen in the context of the embezzlement that was standard practice in the armies of the major European powers, especially France. The fairly uncomplicated field of activity of the Prussian officers and councils of war, and regular checks on the equipment delivered, meant that, at least in the food and clothing sectors, the immediate pattern of the Prussian soldier’s life was more positive than in Austria and France, where the influence of the army suppliers and munitionnaires généraux was so great that the state, constantly teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, could neither control nor abolish them. Prussian soldiers received a new uniform every year produced by the State Warehouse, whereas their counterparts in Austria usually had to wait around four years for a new outfit. The possibility of supplementing his income, the provision of better material support and regular payments allowed the Prussian soldier, now and then, to forget the training methods to which he was exposed. In addition—and this factor should not be underestimated—the charisma of the roi connétable, the only ruler of the period not only to lead his troops to victory but to do so in person, produced an esprit de corps and a professional class-consciousness even among the simple soldiers, such as was not achieved in other eighteenth century armies.72 It is thus unsurprising that, despite mass desertions, during the eighteenth century well over , foreign recruits accepted the Prussian Crown’s offer after their discharge and took up a newly created farmer’s job in the drained Oder and Netze marshes.
71
Menge (), .
72
Duffy (), .
The Modern State and Military Society · . The Army and the Enlightenment: The Role of the Army in the Political Calculations of the European Powers on the Eve of the French Revolution The experiences of the Seven Years’ War and its politico-territorial consequences radically transformed not only the consciousness but also the structure of European military society, although this is not discernible at first sight. The bitter defeats which the French forces had suffered, especially on the Continent, accelerated technological and tactical change, the impact of which was not at first fully appreciated by the European powers and initially demonstrated in operations on the American Continent. The Prussian army, on the other hand, succumbed to the fascination of victory. Although the inability to overcome the stagnation associated with success is a feature of military professionalism in all eras, for the state of Frederick the Great, this was aggravated by the fact that the war’s charismatic leader outlived his success by almost a quarter of a century. Russia under Catherine the Great pursued a successful foreign policy, continuing the imperial traditions of Peter I, which had little effect on the internal structure of the army, despite efforts at reform following the Seven Years’ War.73 In Austria, especially under Joseph II, developments took a turn aptly described by Johann-Christoph Allmayer-Beck: In Austria, the combination of the Enlightenment and the military has a remarkable harmony, which sometimes even strikes one as being almost a little paradoxical. Indeed, one is almost tempted to say that it has led to a typically Austrian synthesis. Cold military pathos and upright, humane endeavours, sober rationalism and idealistic zeal often stand side by side.74
In Austria (not least as a result of Joseph II’s enthusiasm) a tendency became discernible which, with the exception of imperial Russia, had seized all European armies in the same manner. It was a process which had commenced early in France, accelerated by the death of Louis XIV and the heavy losses suffered in the War of the Spanish Succession and given further impetus by the Seven Years’ War, whereas in the other major Central European powers it did not become apparent until the second half of the eighteenth century. Here we are dealing essentially with two different rates of development in the European military systems of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with France always setting the pace. The harmony between absolute government and rationalist philosophy, and the concommitant concentration of the exercise of state power and military professionalism, began in France in the second half of the seventeenth century and 73 74
Beyrau (), ; Stein (), ‒. Allmayer-Beck (), .
· Bernhard R. Kroener had been largely implemented in all European states a century later. When Frederick William I forced the pace of this development in Prussia, with a consistency only possible in small compact states, the first signs of decline were already appearing in France. A world-view based on nature and reason increasingly found the fundamental axiom of absolutist raison d’état immoral—the right to use external force without restraint as the price of domestic peace.75 In this respect, the outcome of the Seven Years’ War had a cathartic effect on European public opinion.76 Intermediate-level commanders in the French army especially blamed the unnatural design of despotic rule for the unsatisfactory relationship between the use of military power and the decline of international influence which it was powerless to halt. If war had, until this juncture been regarded as a natural state of affairs, inherent within the international community although sometimes unreasonable, it was now increasingly rejected from humanitarian and moral considerations, with French officers in particular seeing themselves as part of a public equipped with moral competence.77 Thus, in the second half of the eighteenth century, officers became intensively involved in masonic lodges, some of which, especially in France, were specifically founded as military lodges.78 In the Empire and Austria, reading societies were the main focal point for officers, even though, as the example of Württemberg demonstrates, sovereigns not infrequently took steps to prohibit such societies, if they feared any erosion of internal army structure.79 While enlightened endeavours to achieve reforms were being made during the reign of Joseph II, the Austrian military system presented a totally ambivalent picture. In the conflict between enlightened rationality and humanity guided by reason, military society, in the years preceding the outbreak of the War of the First Coalition, only incompletely succeeded in arriving at an internal standardization commensurate with the requirements of the new era. Although the Jacobins trials provoked by the hysteria caused by the French Revolution, also resulted in death sentences for members of the officer corps, the Austrian Army, in its defeats, ultimately proved more flexible and thus more capable of survival than the Prussian.80 Out of the specific situation of victory the military élite of Frederick the Great’s army developed a further variation of the enlightened view of the benefits of an army. In the final decade of his life, the king himself realized that, although it was impossible to avoid armed conflict, costly wars of attrition should be avoided wherever possible. In tactical training characterized by exaggerated rationalism, the commanders of the Prussian army sought, against the background of their military successes in the Seven Years’ War, to eliminate chance from war as far as 75 78 80
76 Kosellek (), . Habermas (), . 79 Quoy-Bodin (), ‒. Hohrath (), . Reinalter (), ; idem (), .
77
Lauerma (), .
The Modern State and Military Society · possible. The increasing mathematicization of the science of war and a perfection of ‘mechanics from human bodies’ (Mechanik aus Menschenleiben) were not least an expression of a deeply felt aversion to risk. This aversion is understandable when we remember how often Prussia had teetered on the brink of destruction between and . Defence of the ‘interior line’ had always proved more calculable than attack, securing the home territory easier than new conquests. At the same time, the principle of strategic defence permitted a compromise with the humanitarian goals of the late Enlightenment. Between the last years of the old king’s life and the disaster of , the leading representatives of the Prussian army, in particular, were increasingly guided by the notion that conflicts between states should henceforth be resolved by the threat rather than the use of force. On the eve of the French Revolution, the military élite of the European ancien régime was undoubtedly on the threshold of a general proscription of war. One of the most outspoken adherents to this view, the Great King’s right-hand man, General von Rüchel, significantly Chief of Prussian Military Education and one of the army commanders in the disastrous year of , wrote in this context immediately before the outbreak of hostilities: ‘War is an evil—but the art of waging war is a blessing for the human race’.81 While the absolutist state became the creator of the modern military constitution, the aggressive instrument of its foreign policy aimed primarily at expansion, there arose, in the form of the Enlightenment, a counter-force which first and foremost pursued a political instrumentalization, guided by reason, of the military instrument. The classification of the states of Europe into États à prépondérance civile and États à prépondérance militaire cannot be satisfactorily explained by sweeping generalizations about national character beloved of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, some explanation is required for the differing degrees of statecontrolled social militarization evident in the individual states, especially in the eighteenth century. An important indication in this context is the enlightened consciousness of the political élites, determined by their respective social and economic level. In this respect, distinctly different rates of development within the community of European states can undoubtedly be perceived. Nevertheless, the notion of a geographical West–East divide is mistaken, although the special conditions in Brandenburg–Prussia and France appear to point to this conclusion. Rather, applying the phased model outlined at the beginning of this paper, we can assume that the essential interest of the early modern state in military expansion of territory was counterbalanced on the mesolevel which translated this decision into military power by retarding factors of varying intensity in different states. 81
Kroener (b), ; idem ().
· Bernhard R. Kroener In this context, we can make two fundamental statements: The larger the area ruled over, the smaller the chance of achieving, with the means at the disposal of the early modern state, a politico-social penetration commensurate with the interests of the ruler with the objective of social militarization and the optimum mobilization of resources; the further economic conditions developed, the more intensive was the impact of the maxims, disseminated via the instruments of collective consciousness control, of a rationality which was enlightened and thus rejected the undiscriminating use of military force.
This development did not of course advance to the same extent in all the eighteenth-century European nations. When the Prussian state, geographically small and economically weak and greatly influenced by a process of social militarization, was finally prepared to subordinate its foreign-policy actions to these maxims, the states of the European ancien régime were already confronted by the danger of an emerging revolutionary and nationalistic bellicosity.
Pro deo et patria mori: Sanctified Patriotism in Europe, ‒ Norman Housley
In a classic article published in , Ernst Kantorowicz expounded the argument that the revival of patriotic sentiment in the late Middle Ages was heavily influenced by religious ideas; in particular, death on the battlefield, the supreme expression of amor patriae, was by c. viewed by many commentators as a sacrifice carrying a salvific reward. As Kantorowicz put it, ‘at a certain moment in history the “state” in the abstract or the state as a corporation appeared as a corpus mysticum and . . . death for this new mystical body appeared equal in value to the death of a crusader for the cause of God’.1 Kantorowicz’s thesis was subsequently pursued by a number of scholars. Gaines Post collected references to the idea of pugna pro patria (though not to the sanctification of such fighting) in the writings of canonists and legists from the twelfth century onwards.2 In an article which has proved scarcely less influential than Kantorowicz’s own, Joseph Strayer investigated the close ties between crusading, national feeling, and royal power in Philip the Fair’s France.3 More recently, two historians of the crusades have looked at this subject from the standpoint of their specialism. In a study written in , though not published until , the present writer has argued that national sentiment in fourteenth-century England and France was so reinforced by the war between the two countries, and so affected by religious ideas, that the crusades formally proclaimed in association with the English and French war efforts during the Great Schism were natural rather than artificial phenomena.4 And in an attempt to explain what happened to English crusade enthusiasm after Nicopolis (), Christopher Tyerman produced a fascinating variant 1 2
Kantorowicz (), and passim. See also Kantorowicz (), ‒. 3 4 Post (). Strayer (). Housley ().
· Norman Housley on the Kantorowicz thesis by arguing that the English Crown, under the Lancastrians and Tudors, succeeded in harnessing for its own benefit the religious zeal which Englishmen could no longer express in traditional crusading endeavours.5 It is a moot point whether the emerging state borrowed the idea of sanctifying its warfare from the crusading movement, displaced crusading in the sensibilities of its subjects, or developed a religious ethos for its own wars independently of the crusades. But the relevance of the topic to the process of charting, and accounting for, the rise of the war-making power of the European state is unquestionable. It is reasonable to assume that even without access to the indulgences, privileges, and funds which were reserved by the Papacy for crusades, states which could persuade their subjects that their wars were in some sense holy would have been in a better position to persuade their soldiers to fight, to raise revenues at home, and to resist the pressure of peace lobbies. Of course it is precisely because of the advantages to be gained from successfully linking war and religion that the historian has to proceed with some caution. How does one conclude that official documents proclaiming the sanctity of a cause are a reflection of popular feeling, rather than propaganda aimed at winning it over? And, an even more testing difficulty, how can one decide that the depth of national sentiment existed which would have made ‘sanctified patriotism’ of practical value to rulers? Local circumstances clearly differed greatly, and in order to avoid generalizations as far as possible, the bulk of this chapter will concern three case studies in which it has been claimed that the capacity to wage and win wars was powerfully stimulated by ‘sanctified patriotism’: fifteenth-century France, Hussite Bohemia, and early Habsburg Spain. Before examining these case studies in detail, something must be said about the premises for the development of ‘sanctified patriotism’ on the scale which we are considering. There were three of these. The first was the belief that waging war in defence of the homeland ( patria) could be a holy act, blessed by God, supported by his saints, and meriting a reward in heaven for those who fell in battle. In the context of war against pagans, this belief originated even before the First Crusade. It is apparent in the declaration of Pope Nicholas I (‒) that any soldier killed ‘for the truth of the faith, the salvation of the patria, and the defence of Christians’ would be received into the kingdom of heaven.6 But it clearly received a great stimulus from the First Crusade (‒), and in the twelfth century there were pronouncements that defensive war on behalf of the patria was holy, even when waged against fellow Christians. The battle of the Standard (), in which northern baronial supporters of King Stephen defeated an invading Scottish army led by King David, furnishes particularly interesting examples, in the form of the battle 5
Tyerman (), ‒.
6
Cited in Kantorowicz (), and n. .
Sanctified Patriotism in Europe · orations attributed to Bishop Ralph of Orkney (by Henry of Huntingdon) and to Walter of Espec (by Aelred of Rievaulx).7 Orderic Vitalis, writing at about the same time that the battle was fought, went so far as to portray the count of Maine, crucesignatus for the First Crusade, commuting his own vow to the defence of his people against a possible attack by his Norman neighbours.8 Such events were, however, a far cry from full-blown ‘sanctified patriotism’. The standard from which the battle of derived its name portrayed northern saints, and the patria which Walter of Espec urged his men to defend was their own, northern, estates. Both Aelred and Henry made their orators broaden the scope of their appeals, but to the memory of Norman deeds in England, Apulia, and the east, rather than to the needs of the kingdom as a whole. As Kantorowicz pointed out, for Catholics in the twelfth century patria still meant either heaven (the celestis patria of all believers) or one’s ancestral, and ipso facto regional, homeland (pays, Heimat): not country (patrie, Vaterland).9 Loyalties, too, were focused on ties of region, kinship, or vassalage, rather than nation. By the early thirteenth century things were beginning to change, at least in France and England, the West’s leading monarchical states. In his study of the battle of Bouvines (), Georges Duby showed that some contemporary French writers nourished a sense that this was a national conflict, in which Philip Augustus, as the Church’s protagonist, enjoyed God’s support.10 In ‒ the war which the supporters of the young Henry III fought against Prince Louis of France was not only granted crusade status, but was also portrayed as a national endeavour to keep a foreigner out of England.11 Both sequences of events have to be regarded as unusual, and the ideas expressed precocious: but they prefigure later developments, revealing the dynamic impact when a feeling of national hostility entered a thought-world in which warfare, and especially pitched battle, was viewed within a religious framework, as the occasion for a clear demonstration of God’s favour. As historians have long recognized, the crucial broadening-out in meaning of the Latin word patria, so that it could mean patrie as well as pays, occurred in the thirteenth century. The dissemination of Aristotle’s political writings, as reinterpreted in accordance with Catholic belief by St Thomas Aquinas, invested what we would now call political thought with a dignity and purpose which it had lacked when operating within an Augustinian framework. The Thomist belief that the state (respublica) was a mystical body with a positive role to play in the lives Bliese (, a and b); Tyerman (), ‒. Chibnall (), ; Riley-Smith (), ‒. 9 Kantorowicz (), ‒; cf. Dupont-Ferrier (). As late as Alain Chartier could still distinguish between Joan of Arc’s patria (Vaucouleurs), and her natio (the kingdom of France): Delaunay (), . 10 Duby (), ‒. 11 Lloyd (), ‒; Tyerman (), ‒; Carpenter (), ‒. 7 8
· Norman Housley of Christians, and that in the performance of this role its office-holders had the right to command the resources, and if need be the lives of their subjects, fructified enormously the theme of pugna pro patria. For Godfrey of Fontaines, writing in the late thirteenth century, the state, far from being simply the aggregate of its members’ welfares, was situated above them in a moral hierarchy culminating in God. It was therefore impossible to offend God while serving the patria. Indeed, Henry of Ghent compared death for the patria with Christ’s death for mankind on the cross. A cluster of writers, notably Ptolemy of Lucca, and Remigio dei Girolami, put the case for a decisive shift in men’s highest political loyalties from the local, familial, and feudal, towards respublica and patria.12 For such commentators the vocation of the military class, as defenders of the patria from external attack and internal rebellion, was of supreme importance, and it attracted their meticulous attention. The prescriptive spotlight which was trained on the secular duties of militia was just as intense as that which had aimed to direct their specifically Christian duties in the twelfth century. Giles of Rome, for example, wrote in his De regimine principum that ‘in the same way that laws mainly look to the well-being of the common good, so the principal function of knighthood is the defence of the common good, whether of the city or of the kingdom’.13 Citing Cicero (‘my patria is dearer to me than my life’), writers like Henry of Ghent and Giles of Rome expected not just obedience and loyalty from soldiers defending their country, but a readiness to die which was rooted in devotion (caritas patriae). As Giles of Rome put it, In the fifth place, it is becoming that they [milites] should place justice and the common good before life itself. For since any military activity exposes one to the peril of death, nobody can be described as a good and valiant soldier, unless he is fearless in the face of death. As Aristotle intimates in the third book of his Ethics [iii. ], the good and valiant soldier does not object to dying virtuously in war. And a man can be said to die virtuously in war, if he is fighting justly, as in the defence of his patria, or for some other cause of great worth, and faces death with justice and courage. Only a man who places too much value on life chooses shameful flight.14
In c., in his immensely popular ‘Book on the Order of Chivalry’, Ramon Lull made a similar comment: ‘the wicked knight who does not aid his earthly lord and natural country against another prince is a knight without office. He is like faith without works and disbelief which is against the faith.’15 Kantorowicz (), ‒; Lagarde (). For Aristotelian and Thomist influence generally: Ullmann (), ‒; Quillet (). 13 Giles of Rome (), v; cf. ibid. : ‘militia videtur esse quaedam prudentia operis bellici, ordinata ad commune bonum.’ 14 15 Ibid. v–. Herlihy (), ‒. 12
Sanctified Patriotism in Europe · This image of the loyal soldier fighting and if need be dying for his patria, provided its cause was just, went on to find innumerable later expressions. It was not in itself a religious image, but it was so highly charged that religious associations soon began to cling to it; this was scarcely avoidable in the light of the almost sacred manner in which Giles of Rome and others regarded the state, and the saturation of western European society by crusade preaching and propaganda in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.16 The first two books of Maccabees, in which a holy war is waged by a chosen people in defence of a God-given patria and religion, established themselves as the favoured biblical texts for ‘sanctified patriotism’, alongside the writings of classical authors like Cicero and Cato.17 The interpretation which could result, when a government resolved to make the most use of the new ideology, is seen at its most extreme in Philip the Fair’s France. Engaged in conflict with Boniface VIII, Edward I, and the Flemings, Philip and his counsellors, together with fervent apologists like Pierre Dubois, Guillaume de Sauqueville, and the anonymous author of one famous—or infamous—sermon delivered in , made the clearest assertions that the loyalties of all inhabitants of the regnum Franciae were pre-empted by their king and patria, and that this cause was a holy one. For them, France was a ‘holy land’, inhabited by a ‘chosen people’, and ruled by a ‘most Christian king’.18 As a modern historian of the period has put it, ‘the secular notion that the nation is the Holy Land was being born’.19 Such views were advanced with conviction and force, but it is not clear that they were widely shared in Philip IV’s France. Joseph Strayer, the king’s biographer, doubted it: ‘glorifications of France as a holy land, the center of piety, learning, and chivalry, had a less universal appeal than invocation of the royal religion’.20 Indeed, it is arguable that the early phase of the Hundred Years War shows that these shrill assertions of national identity and uniqueness had no more correspondence with what most people thought than those made a century earlier at the time of Bouvines.21 It was fairly easy to vest death for the patria, local or national, in religious or even neo-crusading clothes; and intellectuals and court propagandists elevated the patria itself to a quasi-religious status, the defence of which was akin to that of the Holy Land; but the extent to which the members of Europe’s political communities felt united by national feeling in the late Middle Ages remains hotly disputed.22 The issue is important. Without such feeling, ‘sanctified patriotism’, however strongly espoused by individuals and promoted by governments, would have lacked the raw material on which to work. Potent as they were, sentiments of loyalty to rulers or dynasties could not generate a comparable emotional charge. 16 18 19 21
17 Lloyd (); Schein (). See esp. Macc. passim; Menache (). Strayer (); Kämpf (), for Dubois and De Sauqueville; Leclercq (), for the sermon. 20 Mundy (), . Strayer (), . See also Menache (). 22 See, most recently, Sumption (), ‒. For a sceptical view: Kohn (), ‒.
· Norman Housley Bernard Guenée provided a useful analytical framework for the ways in which national sentiment developed. Nomenclature (Francia, Alemania, Polonia, and so on), a common language, a sense of geographical cohesion, shared religious traditions (above all, ‘national’ saints), and the consciousness of a common history, were all important motors for national feeling; while for the historian, they form indices for the strength of that feeling at any given point. Thus, for Guenée, ‘the fact that neither the states nor the subjects of the duke of Burgundy had a common name was more of a threat to Charles the Bold than the policies of Louis XI’; ‘a nation in the Middle Ages was primarily a language’; ‘the later medieval state . . . relied also on love of one’s country’; ‘far from smothering the nations, religious sentiment had to adapt itself to them’; and ‘there is no nation without a national history’.23 Guenée and others have also placed emphasis on dynastic continuity, administrative advances, a sense of resentment against privileged and intrusive foreigners, and above all the homogenizing burden of war, as contributory factors in the growth of national feelings. Some historians, including myself, believe that the result was a national sentiment of considerable vigour, which was closely bound up with the development of European statehood. Thus, amongst the clearest indications that state power and presumptions were growing were the emergence of what became, in practice, ‘national chivalries’ and ‘national churches’. For Guenée himself, ‘at the end of the day the community of the country was an indisputable fact’, and ‘a state was the more stable and lasting when its inhabitants had some consciousness . . . of constituting a nation’.24 Johan Huizinga, too, believed that ‘it was not difficult to demonstrate the untenability of the notion that national antitheses were alien to the Middle Ages and that national consciousness is a product of the modern period’.25 Both scholars, however, qualified their views by reference to the fact that alternative focuses for men’s loyalties continued to exist, international as well as regional, personal, and social; in particular, it is arguable that the state in this period had firmer foundations in unions of estates (the Ständestaat), than in the slow accumulation of national sentiment. Above all, the sheer variation in the European experience makes any generalization of dubious value, as can readily be shown by brief reference to our three case studies. The value of looking at fifteenth-century France lies in the fact that the French kingdom, a century after giving rise to the sweeping expressions of national unity and superiority mentioned above, underwent a profound crisis following the treaty of Troyes (), which aimed to unite England and France in the person of 23 Guenée (), ‒, with quotations on , , , , ; ibid. ‒, ‒ provide excellent historiographical and bibliographical starting-points for the issue. See also Werner (). For one attempt to create a sense of common history: Lacaze (). 24 25 Guenée (), , . Huizinga (), and passim.
Sanctified Patriotism in Europe · Henry VI. The war which Charles VII fought to reunite his kingdom, and the propaganda produced by his supporters during the conflict, provide yardsticks to measure the extent to which national feeling assisted the Valois cause. The period certainly looms large in Colette Beaune’s magisterial survey of the medieval origins of French national feeling. In an approach not dissimilar to Guenée’s, she considered the subject from the threefold viewpoint of history, religion, and iconography. In all three Charles’s court was active. Intensive use was made both of France’s genuine past (for instance, Clovis’s wars were cloaked in a religious aura, and Charles himself hailed as the new Clovis), and of its mythical, Trojan origins. The exile south of the Loire, which cut off the Valois court from its ancient saintly patron, St Denis, was handled by an adroit shift in cultic patronage to St Michael and a number of local saints. And it was during Charles’s reign that the most enduring images of the French monarchy, the fleurs-de-lis, the Salic law, and the sainte ampoule (holy ampulla), were brought together and used to emphasize the central role of kingship in creating French national identity.26 In Colette Beaune’s view, ‘le sentiment national français s’est construit lentement durant tout le Moyen Âge’. It comprised, paradoxically, a plurality of national identities (‘des Frances’). It was ramshackle, uneven, showed tolerance towards the claims made by many other sentiments of allegiance, and furnished less political or military backing for the Valois court than we might suppose or members of that court probably hoped: ‘l’idéologie nationale médiévale n’a pas en général les moyens d’être centraliste.’27 None the less, she ranked Charles VII alongside Philip IV and Charles V as an active propagandist of the idea of French national identity, and it is impossible to deny the fervour with which contemporaries like Jean de Montreuil, Alain Chartier, Robert Blondel, Jean Juvénal des Ursins, and Christine de Pisan espoused the ideal of national unity and asserted the obligation of all Frenchmen to serve the patria. In Le Quadrilogue invectif (), Chartier made one of the clearest statements of the latter: ‘Aside from your obligations as a Catholic, nature has above all laid upon you the duty of protecting the country of your birth and defending the lordship in which you were born and God gave you life’.28 To take another source—and an appropriate one, since it is impossible to ignore Joan of Arc—Christine de Pisan’s Ditié de Jeanne d’Arc, written soon after the French relief of Orléans in , still leaves the reader with a remarkable impression of a resurgence which was national as well as military.29 Since they were written at a time of defeat, occupation, and civil war, it is not surprising that expressions of national feeling by these authors were usually 26 27 28 29
Beaune (). It is still worth referring to Guenée (). Beaune (), ‒, with quotation on , . Chartier (), . On Chartier’s patriotism: Champion (), ‒. Christine de Pisan, ed. Kennedy and Varty (). See also Wisman ().
· Norman Housley restrained, characterized more by sympathy for a suffering country, the ‘Mother France’ which was beginning to find visual depiction at this time, than by belief in its supremacy. In the Ditié, for example, Christine de Pisan wrote ‘In the sun began to shine again. It brings back the good, new season which had not really been seen for a long time—and because of that many people had lived out their lives in sorrow; I myself am one of them. But I no longer grieve over anything, now that I see what I desire.’30 Colette Beaune has suggested that emotional feelings located in the pays were transferred to the patrie: ‘Cela donne au patriotisme français une chaleur affective, un aspect passionel très nouveau’.31 Thus attempts to locate strong anti-English feeling, as in the search for ‘partisans’, have proved largely unsuccessful. Much of the appeal of Charles VII lay in the fact that he brought, or was expected to bring, peace and order, rather than military victory; in the frank words of Robert Blondel: ‘his safety is our safety, and his ruin is our loss’.32 Once Charles’s successes had re-established French self-confidence, however, the belligerence which had been so striking at the time of Philip the Fair resumed its impetus, and the Italian interventions of Charles VIII and Louis XII were celebrated in the same expansionist tones which had marked the writings of Philip’s propagandists. The highly emotive and rather sentimental patriotism of the era of Joan of Arc had largely disappeared.33 These fluctuations in the nature of French patriotic utterances are important for our theme and we shall return to them. Meanwhile, it is enough to note that warfare, national feeling, and religious conviction were linked in France by ties so close that the search for a precise causal relationship is futile. Even if national unity was more evidently a product of the war than a contributor to Valois victory, and even if one accepts the current tendency to play down the role of Joan of Arc in giving national credibility to Charles VII’s cause, it remains the case that the king’s bandwagon came to stand for much more than a simple dynastic claim. As P. S. Lewis put it, ‘the struggle between the kings of England and of France . . . could never have been settled finally except in terms of a “national” war’.34 It was not only in his own propaganda that Charles VII represented the national identity. Moreover, this identity inevitably contained elements of the ‘progressive sacralization of the kingdom’ which was rooted in the approach of the thirteenthcentury Thomists and had enjoyed such favour at the French court under the last Capetian and early Valois kings. If the theme pro deo et patria mori ever struck a chord in popular thinking, we would expect to find it in fifteenth-century France. 30 31 32 33 34
Christine de Pisan, ed. Kennedy and Varty (), : their translation (original cited ibid. ). Beaune (), . Lewis (), . On the partisan question: ibid. ‒; Allmand (), ‒; Beaune (), . Brown (); Contamine (), ‒. Lewis (), ‒; cf. Contamine (), . For Charles’s propaganda: Lewis ().
Sanctified Patriotism in Europe · At first sight a similar search in Hussite Bohemia looks less than promising. At the political level, the Hussite revolt crystallized as a rejection of the Luxemburg dynasty, robbing Hussitism of the nexus between dynastic loyalty and national sentiment which lay at the heart of French national feeling. In this light it has been argued that Hussite claims that their cause was national, the affair of the gens or natio bohemica, formed a calculated attempt to give substance to what was, in reality, a pragmatic and short-lived alliance formed by various Bohemian estates.35 To a large extent this was a reaction against the simplistic identification of the Hussite movement with Czech national feeling which formed in the early modern period, and came to dominate the views of Czech nationalist historians in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.36 In , for example, K. Krofta spoke of ‘la fusion étonnamment complète du sentiment national tchèque avec le sentiment religieux’ which made of the Hussite wars ‘une lutte pour la défense de l’honneur et de la dignité de la nation’.37 For a later generation of historians such statements ignored not only the international aspect of Hussitism, its espousal of reform throughout the Catholic church, but also the internal divisions within the utraquist* movement in Bohemia itself, as well as the existence of a vociferous Catholic minority.38 However, as Frantisˇek Sˇmahel showed in his painstaking study of the subject, assertion and conviction can be disentangled.39 In the first place, it is apparent that elements of nationhood were present in Bohemia in the early fifteenth century. In particular, there was a consciousness of separate identity based on language, a growing awareness of the history of the gens bohemica, and an emphasis on the special piety of the Czechs, including the idea of Bohemia as the regnum christianissimum (‘most Christian kingdom’). Hus himself entertained strong patriotic feelings. Even before the political revolt of and the crusades which followed, the strongest expressions of Czech national feeling were implicitly or explicitly anti-German, for example the highly polemical quodlibetical address delivered by Jerome of Prague in .40 In ‒—at a time when King Sigismund’s authority was challenged, Hussite Bohemia was threatened by crusaders who were for the most part German, and the tendency towards fragmentation within the utraquist movement became clear—two developments occurred. One was a sharpening of the emphasis placed on Czech nationhood and the associated independence of the Bohemian Crown, especially by those in the articulate centre of 35
36 Seibt (). See also Seibt (). Måcek (). Krofta (), and passim. Professor Krofta’s paper, read on the anniversary of Hus’s death, July , was a forthright political gesture against the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 38 For the international aspect of Hussitism: Heymann (); Betts (). 39 ˇ Smahel (a and b). See also Graus (); Bylina (). 40 ˇ Smahel (a), ‒; Seibt (), ‒. 37
· Norman Housley the utraquist spectrum, led by the masters of the University of Prague. The other was an identification of this nationhood and the Crown with the practice of utraquism: defensio fidei and defensio patriae went hand in hand. Threatened with extinction from without and disintegration from within, the Hussites naturally responded by stressing national cohesion and appealing to their common religious values.41 Not surprisingly, therefore, the religious issue played the same part in Bohemia that dynastic allegiance did in Valois France, in the sense that fully fledged patriotic sentiments developed in its shade and service, and never usurped its role as the dynamo of warfare, defensive or offensive. For example, when John Zˇizˇka appealed to the people of Domazˇlice in to send troops against the ‘enemies and destroyers of the Czech land’, the cause was first and foremost ‘the law of God’.42 The same order of priorities was observed in the Zdice agreements of , and again in , when a Hussite manifesto was sealed ‘with the common seal of all those who support evangelical truth, in the region of the kingdom of Bohemia’.43 It naturally follows that the utraquist patriotic consensus could not survive the emergence of unbridgeable doctrinal rifts between Prague and the radical brotherhoods. Patriotism was an instrument, and a malleable one: Czech Catholics, after all, were able to assert that they were the genuine patriots by continuing to support royal authority, and that the utraquists brought suffering and destruction to the patria which they claimed to love.44 It is ultimately because of its subordinate role that nationalism in Bohemia, as elsewhere in the Middle Ages, cannot bear comparison with its modern counterpart. But if ‘Hussite patriotism’ was a construction, it was one with solid foundations: the common language, shared history, and unique piety of the Czechs, as well as their possession of a ‘natural enemy’ in the surrounding German states, were the very grounds on which Prague based its appeal for help when threatened by the crusaders in .45 Patriotic feeling was enormously bolstered by the alienating brutality of the German crusaders. In the circumstances of the warfare practised in the s, when there was little discrimination between utraquist and Catholic Czechs, it was not hard to depict the crusades as anti-Czech rather than anti-Hussite, strenuously though Sigismund denied the idea. During the siege of Prague in , for example, the city’s authorities appealed for assistance to Bohemia’s barons by claiming that the king’s actions showed that he wanted to wipe out the Czech language and to fill Bohemia with foreigners.46 This was a major theme also in the 42 Sˇmahel (a), ‒; Bylina (), , ‒. Heymann (), . 44 ˇ Sˇmahel (b), ‒; Palacký (), ii, . Smahel (b), ‒, ‒, . 45 ˇ Smahel (a), ‒; Kaminsky (), ‒; Durdík (), ‒. 46 Laurence of Brˇezová, ed. Hofler (a), ‒ (I have not had access to the superior edition by Jaroslav Goll in Fontes rerum bohemicarum, v, Prague, ). 41 43
Sanctified Patriotism in Europe · deposition of Sigismund at the diet of Cˇáslav in June . The king was accused of engineering the condemnation of all Czechs as heretics at Constance, of having the crusade preached ‘with great dishonour to the Bohemian tongue, and damage to the Bohemian kingdom’, and of leading an army of foreigners against his own subjects.47 In the remarkable manifesto which they issued in April , the Hussites drew a comparison between their own position and that of other Slav peoples whom the Germans had expelled from their homelands.48 Even after the settlement at Basle in , the link between national identity and utraquism was revived whenever the latter was threatened, as during the crusades against George Podiebrady.49 In the case of Habsburg Spain under Charles V and Philip II, historians have traditionally baulked at the idea of national sentiment existing as a force, let alone exerting any bearing on political or military activities. Spain, they argue, was a chance creation of dynastic marriage and the circumstantial world of successions. The peninsular kingdoms jealously guarded their own rights and privileges in the face of centralizing tendencies. No more substantial ties than those of dynastic loyalty held them together, and in any case Spain itself formed just one part, albeit the central one, of widespread territories whose heterogeneity militated against the development of national feelings. State policies under Charles and Philip were dynastic and imperial, not national.50 Similarly, the armies which enforced those policies lacked even linguistic unity. Charles had to address the various regional contingents in different languages before engagements, while Philip’s finest fighting force, the army of Flanders, never contained a majority of Spaniards.51 Much of this holds true, but it is possible to detect a strong sense of Castilian national feeling in our period; gradually, and especially under Philip II, this developed into a genuinely Spanish patriotism. This was characterized more by allegiance to the king than by national feeling per se, which remained underdeveloped by comparison with England and France; but the true distinguishing mark of Spanish patriotism was its advanced sense of religious conviction. As Helmut Koenigsberger remarked of the latter, ‘one might almost say that it alone provided the moral justification for patriotism’.52 The remarkable string of victories achieved by Castile in Granada, North Africa, the Indies, and elsewhere, from the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella onwards, created an ingrained belief that Spain’s cause was that of God. Memoirs and tracts written by Spanish soldiers reveal that they perceived themselves to be serving God, king, and country: in that order. This sense of a providential role furnished a cohesive force which was strong 47 48 50 51
Laurence of Brˇezová, ed. Hofler (a), ‒; Heymann (), ‒. 49 ˇ Sˇmahel (a), ‒. Smahel (b), ‒, esp. ‒, ‒. See e.g. Elliott (); Lynch (); Lovett (). 52 Puddu (), ; Parker (), . Koenigsberger (), .
· Norman Housley enough to counterbalance particularist tensions and to provide the wars fought by Charles V and Philip II with a powerful emotional thrust. If it was less ‘national’ than the equivalent attitudes in fifteenth-century France and Bohemia, it none the less gave rise to a mental framework distinctive enough to validate a search for ‘sanctified patriotism’. In fact, it makes Spain the most intriguing of our case studies, in so far as national identity there was linked to crusading causes and the crusading stance even more fully than in Philip the Fair’s France. *** Let us turn now to the question of how participants and commentators viewed the wars fought in the case of these three states, and consider whether there was a relationship between national war and the crusade. Colette Beaune and Philippe Contamine collected references to the theme of pro patria mori in fifteenthcentury France. They argued that the extravagant claims made on behalf of the patria by the Thomists and royal apologists took a long time to make any impression on ordinary men-at-arms, citing as evidence the fact that pro patria mori is absent from Geoffroy de Charny’s Le livre de chevalerie, written in c..53 In my view this is to ignore some important fourteenth-century evidence,54 but it is indubitable that following the disasters of ‒, and the subsequent civil war, the cluster of pro-Armagnac writers whom we have already considered did attribute a positive religious value to death in action on behalf of Charles VI and Charles VII. Christine de Pisan, like Jean Gerson some years earlier, was prepared to describe those who perished in this way as martyrs of God.55 Robert Blondel wrote that ‘those who die for their country are deemed to live in paradise’.56 Similar praise for those killed fighting for France was expressed by Alain Chartier in his Dialogus familiaris et sodalis (),57 and, somewhat later, in the Jouvencel of Jean de Bueil, whose own epitaph has a startlingly modern ring: ‘Pray for me, good people, for the lords of Bueil killed in war while fighting for France and for you.’58 This central argument, that those who died pro patria enjoyed a reward in heaven as well as honour amongst their compatriots, was surrounded by a cluster of old themes and new practices. Prominent amongst the former were the propositions that France was holy, its kings chosen by God, its people the new Israelites; they may be seen expounded at length by Alain Chartier in his address to King Sigismund of Hungary in .59 These were commonplaces by this time, though not necessarily stale ones: it has been suggested that they still aroused 54 Beaune (), ‒; Contamine (), ‒. Housley (), ‒. Gerson, ed. Glorieux (), ,‒; Contamine (), ; Contamine (), ‒. 56 57 Ibid. ‒. Champion (), ‒. 58 Beaune (), , . More generally on the theme of the soldier’s duty to ‘la chose publicque de ce royaume’: Allmand (). 59 Delaunay (), ‒; cf. Gerson, ed. Glorieux (), ,. 53 55
Sanctified Patriotism in Europe · envious resentment in the English.60 The new practices included the honour of being buried alongside France’s kings in the abbey of St Denis, which was accorded to those whose military service was particularly glorious; and the attempt by Charles VII to commemorate the fall of Cherbourg in with an annual day of thanksgiving throughout France.61 France’s wars were both sacred and national endeavours. This brings us naturally to Joan of Arc.62 Joan did not sanctify the Valois war effort—that had already been done—but she concentrated on the theme of sanctification as a means of galvanizing Charles VII’s troops, to a degree which had not been seen in France since Philip the Fair’s reign, and which may have scandalized the English.63 As Joseph Strayer pointed out, there was nothing new in Joan’s famous remark, in her letter to Philip the Good of Burgundy in July , that ‘all those who wage war against the holy kingdom of France, wage war against King Jesus’.64 Her standard, associating the fleurs-de-lis with God and the archangels Michael and Gabriel, was also unexceptional, except for the addition of the words ‘Jesus Maria’, which aroused suspicions of heterodoxy.65 More provocative was her claim to function as the personal channel of God’s support for the Valois cause. This undermined the professional standing of both churchmen and warriors, as well as putting her authority at risk every time she fought.66 By basing many of her military decisions on the advice of her ‘voices’, Joan brought the issue of divine support into the everyday conduct of military operations. Previously it had been claimed or appealed to only on great occasions, in sermons delivered when armies marched to war, or in pre-battle orations. This intense and daily interaction of religion and warfare could not have persisted, even if Joan had not been captured at Compiègne in . But compared with past sanctification of the Anglo-French war, in the case of the English as recently as the Agincourt campaign,67 it is the restrained character of Joan’s actions and comments which is most impressive. According to witnesses at the rehabilitation proceedings—admittedly a highly problematic source—she displayed no hostility towards the English except as occupiers of France, herself shed no blood, and scrupulously adhered to the dictates of a Catholic just war.68 More importantly, she appears to have made no attempt to dress up her war in crusading clothes. The use of the cross as the emblem of Christ’s war (as distinguished 61 Warner (), ‒. Beaune (), , ‒; Contamine (), ‒. I have found most useful Pernoud and Clin () (excellent bibliography); Pernoud (); Krumeich (); Warner (). 63 Vale (), , but the sources cited do not appear to support the claim. 64 65 Quicherat (‒), v, ‒; Strayer (), ‒. Warner (), ‒. 66 67 Pernoud (), . Tyerman (), . 68 Pernoud (), , ; Contamine (), . 60 62
· Norman Housley from the portrayal on French standards of the white cross, St Michael’s symbol), promises of remission of sin, even crusading terminology (milites Christi and so on), are absent from the sources; and we may be sure that Joan’s enemies would have brought them up if they could. This failure to refer directly to the crusade in the context of the liberation of ‘le saint royaume de France’ is the more interesting in the light of Joan’s clear awareness of contemporary crusading issues. This is shown in her offer to the English at Orléans to join them in a crusade to the East if they would abandon the siege,69 in her remark to Philip of Burgundy, in the letter which she wrote to him on the day of Charles VII’s coronation at Reims, that the duke should join forces with the king in a crusade (‘if you want to make war, then fight against the Saracens’),70 and in the threat which she made in to lead an expedition against the Hussites.71 It is possible that this dissociation of the war in France from the crusade was a reaction against the crusades which the two sides waged, in close association with their war aims, during the early phase of the Great Schism.72 After such adventures as Despenser’s Flanders crusade, and Anjou’s crusade against Urbanist Naples, were probably associated with the nightmare of the Schism itself. In any case, as Martin V’s horrified reaction to the English use of Cardinal Beaufort’s anti-Hussite crusades in the French war after Patay shows, the papal Curia kept a sharp eye open for any attempt to repeat the formula of ‘national crusading’, openly or by sleight of hand.73 But the atmosphere of the Valois campaigns of reconquest, especially those fought before , also seems to have militated against any triumphalist deployment of crusading ideas or imagery. For although Joan and her contemporaries considered their conflict to be a holy war waged by a chosen people, they also believed that the crushing defeats at Agincourt and Verneuil, and the civil war between Armagnacs and Burgundians, showed that the French had angered God. They had to prove themselves worthy of his election by fighting in a spirit of penitence and humility; the covenant with God had to be renewed by the spilling of blood.74 ‘Rejoice, free kingdom of France, for now God fights on your side’. Charles of Orléans’s reaction to the battle of Castillon () is illustrative of the restoration of French self-confidence.75 It is significant that, in the second half of the century, French writers began to challenge the self-proclaimed supremacy of Italy in humanist studies; Robert Gaguin in particular displayed what one commentator 70 Warner (), . Procès, ed. Quicherat (‒), v, ‒. Ibid. v, ‒. Warner (), ‒, places Joan’s interest in crusading within the context of her chivalric ideals. 72 Housley (), ‒; for a different interpretation, Tyerman (), ‒. 73 74 Holmes (), . Champion (), , ‒, ; Beaune (), . 75 Pernoud (), . 69 71
Sanctified Patriotism in Europe · has termed ‘un véritable chauvinisme avant la lettre’.76 When the Italian wars commenced in , French patriotic feeling not only resumed with ease its former outward-looking belligerence, but was channelled once more along familiar crusading routes. Not that the Gesta Dei per Francos tradition had ever been forgotten. Even at the nadir of Valois fortunes the idea of a great crusade to regain the Holy Land, led by the French king in fulfilment of eschatological programmes, had found occasional expression. In her Ditié de Jeanne d’Arc, Christine de Pisan fitted the relief of Orléans into just such a programme, proclaiming that once Joan had destroyed heretics within Christendom, she would proceed, alongside Charles VII, to the East: She will destroy the Saracens, by conquering the Holy Land. She will lead Charles there, whom God preserve. Before he dies, he will make such a journey. He is the one who is to conquer it [the Holy Land]. It is there that she is to end her days and that both of them are to win glory. It is there that the whole enterprise will be brought to completion.77
One of Joan’s leading predecessors in the tradition of female prophets, Constance de Rabastens, had earlier exhorted Charles VI to lead a crusade to the Holy Land.78 It is not surprising, therefore, that after Charles VIII’s invasion of Italy this theme came to the foreground in French patriotic expressions: the peninsula had, after all, been portrayed as a staging post on the French route eastwards since the days of Charles of Anjou. The myth of France’s Trojan origins was also grist to the mill, the Italian intervention being seen by some writers as the first stage in a return to regain the ancestral homeland: a clever way of reconciling expansionist national feeling with the appeal of the patria. The adroit Jean Lemaire de Belges even managed to combine eschatological crusading and Trojan mythologizing, writing of a king of France defeating and converting the Turks, dominating Europe and the East, becoming emperor, and enjoying a vision of the walls of Troy.79 For Lemaire, and for the other rhétoriqueurs who wrote in support of Charles VIII and Louis XII around the turn of the century, there was a strong convergence between royal policy in Italy, national destiny, the honour of France’s fighting nobility, and the crusade. Works like André de la Vigne’s La ressource de la Chrestienté (), and Pierre Gringore’s celebration of the treaty of Cambrai in L’union des princes (), went far beyond mere propaganda use of the crusade (although there was plenty of that, too). A view was presented of the French as natural crusaders which was as confident as that put forward two centuries earlier, Mann (), ‒. Christine de Pisan, ed. Kennedy and Varty (), : their translation (original cited ibid. ). 78 Valois and Pagès (), ‒; Vauchez (), esp. ‒. 79 Beaune (), ‒. Aimery de Peyrac had Clovis, pater patriae for Frenchmen in the late Middle Ages, engage in a Jerusalem crusade, ‘tellement la croisade reste partie indispensable de l’idéal royal des XIVe et XVe siècles’ (ibid. ‒). 76 77
· Norman Housley if somewhat more refined. It came to grief soon afterwards when Francis I was compelled by geo-political considerations to adopt a diplomatic policy antipathetic to the crusade. But it was enough to invest those who died at Fornovo, Marignano, and Pavia with a crusading aura.80 The s, which witnessed an effusion of sanctified patriotism in France as Charles VII’s cause revived, were crucial years also in the case of the Hussites, who had to defend themselves against the crusaders and formulate an ideological framework for their military activity. The latter process was scarcely less taxing than the former. In the years leading up to the first crusade, which was launched in the spring of , the question of using violence in defence of the reformation was naturally debated, without any consensus being reached. For example, when Archbishop Zbyneˇk of Prague attempted to suppress the new doctrines in , Hus and Jakoubek of Strˇíbro, a leading disciple, issued calls to arms which could be interpreted in either a spiritual or a military sense. But in the popular song sung soon afterwards in the churches and streets of Prague, ‘Soldiers of God prepare for battle’, the fraternal militancy which would soon animate the Hussite armies was already present.81 In , one Hussite manifesto, so extreme that its editor considered it a piece of anti-Hussite propaganda, called for the purging of the Church by slaughter: ‘let everyone gird on his sword . . . [and] let all be killed, one after another, so that we, with your help, may sweep the German heretics, the merchants, usurers, and greedy clergy, from this world.’82 This bloodthirsty exhortation found a response, at least in part, in the drift towards violence which took place in Prague and in many local communities of Bohemia after Hus’s martyrdom at Constance in .83 But the path taken by Hussite thinking on violence could not remain so straightforward. In the first place, there emerged on the Hussite left wing a strong pacifist lobby, whose adherents embraced the Waldensian condemnation of killing. Anti-war sentiments were especially strong amongst the radical Taborites, who produced, in Peter Chelcˇický, one of the most articulate pacifist thinkers of the Middle Ages.84 Faced with the threat of extermination, however, many of these pacifists turned to violence: one notable example was John Zˇelivský, who came to the fore in Prague in and, despite Waldensian comments in his sermons, led the assault on the Town Hall which resulted in the defenestration of July. This acted as the catalyst to the political crisis of the autumn, which was characterized by widespread fighting as the royalist, Catholic nobility tried to prevent the Taborite radicals joining forces with the Hussite centre and right.85 80 83 85
81 82 Brown (). Kaminsky (), ‒. Ibid. ‒. 84 Ibid. ‒; Loserth (), . Kaminsky (); cf. Kaminsky (), ‒. Ibid. ‒; Heymann (), ‒, ‒.
Sanctified Patriotism in Europe · Secondly, there was the problem of the conservatives’ reluctance openly to challenge the Luxemburg dynasty. Until the Hussites benefited from the neutrality, or rather the irresolution, of Bohemia’s civil authorities. When King Wenceslas finally threw in his lot against the utraquist cause in February , many Hussites, including Jakoubek of Strˇíbro, John Prˇíbram, and the historian Laurence of Brˇezová, found a stance of open resistance to legitimate royal power too much to stomach. Only once Wenceslas’s death in August had opened out the political scenario could these conservative figures back a military solution again. When Sigismund abandoned negotiations in favour of coercion, in March , they became leading exponents of the arguments that the rejection of Sigismund was legal, that the utraquist cause was a national one, and that the use of military means to defend this cause was justified, so long as they were employed by society’s natural leaders, the nobility.86 In terms of ideas, the stage was now set for the defence of the Hussite reformation against the first crusade; but before the crusaders reached Prague one further development occurred. This was the outbreak amongst the Taborites of an extraordinary wave of chiliast fervour. Late in , as the threat of attack deepened, Taborite priests preached the imminent coming of Christ and the destruction by fire of all but five of Bohemia’s towns. Any who wished to be saved must flee to these places of refuge; and what began as a doctrine of flight from impending evil rapidly evolved into one of violence, which was to be directed not only against Catholics but even against conservative utraquists who declined the call to abandon their communities. The chiliasts believed that ‘in this time of vengeance any believer is accursed, who holds back his sword from personally shedding the blood of the adversaries of Christ’s law: every believer must wash his hands in the blood of Christ’s enemies’.87 This was sanctified violence, and its perpetrators viewed themselves as ‘angels of God, true soldiers of Christ sent to exact vengeance for the harm done to Christ and the holy martyrs’.88 The fortress town of Tabor, founded in the spring of on the site of the abandoned castle of Hradisˇteˇ, became the centre of a lordship which extended over much of southern Bohemia. Here the Taborites built up the military force which, recruited from all social classes and operating under the brilliant leadership of John Zˇizˇka, was time and again to defeat and frustrate the invading crusaders.89 By the end of Tabor had ceased to be adventist, and had driven out and destroyed its extremists, the Pikarts and Adamites. But the town continued to be radical in its religious beliefs, and the troubled relationship between Tabor, and 86 87 88
Kaminsky (), ‒, ‒. For this paragraph, see also Seibt (), ‒. Laurence of Brˇezová, ed. Hofler (a), . 89 Ibid. . Heymann (), ‒; Kaminsky (), ‒.
· Norman Housley Prague and its noble allies, lies at the heart not only of the problem of ‘Hussite nationalism’, but also of the sanctification of military resistance to Sigismund. The tensions between them were rather glossed over by leading English-speaking historians of Hussite Bohemia. Howard Kaminsky, for example, wrote of the foundation of Tabor: ‘the faith that had been preached with such ardor . . . now stood forth as a liberating ideal that could summon up popular energies never before seen, a national possession that thousands of men, women, and even children were ready to die for.’90 By contrast, the contemporary historian Laurence of Brˇezová thought that the Taborite chiliasts were not only guilty of holding wrongheaded religious beliefs and dangerous social views; they also perpetrated acts of appalling cruelty in the pursuit of their purgative holy war. Far from Tabor functioning as the spearhead of the Hussite cause, it was Bohemia’s sad fate in to be caught between two groups of self-proclaimed milites Christi: ‘King Sigismund, the open persecutor of [Christ’s] truth on one side, and the Taborites, even crueller, on the other, lit fires and reduced the noble and fruitful land of Bohemia almost to nothing.’91 None the less, as Laurence and other moderate utraquists knew only too well, the military resources of the Taborites were essential to save the reformation. Their arrival at Prague in May therefore injected the city’s defence with the fervour of sacred violence. Laurence described how the Taborites listened to daily sermons exhorting them to fight ‘for God’s law’, ‘that the people should always be in a state of preparedness to wage God’s war’.92 The resulting atmosphere of pure holy war was a far cry from the restrained justification of war against the royalists put forward by the Prague intellectuals. After the defenders’ first victory, the repulse of the crusaders from Vítkov Hill on July, ‘the Praguers, going down on their knees in the Hospital Field, gave thanks to God, singing the Te Deum with loud voices, because He gave them victory over their enemies, not through their strength, since they were so few, but by a miracle’.93 On October, again according to Laurence, the Hussite baron Hynek Krusˇina rallied his troops at the battle of Vysˇehrad with an exhortation which could have come straight out of a crusading chronicle: ‘O good brethren, turn back, and be today strong soldiers in Christ’s war, since this conflict is not ours, but God’s. You will see that the Lord God will deliver all his enemies and ours into our hands.’94 Vysˇehrad became a victory even greater than Vítkov Hill, and the God-given successes of confirmed the Hussites’ belief that their war was holy. When, in Kaminsky (), . 92 Laurence of Brˇezová, ed. Hofler (a), ‒. Ibid. ‒. 93 Ibid. . On the battle: Heymann (), ‒, esp. n. (his translation of the song chanted by the children of Prague to celebrate the victory). 94 Laurence of Brˇezová, ed. Hofler (a), ‒. On the battle: Heymann (), ‒. 90 91
Sanctified Patriotism in Europe · October , a German crusading army broke up in disorder before Zˇatec on receipt of news of approaching Hussite troops, Laurence interpreted the events in terms of direct divine action: Before King Sigismund of Hungary could hasten to the army, the weeping, shouting, and wailing of the women, maidens, and widows reached the ears of Lord Jesus, and the wrath and just vengeance of God overcame the enemy’s whole army. Almighty God turned this entire rabble to flight without anybody attacking them. For on October, at the behest of divine providence, tents caught fire throughout the army. A sort of golden column appeared above the tents, moving from one to the other, and wherever the column stood, fire consumed the tents.95
Throughout the remaining years of the crusades, the holy war theme found repeated expression. John Zˇizˇka’s military ordinances, for example, made constant reference to the expectation of divine assistance in the conduct of ‘his sacred war for the praise of his sacred name’. The ordinances also made it clear that, although circumstances associated the defence of ‘God’s Law’ with that of Bohemia, the hope of spreading the reformation beyond the boundaries of Bohemia had not been lost sight of, for the goal of the war was described as ‘the liberation of God’s Law . . . to help all the faithful everywhere in the Holy Church and especially in the Czech and Slav nation, also in all Christianity’.96 Indeed, one Hussite force engaged on a ‘beautiful ride’ in Germany in described itself as ‘on campaign for the divine law, and fighting on its behalf ’.97 In practice, however, the universalism proclaimed in Zˇizˇka’s ordinances and elsewhere was overshadowed by patriotic pride in victory; and as usual in the case of sanctified patriotism, this gave emphasis to the idea of the Czechs as a ‘chosen people’, which was inimical to effective proselytizing outside the Bohemian crown lands.98 Although it faces strong competition in Laurence of Brˇezová’s ecstatically phrased poem in honour of the victory at Domazˇlice in ,99 the most remarkable expression of Hussite ‘sanctified patriotism’ remains a Taborite one, Zˇizˇka’s battle song, ‘You who are the warriors of God’. Its opening verses are typical: You who are the warriors of God And of his Law Pray for God’s help And believe in him So you will with him always remain victorious. Laurence of Brˇezová, ed. Hofler (a), . 97 Heymann (), ‒; quotation: ibid. . Palacký (), i, ‒. 98 A utraquist manifesto of , for example, called on ‘excellent Czech people, people valiant, people warlike’, to ‘preserve what the Almighty God has given us of his mercy above other peoples and tongues’: Sˇmahel (b), ‒. See also Bylina (), ‒. 99 Laurence of Brˇezová, ed. Hofler (b). 95 96
· Norman Housley Christ will reward you for what you lose, He promises you a hundred times more. Whoever gives his life for him Will gain life eternal. Blessed everyone who stands by the truth.100
As in the case of Hynek Krusˇina’s exhortation at the battle of the Vysˇehrad, the most striking feature of the song is its expression of a self-perception which would have been shared by the Hussites’ enemies, a reminder of the fact that Bohemia was a battlefield for two simultaneous holy wars. Were there any points of contact between them? The Hussites bitterly resented the declaration of crusades against them: the Prague manifesto of April described Martin V’s first crusade bull with distaste as ‘a vile and venomous serpent’s egg hatched by this church which had long before shown herself to be not a mother but a vicious stepmother to the Czech people’, and in a characteristic comment in , the Taborites asserted that ‘we will fight with the help of almighty God and give them a chock-full of indulgences’.101 There are a priori grounds for arguing that the Hussites ‘replied’ to the crusades with a self-initiated holy war of their own.102 Certainly they lost no opportunity of pointing out that their remarkable victories showed which set of combatants really had God on their side.103 This line of argument, which portrays Hussite holy war as essentially reactive, should not be pressed too far. The Hussite embrace of sacred violence derived also from their conviction of the righteousness of their cause (the ‘law of God’), their close reading of Scripture (especially in the case of the Taborite chiliasts), and of course the perilous military situation in which they for so long found themselves. But it is clear that a great deal of thought was given to the implications of sanctifying the war, not least because of the arguments put forward by the pacifist wing against any resistance; and the Hussites fell back on patterns of thought and even some texts which were of crusading origin. Sˇmahel has referred to a correspondence between two utraquists in February in which the almost Bernardine remark was made that ‘every Christian knight has girded himself with belt and sword in order to spread God’s truth and extol his sacred Gospels and put to shame Anti-Christ’s knaves’. In this light it is significant that St Bernard’s hymn, ‘Surge, miles Christi, surge’, figured amongst the fighting hymns of the Taborites.104 The fact that the Taborites had no qualms about detaching the word miles from its customary social context reveals the gulf between their thinking and that of the Prague-based utraquists. The latter could live with the Taborites’ popular 100 102
101 Quoted in Heymann (), ‒. Heymann (), ; Bartosˇ (), ‒. 103 104 ˇ Seibt (), . See e.g. Bartosˇ (), . Smahel (a), ‒.
Sanctified Patriotism in Europe · approach towards warfare because it won battles, but it is clear that they viewed it with little less alarm than Catholic commentators. In both social and political as well as religious terms, Tabor’s ideas could not be reconciled in the long run with those of the conservative Hussites. It was therefore inevitable that the atmosphere of sanctified patriotism should prove to be as short-lived as the national consensus around which it developed. More important was the consideration, stressed earlier, that the question of national identity played second fiddle throughout to the issue of faith. Once the latter was settled, temporarily at least, by the Basle agreement, there was no reason for the persistence of sanctified patriotism. This means that holy war enjoyed a higher, and more colourful, profile in Bohemia during the Hussite period than it did in contemporary France: but it lacked the deep roots in dynastic loyalty which enabled later French kings to press the idea into service again in very different circumstances. One might say that there was more sanctification in Bohemia, but less patriotism to sanctify. There could scarcely be a greater contrast than that between the sanctified patriotism of Hussite Bohemia and that of Habsburg Spain. The former developed in the context of a rebellion against religious and political authority, and was characterized by a rejection of the crusading tradition which was pitted against it. The exponents of the latter, on the other hand, were proud of their unfailing allegiance towards monarchy and Church, and harboured a close association with a glorious crusading past, which they considered themselves to be continuing. At the heart of their attitudes lay an extraordinarily strong Messianism, what Arthur Terry has described as the ‘certainty of a divine mission to be fulfilled’.105 Before looking at its expression, and its usefulness to the Habsburg state, we need briefly to survey how it originated and developed between the fall of Granada () and the death of Philip II (). Ideologically, the Granada war fitted into a programme of measures intended to strengthen the practice of Catholicism in Castile by ensuring orthodox worship and eliminating rival faiths; in this respect it demands comparison with the expulsion of the Jews in , legislation against the mudejars (Moors living in Spain under Christian rule), and governmental encouragement of the Inquisition. The personal dedication of Queen Isabella to this programme is undeniable, but its background was a long-standing decline in the Iberian tradition of convivencia, that is, the practice of members of two or more religious faiths living together in harmony. This preceded the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, and arguably went hand in hand with the slow revival of Castilian crusading from the early fifteenth century onwards. But the Granada war accelerated the ideological shift, gave it a 105 Terry (), ‒. I am grateful to Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Geoffrey Parker for guidance on sanctified patriotism in Spain.
· Norman Housley new, national complexion, and set a novel strategic agenda. Preached and waged as a crusade, the war’s victories were construed as proof of divine approval of royal policy. Expensive and laborious, the campaigns in Granada demanded an unprecedented concentration of Castilian resources, which was justified in terms of a national war effort and played a role in unifying the country after the destructive civil conflicts of Henry IV’s reign (in this respect it resembles Charles VII’s earlier ‘reconquest’). Moreover, by completing the Christian conquest of the peninsula, the war enabled Castile to contemplate overseas expansion.106 In the years following the fall of Granada, Castile conquered a series of fortress towns in Tunisia and Algeria. By the accession of Charles V in , three further important factors had come into play. The first was the growth of a climate of eschatology. In the case of Spain such expectations were linked to ancient ambitions of recovering Jerusalem for Christianity via the Maghrib, and assisted in maintaining the crusading atmosphere created during the Granada war.107 Secondly, the inevitable confrontation between burgeoning Spanish power and the Ottoman Turks, partly for control of the Maghrib and partly for naval hegemony in the central Mediterranean, also helped to sustain the identification of royal policy with the cause of the faith.108 Thirdly, the discovery of America was construed within the prevailing eschatological setting as a heaven-sent opportunity for Spain to conquer and convert on behalf of Christ.109 Full-blown Messianism now took shape, in the form of a dual convergence: between Spanish territorial expansion and the defeat of Islam in the Mediterranean, and between conquest and conversion in the Indies. The resulting ideology was summarized with clarity by Alfonso de Valdés, secretary to Charles V, in a reflective comment on the Emperor’s great victory over Francis I at Pavia (): It seems that God, by a miracle, has granted the Emperor this victory so that he may not only defend Christendom and resist the power of the Turk . . . but that . . . he may also seek out the Turks and Moors on their own lands and, exalting our holy Catholic faith as his ancestors did, recover the Empire of Constantinople and the holy mansion of Jerusalem . . . Thus it may come about, as is prophesied by many, that under the rule of this most Christian prince, the whole world may receive our holy Catholic faith and the words of our Redeemer may be fulfilled: Fiet unum ovile et unus pastor.110
As Holy Roman Emperor, rejoicing in a name resonant with prophetic meaning, Charles was able to make the fullest use of the eschatological content of the 106 For the Granada war: Ladero Quesada (). The best introduction in English is Hillgarth (), ‒. 107 108 MacKay (), ‒; more generally, Reeves (). Hess (). 109 110 Phelan (); Milhou (). Quoted in Terry (), .
Sanctified Patriotism in Europe · Messianic creed. But by wedding it to the imperial tradition, he necessarily obscured its Spanish context: his Tunis crusade of , for example, was celebrated primarily in terms of Roman history rather than as a victory for Spain’s Maghribian expansion.111 In fact it was only after the accession of Philip II in , and the evolution of an Empire whose heart was decidedly Castilian, that the Messianic ideology became firmly focused on Spain. As Felipe Fernández-Armesto put it, ‘from [the late s] the mood evoked by Titian’s great allegory, Spain Coming to the Aid of Religion, deeply influenced Spanish decision-making and dominated the imagery in which decisions were expressed’.112 This applied in particular to the king’s greatest victory and defeat, the Lepanto and Armada campaigns ( and ). It has recently been argued that the sanctification of Spain’s wars had become so embedded in the popular mentality by that the Armada’s destruction was interpreted not as the definitive loss by the Spanish of their status as Chosen People, but simply as a chastisement for overwhelming national sinfulness. As Juan de Mariana put it in , it seems [to me] that it will be a long time before we can rejoice over the ills and misfortunes of our neighbours, [since] a few years ago we lost a massive armada on the beaches of England, a defeat and humiliation which we cannot put right for many years, and which was retribution for the serious crimes which are committed in our nation.113
In Olivares expressed what was still a national commonplace when he wrote, in response to a victory in Brazil, ‘God is Spanish and favours our nation these days’.114 It is clear that national Messianism was a powerful undercurrent in Spain’s external affairs in the sixteenth century; but to what extent did it shape the direction of those affairs or influence the waging of Spain’s wars? These questions can be approached from three different directions. First, Charles V and Philip II undoubtedly benefited more than any of their contemporaries from surviving crusade institutions and practices. Their grip over the offices and estates of the Spanish military orders was exclusive and lucrative, and they reaped further rich pickings from the sale of hábitos, or membership of the orders. The two monarchs were granted regular renewal of the bula de la cruzada, the financial administration of crusade indulgences, which again proved extremely profitable. The papal Curia also allowed them much freer rein in taxing their clergy than other Catholic rulers enjoyed. It is impossible to say how far this flow of money hinged on the fact that Charles and Philip could claim to be fighting wars pro fide, rather than on the 111 113 114
112 Duchhardt (). Fernández-Armesto (), ‒. Quoted in Gallagher and Cruickshank (), , and see passim. Elliott (), ; cf. ibid. ‒ for Olivares’s providential interpretation of the disasters of .
· Norman Housley pressure which they were able to exert on the popes, or on the greater control traditionally enjoyed by Spanish rulers over the revenues of their church and military orders as a result of the peculiar circumstances of the Reconquista. But it is notable that the form in which the cruzada was phrased and preached was rooted in the bulls granted for the Granada war, and that church taxes were consistently justified in terms of the religious character of Spain’s wars.115 Secondly, the idea of a divine mandate was axiomatic in the official presentation of Spanish policy and probably also—although of course we shall never know for certain—in the private thinking of Charles V and Philip II. The approach of the Spanish government accorded with the view expressed by Pedro de Ribadeneyra, in his full-scale assault on Machiavelli and raison d’état in . He declared that ‘princes who rule in accordance with God’s law, rather than by false raison d’état, are favoured by God’, whose intervention was apparent in the miraculous victories of the First Crusade, the Albigensian Crusade, the Reconquista, and, more recently, the Catholic cause in Germany, France, the Low Countries, and the Mediterranean.116 As Koenigsberger pointed out, Philip II rarely let his foreign policy be dictated solely by this principle; and contemporaries, including the popes, were quick to point to the occasions on which religion was apparently being used as camouflage for Spanish interests.117 But if practice did not always correspond to theory, the convergence between the two was strong enough for the Protestant powers to see Spain as a continual threat. And there can be no reasonable doubt that both Charles and Philip saw their immense power as a gift from God, which had to be justified by its use in his service.118 Thirdly, the dominant ideology did influence ordinary Spaniards. In the Castilian cortes regarded the interests of Castile and those of the faith as synonymous. This did not mean that the cortes was prepared, on these grounds, to forget all other considerations: on another occasion, a deputy remarked that Spain’s wars against the northern Protestant powers must be ended because, although they were just and holy, they were also financially crippling.119 But, at the very least, there is evidence that Spaniards experienced a sense of national pride in their victories which was conflated with religious emotion. There is no reason to regard as exceptional Cervantes’s eulogy of Spain in his second canción on the Armada: ‘Mother of the heroes of the war, confidante of Catholic soldiers, crucible in which the love of God is purified, land where it is seen that Heaven buries those who to Heaven will be borne as defenders of the purest faith.’120 115 116 118 119 120
Goñi Gaztambide (), chs. ‒; Wright (). 117 Ribadeneyra (), , ‒. Koenigsberger (); cf. Lynch (). Brandi (); Lynch (), ‒; Parker (), ‒, , . Koenigsberger (), ; Parker (), . Serrano y Sanz (), . Translation: Don and Gabriella Bliss in Navarro Ledesma (), .
Sanctified Patriotism in Europe · It is, however, in the attitudes of the Spanish military class that sanctified patriotism is at its richest. As Raffaele Puddu put it, ‘una tensione a un tempo religiosa e guerriera animava i tercios, e la loro forza appariva il riflesso della disciplina, della coerenza interna e dell’assenza di conflitti politici, confessionali o sociali d’un popolo che seguiva compatto la guida del pulpito o del trono’.121 Puddu’s own investigation of this topic was largely based on a remarkable group of treatises written in Spain, mainly at the end of Philip II’s reign, on the subject of military discipline and motivation. For the authors of these tracts, especially Marcos de Isaba, Martin de Eguiluz, and Diego García de Palacio, the warfare associated with Spain’s providential role was a sacred task entrusted to her fighting men. The obedience on which so much depended was thus treated as a religious virtue, and the oath of faithful service taken on enlisting in the royal army was sacred, akin to the crusader’s vow. In his Dialogos militares (), García de Palacio argued that the soldier who died while fighting with obedience in a just war on behalf of country or king would not only be remembered in the centuries to come, but would enjoy the ‘conversation and company of the angels’ in heaven.122 With such comments we return to the ideas of St Bernard; indeed, in his ‘Avisos para soldados y gente de guerra’ (), F. Antonio quoted De laude novae militiae as an apposite parallel to the contemporary situation.123 These were, of course, prescriptive texts, and it is necessary to remember that the most extreme rendering of the view that the soldier’s vocation was both spiritual and military was placed by Cervantes in the mouth of a madman.124 But other sources confirm that the idea of the soldier’s sacred vocation exercised a considerable impact, notably the memoirs of Spanish fighting men. Léon van der Essen wrote that these texts revealed the pride of men who believed that they had fought for God, country, and king.125 Geoffrey Parker agreed that the combination of patriotism and a sense of religious mission made ‘a potent formula’.126 As so often in previous centuries, the sanctification of war reached its height before pitched battles. Before the battle of Steenbergen (), for instance, Alexander Farnese reportedly encouraged his troops with the prediction that they would win ‘a fair victory over the enemies of the Catholic religion, of your king and mine; this is the day on which Jesus Christ will make you all immortal and place you in the ranks of the chosen’.127 Service of God and king was in fact the dual motivation of men like Julián Romero and Francisco Verdugo in the Old World, just as it was of many conquistadores in the Americas.128 Needless to say, the impact of providential ideology on the morale of the army of Flanders, or indeed any Spanish force, is not 121 124 126 128
122 123 Puddu (), ‒. García de Palacio (), v–. Puddu (), . 125 Cervantes (), , , ‒. Van der Essen (), . 127 Parker (), . Van der Essen (‒), iii, ‒. Díaz (), ; Puddu (), ‒.
· Norman Housley susceptible to measurement; but it cannot be ignored in assessing Spain’s military performance in the sixteenth century. * * * Pulling together the threads of these three case studies, what conclusions can be drawn about the nature of sanctified patriotism, its connection with the crusade, and its contribution to state formation? There are certainly similarities. In all three instances, the cause of a people and country was viewed providentially, with the twin corollaries that God actively intervened in military affairs, and that those who died while fighting in a just war pro deo et patria would receive a heavenly reward. However, the range of variation in the way the patria was regarded was considerable. In fifteenth-century France, national feeling was vibrant and persistent, but it could not be dissociated from the Valois dynasty, which made clever and constant use of it. In Hussite Bohemia the national cause was subordinate to that of the new faith, indeed it was to some degree created in its service. In Habsburg Spain national sentiment always came third to both monarchy and faith, although it grew in strength under Philip II. Patriotism remains, none the less, a valid description of the deep, if complex, feelings of loyalty and attachment which developed in all three countries. Pro deo et patria mori was a sentiment which would have evinced a positive response from most of those whose comments and actions have been examined in this chapter. The principal themes of sanctification present less variation. Indeed, two themes constantly recur. One is that of the ‘Chosen People’, who, like the ancient Israelites or the Maccabees, bask in God’s favour and function as the instrument of his will. Peccatis exigentibus, they may temporarily forfeit his support and suffer crushing defeats, such as Agincourt and the Armada; but the Covenant is renewed once fitting repentance is shown. In an age which still relied so heavily on biblical exegesis to support political ideas, every gens which attained an advanced stage of national consciousness was liable to have this tag attached to it, but in the context of warfare, it dominated all other conceptual approaches. The ‘Chosen People’ theme was of course especially appropriate in the case of expansionist or Messianic nationalism (late fifteenth-century France, Habsburg Spain), as opposed to defensive patriotism (France and Bohemia in the s), although it was not absent in the latter. The second recurring theme is the attention given to the soldier: whether he was acting as defender of the sacred patria, or as the executant of divinely mandated expansion, he became the focal point of sanctified patriotism. From Giles of Rome to Diego García de Palacio, a stream of writers devoted their energies to instructing soldiers when, how, and in what frame of mind they should fight and die pro patria. This brings us to the crusade. Just before the start of our period, crusades had been fought against Christian enemies in Flanders, Spain, and southern Italy in
Sanctified Patriotism in Europe · the closest association with national endeavours.129 ‘National crusading’ did not recur in such a dramatic form, but close links between the crusade and the patria are sometimes visible. It is highly likely that Hussite holy war enjoyed a relationship, part symbiosis and part antagonism, with the crusades fought against the utraquists; and the Habsburg wars against the Ottomans, and against Elisabeth I, were formal crusades, although crusading practices had reached a condition of such debilitation that the interaction was much less fructifying than it would once have been.130 Sanctified patriotism does not have to be explained in terms of a conscious or unconscious borrowing of crusading ideas, imagery, and language. A conflation of Catholic thinking on the just war, classical Roman writings, and Thomist ideas, would account for the pugna pro patria idea; and reference to the Old Testament alone would have provided enough material for Messianic expansionism. But it would be perverse to argue, on these grounds, that no borrowing or transfer took place. At the start of our period both of the recurrent themes considered in this chapter, the populus dei and miles Christi, had received massive attention in relation to the crusading movement, and no contemporary pondering them in the new context could have done so without being influenced by the crusades. Because it was in the service of the state, sanctified patriotism possessed a potential for action which the crusade had lost, for the growth in the war-making ability of the European state in this period forms an instructive contrast with the decay which was overtaking practical crusading. This came about to some extent because the sovereign state claimed what was, in practice, a monopoly of control over its subjects’ resources; and since that control was bound up with the growth of national feeling, the two processes were indirectly linked. It is possible to go further and posit a natural tendency for men in this period to seek a conjunction between war and religion, which meant that the state, through sanctified patriotism, provided what the crusading movement could no longer offer.131 This is a circumstantial argument, but it has been advanced with some force for England, where, for a combination of political and geographical reasons, practical crusading came to an end as early as .132 Spain forms an interesting comparison with England because Spanish crusading was intimately bound up with the creation of both the Spanish state and Spanish national identity: crusading was therefore not replaced but incorporated. The French experience lay between the two, in so far as geography, reinforced by Europe’s most glittering crusading traditions, made it possible to inject crusading into the national identity, but only in the context of a 129 130 131
See above, n. . See e.g. Tyerman (), ‒, on the Spanish Armada as a crusade. 132 Contamine (), . Tyerman (), ‒, esp. , .
· Norman Housley policy of active involvement in Italian and Mediterranean affairs, which of course was not consistently possible. Although there were always sceptics and pacifists, by most inhabitants of Europe’s three most powerful nation-based states, England, France, and Spain, believed that their rulers’ wars were sanctioned and supported by God. Sacred violence was thus carried like a virus into early modern Europe, and transmitted, albeit in a much altered form, into the full-blown nationalism of later European history. Exponents of Christian peace and unity saw in sanctified patriotism one of the most disturbing symptoms of the hardening lines and mutual antagonisms of contemporary statehood. Erasmus, for example, in his Institutio principis christiani () and Querela pacis () complained that the armies of Europe’s princes marched under the sign of the cross and fought in Christ’s name against their fellow Christians.133 With some exceptions,134 it is futile to try to isolate its impact and measure its direct value to rulers. Doubtless many soldiers fought more bravely (or mutinied less readily), and many subjects paid their taxes more willingly, because they believed in the sacred character of their nations’ wars.135 This assisted the state in the fundamental process of tapping the resources needed for war and converting them into effective military force. But the main significance of sanctified patriotism resides in what it tells the historian. For it is rich, and at times colourful, evidence of the broader movement of ideas, and the accompanying shift in human loyalties, which underpinned the growth of state power from the thirteenth century onwards. Margolin (), , ‒. A notable exception was Hussite Bohemia, where the sanctification of warfare clearly played an important role in raising morale and increasing military effectiveness: Durdík (), ‒. 135 García de Palacio for one believed that captains should instruct their troops on their duty to God, king, and country, so that they would fight better: Puddu (), . 133 134
The Peacemakers and the State: Pontifical Diplomacy and the Anglo-French Conflict in the Fourteenth Century Françoise Autrand
H
istorians have come to recognize the crucial importance of war in the origins of the modern state. The theme of this book is proof enough that the demands of war, above all, allowed the state to mobilize the material, human, and even spiritual energies of the community. As for peace, it remained linked to a more traditional image of power. St Augustine already thought that peace and justice were the raison d’être of, and justification for, the state. The king ushering in a reign of justice and peace, rex pacificus, whose religious image was that of King David, was the ideal prince of Carolingian thinkers. Yet these ideas were far too deeply anchored in peoples’ minds, too closely linked to scriptural texts commented upon by church teaching and repeated in the liturgy, to disappear with the growth of the modern state. In the fourteenth and fifteenth century state, a model of which the original characteristics have been recognized, there was room for peace. King and peace continued to go hand in hand, just as war and peace still went together. Contemporaries were conscious of this fact. Witness Froissart in the fourteenth century: in Book I of his Chroniques, he relates the beginning of the war of Navarre in , and how Charles, count of Evreux and king of Navarre, failed to obtain from the king of France (his father-in-law, John the Good) what he had promised, or any guarantee that royal officers would cease hindering the exercise of the count of Evreux’s acknowledged authority in his lands in Normandy. Thus Navarre’s children, Charles and his brothers Philip and Louis, took up arms. Froissart explains that they could not arrive at peace ‘if they did not make war’.1 1
Froissart, ed. Luce (‒), iv, .
· Françoise Autrand The bishop Jean Juvénal des Ursins wrote the very same words but because he was a pacifist, he placed them in the mouth of ‘Sedicion’ (Sedition). Indeed, the treatise Audite Celi in which they are found was begun on May , as the congress of Arras was being prepared which brought about peace between France and Burgundy, and Juvénal des Ursins had good reason to hope a general peace would result. As a peacemaker, the prelate condemned the words spoken by ‘Sedicion’ to benigne et doulce France: ‘For war is only made in order to have peace; make strong war and you will have peace by subjugating your enemies. Do you think you might have it otherwise?’2 ‘Sedicion’ herself recognized this: one made war only to achieve peace. Peace was the final objective of war. Moreover, peace was the king’s business. Once again it was Jean Juvénal des Ursins who declared, speaking of the French people tired out by war: ‘they would have accepted a Saracen as king if only he had given them peace’—a Saracen perhaps, but a king. The peace the inhabitants of the kingdom so ardently longed for could only proceed from the king.3 On the other hand, war and victory were not enough to justify power. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, ‘right of conquest’ flowed easily from the tongue, but this right never existed in a vacuum. Let us once again quote Jean Juvénal des Ursins. In L’histoire de Charles VI, traditionally attributed to him, he recounted the Emperor Sigismund’s visit to the Parlement of Paris in and his intervention in an audience. Two litigants disputed the office of seneschal of Beaucaire. The fact that one of them, Guillaume Seignet, was not a knight was put forward against him. Sigismund interrupted the lawyer and dubbed the candidate on the spot. The commentary of the legist is indignant: ‘given that in the past the Emperors wanted to maintain the right to sovereignty over the kingdom of France in the face of all reason. Since the king is Emperor in his kingdom and holds it only by God and the sword.’4 Not, we should note, by sword alone, but by God and the sword. It might be argued that Jean Juvénal des Ursins was a lawyer. Take instead the author of the Jouvencel, Jean de Bueil, whose whole career was spent in the army of Charles VII, and whose disgrace under Louis XI resulted in his delightful memoirs. To the warlike Jouvencel, the hero, a comrade praises the trade of soldier in which a brave man may become ‘the greatest Emperor in the world’. Of course, not everyone achieves this, but ‘what they win, they hold by God and by the sword, and it is clearly theirs’.5 For the knight as for the prelate, the right of conquest did not exist without divine right. 2 4 5
Juvénal des Ursins, ed. Lewis (‒), ii, . Juvénal des Ursins, ed. Buchon (), . Bueil, ed. Favre and Lecestre (‒), i, ‒.
3
Ibid. .
The Peacemakers and the State · As for the ideal of peace for the French royalty in fourteenth- and fifteenthcentury France, no text gives it better expression than Charles V’s beautiful prayer: by constantly giving me the strength and power to resist your enemies, and my enemies, and those of my kingdom, which you have given and granted to me to keep in good and proper safekeeping, and to pacify, treat, and bring my enemies together in good peace and concord coming and proceeding from you . . . And may I treat the princes and lords of my kingdom so well, those of my blood and lineage as much as the others, and keep them in such good union and concord that I may obviate all debates, wars, and divisions.6
The prayer contained three requests: for war (that is just war, since the defence of the kingdom was ‘good and rightful’); for peace; and for unity between the princes and lords of the realm. We should note that although war was evoked through the use of a passive vocabulary, ‘resist . . . enemies’, ‘obviate all debates, wars, and divisions’, peace, on the other hand, mobilized a whole series of verbs expressing action. Peace was what kings must make. This demanded all the active energy of the king, who also required divine assistance. To resist war, and to make peace: such was the king’s duty. The idea of peace was present in the monarchical framework in which the modern state was being cast. It was also to be found in other types of modern state, such as urban states originally founded on a pledge of peace and leagues of towns united for peace. In the fourteenth century, making peace in the midst of the omnipresent wars of western Christendom was the task of the Popes. Negotiating truces, offering arbitration, organizing meetings between belligerent parties—these were some of the activities of the pontifical court in Avignon. The Anglo-French war was their principal undertaking and their failure to make peace in that context is well known. However, the concept of sovereignty, at the very heart of the modern state, was undoubtedly the obstacle on which they foundered. Examination of the work of the peacemakers from the papal court at Avignon during the FrancoEnglish conflict, and scrutiny of the forces of peace grappling with sovereignty at this period thus provides one approach to the origins of the modern state.
. Towards a History of Peace Despite the wars, and the loud and powerful mobilizing effect of competition between states, a dynamic of peace compels recognition, nevertheless, in the Christian West of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There can be no doubt that this dynamic was founded on the aspirations of a community subjected to the destructive effects of the war. The pathos of the letters of the Avignon Popes in 6
Contamine (), i, ‒.
· Françoise Autrand their references to the misfortunes of war are a constant reminder of this fact. Yet action on behalf of peace should not be confused in any way with the resistance eventually put forward by local populations to the demands of war, by refusing to pay taxes or to submit to the requisitioning of supplies, fodder, or animals. This resistance was not always passive. Here and there throughout the sources there are references to local uprisings or to isolated related incidents. Thus, the day after the battle of Poitiers, one of the king’s counsellors, Renaud Chauveau, bishop of Châlons, was killed escaping across a ditch by a carter to whom, some days earlier, he had refused to give a letter, releasing him from the requisitions carried out by the royal purveyors.7 The most extreme case of this active, and indeed violent, resistance to the war, seems to be that of the Jacquerie. The Jacquerie in fact broke out on May at Saint-Leu-d’Esserent in an area where troops had been moving for several weeks. Moreover, the nobility of the region had just received the order to put their castles in a state of defence by garrisoning them with men-at-arms, for whose pay and upkeep the nobles were responsible.8 Then, according to the Chronique normande, they met together and took council. How were they to obey the order of the Regent when they had no means to do so? There was only one answer to this question: to requisition, to ‘take from their men’, that is, the inhabitants of their lands.9 The Regent himself was also reduced to this, as is proved by the letter of remission granted by him to the garrison of the castle of Etampes: ‘because the said captain and his men did not receive wages from us, we [gave] them freedom and authority to take from the country and from other places in the kingdom supplies of all sorts necessary for men-at-arms’.10 What happened then, in these circumstances, on the day before Corpus Christi , in Saint-Leu, not far from Chantilly? A small troop of knights and squires, perhaps from the castle garrison, came to the village, no doubt in order to requisition supplies. They were massacred. In a few days the movement spread, attacking nobles and castles. What followed is well known, as is its end. War was made in vain against the war. Even in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century France, ravaged by fighting and men-at-arms, there was to be no peace movement stemming from the people. Peace could only come from negotiations concluded by a formal agreement. But who could negotiate? Who had the right to conclude an agreement with the enemy to lay down arms? In order to answer this question, it was first necessary to know who the enemy was. Yet in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century France, which Philippe Contamine has dubbed ‘the pillaged France’, given over as spoils to 7 9 10
Chronique des quatre premiers Valois, ed. Luce (), . Chronique normande, ed. Molinier (), ‒. Histoire de la Jacquerie, ed. Luce (), .
8
Cazelles (), .
The Peacemakers and the State · men-at-arms, the enemy could not be defined. When the Carmelite Jean de Venette reported the disturbances of ‒, he referred on every page to ‘enemies’ inflicting so much misery on the poor—but who was he talking about?11 The English? The Navarrese? The Free Companies? About all men-at-arms in general, or the Devil’s henchmen? In time, the English were to be distinguished among the disturbers of the peace by the name of ‘ancient enemies and adversaries’ given to them, yet for a long time the concept of ‘enemy’ seems to have had a fairly general meaning. How could it be otherwise, since the very notion of ‘war’ eludes our demands for strict definition? Despite all endeavours, the king’s war did not prevent the lords from making war among themselves. In general, the language of the day made no distinction between this type of hostility and all the others which disturbed the peace. The chronicler Jean de Venette seems to have been alone in calling these wars ‘private wars’, when he deplored all the evils affecting France in the years ‒ ‘tam in bellis particularibus quam aliter [as much in private wars as otherwise]’.12 While the king (the state) did not as yet have an indisputable monopoly over war, he had no better monopoly over peace. To bring about the cessation of hostilities, treaties might be concluded at any level. Thus villagers might ultimately negotiate directly with the company controlling their area, in order to secure a precarious peace in exchange for the payment of a patis. A whole province might negotiate with the enemy to spare itself the horror of pillage, as Burgundy did during the English chevauchée in the winter of ‒, when the duke or, more specifically, the ducal government, promised Edward III , écus to spare the duchy.13 In the fifteenth century, during the Armagnac–Burgundian war, regions thus concluded local agreements, while their princes waged war far away. This was the case with lands subject to the duke of Bourbon. In the middle of civil war, in , the Duchess Anne negotiated with the local representative of the duke of Burgundy, Amédée de Viry (who, three years earlier, had been threatening her land, the Beaujolais), in order to conclude a truce protecting the Beaujolais from warfare and the passage of routiers.14 Such truces, made by the very women who watched over the lands, were the local form taken by the foreign policy of princes. Truces of this kind form part of any history of peace. However, in order to put an end to the horrors of war, nothing was as good as a ‘good peace’, ‘universal peace’, or ‘final peace’, agreements which lay within the domain of what we would call ‘diplomacy’, a word referring in modern parlance 11 13
12 Continuationis chronici, ed. Géraud (), ii, . Ibid. 14 Froissart, ed. Luce (‒), vi, . Leguai (), .
· Françoise Autrand to the foreign policy of the state and taking two forms: political decisions, or diplomacy proper, and diplomatic practice, that is, negotiations and embassies. At this period, however, diplomacy functioned on two levels, since papal diplomacy was added to state diplomacy especially during the time of the Avignon Papacy. It is in this area, in the endeavours of the Pope and the Avignon Curia on behalf of peace, in their failures, and in the resistance of states, that the conflict between peace and sovereignty can best be understood. This is sufficient to reveal a difficulty immediately apparent in any consideration of the history of peace in the Middle Ages, that of vocabulary. Should we speak of ‘diplomacy’, ‘foreign relations’, ‘diplomatic negotiations’, or ‘ambassadors’? Our whole vocabulary is inappropriate. This is not surprising, since the realities are not the same. There were no permanent embassies, but there were ‘ambassadors’, sometimes also called ‘special messengers’ or commissioners, since they were entrusted with a mission. Meetings between representatives of warring parties were often called traictié or parlance. Indeed, if no word in fourteenth- or fifteenth-century France referred to what we call ‘foreign affairs’, it was because the boundary between domestic and foreign affairs was far from clear in discussion of Guyenne and Brittany, of the Dauphiné or Burgundy, and when a border did not enclose the action of the royal state within the boundaries of the kingdom. In addition to the inadequacies of vocabulary, there are some problems of bibliographical research for the history of Franco-English peace at this period. Indeed, two directions should be explored. Research into diplomatic practice must be directed towards what is covered by the term (highly inappropriate, given the centuries under consideration), ‘history of international relations’. The concept of peace, on the other hand, falls within the realm of what is usually termed ‘international law’. ‘International relations’, ‘international law’—the adjective ‘international’, which first appeared in French in , refers to the era of the Europe of nations. It was indeed in the nineteenth century that the attempt to systematize the study of the relations between autonomous political units—what we mean by ‘nations’— gave birth to these concepts. Yet well before the formulation of these concepts, the works of scholars and the thinking of the great classical jurists had laid the foundations for such a study. It is from these foundations that one must approach both the study of diplomatic practice and the concept of peace. Diplomacy It would be impossible even to begin to approach this problem without the monumental work of Thomas Rymer, Foedera, conventiones, litterae et cujuscumque generis acta publica inter reges Angliae et alios quosvis imperatores, reges, pontifices, principes vel communitates.15 Everything in this work is important: 15
Rymer (‒).
The Peacemakers and the State · documentation, concept, and even the title. It is striking that Rymer, who did not trouble himself with abstracts that might be inadequate or reductive, did not hesitate to make lists. As a realist, Rymer believed that the kings of England had to communicate with the lords, communities, and towns which were not to give birth to modern states, but which, in their day, played their part in foreign affairs. Moreover, far from limiting his collection to the great texts, he assembled complete records, down to the most insignificant safe conduct or quittance for replacement of a lost horse. The work is part of the history of its day. When he was around fifty years old, Thomas Rymer, a literary critic, had become the historiographer of King William III, when in he was given the responsibility of compiling a collection of ancient treaties concerning England. Kings and wars, and consequently diplomacy: these were indeed the main topics of traditional history. Yet already in the seventeenth century, something had changed. The history of war and peace could no longer simply be that of battles and conquests. When Rymer began his work, Leibniz had just published his Codex juris gentium diplomaticus (). As a jurist and a historian, the philosopher who had laid down the rules for historical criticism while he was gathering his documents did indeed have it in mind to provide the material necessary for establishing a code of law of nations. Thomas Rymer took Leibniz as his model. He corresponded with Leibniz, and behind his compilation of historical documents was the idea of international law. In France, the monarchy of the ancien régime did not have its Rymer. It would not be possible to compare his work to that of Frédéric Léonard, whose sixvolume Recueil des traitez de paix, de trêves . . . faits par les rois de France avec tous les potentats de l’Europe et autres depuis trois siècles was published in Paris in , the same year as Leibniz’s Corpus. This, much slimmer, Recueil only starts in . Similarly, J. Dumont’s collection, Corps universel diplomatique du Droit des Gens, contenant un recueil des Traitez d’alliance, de paix . . . Depuis le règne de l’empereur Charlemagne jusqu’à présent, published at Amsterdam and The Hague in , contains only a selection of the great texts. This was not from any lack of scholarship or absence of official history, but the great Benedictine project to publish the sources of French royal history, the Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France which appeared between and , did not include fourteenth- and fifteenth-century diplomatic documents, some of which remain unedited in Series J (Trésor des Chartes) and K of the Archives Nationales. Some diplomatic records, such as the journal of the embassies of Nicolas du Bosc, have been published by Benedictine scholars, but buried amongst a haphazard collection of documents.16 Documents that are invaluable for the history of diplomacy have been gathered by scholars, 16
Martène and Durand (‒).
· Françoise Autrand but they are usually to be found in collections centred around a specific reign17 or a particular topic.18 There was no clear-cut decision to isolate foreign affairs as such. In this sense, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scholarship, on both sides of the Channel, merely reflected on fourteenth- and fifteenth-century administration. On the English side, there was already an efficient archive system at the time of the Hundred Years’ War. From the end of the thirteenth century onwards in disputes with both the Pope and the king of France, the king of England had a ‘keeper of papal bulls’ (). Later, a ‘keeper of processes and other royal documents concerning the duchy of Aquitaine’ was put in charge of collecting, sorting, and preserving diplomatic papers of all kinds, in order to provide royal envoys with all the material and information they might need.19 In ‒, the documents relating to Aquitaine were compiled into a ‘calendar’ so that generations to come ‘might retain a more complete memory’, and an index of these texts (previously classified by topic) was made, so that they could be consulted more easily; thus a collection of diplomatic documents was drawn up that was intended to be of essentially practical use.20 The instructions given by king and Council to ambassadors, the reports they sent during or after a mission had a prominent place and the files thus constituted ensured the efficiency of diplomatic work. There was no such mechanism in France. Sometimes, when a particular matter was at issue, the king would have someone put together records such as those constituted by Pierre d’Etampes, keeper of the Trésor des Chartes, at the time of the negotiations with Flanders.21 A register of the Trésor des Chartes (AN JJ) was assembled in the same way for matters relating to Flanders, England, and Scotland, as well as for negotiations concerning Lyons.22 But nothing systematic was undertaken for the whole body of diplomatic documents. Charles V, however, who was always concerned to find a rational solution to problems, did take an initiative in this direction. In c. he had a collection made entitled in old inventories and copies Alliances des rois avec plusieurs personnes, or Lettres des alliances faictes par les roys de France avecques pluseurs empereurs et roys, or Livre des alliances et appoinctements des roys de France. The collection included documents, dating from the end of the twelfth century to . These documents had been copied from originals kept in the Trésor des Chartes, and the copy had been certified as true to the original by two apostolic notaries, thus revealing the official nature of this compilation, executed by order of the king. A French translation was added to the documents written in Latin.
17 20
Besse (). Allmand ().
18
19 Secousse (). Cuttino (). 21 22 Delaborde (), p. xlvi. Ibid. p. xlix.
The Peacemakers and the State · However, not all the rubrics of the Livre des alliances concern foreign countries, as if the king, in his relationships with other powers, had been unable to distinguish between the affairs of the kingdom, on one hand, and foreign affairs on the other. This, at least, is the conclusion reached by A. Artonne23. In fact, one may ask whether this collection was not a work specifically assembled on the occasion of the visit to Paris of the Emperor Charles IV, and whether its guiding principle was that of royal sovereignty rather than ‘foreign relations’. Moreover, did ‘foreign affairs’ really exist at all in a period when, to both east and west, the territorial foundation of the kingdom lacked stability?24 In any case, Charles’s undertaking was not followed up. Thus, toward the midfifteenth century, when peace negotiations between France and England began once more, French diplomats complained that they were less well equipped for the task than their English colleagues. Jean Juvénal des Ursins suggested to Charles VII that English diplomatic practice should be copied.25 Jean himself, when he had to prepare for the king the ‘complete treatise of France against the English’ called Tres crestien, tres hault, tres puissant roy, had to supply an appendix of relevant documents which he had copied, for the most part, from originals in the Trésor des Chartes.26 The scholarly study of history which developed in France after had considerable ground to make up in the area of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century diplomacy. While the publication of sources continued in England, in France between and (apart from occasional studies devoted to particular negotiations or events) there began to be published works concerning the political relations of France with a single foreign country, such as Germany, Castile, or Savoy,27 studies devoted to a specific period, such as the preliminaries of the Hundred Years’ War, or the story of Isabelle of France, daughter of Charles VI and her wedding to Richard II;28 finally, there were a few editions of texts, such as the great treaties of the Hundred Years’ War.29 Nevertheless, not one historian devoted himself to the study of diplomatic practice, in spite of the juridical contributions of E. Nys.30 Given that foreign affairs were acknowledged to have had no independent administration in the Middle Ages, it necessarily followed that they had no place in the flourishing history of institutions. Everything in this field began with the permanent embassies, with the Italians and Machiavelli, and thus every bibliography began with R. Maulde La Clavière, La Diplomatie au temps de Machiavel,31 because of its backward glances to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 23 26 27 29 31
24 25 Artonne (). Autrand (). Allmand (), . Juvénal des Ursins, ed. Lewis (‒), ii, ‒. 28 Leroux (, ); Daumet (); Cordey (). Déprez (); Mirot (). 30 Cosneau (). Nys (, ). Maulde La Clavière (‒).
· Françoise Autrand The renewal of political history, after three decades of disparagement, has had little positive effect on the history of diplomacy. Significantly in this respect, Bernard Guenée’s wide-ranging work, L’Occident aux XIV e et XV e siècles: Les Etats, published in , devotes a total of just three pages to diplomacy. Its bibliography runs to a mere eight titles, while none of the three bibliographical supplements reaches ten. For the whole of Europe, over two centuries, this is very little.32 The point of departure for any recent bibliography is F. L. Ganshof ’s Le Moyen Age (the first volume of L’Histoire des relations internationales under the general editorship of Pierre Renouvin), three chapters of which are devoted to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.33 This book’s originality lies in the choice of an author who does not limit himself to relations between states or even to political relations, but discusses lettres de marque as much as territorial waters, mercenaries as much as papal tax collectors. As a historian of feudalism and a Flemish medievalist, F. L. Ganshof does not limit his thinking to the framework of nation-states. The renewal of the history of diplomacy came from England. While the tradition of monographies, editions of documents, and studies on specific topics was continued vigorously in the works of C. Allmand, J. Dickinson, J. Le Patourel, and J. J. N. Palmer,34 a new field of studies began to open up: the practice of diplomacy, the diplomatics of diplomacy. These new approaches have brought to light the existence of an early administration of foreign affairs in England. As early as , G. P. Cuttino’s study, English Diplomatic Administration, ‒ demonstrated the appearance and rising power of a ‘keeper of processes’. This was followed by other works by the same author, as well as those by J. Ferguson and P. Chaplais, culminating in the magnificent work by Pierre Chaplais, English Medieval Diplomatic Practice, a book which has no equivalent in France or elsewhere.35 Another recent approach involves structures, as represented by Donald Queller’s, The Office of Ambassador in the Middle Ages.36 By drawing on sources relating not just to England, but also Flanders and Venice, by using judicial sources as well as diplomatic documents and chronicles, the author demonstrates the importance of all aspects of diplomatic representation and of the new principles ( plena potestas) governing the conduct of relations among powers. Nevertheless, it was a long time before these stimulating new approaches awoke the history of diplomacy in France, dormant since the Second World War.
32
33 Guenée (). Ganshof (). Allmand (, ); Dickinson (); Chaplais (); Le Patourel (); Palmer (, , ); Keen (). 35 36 Cuttino (, ); Ferguson (); Chaplais (, ). Queller (). 34
The Peacemakers and the State · In the bibliography of B. Guenée already mentioned, F. L. Ganshof ’s book is the only work written in French. Except for a study by Jean Schneider,37 there is not a single title in French before the third bibliographical supplement. As a result of the absence of primary studies, the chapter devoted to the Middle Ages in J. Baillou’s, Les affaires étrangères et le corps diplomatique français,38 fails to emphasize the embryonic administrative apparatus attached to foreign affairs, which apparently materialized in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This at least is evident in the works of Isabelle Le Bis, and her study of records assembled by specialists relating to specific diplomatic affairs.39 Her research, like that of Charles Giry-Deloison,40 and Pierre Jugie,41 has also focused on diplomatic personnel. New discoveries will be likely to centre on the practice of diplomacy and the peacemakers, their methods and achievements. Peace For the specialist in international law, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries belong to the pre-Grotius period. These centuries fall at the end of a long prehistory of peace, rich in movements and interesting initiatives, which can be approached in the two volumes of the Société Jean Bodin entitled La Paix.42 This book presents a chronology of the history of peace in the Middle Ages. As a result of the Peace of God, the Truce of God, and the peace movements, the period from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries represents the golden age of peace efforts, at least in the eyes of historians. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are dominated by activities of the Popes in their attempts to put an end to wars among Christians. Alongside the stubborn realism of these peacemakers, there was room for dreams. From the beginning of the fourteenth to the end of the fifteenth century an animated hope of peace inspired plans to establish a Christian community in which peace was maintained by a single power or sovereign assembly. The authors of these schemes were theorists like Pierre Dubois, Marsilius of Padua, and Wycliffe, as well as kings, such as Charles V of France, or George Podiebrad of Bohemia. After them came the era of the ‘founders of international law’ (as J. Basdevant has put it)—Francesco de Vitoria, Suarez, and above all Grotius. The history of peace in the fourteenth century at least can be more-or-less equated with the diplomatic activity of the Avignon Papacy, which has been ably studied by French historians, theologians, and canonists from the s to the s. In this context the names of E. Déprez, G. Mollat, J. Gaudemet, Y. Renouard, and, more recently, B. Guillemain stand out.43 This source of 38 39 Schneider (). Baillou (). Le Bis (‒, ). 41 42 Giry-Deloison (). Jugie (, ). La paix (). 43 Wynen (); Déprez (); Mollat (, ); Gaudemet (); Renouard (); Guillemain (). 37 40
· Françoise Autrand inspiration has not dried up, as both the study by M. C. Mahaut devoted to the activity of Benedict XII in the Iberian peninsula44 and the work of P. Jugie show, but there has also been a shift towards the study of the concept of peace. In the collective volume, The Church and War,45 naturally devoted more to war than to peace, D. Wood’s article, ‘Omnino partialitate cessante: Clement VI and the Hundred Years War’,46 (despite its difficulties in escaping the problems of bias) opens up interesting perspectives on the idea of peace and on the nature of the monopoly of peace exercised, or at least claimed, by the Pope. In the history of peace in the late Middle Ages, neither prince, king, nor modern state, claim the lion’s share. None the less, the problems to be addressed are outlined in all their complexity—peace and public power; peace and competition; peace, kingdom, and Christendom; peace as a gift of God; the impossibility of peace—by the report presented by Philippe Contamine at the International Congress of Historical Sciences in .47 A recent article has pointed to the role of history in the scholarly origins of international law. For in the first quarter of the fourteenth century the canon lawyer Jean de Saint-Victor, in his Memoriale historiarum, demonstrated the validity of the grounds for the division of the world into kingdoms, the basis for a new law of nations.48
. Papal Diplomacy at Avignon vis-à-vis European states No good Christian should deny that the Holy Father in Rome can depose kings and other secular princes from their kingdoms and lordships because of their sins and can force kings and princes to make peace, as is shown in the chapter Novit, De judiciis, which speaks enough of the war at that time between the kings of France and England.49
By placing these words in the mouth of the cleric, the author of the Songe du vergier clearly shows that they express neither what is, nor what he wants. He also asserts that the desire for peace which impels the Pope should not lead to force, and that he always encounters resistance in the reality which is the state. Nevertheless, the Pope’s burning desire for peace, his rejection of war, and his diplomatic activity were also realities, regarded as natural by contemporaries on the English side as much as the French. The chronicler Geoffrey Le Baker of Swynebroke says when he mentions the election of the Pope Innocent VI and ‘his great desire for peace’: Iste papa Innocentius, pro magno pacis desiderio, misit Calesiam cardinalem Bononiensem auditurum tractatum de pace finali inter regna Anglie et Francie.
44 48
45 46 47 Mahaut (). Sheils (). Wood (). Contamine (). 49 Schmitt-Chazan (). Le songe du vergier, ed. Schnerb-Lièvre (), i, .
The Peacemakers and the State · The same Pope Innocent, because of his great longing for peace, sent the cardinal of Bologna to Calais to hear the treaty of final peace between the kingdoms of England and France.50
The Norman chronicler, the so-called ‘chronicler of the first four Valois’, reports the futile efforts of this same Pope Innocent VI, just before the battle of Poitiers in these terms: ‘Pope Innocent was angry about the war between the two kings of France and England, and in order to make peace, or an agreement, or a truce in hope of an agreement, he sent to France two cardinal-legates’.51 For contemporaries the love of peace and action promoting peace were the natural attributes of the Papacy; moreover, this had been the tradition since Gregory VII. However, in the fourteenth century, during the Avignonese Papacy, the papal duty to promote peace took a new turn, apparent in the numerous letters sent by the Popes on this topic. It was a spiritual duty. Since he was responsible for the salvation of souls, the Pope was to strive for the peace which would allow them to gain entrance to Heaven, whereas war threatened them with eternal damnation. This was the theme of a sermon by Clement VI studied by Diana Wood and built upon the Augustinian antithesis of the two cities, Jerusalem and Babylon, which opposes peace and war, order and disorder, legitimate possession and despoilment, love and hate, divine dominion and diabolical tyranny, and, ultimately, salvation and judgement.52 Responsibility for peace was thus linked to the spiritual power of the Popes and, like this power, it was universal. Such a concept is expressed in some of the papal letters, which were most solemn, as were the instructions—spiritual rather than political—given by the Pope to the legates about to depart. In those which Clement VI addressed from Avignon to the cardinal-legates sent to arbitrate between Edward III and Philip VI on May , which are remarkable for the profundity of their thinking on peace, a very short phrase demonstrates the amplification the Pope had given to his role as peacemaker: thus we, constituted by God as a vicar of peace on the earth, in spite of our unworthiness, are forced by the necessity of our office to think diligently about the ways of peace for the entirety of Christian people, by praying and entreating that the Lord of peace grant them quiet days . . . and by using the full application of active hands.53
‘For the entirety of Christian people’, ‘active hands’, the words are clear. The pontifical mission is universal and guided by an active conception of peace. D. Wood has commented that the Avignon Papacy laid claim to a genuine ‘monopoly of peace’.54 50 51 53 54
Chronicon Galfridi Le Baker, ed. Thompson (), . 52 Chronique des quatre premiers Valois, ed. Luce (), . Wood (). Clément VI, ed. Déprez, Glénisson, and Mollat (‒), i, no. , cols. ‒. Wood ().
· Françoise Autrand These were the ideas; as for papal diplomatic activity, it was in line with the political reality of the day which was dominated by the existence of sovereign states. It is obvious that this reality gave general shape to papal intervention, but can we take this further? Papal correspondence was the simplest form of papal diplomatic activity, consisting of closed, or secret, letters originally composed by clerks of the Apostolic Chamber, which later formed the group of secretaries, distinct from the Chancery. The practice of recording has helped preserve many of these letters, but not all of them. An edition of these registers was published by the Ecole française de Rome: it is a full edition of the letters, whereas the ‘common letters’ are simply summarized. This abundant correspondence, relating to the whole of Western Christendom, and concerning a great range of political matters, large and small, calls for some comment. The Pope’s choice of addressees is revealing, determined by the goal sought, which was to weigh upon all those who might have had a part in decisions at the time when they were taken. To take an example: in , after the conclusion of the truce of Bordeaux between the imprisoned king of France and Edward, prince of Wales, King John was transferred to England in order to negotiate with Edward III a longed-for peace which, it was universally hoped, would be final. The most crucial moment was to be towards the end of May, or the beginning of June—the meeting between the two kings. Thus, ‘on June a flood of papal letters began to drown England’.55 They were addressed not just to the king, but to his family—the queens (Isabella of France mother of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault), the king’s sons (the Prince of Wales and Lionel, and to the Duke of Lancaster)—to close noble associates, such as the earls, William of Northhampton, Roger of March, Richard of Arundel, Thomas of Warwick, Robert of Suffolk, and Ralph of Stafford, to the king’s knights (Bartholomew Burghersh and Guy Brian), and to the prelates (the two archbishops of Canterbury and York, the bishop of Winchester, chancellor of England, and to the bishop of Rochester). The prisoners of the prince of Wales, the ‘Frenchmen of London’, also received entreaties from the Pope. The list of addressees also included those constituting the council of the imprisoned king. Besides his son Philip, there were also his two cousins of Artois, Jacques of Bourbon, the Melun-Tancarville clan, the soldiers Boucicaut and the marshal of Audrehem, and the count of Ventadour, an experienced diplomat. The Pope asked all of them, including the king of France, to have peaceful dispositions: obsecramus quatenus sic regium animum mentemque disponas ad pacem quod actore Deo vota et desideria nostra et Christi fidelium compleantur. 55
Denifle (), i, .
The Peacemakers and the State · we beseech that you will dispose the mind and spirit of the kings towards peace so that, by the action of God, our wishes and desires and those of all Christian people may be fulfilled.56
The letters were not sent at random. The Avignon court knew where the decision-centres could be found. This was certainly one of the most sensitive points of papal intelligence, and it explains the rapidity with which these letters were sent. Thus, also during the summer of , on the other side of the Channel, an important political development was the move of Jean de Craon, archbishop of Rheims, from the assembly of the Estates to the Council of the Dauphin. As soon as the Pope was informed of this, he wrote to Jean to congratulate him and to rejoice in this promotion: Gaudemus quod sicut habet fide digna relatio, in conspectu dilecti filii nobilis viri Caroli, primogeniti carissimi in Christo filii nostri Johannis regis Francorum illustris, ducis Normannie, ad cujus es assumptus consilia, non que placeant sed que expediant loqueris . . . gaudemus quod merita tua et ipse idem Deus meritorum hujusmodi distributor te duci admodum gratum reddunt. We rejoice that, as a trustworthy report tells us, in the presence of [our] beloved son the noble Charles, duke of Normandy and oldest son of our dearly beloved son in Christ John, illustrious king of France, duke of Normandy, to whose councils you have been appointed, you will not speak what is pleasing but what is fitting . . . we rejoice that your merits as well as God, the distributor of merits, make you perfectly agreeable to the duke.57
The content of these letters has often prompted sarcastic comment by historians about their authors. The height of delusion and naïveté seems to have been reached with the conflict between John the Good, king of France, and Charles of Evreux, king of Navarre. While the matter was being worked through by means of assassination, abduction, pillage, and torture, interspersed with bogus treaties no sooner announced than denounced, Pope Innocent VI was sending to the two hostile parties soothing letters couched in the Augustinian vocabulary, of unity and concord, cautioning against division in the house of France and encouraging father and son-in-law respectively to paternal love and filial obedience.58 This language certainly sits strangely beside the reality. Is it possible to believe that Innocent VI, experienced in the political and diplomatic affairs of his day, was himself such an innocent? Should we not rather infer that, by acting on the level of conscience, on a purely spiritual level, the Pope was merely seeking to make the kings themselves responsible for peace? He did just the same when, just before the negotiations, he begged the war-like and victorious Edward III to ‘dispose his soul towards peace’. One of the objectives of papal diplomacy during the Avignon 56
Ibid.
57
Delachenal (‒), i, ‒, no. .
58
Denifle (), i, ‒.
· Françoise Autrand Papacy was surely to transfer the onerous duty of peace to the actors on the political stage, above all the kings. To place diplomacy on a spiritual rather than a temporal level, at least as far as countries remote from Italy and the interests of the Papal States were concerned, was a means by which the Papacy could disappear behind the legitimate authority of states. Another such means is apparent in the tireless offers of mediation and subsequent arbitration between the warring parties, to secure truces or to negotiate peace. In such cases in the fourteenth century, it is clearly specified that the Pope was only offering his good offices, that he might be acting as arbitrator, never as judge. Papal arbitration was not always accepted since it could arouse bad memories of the vassalic ties binding some kings to the Holy See. This was the case in the conflict between James II of Majorca and the king of Aragon. From the outset, the Popes had actively intervened on behalf of the young king of Majorca against his enterprising neighbour. Decades passed before the adversaries were prepared to resort to Papal arbitration. Gregory XI delegated his powers to Cardinal Gilles Aycelin de Montaigu, who was responsible for negotiating a compromise, not for laying down any sentence. Despite these precautions, Peter IV of Aragon was quick to reject this arbitration, claiming papal partiality.59 The Popes who wanted to do all they could for peace, took every necessary precaution and were careful to specify, should their arbitration be accepted, that they were acting only as private individuals, not ‘ès qualités [by virtue of their office]’? As early as , Boniface VIII, the mediator between France, England, and Flanders, stated that his arbitration was made in the person of Benedict Caetani, not that of the Pope.60 When even papal arbitration appeared to be unacceptable, the Pope declared his intention to act entirely as a private individual, as Benedict XII did when he stated: ‘non tanquam judices vel arbitros, sed velut mediatores et amicos communes [not as a judge or arbiter, but rather as a mediator and mutual friend].’61 The English chronicler Adam of Murimuth recognized this when he reported Clement VI’s intervention between France and England, declaring that the Pope acted as a ‘persona privata et amicus communis [private individual and mutual friend].’62 Given that the word amicus might then refer to kinship, it becomes still more evident that such mediation was deliberately set in the private sphere. Nevertheless, this mediation did not escape the juridical progress of the period, which emphasized new principles concerning representation, such as the plena potestas which transformed the messenger into a proctor or ambassador. His 59 61
Mollat (), ‒. Gaudemet (), .
60 62
Mollat and Vauchez (), . Murimuth, ed. Thompson (), .
The Peacemakers and the State · intellectual training at the University of Paris and his political experience in the service of the king of France meant that Clement VI was not ignorant of these principles. He used them with great subtlety, as is demonstrated in this declaration made at the time of the negotiations, in which he says he is acting ‘non ex auctoritate nostra, sed ex potestate attributa nobis a partibus [not by our own authority but by the power attributed to us by the parties].’63 He hoped this would be a means of binding the parties involved in negotiation, without giving them the opportunity to challenge papal authority. All rulers were sensitive on the issue of authority, which impinged on nothing less than their sovereignty. Thus King John of France, while accepting the arbitration of Urban V in , spelt out the meaning of his action: he accepted it ‘not in the least as a form of subjection, but by his free will and his own consent and authority’.64 The new demands of the sovereign states were a burden on papal diplomacy, even when such diplomacy made use of the Pope’s acknowledged spiritual powers and acted ‘cum armis papalibus [with the weapons of the Papacy]’. The sharpest papal weapon was princely marriage. Discussing the matrimonial strategies of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century princes such as the dukes of Burgundy, the kings of Poland and Scandinavia, or those of the house of Habsburg, Bernard Guenée concludes that marriage could not spawn a state, or make it last.65 This is true. Guenée’s examples, to which we may add the turbulent history of royal marriages in the Iberian peninsula, demonstrate this clearly, and it is undoubtedly true that the Pope held the key to all these matrimonial politics. The foundation for this instrument of power was the canonical ban on marriage between relatives, a strict prohibition of marriage within the fourth degree of consanguinity, besides spiritual kinship which could only be lifted by papal dispensation. The Pope might grant or refuse this, but in either case he was careful to keep this diplomatic weapon in his own hands. Even the most favoured sovereigns could not rely on papal consent for such a marriage, as the marriage of Robert of Bar shows. Immediately after his accession, Charles V married his sister Mary to one of his faithful supporters, Robert, duke of Bar, one of the princes on the eastern borders of the kingdom who had been unstinting in their support. Once the marriage had been celebrated ( June ) it was apparently observed that the newly-weds were relatives within the third degree and, still worse, that the young duke of Bar’s father had been Mary’s godfather. Dated July, Urban V’s answer to Charles V’s request, sent immediately after the wedding, is revealing: while protesting his kind intentions towards Charles, and approving the marriage which was useful to both king and kingdom, (‘pro tuo et regni tui commodo’), the Pope could not pass over the second 63
Déprez (), , no. .
64
Secousse ().
65
Guenée (), ‒.
· Françoise Autrand obstacle, which was canonically the most serious, without further reflection and taking counsel from the cardinals.66 In papal diplomacy, the place of marriage was all the more important since family relationships constituted, in a certain view of the Christian world, the organic relationships between states. Henri Bresc has brilliantly shown how some princely marriages became the object of merciless struggles between factions of cardinals.67 The marriage of Joan of Duras at the court of Naples shows how high the stakes of such unions could be. On the question as to whether it would be a Genevan or a Navarrese marriage, the cardinal of Bologna assumed the dynastic ambitions of the house of the count of Geneva and his allies with a tenacity quite equal to that of his enemies.68 Because some marriages offered an opportunity for both subtle and brutal confrontations between the authorities involved, they reveal the complex interlocking of spiritual and temporal power in the fourteenth century. This was the case with the wedding projected in March between Margaret, daughter of the powerful Edward III, and the eldest son of his prisoner, Charles of Blois, duke of Brittany. The marriage was accompanied by a very restrictive alliance for Charles of Blois, an alliance which did not prevent the unfortunate candidate for the duchy of Brittany from payment of a , écus ransom, while practically committing him to ‘making war on the French’.69 Nothing could be done without the necessary papal exemptions. The Pope could not bring himself to do this without the consent of the king of France, even less behind the latter’s back. The scheme never went anywhere. Nevertheless, it is probable that the murder of the constable, Charles of Spain, son-in-law of Charles of Blois, by the king of Navarre, was a result of dealings surrounding this scheme at the French court. The projected marriage between Edward III’s son Edmund and Margaret of Flanders illustrates both the goals and the methods of the Pope. As early as , Edward III was negotiating the marriage of his son, Edmund, earl of Cambridge, to Margaret of Flanders, heir-presumptive to the counties of Flanders, Nevers, Rethel, Artois, and Burgundy. Following English diplomatic custom, an alliance with the count of Flanders was part of the marriage plans. The betrothal was finally decided on October . It was then necessary to ask Pope Urban V for a dispensation, since Edmund and Margaret were cousins within the fourth degree. The answer, sent on December , was a flat refusal. There was nothing in the least spiritual about the underlying reasons, and no doubt at all in the mind of the author of the Vita primi of the Avignon Pope: primo obviando destructioni regni Franciae . . . secundo occurrendo turbationibus, 66 69
67 68 Prou (), , . Bresc (), ‒. Jugie (). Pocqet du Haut-Jussé (), i, ‒; Bock (), ‒.
The Peacemakers and the State · guerris et dissensionibus jam praetactis, cum ad suum spectaret officium talibus viam percludere et eam nullatenus aperire. first, to prevent the destruction of the kingdom of France . . . secondly, to relieve the tumults, wars, and dissensions now prevailing, as pertains to his office by such means to close this path and by no means open it.70
The Pope’s duty was not only to prevent new wars, but to avert the destruction of the kingdom of France. In this instance we can surely refer to a European balance of power. The papal veto on the marriage did not prevent the conclusion of an alliance between Edward III and the count of Flanders.71 Yet, as the Popes well knew, without blood relations such alliances remained fragile. Urban V took advantage of this occasion to revoke all the general exemptions granted by his two predecessors to princes and sovereigns, because he was eager to retain control of such a powerful advantage.72 It was in the area of ecclesiastical censure that the Avignon Popes demonstrated greatest restraint towards sovereign states. Setting aside the Italian question, which implicated the existence of the papal states, excommunication was used, above all, against the free companies. Three bulls of Urban V in and constituted the canonical arsenal the Church could then use against out-of-work mercenaries and their imitators who were disturbing the peace.73 Because of the attack he led against Provence in , Bertrand du Guesclin was excommunicated and his lands placed under interdict. He himself, the men of his company, and their families were deprived of all benefices, offices, and privileges.74 Thus everything in the diplomatic activity of the Avignon Papacy reveals a subtle interplay between temporal and spiritual power which skilfully relied on state legitimacy. Indeed, a positive vision of the state is apparent in all papal interventions: a kingdom needed its king, a county its count, a community a legitimate and natural authority at its head. Papal intervention demonstrated this clearly in the frequent cases of fourteenth-century prisoner-princes, whether the duke of Brittany or the king of France, the king of Navarre or the count of Armagnac. Chiding Jean d’Armagnac, as Innocent VI had rebuked the Dauphin after the battle of Poitiers, so that he would put all his energies into securing the freedom of his father (the count of Armagnac, taken prisoner by Gaston Phoebus of Foix-Béarn at the battle of Launac), Urban V declared that subjects deprived of their lord were in danger.75 Innocent VI had been still more explicit when he admonished the Dauphin to work for the deliverance of both his father and the king of Navarre: what was at issue was the public realm, the common weal: ‘consideratione 70 72 74
71 Ibid. , no. . Rymer (‒), iii pt , . 73 Prou (), ‒ ( Oct. ). Delachenal (‒), iii, ; Denifle (), i, ‒. 75 Prou (), ‒, ‒. Ibid. .
· Françoise Autrand utilitatis publice, quam ex ea [liberatione] non solum domui tue regie sed universaliter toti regno Francie [by consideration of public utility which, from this [release], [will be of benefit] not only to your royal household but the whole kingdom of France in its entirety]’,76 he wrote concerning Charles of Evreux and repeated the same phrase, utilitatis publice, with reference to the return of the king of France. Conversely, papal letters often presented as disastrous the fate of a country fallen into foreign hands, extraneos. Such a blow to the world-order could only be the work of the devil, ‘father of scandal, the sower of confusion’. Jurists, diplomats, Popes, and cardinals were all aware of the role played by sovereignty in these legitimate and natural powers, since sovereignty was the obstacle confronting their efforts to put an end to the Anglo-French conflict.
. Peace and Sovereignty Three conferences, organized by the Holy See in the hope of negotiating peace between France and England, offer three instances in which the forces of peace can be observed grappling with the modern state and, more specifically, with its core: sovereignty.77 The Avignon conference in closely followed the formal outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War. As soon as hostilities broke out in Brittany, the Pope rushed two cardinal-legates to the two enemies. While working towards the truce of Malestroit concluded on January , the legates secured a promise from both parties to send ambassadors to Avignon to negotiate a return to peace. Indeed, significantly, the Pope applied to the ideal of peace the vocabulary of reformation along with its whole spiritual background. Reformatio pacis was to be the object of the conference. Almost two years had to pass before this conference took place in Avignon between October and November . In order to understand what occurred there, ‘pro intellegentia actorum in tractatu circa reformationem paci [for the information of those participating in the negotiation concerning the ‘reformation’ of peace]’, the English ambassadors kept a journal of the conferences. Together with abundant related archival material, this text offered E. Déprez the opportunity to produce one of the solid studies at which French historians of the s excelled.78 He demonstrated that there were three phases of negotiation, led in person with talent and tenacity by Pope Clement VII, who had the wit to disappear when it came to actual bargaining before a team of six cardinals. The English ambassadors at once laid down their 76 78
Denifle (), i, ‒. Déprez ().
77
David (); Riesenberg (); Wilks (); Royer ().
The Peacemakers and the State · demands: the Crown and kingdom of France. As for the French, they refused to allow discussion of the kingdom or the claim to the Crown and wanted talks limited to the question of Guyenne, while refusing to allow that the duchy might be held ‘sine superioritate coronae Franciae [without the superiority of the Crown of France]’, immediately placing the debate on the level of sovereignty.79 Having arrived at this stalemate, the cardinals were reduced to bargaining, during which various more-or-less realistic concessions were held out by the English, while the French declared unambiguously that no territory granted to Edward III in the French kingdom would be held ‘nisi in subjectione [other than in subjection]’.80 In these circumstances, it is not surprising that no peace emerged from this conference. As the bishop of Norwich wrote to Edward III at the end of November, ‘as for a treaty of reformation of peace between you, my lord, and your adversary in France, I see nothing tangible.’81 The fact that nothing ‘tangible’ came out of these negotiations does not mean that they have no significance in the history of peace. The peacemakers can be seen at work, beginning with Pope Clement VI in person. He was a realist, and his discourse on peace was rather different from the Augustinian flights of his Paris sermons, if we can believe the summary sent by the dean of Lincoln to Edward III: He showed us graciously the good that could come through a ‘reformation’ of good peace between you, sire, and your said adversary, and how all of Christendom, as well as the common people and merchants of all lands deteriorate and are lost, and the unfaithful and enemies of our Lord are strengthened by reason of this war.82
The role of the Pope, as was customary in such cases, was clearly defined by the authors of the journal of the conferences from its opening lines. The ambassadors were in the presence of the Pope as private citizen and friendly mediator: coram domino papa tanquam coram privata persona et amicabili mediatore de consensu ipsarum partium electo ad huc pendente, legum et jurium omissis allegationibus. before the Lord Pope as before a private person and friendly mediator elected by the consent of the parties involved in this matter, setting aside all legal and juridical issues.83
The sphere was certainly that of private negotiation, which did not prevent the English from questioning whether the French had full powers to negotiate peace. Yet this role of mediator was understood as an active one by the parties involved. It was up to the Pope to make proposals, openings, to find ways, and to ‘test and find the way of peace’.84 He was told this to his face, both in French and Latin: ‘we answered him that it was not up to us to show any way towards peace, but only to stand on our stated demands for the kingdom and to listen to the ways 79 81
80 Froissart, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove (‒), xviii, . Ibid. . 82 83 84 Ibid. . Ibid. . Ibid. , . Ibid. , , .
· Françoise Autrand he himself as mediator could show us.’85 It is clear that the parties placed responsibility for peace on the shoulders of the Pope. The Avignon negotiations are also interesting for their unambiguous declaration of the obstacle encountered on every step of the way towards peace, namely sovereignty. This is surely what the English had in mind when they said, and stubbornly repeated, that their demand was ‘the Crown and the kingdom of France’ and the meaning of their response to the offers of money made by France. Admittedly, the offers were not rejected, but they stated that their king was not a merchant who could, in exchange for that vile and abject thing, money, renounce something as noble as the kingdom of France.86 As for Guyenne, they wanted to hold it ‘only as an allod’, allodially (in allodio), and freely (libere).87 Although there had been a war, it had broken out over the issue ‘of the lands of the duchy, between the king of France as sovereign lord on the one hand and the duke of Guyenne as his vassal’.88 Yet from this point onwards, the king of England wished to hold the duchy only ‘sine superioritate et subjectione [without sovereignty and subjection]’.89 The problem indeed lay in these words which were so difficult to translate from Latin into French and vice versa and which expressed, said the cardinals, the unsustainable relationship (communio)90 between the two princes. On the French side, before the notion of inalienability (of the duchy of Guyenne) was even brought to the fore, it was already seen as a separation, ‘seperationem dicti ducatus a corona et dominio Francie [the separation of the said duchy from the Crown and dominion of France]’.91 Discussion on this point elicited for the first time arguments pregnant with meaning: such a separation was impossible, since ‘even if the king of France wished to consent to it, the kingdom would be opposed to it and would not suffer the property of the Crown to be thus divided, which has always been whole since ancient times’.92 To this was added the opposition of the subjects, ‘the inhabitants or community of the duchy’, who were not eager to have only one of the two princes as lord. The English response is also significant. It did not avoid the fundamental problem, the idea of dividing the kingdom: ‘although a kingdom cannot suffer such a division, that is, a distribution between the king and one of his subjects, by taking one part out of the whole’, this might none the less have been agreed for the sake of peace, in case the kingdom itself was in question. As for the inhabitants, if the princes were to consent to this solution they could only comply with it, whether they liked it or not.93 The terminology had not yet crystallized, but the idea of the indivisibility of the kingdom, of any kingdom, was indeed there. The day was long past when, after the death of Louis X, Edward II of England, because of his wife, could ask for ‘his [part] of the 85 89
Froissart, . Ibid. .
90
86 Ibid. . Ibid. , , .
87
Ibid. . 91 Ibid. .
88
Ibid. . 92 Ibid. .
93
Ibid. .
The Peacemakers and the State · kingdom’, as did Charles de La Marche, the future Charles IV of France. Sovereignty, indivisibility, and the inalienability of the kingdom: peace negotiations undoubtedly helped to define these concepts. At the conferences which begun at Guines and ended in failure at Avignon, the forces for peace appeared for a time to be strong enough to hold in check the growth of the sovereign and territorial state. Despite Edward III’s brilliant victories and the French disasters of and , warfare had not produced a solution to the Anglo-French conflict. After the suspension of hostilities necessitated by the Black Death, tension began to mount once more with the war in Brittany and, soon afterwards, the Navarrese dispute. Innocent VI, himself an erstwhile cardinal-diplomat and peacemaker, had just become Pope when he set to work once again. The result of his efforts was the legation of the cardinal of Bologna, who remained in France for two years (‒), sat on King John’s council during a period of political and diplomatic instability and, swimming against the tide, worked desperately for the re-establishment of peace.94 He succeeded in gathering ten or so representatives from both sides ‘before the castle of Guines’ and ‘through [his] mediation’95 an outline for peace was formulated on April . The conditions were that, first, the king of England would renounce the French Crown; and, secondly, he would have the duchy of Guyenne, together with a part of the former Plantagenet possessions: Poitou, Limousin, Touraine, Anjou, and Maine, but not Normandy; together with the counties of Ponthieu and Guines which, with Calais, formed beachheads onto the Continent; all of this was to be held ‘freely, as an allod, without any sovereignty, homage, or resort (final appeal), but as a neighbour; thirdly, the two kings and their kingdoms were to be united by a perpetual alliance; fourthly, two sons of Edward III were to marry two daughters of King John; fifthly, a truce was concluded for a year; sixthly, the treaty was to be ratified in Avignon before the Pope by ambassadors of the two kings endowed with sufficient powers.96 It should be noted that, for the final conclusion of peace, the Pope made his usual reservation. While, in order to work out possible boundary disputes, he had offered his personal services as Etienne Aubert, he put the full weight of his papal authority behind the proclamation of peace, the confirmation of which on oath at the seat of the Holy See would be subject to all ecclesiastical censure.97 Ambassadors of the two kings gathered in Avignon in the last week of . The representatives of the king of France refused to ratify the treaty, declaring that neither the king, nor they themselves, could renounce sovereignty over Guyenne and 94 95
Mollat (); Delachenal (); Perroy (); Bock (); Cazelles (), ‒; Jugie (). 96 97 Bock (), . Ibid. ‒. Ibid. (art. ).
· Françoise Autrand other places in the kingdom. Neither the Pope nor the cardinal of Bologna could make them change their mind.98 At Avignon there was also a son-in-law of the king of France, the young king of Navarre, Charles of Evreux, who was then in revolt against the king, who had confiscated the castles Charles held in Normandy. Secret discussions brought him closer to the duke of Lancaster. These discussions resulted in secret plans for an Anglo-Navarrese alliance: the two would combine their forces to conquer France. After their victory, Charles of Evreux was to recognize Edward III as king of France and pay him homage for all his fiefs. As the price for renouncing the Crown, Charles would have Normandy, Champagne, and Brie, as well as the Languedoc. The idea was that they would land together in the Cotentin in the summer of . We should observe at once that this grand scheme never came to anything.99 Both these treaties remained relatively neglected by historians until Raymond Cazelles detected in them a ‘diabolical plan to divide the kingdom’ devised by the cardinal of Bologna.100 This brilliant theory did not convince Pierre Jugie, historian of the cardinal. Without accepting such extreme interpretations, the treaty of Guines has caused much perplexity among historians. How could French diplomats have relinquished almost all of the western half of the kingdom without the pressure of a defeat? How could the king’s counsellors have renounced sovereignty? What were the king’s legists doing? Where was Simon de Bucy, first president of the Parlement? The English historian J. J. N. Palmer, who has specialized in fourteenth-century Anglo-French diplomacy, has admitted that he sees it as ‘the most mysterious episode of the Hundred Years’ War’.101 How is this failed episode to be explained, the fleeting victory of the concept of peace over that of sovereignty? We must first shed the aura of mystery surrounding the episode, very largely the result of archival lacunae. Since the negotiations failed, there was no particular motivation for anyone to preserve with care the course they had taken. Thus the sources for these negotiations are scattered among the Vatican Archives, English archives, in Rymer and Secousse, with a few documents here and there, undated drafts of letters, and so on. Even the text of the treaty of Guines was only published as recently as , stranded in the desert of a bibliographical essay on diplomatic history.102 It is important to describe the circumstances in which the treaty of Guines was concluded, setting aside for the moment the abstract history of concepts in order to consider the concrete context of events. At the time of the negotiations, the two 98 101
Mollat (), . Palmer (), .
99 102
Delachenal (), . Bock ().
100
Cazelles (), .
The Peacemakers and the State · enemies occupied very unequal positions. England was threatening the land and inhabitants of the kingdom of France with military aggression. In France the large size of the kingdom, as well as a political crisis, paralysed the territorial system of defence. Given these conditions, a year-long truce allowing France to gain time might have seemed sufficient advantage for the French to decide to accept the conditions imposed by the English. It is not certain whether this blatant opportunism was as significant as pressure from the cardinal of Bologna. The treaty of Guines was his work. It is probable that the Latin text was composed in his entourage. But, above all, the will for peace was his. On several occasions during his legation in France, the cardinal had proved himself to be a peacemaker who was persistent rather than skilful, as demonstrated in his interventions between Charles of Blois and Edward III or between Charles of Navarre and King John. The cardinal’s burning and active desire for peace has still to be explained. Success in his mission was of course an important motivation within the internal strategy of the Avignon Curia.103 But this was not all. In the difficult diplomatic game of ‒, he did not act alone. Others—and not just the pious clergy of Avignon—wished for peace. If motives other than treason or blindness are to be ascribed to the cardinal and those sharing his views, then concepts of both peace and the state should be attributed to the cardinal and those sharing his views. Thus, the transfer of provinces which seems outrageous in the context of a territorial concept of the state did not unduly disturb these individuals’ world-view. Such transfers represented the price of peace, a peace worth more to them than anything else. A century later, prelates in the entourage of Charles VII once again demonstrated the defeatist side of pacifism. Then, too, territorial transfers also represented the price to be paid for the Crown, whereas the Crown itself had a supreme and inestimable value. As the English had declared in , ‘one does not renounce something as noble as the Crown of France for money’. We should note the word noblesse. Perhaps, for some, the Crown was an honour and a dignity rather than a location, and thus territorial integrity was not of the utmost importance. The example of the papal monarchy perhaps endorses this view. Still clearer is the indifference of the cardinal of Bologna and his associates to the problem of sovereignty. Indeed, the treaty of Guines declared that the king of England was to hold Guyenne and other continental lordships conceded by King John ‘libere et in allodio et absque quacumque superioritate, homagio seu resorto [freely and as an allod and without any form of superiority, homage, or resort]’, as Article put it.104 The trinity of sovereignty-homage-resort, which had been less finely tuned ten years earlier, should be stressed; another formulation in Article clarified 103
Ibid.
104
Ibid. .
· Françoise Autrand its meaning further.105 Such a clear definition of the very nature of the sovereign state appeared to have had little impact on the minds of our peacemakers. Already in February , negotiating the reconciliation of the kings of Navarre and France in the treaty of Mantes, they had shown themselves very careless, or not very knowledgeable concerning the problem of sovereignty. While declaring that, in the territories handed over to Charles of Evreux the king retained ‘the royal rights which cannot and should not be separated from the Crown’, they granted to the prince a sovereign (Norman) Echiquier, not subject to appeal to the Paris Parlement.106 Instead, what counted was the organization of relations among rulers. It was necessary to break the relationship between the king of France and the duke of Guyenne, this ‘communio superioritatis et subjectionis [relationship of superiority and subjection]’,107 as people said in , this union based on sovereignty, homage, and resort, as they would have said in , this ‘feudal relationship’, as historians say in their inadequate terminology. But kings could not simply be neighbours. A relationship was necessary. Following Avignon policy, the cardinal had to propose marriages. Reading Article of the treaty,108 it is possible to guess at the reluctance of the English to tie family ties. Was it one of their initiatives to propose a perpetual alliance, ‘lige, alligaciones et amicitiae perpetue’, an alliance above all others, as established by liege-homage in the past?109 The alliance was part of the English diplomatic arsenal. In those years, the king of England made successive alliances with the duke of Brittany, the king of Navarre, and the count of Flanders. Alliance replaced vassality. Might this have been a concept of ‘international relations’ at the court of Edward III? Whatever, the treaty of Guines, envisaged the king of France losing a vassal but gaining an ally; and this was to be the solution accepted in the Brétigny-Calais treaty of . None the less, at the last minute, the counsellors of King John refused to accept the Peace of the cardinal of Bologna. Why? Froissart, who never bothered about abstract concepts, said that the ‘article of Brittany’ broke the peace.110 But the English chronicler Geoffrey Le Baker, who was better informed, was more specific.111 The French, he said, did not want to abandon anything else to the king of England other than utile dominium (effective lordship) over the granted provinces, reserving the regalian right of the Crown (‘regalitas regie corone Francie’). Indeed, neither the king, nor they themselves, could consent to such alienations once they had sworn to preserve the kingdom in its entirety. The Pope offered in vain to release the French from their oath. Their refusal was based on two words: ‘non possumus [we cannot].’ 105 107 109 111
106 Bock, . Cazelles (), ; Secousse (), ‒. Froissart, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove (‒), xviii, . 110 Ibid. art. . Froissart, ed. Luce (‒), iv, . Chronicon Galfridi Le Baker, ed. Thompson (), .
108
Bock (), .
The Peacemakers and the State · The integrity of the kingdom, sovereignty, had by then become a very clear demand of the monarchy. This could also be seen in the Navarre affair when the king’s legists, who had been alerted, acted in such a way that the Norman Echiquier of Charles of Evreux would once again come under the jurisdiction of the Parlement of Paris.112 Yet, never had papal diplomacy made such strides towards peace. This was because this diplomacy had found an echo within part of the French political community. There were the enemies of the modern state for whom the main consequence of the war was a royal tax endangering ‘French freedoms’. There were those downhearted by the territorial state, ready to give up before the government and above all the vast expanse of the kingdom. Thus the pacifism of the Avignon court encountered a sort of weakening due to the harsh demands of the modern State. From the moment the war began again in , the peacemakers went back to work. Their efforts led to the conferences of Bruges in ‒.113 The conferences unfolded in three stages. Very quickly, the legates had to face their responsibilities as mediators, and were asked to put forward proposals. The problem of sovereignty soon became an obstacle. Since they were as realistic as they were persistent, the legates were reduced to the most modest attempts at peacemaking: bargaining about the division of Guyenne, securing long truces. In the end, Charles V sent the abbot of Saint-Vaast of Arras to Bruges114 carrying instructions clearly setting out his views. The king’s final proposals before the hostilities began were unambiguous: territorial transfers, yes; a loss of sovereignty, no. Times were hard for the peacemakers. The Pope tried in vain to hold onto the monopoly of peace which was escaping from him. In January , when he invited the hostile parties to send their ambassadors to Avignon, he reminded them again that peace ‘could not be as honourably nor as surely treated nor concluded as by him and in his presence’.115 Taking up the scheme and the treaty, he proposed once again that the kings of France and England should accompany an extended truce ‘with friendship, confederations, and alliances’.116 But the days of the great sermons on peace were past. The legates repeated that peace came from God and not from men.117 When they praised peace to Charles V, they no longer even extolled its commercial advantages but contrasted with it the horrors of war which France knew all too well.118 The stumbling-block to their efforts was sovereignty. The legates were fully aware of this, as was the political community, ever since the post-Brétigny era and Cazelles (), ; Secousse (), ‒. Perroy (); Royer (), ‒; Chronique des règnes de Jean II et Charles V, ed. Delachenal (‒), i, ‒. 114 115 116 Perroy (‒), ‒. Perroy (), ( Jan. ). Ibid. . 117 118 Ibid. . Ibid. ‒. 112 113
· Françoise Autrand the Gascon appeals (‒).119 All of their proposals took this obstacle into account, whether attempting to circumvent it or confronting it directly. Thus, in September , secret proposals were sent to the two kings. Their goal was none other than to define ‘sovereignty and resort’ in order to limit jurisdiction ‘very narrowly’ and specify how the king of France might use it.120 Since it transpired that the king of France would not concede the principle, the tireless negotiators tried to solve the problem in practical ways. This was futile. The king would not allow his sovereignty to be the subject of debate in practice or in theory. This was an issue which went beyond the Guyenne affair. Charles V and his counsellors wanted to make the point clearly once and for all and, in order to do this, sent Jean Le Fèvre, abbot of Saint-Vaast of Arras to Bruges in December . His letter of credence clarified the point.121 After declaring that the king would not yield jurisdiction ‘for any occurrence, cause, or reason’, the abbot gave the king’s reasons, as well listed and articulate as the arguments in a case before the Parlement. One reason is revealing: if the king yielded, it would be a ‘bad example’, since the princes of the kingdom could, just as the king of England had, make war ‘to remove themselves from his sovereignty and jurisdiction’. The same would happen in the case of a division between the king’s sons and brothers, and this would be unreasonable ‘quia jura regni sunt indivisibilia [since the laws of the kingdom are indivisible]’.122 In consequence, the instructions to the ambassadors in are a firm reminder of the royal decision not to concede ‘homage, sovereignty, and resort’.123 In , when negotiations were being held at Bruges with the papal legates and the English, at Paris, in the scholarly entourage of Charles V, the Somnium viridarii was being compiled. Two years later, the Songe du Vergier, the French translation, included in a new chapter which was not in the Somnium viridarii an exposition of the French position toward England.124 If the king could alienate sovereignty and last resort over Guyenne, I will tell you that he can also alienate sovereignty and last resort over Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy, and Picardy, and generally over all the other parts of his kingdom, and thus he will remove the flowers and all the precious gems from such a noble crown, as is that of the kingdom of France.125
The fate of Guyenne did not merely involve the relations of the king of France with the king of England, but with all the princes of the kingdom. Sovereignty was not just at the heart of the Anglo-French conflict, it was the keystone of the French 119 121 122 124 125
120 Chaplais (). Perroy (), ‒. Perroy (‒); Perroy (), ‒. Gloss cited in Le songe du vergier, ed. Schnerb-Lièvre (), i, . Le songe du vergier, ed. Schnerb-Lièvre (), i, ‒. Ibid. .
123
Perroy (), .
The Peacemakers and the State · monarchy. During the reign of Charles V, an equilibrium of a kind was generally established between the unity and immensity of the kingdom, between the honour of the Crown of France and the reality of the territorial state. The kingdom was a sort of community of principalities united under royal sovereignty, and a kind of system into which the king of England could not, and did not wish, to enter. It was also perhaps for this reason that the king of France was so attached to the title of ‘sovereign’, as the Roman emperors to ‘Augustus’, ‘because they must make their Empire grow’.126 Thus in all the correspondence exchanged during the negotiations of Bruges, the papal legates addressed their letters to the king of England our very dear and respected lord’, whereas Charles V is always addressed as ‘our very respected king and sovereign lord’. The state of France in the fourteenth century was a fragile construction with sovereignty as its keystone. It was this that thwarted the efforts of the peacemakers. 126
Ibid.
War and International Law in Europe Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries Heinz Duchhardt
The dynamics of the early modern state, its genesis, consolidation and perfection, as well as the long process of creating international law are only seemingly two parallel and unconnected processes. If international law, as it was constituted and consolidated from the end of the sixteenth century, tried to find common rules for peace-making and, above all, for the right to wage war (ius ad bellum) as well as for the conduct of war (ius in bello), there was one necessary precondition: a clear definition of those who were entitled to wage war and to make peace. That is, the right to wage war had to be confined to both the internally and externally ‘sovereign state’. The exclusion of individual persons, corporations or semi-political associations (Einungen) from international relations, the limitation of the group of ‘subjects of international law’ to states which were not restricted in their freedom of action by feudal or other rights of foreign rulers must be regarded as one of the great achievements of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century international law. In the medieval theory of war this decision—not only to confine the right to wage war to sovereign states but also to legalize and legitimize each war conducted by a sovereign—could not have been foreseen for long. * * * Hence it appears that it is necessary to look back at the Middle Ages in order to understand the attitude of ‘modern’ international law towards the problem of war. The characteristic feature of all theoretical discussion of war during the Middle Ages is the close connection of war and law. After Thomas Aquinas, even after This chapter was translated from the German by Marianne Hopmann, MA.
· Heinz Duchhardt St Augustine, war was understood by theologians and philosophers to be a reaction to an infringement of a legal order. War was therefore legal settlement achieved through violent means within an order that considered such violence legitimate.1 The reference to philosophers and, above all, theologians reflects the fact that, during the early and the high Middle Ages, all discussion of war was substantially a result of the dichotomy between the biblical commandment of peace and love on the one hand and political reality on the other. Part of this political reality was, fundamentally and throughout Europe, the right to private warfare, to feud, as a characteristic feature of constitutional and social structures: a form of law enforcement essentially resulting from the lack of institutions and mechanisms capable of safeguarding and restoring the legal order.2 For the medieval theorists and jurists, and according to common opinion, war was principally and essentially nothing but a feud (if an especially costly one) taking place, in general, within the same legal forms as a feud—announcement (Absage), periods of time between the announcement and the beginning of hostilities, sparing individuals and institutions unfit for the feud—the ‘formalization’ of which (Dickmann) was governed by the mechanisms established by the feud system since the era of the Hohenstaufen. Although the circle of those entitled to conduct a feud (in other words, war) had been very large for a long time and the mechanisms for preventing war—for instance, institutional arbitration—remained somewhat embryonic and regionally limited, it would be totally misleading to believe that the late Middle Ages had been shaped by a continual sequence of successive or even simultaneous wars on a smaller or larger scale with proportionate bloodshed. Certainly in theory, and possibly most of the time in practice, the conduct of war was tempered—excesses obviously not being the rule—and the potential violence (accepted as legitimate) somewhat minimized, because it was always a question ‘only’ of forcing the adversary to accept one’s own legal viewpoint rather than destroying him. It was probably in part a result of this background (that is, the absence of any war of vast and really catastrophic dimensions), that no doubts about the legitimacy of war were openly articulated during the Middle Ages.3 The medieval thinkers’ crucial problem was to formulate a theory reconciling war and Christian doctrine: in other words, the permissibility of war in certain conditions in the sense of its congruity with Holy Scripture. The decisive keywords had been assigned and defined by St Augustine—iusta causa, intentio recta, and so on. Notwithstanding the lack of any systematic approach, he undoubtedly 1 For the medieval law of war: Janssen (); Russell (). Preceding articles by Fritz Dickmann furnish a comprehensive work, although uncompleted: Dickmann (). 2 See inter al. Asmus (). 3 For war in the Middle Ages: fundamentally, Contamine (b).
War and International Law · deserves credit for overcoming the early Church’s condemnation of war by integrating the ancient ideas of just war into the Christian concept of the world and of man and by transforming the ancient bellum iustum into a religious war waged to establish the divine world order and to restore a broken legal order. By the close of the Middle Ages, however, the Decretum Gratiani and, above all, the theory of Thomas Aquinas were widely considered valid and binding. It was Aquinas’ achievement not to develop a new theory of war, not even to give a refined explanation of the Augustinian theory, but rather to integrate St Augustine’s fundamental ideas into a clear and logical conceptual system. For Aquinas war is just and compatible with the Christian doctrine if three conditions are fulfilled: auctoritas principis, intentio recta of the belligerents, iusta causa. In the succeeding centuries, there was a wide-ranging and often highly controversial discussion about each of these conditions which cannot be outlined here in all its complexity. For as to the crucial question of which princeps was entitled to wage war—even Aquinas probably thought mainly of ‘sovereign’ states while obviously rejecting the entire feud-based system of private warfare—Pope Innocent IV established the parameters of the debate by reserving the right to wage war to that prince ‘qui superiorem non habet [who has no superior]’. This definition was to shape all future debates and influence considerably the early modern process of state-building. The other two prerequisites mentioned by Aquinas posed much greater problems for moral theologians and publicists. Both could not easily find convincing answers, because the ‘rightness’ of an intentio was, by nature, difficult to ascertain and to prove, and the question of iusta causa was unanswerable for the simple reason that the late Middle Ages had no neutral and accepted institution capable of making decisions about ‘justice’ in international conflicts—the efforts on the part of the popes to claim such competence for the Curia had been failing to win acceptance in political practice since the time of Gregory VII. Nevertheless, both formulae became common European thought far into the modern period: the influence and efficacy of the idea that war was waged to redress and punish an injustice—deriving from the iusta causa formula—and was thus a legal remedy can hardly be overestimated. Of course, the theologians of the high and the late Middle Ages not only faced the task of repeatedly reinterpreting Thomist war theory, but they also had difficulty in establishing a general consensus as to the Church’s attitude towards warfare.4 This holds true especially for the question as to whether the Church was permitted to take up arms in order to fight against heretics or was only allowed to direct the secular powers to take the relevant measures or recommend such measures to them. The problem of ‘Holy War’ (in the sense of an autonomous 4
See, fundamentally, Hehl ().
· Heinz Duchhardt venture of the Roman Church against heretics and infidels) was a controversial topic that was infinitely more important to the publicists than the general theory of war, stemming from their attitude towards the curial doctrine developed especially by Innocent III and the Lateran Council of . For this problem was connected with the exciting question of the rank and competence of the universal powers per se. * * * By the close of the Middle Ages, there was a clear tendency in many parts of Europe to limit internal wars and feuds—in the German Empire, for instance, by means of confederations for the preservation of the public peace (Landfriedensorganisationen), by arbitration and by creating a new central court of justice—an area in which the Peace of God movement had never really succeeded. Nevertheless, the dissolution of religious unity was unintentionally to reverse this trend. The religious civil wars affecting France, the Netherlands, and (somewhat intermittently) the German Empire produced an entirely new type of war, rendering earlier theoretical problems more or less obsolete. If, until this period, the theoreticians of war had been able to argue that the protagonists had a shared legal system and a common mentality (thus making it possible to equate war with a violent legal dispute), this fiction was now eliminated because the different religious camps had developed different legal systems. The ferocity of the religious wars was a result of a common perception that ‘the other’ was an outlaw and might be annihilated, if not unhesitatingly at least without too many scruples. While the legal system fell apart, war was gathering momentum and became more brutal. The fiction that war was a violent legal dispute was bound to lose its credibility. Such doubts about the justifiability of war from the perspective of ‘justice’ in the moral–theological sense arose with a certain necessity, and against the background of a general expansion in the functions of the state; they were bound both to be increased and at the same time to take a positive turn: in both thought and political practice war was increasingly separated from the role it derived from the exercise of political power; instead, it acquired the quality of a characteristic feature of a sovereign state.5 Not all contemporaries were equally aware of this, but from the early sixteenth century onwards it had been impossible to overlook this trend. However, sixteenth-century thinkers faced an additional problem: not only was a united Christendom (christianitas) dissolving, which itself caused wars and 5
See also Behnen (), .
War and International Law · allowed conflicts to assume a completely new dimension, but Europe had also to recognize that there was a world beyond Christendom which had to be integrated into the traditional world view and for which there was as yet no code of behaviour. For it was precisely in the New World that the intermediate state between war and peace, not unknown to the Middle Ages, was perpetuated and multiplied, for which the publicists were to create the tag, ‘No peace beyond the line’, and politicians develop the idea of so-called ‘lines of friendship’ (Freundschaftslinien), separating the realm of the law of nations from that of the state of nature where the law of the strongest prevailed. In the Old World this intermediate state took shape, for instance, in the institutions of reprisal and privateering. The first and most resolute reaction to these problems was to come from the late Spanish Scholastics, to whom recent research ascribes the origins of modern international law, narrowly defined. It was not by chance that the Spanish felt particularly challenged by problems concerning the treatment of non-Christian peoples and the decline of the universalist world-view that had hitherto prevailed, stimulating them to develop new moral philosophical theories of international politics (and, moreover, to exert influence upon practical politics).6 It is notable, at first, that the Spanish theologians—Vitoria first and foremost7— totally and definitively dismissed the traditional model of thought as far as the precondition of the iusta causa (‘just cause’) was concerned. According to the Christian world-view and thus also the ‘philosophy’ of the Spanish conquista, iusta causa implied that any war against infidels was legitimate. However, Vitoria not only questioned the sum and substance of this doctrine but he went even further: against the background of the new overseas experience—Vitoria’s decisive book, published posthumously on the basis of lecture notes, is entitled De iure belli Hispanorum in barbaros8—the Spanish theologians took the view that ignorantia on one side, that is, the absence of any sense of right and wrong, nullified the iniustitia of an objectively guilty act, and thus even a war waged by the American natives against the Spanish conquerors could subjectively be iusta causa. Thus the path was paved for the idea that in a war both belligerents—at first subjectively— defended a just cause, and Spanish lawyers and theologians (such as Luis Molina), followed suit without exception. Now it was only a question of time before this viewpoint was objectively delineated, that is a criterion conceived which categorized as ‘just’ on both sides any war waged by powers entitled to wage war, not depending on the legal title which could hardly ever be judged upon. Schmitt () is fundamental for early modern international law; criticized in Wolff (), pt . See also Grewe (). 7 Vitoria’s work is rendered relatively accessible through Ulrich Matz’s biographical sketch: Maier (), ‒. 8 Vitoria, ed. Schätzel (). 6
· Heinz Duchhardt The Spanish theologians, led by Vitoria and Suarez,9 are of central importance in the history of international law, whose distinctive significance (ius gentium in the sense of the law of states and the law between the states) they were the first to specify. They not only enriched the discussion of bellum iustum (the ‘just war’) for the first time precisely by linking ius ad bellum with summa potestas iurisdictionis but, in explicit difference from Thomas Aquinas, they conceived a natural law of a new kind that renounced specific Christian elements. The high scholastic law of nature had taken its departure from human reason inspired by God and thus from the dependency of all human sociability on God. The Spanish late scholastic ‘modern’ law of nature, by contrast, took as its basis human rationality in the sense of a given fact that was not to be questioned. This was not only a symptom of a general secularization of thought (implying, among other things, the restriction of the two universal powers to their own realms) but also bore materially upon the theory of inter-state relations from which there was henceforth no longer any convincing reason to exclude non-Christians, civilized heathen states, and even the political systems of the ‘wild’ (that is, savage) New World. Moreover, since ratio and sociability of men, and then of states, were no longer conceived in terms of God’s love or rejection, the Spanish late Scholastics necessarily came to define the state of nature as a principally peaceful condition. However, the essentially ‘peaceful’ law of nature, as postulated by the Spanish theologians, did not preclude war based on the right of states to take measures against other states infringing fundamental human rights. The Spanish theologians wished to restrict war to the inter-state level, more explicitly than their intellectual forerunners had done. It was once more Vitoria, with his rejection (derived from the idea of the perfect communitas) of the intermediary feudal powers’ right to wage war, who had shown the way. With his intellectual successors (such as Suarez, Ayala, and Gentili, who had all experienced the Dutch Revolt), this position becomes even more comprehensible, namely, that the right to wage war had to be withheld from the intermediate, non-sovereign feudal forces within a state or, indeed, removed from them. According to this view, war is possible only between res publicae perfectae as unities belonging to sovereign princes; it is, nevertheless, an exceptional interstate condition, a means to be used only in order to restore and to secure peace between states based upon iustitia. Still more important for the future course of this debate, however, was the fact that, with regard to the old controversy as to who was to decide what was a ‘just war’, the justice of the cause for which each belligerent fought, Suarez ascribed decisive competence to the sovereign— and to him alone—thus, finally, considering war and the right to wage war the
9
For Suarez: Soder (); but see also esp. Behnen (), ‒. Suarez, ed. de Vries ().
War and International Law · ‘expression and function of state sovereignty’10 the sovereign was to decide to the best of his knowledge and belief whether his cause was ‘just’. As a result, the idea that both belligerents might claim the title for themselves and thus both wage a ‘just’ war (which had been considered problematic, if not absurd, by medieval thinkers and even by Vitoria) could almost be set up as a norm. The question of the ‘just cause’ became irrelevant once the formal conditions for waging war became the criteria for a just war: the ground had been prepared for overcoming the discrediting notion of war. With this, the Spanish theologians simultaneously accounted for the restructuring of the European community of states: a community of states in which— grosso modo—each state was individually confronted, during the period from to , with, on the one hand, enormous internal challenges and threats and, on the other, in which universalist concepts were increasingly questioned and the early modern state was strengthened to such an extent that all outside interference was rejected. In this system of states, still lacking a real order, three things could not be doubted: that, notwithstanding the more or less unrealistic and utopian ideas developed by outsiders (such as Sebastian Franck), war would maintain its position; that, as Suarez was the first to conceive quite clearly, the right to wage war was governed by the interests and necessitates of the individual states; that the medieval issue of the ‘just war’ was no longer up-to-date and therefore no longer sufficed. The question of iusta causa had, after all, been one of morality, theology, and conscience; this approach was bound to become obsolete within a Europe constituting itself anew, witnessing the change in its dominant perspectives, i.e. competition between states, and the principle of ‘reason of state’. It is no coincidence that in Bodin’s general theory of state and his doctrine of sovereignty, ius belli ac pacis forms part of the sovereign’s territorial rights as a matter of course, and it is no less significant that in Justus Lipsius’s conception of the military- and power-state, formulated a little later, the ruler’s omnicompetence in the military sphere was constitutive for his supreme jurisdiction, and thus for his sovereignty. However, the Spanish thinkers took another step of comparable importance: if the community of states did not ultimately wish to interfere in the sovereign’s free decision concerning ius belli, that is ius ad bellum, the right to wage war, the question was all the more obvious and simultaneously more challenging as to whether war as such could be subjected to legal rules. Once again, the main outlines of the late scholastic theory of natural law had already been shaped by Vitoria: any right to wage war, and any war, had to be orientated towards the common good of states and of the community of states, respectively, and delimited by it. His
10
Behnen (), .
· Heinz Duchhardt successors, however—nolens volens—were more precise, and in this context the Spanish lawyer and military judge Ayala should receive especial mention. It is no coincidence that his book of the law of war (De jure [belli] et officiis bellicis et disciplina militari, published in )11 was included in the famous series, ‘Classics of International Law’. Profoundly influenced by the negative experience of the Dutch Revolt, he raised the question whether war, by its nature full of horror and injustice—as he had witnessed at first hand—was capable of being regulated by legal stipulations. Ayala, like some of his contemporaries, defended the position that ius belli was the concern of the sovereign ruler alone; if a sovereign—to his best knowledge and belief, of course—started a war, it was eo ipso a just war (notably, in the eyes of an author coloured by his experiences of civil war, the suppression of rebellion among his subjects was viewed as iustissima causa, ‘a most just cause’). The way in which Ayala follows up these thoughts was bold: if a war— in this point he fully adopts Vitoria’s theory—is waged by sovereigns who are both entitled to do so, it is a just war on both sides, and this is bound to have consequences for the conduct of war itself. Since the full severity and ferocity of contemporary military practice could only be unleashed on an unjust enemy, and since such an unjust enemy no longer existed in political reality (there was only the iustus hostis, the ‘just enemy’), the victor of such a mutually just war had to adhere to precise rules: he had to refrain from any form of cruelty to his enemies, especially those taken prisoner, and warfare had to be humanized; furthermore, in peace-making above all the assumption that the victor could act as judge of his justly vanquished opponent had to be abandoned. Peace-making was no longer a legal decision (decisio) or punishment but rather a transactio, a compromise on conflicting claims between two fundamentally equal partners. Ayala not only deserves recognition because Grotius occasionally referred to him, but also because research considers him one of the most original innovators of the early theory of international law. With his intellectual achievement he left the Middle Ages definitively behind: arguments from moral theology gave way, once and for all, to a theory of the law of war that was juridical in outlook. The position of theologians and philosophers since St Augustine and Aquinas, which had ascribed to war the role of a mere legal remedy, had become untenable. This had come about when the core of the doctrine, iusta causa, had been questioned and finally dismissed by Ayala’s iusta causa ex utraque parte, the idea that the ‘justice’ of war resulted from the mere right to wage it. Since auctoritas principis had become the only prerequisite for a just war, war turned from being a legal remedy in the last resort to becoming a ‘legally sanctioned means of self-help of each
11
Ayala, ed. Westlake (). For Ayala, see also Fraga Iribarne ().
War and International Law · sovereign state’.12 Lipsius13 and the Calvinist theory of state (with Daneau and Althusius as its principal exponents),14 then developed the doctrine of ‘necessary’ war, intended as an outright antithesis to the doctrine of ‘just’ war, the necessitas of which was defined by the prince and the main objective of which had always to be the conservatio reipublicae (preservation of the public weal). Despite the fundamental importance of Ayala’s statements on ius in bello (the law of warfare), as a whole they had been somewhat fragmentary and were far from constituting a canon of rules or a code of behaviour for belligerents in times of war. In this respect, it was the Italian lawyer, Alberico Gentili, living and teaching in Oxford, who, a few years after Ayala’s work had been published, took a decisive step forward with his De iure belli libri tres.15 Grotius numbers him, with Ayala, among his predecessors, although his references lack respect and are sometimes unjust. As far as the basic concept of the law of war is concerned the Spaniard and the Italian hardly disagree. For Gentili war is ‘iusta contentio publicorum armorum [ just struggle of public arms]’ where iusta not only expresses mutual legality and legitimacy but also encompasses the additional sense of ‘appropriate’, that is, in accordance with the formalities and rules of war. Gentili, too, is convinced that any war waged by a power entitled to go to war is just eo ipso (subjectively and objectively); at the same time, he warns urgently against considering a military victory as ‘proof ’ that the victorious party had defended a ‘more just’ cause. Gentili’s real achievement, however, as I have already said, is his further development of ius in bello, the law of warfare. At the top of his code of rules and norms he asserts that war must be declared appropriately. To Gentili this meant very much more than a mere formality but rather, as it were, a ‘last-resort’ procedure which might avert war at the eleventh hour. He believed that between the declaration of war and the opening of hostilities there should be a moratorium of thirty-three days, a cooling-off period, as it were. This obligation to declare war appropriately could be dispensed with only in case of necessary immediate defence and the suppression of rebellion. As for the means to be employed in war, Gentili unambiguously rejects the use of poison; however, he thinks it admissable to employ ruses and spies (who, of course, could be killed at any time by the enemy because of the danger they presented to him). If one side infringed a truce, the other was entitled to recommence hostilities without further formality. Gentili treats the problems of prisoners of war in particular detail; he is first of the opinion—in contrast with the earlier views of, for instance, the glossators and post-glossators—that prisoners released on certain conditions are bound on oath 12 13 14 15
Dickmann (), . Significantly, Lipsius no longer even attempted to define just war: Starck (), . For Daneau and Althusius: Behnen (), an important essay. Gentili ( edn).
· Heinz Duchhardt to cease from combat. Prisoners of war had a status that was fundamentally different from that of normal captives and were in no circumstances to be killed unless they were guilty of grave offences and had violated the laws of war—here Gentili had in mind such instances as deserters later arrested by their own troops. Captive enemy officers were also to be treated mercifully and to be exchanged for enemy officers. At most, it was permissible to execute hostages given as pledges for the maintenance of a state of peace, if the enemy broke his word. Gentili’s standards in relation to the civilian population appear entirely modern: women—so long as they were not fulfilling soldiers’ duties—and children were to be spared; likewise unarmed clergymen and peasants. The same applied to travellers and merchants, because war was an armed conflict rather than a struggle with unarmed persons, a group Gentili called innocentes. In the theoretical sphere, Gentili’s law of warfare, inspired by a quest for humanity and by the idea of restraining the horrors of war and of bringing about chivalrous warfare, perhaps marked the decisive change from focusing attention on the question of ius ad bellum, which was now regarded as definitely decided upon, to concentrating on the behaviour of the hostile parties. Significantly, it was once more a man with experience of the Dutch Revolt and who had witnessed the ‘Teutscher Krieg’ which had just broken out on his doorstep who summarized and elaborated Gentili’s approach and who was even more effective in ensuring that his concepts became the standard arguments of future lawyers. Not dissimilar to Hobbes’s later Leviathan written in exile in France, Hugo Grotius’s opus maximum of , De iure belli ac pacis (a title which accurately and not by chance reflects the priority accorded to war rather than peace), became the basic manual for both the theoretical justification and the entire practice of the international law of war as well as of international law in general for the whole period of the ancien régime in Europe. It was the ‘gospel’ of all diplomats and ministers of foreign affairs. With its many reprints and translations it features at the very top of the ‘bestseller lists’ of ancien régime Europe. Whether it is true that most military leaders carried the book in their luggage (as is recorded of Gustavus Adolphus on his German campaigns)16, is a much knottier question. On the eve of the Thirty Years’ War there was a wealth of writings on war techniques, and upon war and military organization, available to military practitioners, for instance on fortification and military discipline, on strategic and tactical questions, on the quality and function of heavy guns, and many other topics. Such writings of course also occasionally reflected on the nature of war or the behaviour of soldiers towards the civilian population, but, in general, they clearly subordinated such questions to their other concerns. In Frommhold’s Newes 16
Hoffman-Loerzer (), n. .
War and International Law · Kriegs-Büchelein (), for example, the law of war notably features only in the appendix to the second part.17 Unlike France (Daneau), for example, or the Netherlands (Lipsius), in the German Empire no complete war theory was published but only writing concerning the practice of warfare. Nevertheless, the titles compiled by Max Jähns18 at least reflect the fact that—incidentally, in parallel with the emergence of a specific German public law—since the end of the sixteenth century, a considerable number of German authors came to be preoccupied with the questions raised by Gentili and Ayala. These were, for the most part, doctoral theses (such as, Johannes Suevus, Juris bellici brevissima delineatio (); Heinrich Bocer, De bello (); Valentin Riemer, De jure belli (); and Ernst Lothmann’s De jure bellico ()), whose reliance on the late Spanish scholastics, Gentili, or the Calvinist political theorists and their fundamental regard for war and simultaneous contempt for peace, which they considered the manifestation of dullness and idleness,19 remains to be examined in detail. But they demonstrate that even the Empire and its lawyers (hitherto somewhat unpolitical) came to be moved by the questions raised by south- and west-European authors. Without exception these works were published before Grotius’s Libri tres to which we must now return for its influence upon the publicists.20 The success of Grotius’ work continued to increase until the eighteenth century to such an extent that a special formal discipline of jurisprudence, ‘Grotianism’ (Grotianistik) was developed. However, this success is somewhat surprising, because Grotius’s work in no way presents a consistent and complete system of ideas but is full of contradictions and logical inconsistencies—or at least it seems to be. Grotius’s suggestions for the treatment of war prisoners and innocentes demonstrate this: on the one hand, with reference to the law of nature, he did not hesitate to declare legitimate the execution both of soldiers taken prisoner and non-combatants including women and children; on the other hand, this is suddenly declared null and void because the evolved ius inter gentes, Christian charity, and the precepts of moderation impose narrow limitations upon the belligerents. It is evident, indeed, that the Dutch thinker and systematizer avoids any clear statement on the hierarchy of the principles of ius gentium naturale and ius gentium voluntarium (that is, the positive law of nations) which he sets in opposition to each other, and this makes the Libri tres a quarry for citations which allows a good many authors to make use of them for completely different interpretations. The centre-piece of Grotius’s deductions on the law of war is the notion of bellum solenne, ‘formal war’. Not every war is a bellum solenne—hence Grotius’s 18 19 Jähns (), ii, . Ibid. . See Behnen (), . For an approach to Grotius’s life and work, see two brief sketches: Hofmann (); HoffmanLoerzer (); both with references to the comprehensive earlier literature. See also Link (), and Bull et al. (), esp. the contribution by Draper. 17 20
· Heinz Duchhardt preoccupation with bellum privatum, that is, any kind of self-help by the individual or by ‘non-state’ groups against infringements of law. The concept bellum here is given a connotation of private and criminal law that differs considerably from modern understanding. In contrast to bellum privatum, only bellum solenne with its legal effects is described as a ‘just’ war (which each side can subjectively consider just). A bellum solenne must be waged by a sovereign ruler and started by a formal declaration of war. Quite traditionally scholastic in this respect, Grotius principally regards war as a legal position, an act of self-help instead of a legal dispute, a substitute for a working jurisdiction. The parties in such a formal war, the hostes (in the sense of a legal status) are, as a rule, bound to the regulations of the law of war, ius in bello, to which Grotius devotes the whole third book of his Ius belli ac pacis. We shall return to this law of warfare. No less important and influential for later treatments of the subject are Grotius’s observations concerning neutral parties, those ‘qui in bello medii sunt’. It is true that Grotius, as a result of his attempt to use classical concepts, avoids the term ‘neutrals’, but it is quite clear from the distinctions he uses when referring to them that this is what he is speaking about. Non-belligerent states and sovereigns are to refrain from giving any support to a party waging an unjust war and, conversely, they are not to obstruct the efforts of a party conducting a bellum solenne. If it is unclear to the non-participants which party defends the just cause in a particular case they are to adhere strictly to the principle of impartiality which (Grotius suggests) would best be demonstrated and emphasized by making bilateral treaties with both parties stipulating the legal position of ‘neutrality’, in the sense of refraining from giving support to either party. Hitherto, the institution of neutrality had been secondary to international lawyers; Grotius was the first to discuss it in more detail. This may result from the fact that neutrality had hitherto been rather marginal to practical politics—neutrality, that is, in the sense of a state’s non-participation in a war, which gave it an autonomous or contractual status of inviolability and impartiality towards the belligerent parties. Although the fifteenth century saw agreements and treaties by which states or pre-state territories claimed, or agreed with belligerents upon, their own neutrality in relation to armed conflicts, the practice of neutrality remained insecure to a high degree. For instance, the question of permitting alien troops to march through ‘neutral’ territory remained vexed. Research is rather unsatisfactory in this area, but it appears that the law of neutrality for naval warfare was first settled by more definite contractual forms and formulae, whereas the concept of neutrality for land warfare remained vague at least until the initial phase of the Thirty Years’ War; the right of marching through a territory of neutral states, mentioned above, was being demanded up to the early eighteenth century, and Grotius, too, considered it legitimate. In any case, more intensive
War and International Law · discussion of the forms and criteria of neutrality began only after the publication of Grotius’s work although perhaps stimulated by it. Although the pertinent chapters in the third book form only a small part of the whole spectrum of Grotius’s work, he laid the foundations for the law for warfare in particular. His emotional involvement with the creation of a binding ius in bello can certainly not be denied; in the preface of his Libri tres he complains movingly about the disastrous decline of law and customs during the religious wars he had witnessed. Grotius speaks uncompromisingly of ‘degenerate warfare’, which causes anybody to take up arms for futile or irrelevant reasons which serve to legitimize almost any ‘crimes’, once arms have been taken up. From this recognition Grotius developed the two main objectives of his work: first, urgently to admonish sovereigns and nations to be reluctant in resorting to armed violence, to go to war only for reasons of justice, and even in such a case to give priority to peaceful means of settling the conflict—even to the extent of finding a decision by casting lots or fighting duels between princes. Secondly, his aim was to show that when war was really inevitable, warfare was to be restrained, tempered, humanized, and regionally limited. Principally, war—this is the thought Grotius brought to a conclusion for the first time—is to be subject to the rules of war: the perennially valid laws of mankind were not to be suspended during war. As for this legal order at war, ius in bello, Grotius in fact largely perpetuated his predecessors’ reflections without always admitting this as candidly as would have been desirable. In the so-called ‘Age of Religion’, the frequent violent religious conflicts had made the lack of a humanizing international law of war one of the most pressing legal needs of the epoch—a law of war which would aim to eliminate from warfare inhuman hardship and brutality. With all the shifts in his thought, and his logical inconsistencies, Grotius believed a considerable degree of arbitrary action allowable, even to the extent of permitting the seizure of private property and the robbery of churches; nevertheless, the Dutch lawyer pointed the way forward in two important areas. First, his thought limited the task of making war to the paid troops who were to fight, as it were, amidst a civilian population which, in general, was to continue to lead a peaceful existence; in other words, he tried to separate war strictly from the rest of public life. Secondly, he called for tempered warfare which refrained from using the whole range of weapons and technical means potentially available: for instance, Grotius pleaded passionately for the introduction at least of moral, if not of legal, sanctions against certain weapons that had particularly devastating or incalculable effects, such as, poisoned ammunition or blades, or even chain-shot or spiked ammunition. In this respect, Grotius was remarkably ‘innovatory’ and set the fashion which has continued to the present day, to outlaw certain arms systems. He also wanted the soldiers on the battlefield to be subjected to strict
· Heinz Duchhardt restraints and the rape of women especially to be severely punished. Such restrictions, however, had already been considered by some of his predecessors. To the modern reader such measures may still seem remote from any desirable standard of restraint upon the warring parties; at the time, however, it was a considerable step forward. This is evident when Grotius’s writings are compared with those of other near-contemporary authors. Daneau, for instance, openly declared cruel warfare permissible and just, and Althusius approved all manner of atrocities, including the expulsion of whole populations, while viewing a ‘scorched earth’ policy as a routinely legitimate law of war.21 To Grotius, at any rate, such a conscious radicalization of warfare was out of the question; rather, he followed Lipsius in turning against military brutalization. Whether Grotius really had a humanizing influence upon the military practice of the period that followed has often been debated. It cannot be decided with certainty. Nor can the hypothesis be proved or refuted that Grotius, with his reference to ‘military custom’ and ius naturale which leave much scope for arbitrary action, not only failed to maintain the standard set by the positive law of his time but even contributed, indirectly, to the growing barbarism of the Thirty Years’ War. Beside the immediate impact of Grotius’s work on specialized juridical research,22 which can also be observed in Germany, warfare was undoubtedly changing during the ‘Age of Absolutism’. Increasingly, a practice of warfare came to prevail which regarded as its proper aim not to fight battles but rather—given, too, that manpower was scarce—to avoid them; and it was one which also, as a rule, tried to save the country from the effects of war: the ‘scorched earth’ policy during the Nine Years’ War was a somewhat atypical exception to this rule. This does not mean that war—which became virtually an everyday norm during the reign of Louis XIV23—did not affect the unarmed population (it did, for example in the form of forced contributions, demands for hostages, or billeting), but military practice tended to take care to ensure that only armies and navies became involved in a war. Contemporary war theory accordingly laid great emphasis on these two points—avoiding excessive casualties by means of ‘strategic’ warfare, and sparing the civilian population. Of course, the increase in the rationality of warfare and the endeavours to avoid excesses at the cost of the civilian population were also caused by the fact that the explosive force of religious conflicts had been distinctly diminishing since the midseventeenth century. This is not to say that religious factors had become unimportant in foreign and domestic policies (witness the problem of Catholics in England, the repeal of the Edict of Nantes in France, religious conflict in the Pal21 23
See Behnen (), ‒, . Duchhardt ().
22
Jähns (), ii, ‒.
War and International Law · atine, the Thorn Blutgericht, and so on). It is certainly controversial to date the end of the ‘Age of Religioun’ at c., but quite evidently the military atrocities fostered by religious tensions were becoming increasingly the exception. The fact that the political propagandists, and consequently also international treaty law, resorted to rational notions such as ‘balance of power’ or ‘Europe’ as fundamental principles free from religious connotations illuminates this transition to a secularized world-view from another perspective. To turn to post-Grotian international law, the way the English political theorist Thomas Hobbes reformulated the fundamental problems was highly significant. His work brought about ‘the definitive replacement of the scholastic-theological natural law tradition by a consistently rationalist system of natural law’.24 The question of how ‘sovereign’ powers were to be defined, discussed again and again throughout the preceding centuries, and with it the question of who had the right to wage war could finally be relinquished to the archives: henceforth there could be no doubt of the sole competence and simultaneous omnipotence of the princeps irrevocably appointed by state contract and endowed with total political power. For the relationship between the states, however, in the absence of effective mechanisms of command aiming to enforce legal norms, Hobbes’s consistent system of natural law meant that at the same time that the states were co-existing in a kind of state of nature, they were also waging war against each other (‘bellum omnium in omnes’). Finally, this meant that any binding order of international law was denied. The ‘ideological’ break with Grotius could not possibly have been more abrupt or more radical: there the endeavour to extend inter-state rules of law to the practice of war; here, now, the sobering proposition that life among states had to continue without the rules of law and had to resign itself to the permanent hostility of the civitates. Hobbes’s radical theory of natural law and political philosophy had great impact—extending, for example, as far as Spinoza’s thesis of an inter-state hostility that was almost a natural condition—and fundamentally shaped all theory and discussion of international law until the end of the ancien régime. It is interesting, however, that, at this point different branches of the science of international law developed on the basis of Hobbes’s theory of natural law. It is striking that none was conceived by French lawyers whose contribution to early modern international law was generally small—and this at the very time when France had assumed the leading role in European politics. In terms of historical influence Samuel von Pufendorf ’s approach was certainly the most important,25 continuing 24 Grewe (), . On Hobbes, see the brief but important article by Hans Maier in Maier (), ‒. 25 For an introduction to Pufendorf ’s work and thought: Notker Hammerstein’s article in Stolleis (), ‒.
· Heinz Duchhardt and referring back to that of Hobbes, and in dispute with Grotius, denying the existence of any arbitrary or positive international law in the sense of a law binding the states. However, Pufendorf differed from the English author, in considering the relationship of states not an area free of law in every respect but rather a legal order of a very specific structure leaving it to each individual state to look after its own rights and to take revenge for any violation of the ‘law of nations’. Pufendorf, whose reputation as a theorist and systematizer is controversial and still being evaluated by research, only dealt marginally with the international law of war. Quite distinct from the Pufendorf position was the view taken by the Kiel professor of natural and international law—the second chair of its kind after the Heidelberg professorship temporarily held by Pufendorf—Samuel Rachel. In addition to the ius gentium rooted in natural law, Rachel supposed the existence of an international law agreed upon by treaty (ius gentium secundarium) which, however, ranked second to the international law in the sense mentioned before (ius gentium primaevum). Yet while the results of these and other authors with regard to the international law of war in the narrow sense were relatively modest, and while the long lists at the Universities of Jena, Wittenberg, Leipzig, Helmstedt, and Altdorf of doctoral dissertations on such related themes as De bello, De belli justitia, De moralitate belli, and so on remain unexamined,26 the authors of the eighteenth century were to change the shape of their discipline. They were generally more directly influenced again by Hugo Grotius’s concept of international law, especially by his dual foundation in both natural and positive law. This is true, above all, of Christian Wolff and his student Emer de Vattel who, in the mid-eighteenth century, wrote the manual of international law which remained standard until the end of the ancien régime. Christian Wolff 27 must be numbered among the most vehement critics of Pufendorf ’s equation of natural and international law; in connecting natural and positive international law, however, he followed a path that was different from Rachel’s. Rather, Wolff developed Grotius’s idea of a society of nations based on international law and guided by the common good of the nations into a civitas maxima superior to the states. The laws of this civitas were to form the ius gentium voluntarium. The civitas maxima is Wolff ’s real innovation in the theory of international law: a voluntary association of nations to which they are assumed to have agreed irrevocably by treaty. The legal acts of this association are considered Jähns (), ii, , ff. For an introduction to Wolff’s thought and work: Marcel Thomann’s article in Stolleis (), ‒. 26 27
War and International Law · absolutely superior to the will of any individual state. Since, however, the member states of this association based on international law could not assemble for the purpose of making declaratory acts or formulating laws, the common good of the nations had to be defined with reference to those objectives to which the nations were bound to agree when making a decision founded on reason and natural law. Wolff even thought it necessary to go so far as to conceive of a fictitious rector civitatis maximae authorized to define, by reasonable deduction, what should be considered valid international law. It seems self-evident that Wolff ’s theory was far too rationalistic and abstract to meet with a resonance or acceptance similar to that of the more pragmatic teachings of Ayala or Grotius which were much more realistic. Very significantly, Wolff ’s most renowned student in the field of international law, Emer de Vattel, completely abandoned the basic thought of civitas maxima and, consequently, his work encountered a much more positive response among contemporary lawyers and bureaucrats. For the politicians and diplomats who were responsible for framing international legal relations, the practicability of any reflections on the international law of war and peace was, generally, much more important than the philosophical dimension of the problem. From the second half of the seventeenth century onwards an increasing differentiation can be observed, for conventional international law in general and the international law of war in particular. What has generally been observed of the nature of contracts during the early modern period is especially true of the international law of war: namely, that it consisted primarily in legal transactions; in other words, it regulated an individual case according to the principle of quid pro quo.28 This applies to neutrality agreements and either offensive or defensive alliances made for specific cases and situations, not claiming to be perpetual; it holds good, however, in particular for the many treaties relating to the exchange of prisoners of war which became customary during the wars of the later seventeenth century. In these ‘ransom treaties’, per caput amounts were stipulated for each individual commissioned rank which could be balanced out, so that in an ideal case the warring parties, at regular or irregular intervals, exchanged prisoners of war of equivalent monetary value. According to the numerous seventeenth-century Ranzions treaties, medical ranks, clergymen, and women were to be exchanged especially fast and at low rates, and this instruction seems to have been followed in most cases. This practice undoubtedly has something to do with the appeals for greater humanity in warfare that were made by international lawyers, but it must certainly also be seen in the light of contemporary demography, for manpower itself was ‘precious’, and in some 28
Grewe (), .
· Heinz Duchhardt European regions the fall in population due to the Thirty Years’ War was only offset in c.. This problematic nexus of law and the exchange of prisoners of war also produced a remarkably comprehensive literature29—doctoral dissertations again preponderant—which has apparently received very little consideration. Concurrent with these attempts at securing greater humanity in warfare, a particular kind of literature developed towards the end of the reign of Louis XIV which, through a fundamental criticism of war, tried to establish the vision and utopia of ‘eternal peace’. William Penn and the Abbé de Saint-Pierre are characteristic examples: they were authors who wanted—by what they believed to be rational means—to produce a state of international relations without wars. They must be regarded as pioneers of the general criticisms of war which were to be characteristic of the Enlightenment. For Enlightenment thinkers, however, the perception—still absent in the work of Saint-Pierre—of the connection between internal peace (based upon coercion and safeguarded by an oppressive political system) and international war was fundamental, and one reached only by the radical Enlightenment subsequent to Rousseau. Only at this point did theorists come to recognize that all war criticism had to be directed not to war itself but to the absolutist state. Several recent authors30 have demonstrated the extent to which Enlightenment thought—even that of military commanders—consistently moved on, at the end of the eighteenth century, to the view that the world’s real evil stemmed from the prince’s power over the armed forces, and that it was necessary to work towards complete renunciation of armed force. General military literature from the early Enlightenment onwards tended to concentrate on those arguments which tried to avoid the horror and atrocity of war; certain ‘nationally’ minded authors, for example Hans Friedrich von Fleming (author of Von vollkommenen Teutschen Soldaten [On the Perfect German Soldier], ), castigated the military misbehaviour of adversaries in the past (devastations, rape, poisoning, and so on)—on the part of France in this case—in order to characterize such excesses as both unthinkable and repulsive for their own time.31 Although it is true that writers on international law strictly defined came to be more explicit about the subject than their predecessors had been, it is, nevertheless, just as striking that even during the Enlightenment the topic of humanizing war, to say nothing of the idea of outlawing war altogether, was not integrated into the general philosophical and political discourse as fully as one might expect. This is well demonstrated in Vattel’s Droit des gens of , the last ‘classic’ of international law of the ancien régime.32 29 30 32
See oblique references in Jähns (), ii, , ‒. 31 Kunisch (). Jähns (), ii, ,. Ruddy (), is fundamental for Vattel. Vattel ( edn).
War and International Law · The third part of this clearly structured book, which was quite as influential as many of its predecessors particularly in the English-speaking world, is dedicated to the problem of war. Here, as in the work as a whole, Vattel deals with this topic not in the sense of reproducing the positive international law of the time but applying the principles of natural law to the life of states, and thus in the sense of political morality33 and practical political instruction.34 Like Wolff, Vattel considers war to be the process of enforcing a legal claim by violent means and thus in all its abnormality, a process compatible with natural law. Society, he reasoned, delegates the right to wage war to the relevant sovereign who is allowed to make use of it primarily when an injury, suffered or imminent, has to be deflected from his state: given this fact, even offensive measures taken as preventive action can be legitimate. However, Vattel strictly condemns wars waged for the sake of mere territorial expansion; the aim of all politics must cease to be the ‘goût barbare des conquêtes’, but it should be the ‘conservation’ of the states ‘et leur bien-être’. Thus the ‘necessity’ of war assumed a key position in Vattel’s theoretical edifice; from this perspective the idea that a war could be just on both sides is to a certain extent rejected, although Vattel has no wish to question the sovereign’s right to wage war on principle. For Vattel the question as to the point at which a sovereign had the right to take preventive measures when feeling threatened by a neighbour state posed a major problem; for against the background of the opening of the Seven Years’ War, this was an acutely delicate and relevant subject. Of course, no theorist could formulate a general rule for this problem applicable to practical politics, but Vattel realized that the evidence that a state was actually threatened had to be quite overwhelming in order to legitimize a preventive war. For Vattel preventive war, which he was capable of imagining even as a collective action of all nations against an ‘enemy of mankind’,35 was always an ultima ratio; greatly preferable was the formation of alliances by the states under threat to exert a corresponding political counter-pressure upon the potential aggressor as well as to act as a kind of military deterrent. In his view, the contemporary political situation—with a close network of states almost forming a ‘republic’ and held together by the will to maintain the status quo and the freedom of each—principally suggested such a reaction, that is, a political reaction to potential threats. Vattel’s vision of the société des nations the general duty of whose individual members was to contribute to the happiness and improvement of all the other nations36—this is the exciting innovatory quality of his international law, particularly since he assumed the right of the society of states to take measures against an individual state in certain circumstances, such as legitimate rebellion by the people against intolerable despotism (permissible intervention). 33
See Thévenaz (), .
34
Manz (), .
35
Ibid. .
36
Ibid. .
· Heinz Duchhardt For, even if such a league of nations guided by the common good were to exist, war cannot be excluded from its conduct; none the less, certain formalities had to be observed. For one thing—astonishing for his time when practical politics were far removed from this recurrent demand—before a war could be started there had to be a formal declaration of war in order to allow both parties time for second thoughts before opening hostilities; however, there is some indication that Vattel had in mind not so much the war-preventing function of a declaration of war, but that he regarded it primarily as a pause which might turn an undeclared war (in other words, an unregulated war) into one which was ‘regular’. Moreover, Vattel, clearly following Bynershoek’s book of , for the first time defined the notion of neutrality with such precision that it became feasible for it to be used in practical politics: he viewed it as strict impartiality combined with a strict embargo on all goods relevant to purposes of war based either on formal neutrality pacts or— more rarely—on the principles of natural law. Incidentally, in Vattel’s eyes, the renting of Swiss mercenaries did not infringe the neutral status of the confederation. In the third place, finally, from the premisses of natural law, Vattel formulated, in parts at least, a code of behaviour for the belligerent parties aiming at a high degree of moderation on both sides: as a rule, prisoners of war were not to be executed other than in the exceptional case of ‘necessity’; vicious murder and the use of poison (including poisoned weapons) were to be rejected and could not be justified either by the law of war or by natural law; the person of the sovereign was sacrosanct and must not be the aim of military operations. To today’s reader this, too, may seem fragmentary enough; it has to be pointed out once again, however, that Vattel did not aim to give practical instruction to contemporary politicians and generals but to examine, at an intellectual level, the structuring of inter-state relations on the premisses of natural law—in other words, the compatibility of natural and international law. He left no doubt that, according to his political philosophy, peace had to dominate the life of states. To him, peace (the subject of Book IV of his Droit des gens) was the normal state of human societies and of a society of states shaped by the principle of sovereign equality among its constituents—in this respect, the distance from Hobbes, and ultimately from Grotius, is especially marked. * * * Vattel’s work was the last comprehensive survey of European international law based on natural law: Mably’s works on international law (notably, Droit public de l’Europe fondé sur les traités, ), for example, already clearly point forwards to the period of revolutionary change. Reviewing more than two centuries of European discussion on international law and its theory with regard to war, the following results seem to be worthy of note:
War and International Law · • Philosophical and theological thought on the phenomenon of war had long (ultimately since St Augustine) been dominated by the interpretation of iusta causa. Any war could and was supposed to be no more than a legal remedy, a kind of substitute for a legal dispute in order to restore a broken legal order. • In accordance with the actual changes in the states’ structure and with the widening of the world-view, the late Spanish Scholastics abandoned the central thesis of the Christian doctrine of war, and reduced the moral and legal assessment of war to the question of the right to wage war. They made auctoritas principis the appropriate criterion of a ‘legitimate’ war. War was integrated into the Jus Publicum Europaeum thereby ‘not as a last resort but as a legally sanctioned means of self-help of each sovereign state’.37 • For war to be a means of self-help in the sense of a violent conflict between sovereign states, the sovereign must have an undisputed monopoly of force. External law of war and internal peace based on coercion are mutually implied conditions. • The attempts made by Ayala and Gentili through to Vattel to establish legal rules in the sense of norms of behaviour in war—which is finally unavoidable and also legitimate—thereby reducing if not excluding atrocities with the aim of making war less inhumane, ultimately remained fragmentary and marginal. The repeated assertion that ‘the humanization of war was initiated and achieved by the practice of war and not just by theory’38 appears to be affirmed. • Just as all international law in political practice has always been and remains only a law of disputed validity and of undisputed weakness,39 so the influence upon practical politics of theories of international law, most of them rather abstract, on the basis of Christian doctrine or natural law, must not be overrated. However, international law theories reflect the general structures of thought, and these were structures that principally conceded war its place in politics during the ancien régime, and questioned war, if at all, only from the perspective of the radical Enlightenment. 37
Dickmann ().
38
Wolff (), .
39
Dickmann ().
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L I S T O F C O N T R I B U TO R S
FRANÇOISE AUTRAND () is Professor of Medieval History at the École normale supérieure (France). Her specialist area of study is fourteenth- and fifteenthcentury France (powers, society). She is the author of an extensive study of the personnel of the Parlement of Paris, Naissance d’un grand corps de l’État. Les gens du Parlement de Paris, ‒ (Paris, ), as well as two biographies of kings of France, Charles VI. La folie du roi (Paris, ), and Charles V (Paris, ). She contributed to the Histoire de la fonction publique en France, edited by M. Pinet (Paris, ). JAAP R. BRUIJN () is Professor of Maritime History at the University of Leiden (Netherlands). He has published widely on the Dutch navy, the East India Company and Dutch–Asiatic shipping in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; with F. S. Gaastra, he has edited Ships, Sailors and Spices: East India Companies and Their Shipping in the th, th, and th Centuries (Amsterdam, ). PHILIPPE CONTAMINE () is a Member of the Institut de France and Professor at the Sorbonne (Paris). The author of numerous works relating to the state, war, nobility, the economy, and private life, above all in fourteenth- and fifteenthcentury France, his more recent publications include La noblesse au royaume de France de Philippe le Bel à Louis XII: Essai de synthèse (Paris, ). MARIA NADIA COVINI () is an Associate Professor of Medieval History at the Università degli Studi of Milan (Italy). She has worked on different facets of the civil and military institutions of the duchy of Milan in the fifteenth century. Her doctoral thesis focused on the Sforza: L’esercito del duca. Organizzazione militare e instituzioni al tempo degli Sforza, ‒ (Rome, ). HEINZ DUCHHARDT () is Professor of Modern History and Director of the Institute of European History at the University of Mainz (Germany). He is the author of many books on international relations, politics, and the constitutional history of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His publications include Balance of Power und Pentarchie. Internationale Beziehungen ‒ (Paderborn, ) and, with Andreas Kunz, he has edited ‘Europäische Geschichte’ als historiographisches Problem (Mainz, ). NORMAN HOUSLEY () is Professor of History at the University of Leicester
· List of Contributors (UK). He has written extensively on the history of the crusades and religious warfare from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, including The Later Crusades, ‒. BERNHARD R. KRÖNER () is Professor of Modern History at the University of Potsdam (Germany). He has written widely on the armies and fighting men of France in the seventeenth century and Prussia in the eighteenth. Among his works are Potsdam: Stadt, Armee, Residenz in der preussisch-deutschen Militärgeschichte (Berlin, ); Krieg und Frieden. Militär und Gesellschaft in der frühen Neuzeit (Paderborn, ). JAN LINDEGREN () is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Uppsala (Sweden). His published research covers the history of agriculture and the theory of history, but he has written above all on the relations between war and society in early modern Scandinavia—the social and economic consequences of war, war and the formation of the state, and the problems of logistics. JEAN MEYER () is Professor Emeritus at the Sorbonne (Paris) (France). He is the author of numerous works over a broad field—on nobility (Breton, French, and European), the state, war, and maritime economy—and these include Bossuet, La Chalotais, and Histoire de la marine française. LUIS A. RIBOT GARCIA () is Professor of Modern History at the University of Valladolid (Spain). He has published various studies on the revolt of Messina (‒), Spanish power in Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the system of defence and recruitment operated by the Spanish Habsburg monarchy.
INDEX
absolutism , , , , ‒ Académie des Sciences accomandigia , acostamiento ‒ Adam of Murimuth Adamites adhereza admiralties: Dutch Republic ‒, English ‒ Spanish Aelred of Rievaulx Agincourt, battle of () , , ‒ agrarian population ‒ recruitment of ‒, agricultural land, and army subsistence ‒ Alba, town of ‒ Albarno, Montréal d’ Albania Albornoz, Cardinal Gil , Alfonso X, king of León and Castile Algeria Algiers Alps, the , , Alsace , , Altopascio, battle of () Amboise, Charles d’, count of Brienne Amboise, Michel d’ America, discovery of American Independence, War of , French fleet and Amsterdam ‒, , , ancien régime ‒, ‒, , , diplomacy and horses international law and , ‒ military society and non-commissioned officers critical of Angennes, Jacques d’, lord of Maintenon Angevin party , , , Anglo-Dutch Wars Anjou Anne, Duchess of Burgundy
Antonio, F. Antwerp , Anzin Company Appennines ‒ Aquinas, St Thomas ‒, , , Aquitaine, duchy of Aragon Aragon, king of arbitration, papal archers ‒ Aristotle Armada campaign () , Armada de la Guardia Armada del Mar Océano Armagnac, Jean d’ , Armagnac-Burgundian war Armagnacs armed retinues arms manufacturers, Spanish army: bureaucratic revolution of ‒ capture and division of booty by ‒, ‒ communications competitiveness and ‒ discipline , embezzlement and feudalism ‒ nobility in ‒, ‒ permanent ‒ and politics professionalism ‒ recruitment ‒, ‒, size of , ‒, , , social stratification of ‒ specialized units in state ‒ subsistence for ‒ use of roads by ‒ vocation as defenders of the patria ‒ volunteers in ‒ war losses and ‒ weapons arquebusiers
· Index Arriagas, Julián de arrière ban , , , artillery , , , and booty astronomers atrocities free companies punishment of Aubert, Etienne Aubépine, Sébastien de l’, abbot of Bassefontaine Audrehem, marshal of Augustine of Hippo, St , ‒ Austria: Enlightenment and the military in military training in non-commissioned officers in officer corps in ‒, Austrian Succession, War of , Austro-Hungary Austro-Turkish limes Avignon: capture of conference of () ‒ Ayala, Balthazar , , ‒, Aycelin de Montaigu, Cardinal Gilles Azario, Pietro Balsac, Robert de Bandes d’Ordonnance Bank of England Barros, Cristóbal de Basin, Bishop Thomas battlegrounds ‒ battle(s): death in ‒, ‒ and prisoners of war and sanctified patriotism , , ‒ and speed of intelligence ‒ Bayard, chevalier ‒ Beaufort, Cardinal Beaujolais Beccarie de Pavie, Raymond de Belfort Bellec, Admiral Benedict XII, Pope Benedictine Order Bentivoglio, Giovanni Bergen-op-Zoom Berkeley, Thomas Berlin-Potsdam Bernard of Clairvaux, St ,
Bernard of Saxony-Weimar Bicocca, battle of Bilbao Black Death Black Forest Blondel, Robert ‒, Bocer, Heinrich Bodin, Jean Bohemia ‒, ‒, ‒ Bologna , Bologna, cardinal of ‒ Boniface VIII, Pope , booty: division of ‒ prisoners sold as private appropriation of ‒ regulation of ‒, ‒ as royal prerogative ‒, ‒, , , Vattel on Bordeaux truce of Bosc, Nicolas du Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne , Bossut, Abbé Boucicaut, Marshal Boulogne, count of Bouvines, battle of () , , Bovet (or Bonet), Honoré ‒ bowmen, reserve of ‒ Brabant line Brahe, Count Per Brandenburg, Margrave Albert Brandenburg-Prussia , ‒, , ‒ Brandolino, Tiberto Brantôme, Pierre de Bourdeilles, Seigneur de Brest ‒, , Brétigny-Calais treaty Brissac, marshal of ‒ Britain, see England; Scotland Brittany, duke of Brombergerkanal Brouage Bruges conferences ‒ Brussels ‒ Bucy, Simon de Buda ‒ Bueil, Jean de , , , ‒, , Bulgnéville, battle of bullion Buonconte, Bonifacio di Ugolino di
Index · bureaucracy ‒ military Burgundy , ‒, , , Bygdeå, Sweden ‒ cadets naval , ‒ Cadiz , Caen ‒ Caetani, Benedict Callot, Jacques Calvinism Cambrai, treaty of ‒, canals , ‒, ‒ Cane, Facino cannons , cantonal system , ‒ Capuchins Carmagnola, Francesco, count of , cartels Cartagena , cartography , ‒, Cassini, Jean-Dominique ‒ Castile , , , , ‒, , and Granada ‒ and militias nationalism recruitment ‒ war losses ‒ Castilian Succession, War of Castillon, battle of Catalonia , ‒, Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia Catholic Church ‒, and Hussites ‒ in Spain ‒ and war ‒ see also Papacy Cavalli, Iacopo cavalry , changes in ‒ French , , Italian and Italian city-states ‒ rapid-response role of Spanish Cavriana, meeting at () Ceresole, battle of Cerignola, battle of Cervantes, Miguel de ‒ Charles, duke of Normandy Charles-Emmanuel, duke of Savoy
Charles I, king of England ‒ Charles II, king of Spain Charles IV, king of France Charles IX, king of France Charles of Anjou, king of Naples and Sicily ‒ Charles of Blois, duke of Brittany , Charles of Evreux, king of Navarre , , ‒, , Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy , , Charles V, king of France , , , , , and Bruges conferences ‒ and diplomacy ‒ prayer for peace Charles V, king of Spain ‒, ‒ Charles VI, king of France Charles VII, king of France ‒, ‒, , ‒, ‒, Charles VIII, king of France , Charny, Geoffroy de ‒, Chartier, Alain , Chatham ‒ Châtillon, Jean de, lord of Troissy Chauveau, Renaud, bishop of Châlons Chelcˇicky´, Peter Chioggia, War of chivalry Choiseul, Étienne François, duc de , , ‒ Christian doctrine and warfare ‒ chronometers ‒ Cicero Cisneros, Cardinal city-states: armed retinues of expansionism of ‒ and free companies ‒ political developments in ‒, rural lords and ‒ cives , Civil War (English) civilians: disarming Gentili on treatment of Grotius on and immunity from war resistance to war ‒ Thirty Years War ‒ civitas maxima ‒ class and recruitment ‒, ‒ Clement VI, Pope , Clement VII, Pope ‒
· Index Clermont, Jacques de Clerville, Chevalier de Clovis Cocherel, battle of Colbert, Jean-Baptiste ‒, , , Colleoni, Bartolomeo Colonna, Prospero Columbus, Christopher commissions: purchasing of ‒ in Spanish army ‒ see also non-commissioned officers commissions of array , , , communes ‒ communications: varying speeds of Commynes, Philippe de , , company commanders , compulsory service ‒ comradeship Condé, Louis II de Bourbon, th Prince de condotte, see contracts condottieri (mercenary captains) , , ‒, ‒, , , conscientious objection conscription , ‒, , ‒ Prussia ‒ Sweden Constance, Council of Constantinople, fall of () , ‒ contracts: and city-states , , , ‒, international law mercenaries ransom , Copenhagen peace of Cornazzano, Antonio da Correggio, Giberto da Correggio, lordship of Cortesia da Serego couriers –, Couronne (French warship) Craon, Jean de, archbishop of Rheims Cravant, battle of Crécy, battle of , Cretan War criminals , ‒ Croatia Cromwell, Oliver , , ‒ crusades
against Hussites ‒, ‒, ‒ Joan of Arc ‒, , ‒, ‒ Spanish ‒ Czechs ‒, Dal Verme dynasty Damietta, capture of Dardanelles David, King David I, king of Scotland De Wildt family death sentences ‒ Della Scala, Verona , , demographics ‒ affected by war losses ‒ and army size and Thirty Years War , , Den Helder Denmark: economics of warfare economy ‒ navy ‒, population soldiers ‒ Deptford Deschamps, Eustache Dieppe diplomacy ‒ and Avignonese Papacy ‒ and length of negotiations school of discipline ‒ army Domazˇlice , Downs, The () Dreux, Robert, count of Du Bellay, Martin and Guillaume Dubois, Pierre , Dunkirk Spanish capture of – Dupont de Nemours, Éleuthère Durfort, Guillaume Raymond de Dutch Republic, see Netherlands Dutch Revolt , , East India Company (Dutch) , École de Mézières École militaire École Polytechnique economy ‒ Edmund, earl of Cambridge ‒ Edward, prince of Wales
Index · Edward I, king of England Edward II, king of England ‒ Edward III, king of England , , ‒, ‒, , El Ferrol , Elizabeth I, queen of England Emilia Romagna , , engineering corps England army recruitment in ‒, canals in compulsory service and crusades ‒ diplomacy in ‒, ‒ military administration navy ‒, ‒, ‒, ‒ and papal diplomacy ‒ peace negotiations with French ‒ and royal marriages ‒ size of army state militia , Enkhuizen ‒ Enlightenment , , and the army ‒ states and the ‒ Ensenada, marquis de la ‒ epidemics , Erasmus, Desiderius espionage Este of Ferrara , Estonia Etampes, Pierre d’ Etampes, castle of états à prépondérance civile/militaire , ‒ Eugene of Savoy, Prince Eulenbourg family Farnese, Alexander Ferdinand, Prince Ferdinand, the Catholic, king of Spain , , ‒ Fernandez de Cordoba, Gonzalo feudalism , ‒, , feuds Finland , Finowkanal firearms, see weapons firepower ‒ fireships Flanders , ‒, , , , Flanders, count of ,
Flavio, Biondo Fleming, Hans Friedrich von Flemish navy Florence , ‒, , , , ‒, Flushing Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de foreign affairs , ‒ Fornovo, battle of fortresses ‒, ‒ cartography and changes in warfare city ‒ and fiscal geography new or transformed towns ‒ in Tuscany types of ‒ Venetian ‒ Fra Moriale France , Anglo-French war ‒ and Aragon army: non-commissioned officers , ; officer corps ‒; recruitment ‒, ‒, , ‒; size of , ; standing army ‒, ‒ canals in ‒, ‒ diplomacy in ‒ and the Enlightenment ‘iron ring’ , ‒ and Italian States maps , ‒ military administration ‒ military training ‒ and papal diplomacy ‒ peace negotiations with English ‒ prisoners of war ‒ and royal marriages and sanctified patriotism ‒, ‒ state militia , ‒ use of cannon ‒ see also French navy Francis I, king of France , , Francis of Assisi Franck, Sebastian Franco-Piedmont frontier Franco-Spanish conflict (‒) francs-archers ‒, , , Frederick II (the Great), king of Prussia , , , , , ‒, Frederick V, Elector Palatine Frederick William I, king of Prussia , , , , , ,
· Index French navy ‒, ‒, , ‒ booty canal link to Paris Truguet reform of ‒ French Revolution ‒, ‒, , French Revolutionary Wars use of fortresses during ‒ Friedrichkanal frigates , Frinard, Martin Froissart, Jean , , Fronde party Frontenac line frontiers: fortified ‒, linear ‒, natural ‒ security of gabelles Gaguin, Robert Gallia clausa (‘France enclosed’) , García de Palacio, Diego garrisons , Gascon appeals (‒) Gaston IV, count of Foix Gendarmerie Geneva, count of Genoa , , , Fieschi dynasty Gente de Ordenanza Gentili, Alberico ‒, geo-history geo-politics ‒ German Empire , Germany , ‒ devastation after Thirty Years War ‒ mercenaries from size of army Swedish troops in Gerson, Jean Ghibelline party , , , ‒, Gibraltar Giles of Rome ‒ Giovanni da Legnano Glorious Revolution () , Godfrey of Fontaines Gonzaga, Don Ferrante ‒ Gonzaga, Mantua González de Castéjon, Pedro Gouffier, Guillaume, lord of Bonnivet grain ‒
Granada , , ‒ Granada, War of , granary-fortresses ‒ Grand Tours ‒ Grande Armée Grandson, battle of Graville, Guillaume de Great Schism , Great War of the North , ‒, ‒, Greece Gregory VII, Pope , Gregory XI, Pope ‘Grenier route’ Gringore, Pierre Grotius, Hugo , , , ‒ international law ‒ on private appropriation of booty Guelders, duke of Guelph party , ‒, ‒, , guerrilla warfare Guesclin, Bertrand du Guicciardini, Francesco Guiche, town of Guinegatte, battle of Guines, treaty of ‒ Guise, François de gunpowder , Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden , ‒, Gustavus I, king of Sweden Gustavus II Adolphus, king of Sweden , , Gustavus III, king of Sweden Guyenne, duchy of ‒, , Habsburg dynasty , loyalty to ‒ Habsburg Empire , , ‒ in Italy , ‒ Spain ‒, ‒ Hague, The Hamilton, Marquess of Hanover Hawkwood, John Henri IV, king of France , , Henry III, king of England Henry IV, king of England Henry of Ghent Henry of Huntingdon Henry the Navigator Henry V, king of England , Henry VI, king of England
Index · Henry VIII, king of England Heraklion ‒ Hobbes, Thomas , ‒ Hohenzollern dynasty , , Holy Land , , Hoorn ‒ horses: fodder , speed of travel on ‒ Hundred Years War (‒) , , , ‒ peace negotiations ‒ prisoners and booty treaties of see also Joan of Arc Hungarian plain Hungary ‒ and Venice Hus, John , Hussites , ‒, , ‒, ‒ Iberian peninsula , , , , ideology, and warfare , inalienability ‒ Indelningsverk individualism industrial capitalism industrial espionage infantry and Italian city-states ‒ Sweden ingénieurs du roi ‒ Innocent III, Pope Innocent IV, Pope Innocent VI, Pope , , , Inquisition Inscription Maritime , intelligence systems ‒ international law , ‒, ‒ ‘just war’ concept , ‒, , , ‒ works on ‒ invasion-routes ‒ Isaba, Marcos de Isabella, queen of France Isabella I, queen of Spain , , Italian Wars ‒ Italy: city-states, see city-states division of booty and European States ‒ free companies ‒ French invasion of –,
and Ottoman Empire permanent army in political system in – regional states – rural lords – Jacobins Jacquerie , Jacques of Bourbon Jakoubek of Strˇíbo – James II, king of Majorca Jerome of Prague Jerusalem , Jesuits , Jews, expulsion from Spain Joan of Arc ‒, , ‒, ‒ Joan of Duras John II (the Good), king of France ‒, , , John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy Joly, Guillaume ‒, Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor ‒ journeys , Julius Caesar , Junker Junta de Armadas ‒ Jura mountains ‘just war,’ concept of the , ‒, , , ‒ Jutland, battle of Juvénal des Ursins, Archbishop Jean , , Karlskrona, Sweden , Kirchholm, battle of Knäred, peace of knektehållet kronohandels system Krusˇina, baron Hynek , La Hire, Philippe de Labre, St Benedict Joseph Lancaster, duke of lances, see weapons: pikes Landi, lordship of the Landsknechte , ‒ Lannoy, Ghillebert de Lateran Council Latin America Launac, battle of Laurence of Brˇezová – Laurent (Anzin Company engineer) –
· Index Laurent de Villedeuil (Controller General of Finances) Le Baker of Swynebroke, Geoffrey , Le Baveux, Guy Le Fèvre, Jean, abbot of Saint-Vaast of Arras – Le Havre , League of Augsburg, Wars of the , Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm , Lemaire de Belges, Jean Léonard, Frédéric Leonardo da Vinci Leopold I, Emperor Lepanto campaign Les Invalides, Paris levée en masse levies , Liberty (formerly the Charles) Lifeguard Regiment (Swedish) ‒ Liguria Lille limes , , Lincoln, dean of Lipsius, Justus Livonia Lodi, Peace of () , Lohndorff family Lombardy , , , ‒ London longitude/latitude ‒ Lorient , Lorraine , Lothmann, Ernst Louis IX, king of France Louis of France, Prince Louis VIII, king of France Louis XI, king of France , , ‒, Louis XII, king of France , , Louis XIII, king of France Louis XIV, king of France , , , ‒, and cartography , ‒ and linear frontier policy ‒, and military nobility ‒ mutual exchange agreements size of army Louis XV, king of France Louis XVI, king of France , Louise of Savoy, Regent of France Louvois, François Michel Le Tellier, marquis de loyalty ‒, ‒, Lucca, lord of ,
Lull, Ramon Luxembourg Luxembourg, Jean de Luxemburg dynasty , Lyons Machiavelli, Niccolò , , Madrid , ‒ treaty of Maghreb , Maintenon viaduct Malatesta dynasty , , ‒ Malestroit, truce of Mallorca Malta Mansfield, Count of Mantes, treaty of Mantua, lord of (Ludovico Gonzaga) Marches ‒, , ‒ Margaret of Flanders ‒ marginalization ‒ Maria Theresa, Holy Roman Empress , Mariana, Juan de Marie network Marignano, battle of () , , Marlborough, John Churchill, st Duke of Marseilles Marsilius of Padua Martin V, Pope , masonic lodges mathematics education matricula Maurepas, Comte de Maurice of Nassau, Prince , Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor Mazarin, Cardinal Jules , Medici, Catherine de’ Medici, Giovanni de’ Medici, Marie de’ Medici family , Melun-Tancarville clan Ménétra (glazier) mercantile marine, see merchant vessels mercenaries , , ‒, Dalmatian free companies ‒, , German and Italian city-states ‒ and military entrepreneurs ‒ as part of armed retinues Scandinavian countries ‒ see also condottieri
Index · merchant vessels: armed in Dutch navy ‒ end of use by navies , ‒ in Spanish navy ‒ in Venetian navy Messianism ‒, Metz: routes from siege of , Milan , , , , , ‒, , Milan, Francisco Sforza, duke of , ‒ Milanese initiative military aid, reciprocal ‒ military entrepreneurs ‒ military exemption , , ‒ Military Orders ‘military revolution’ debate , ‒ military service rolls military society ‒ and marriage ‒ secondary occupations in ‒ and training , ‒ milites , Mirabeau, Honoré Gabriel, Comte de ‘Modern Army’ ‒ monarchies: and absolutism , , , ‒, ‒ and the army ‒ and peace ‒ right to booty ‒, ‒, , , right to prisoners ‒ as warlords Monferrato, marquis of Monge, Gaspard Monnet Plan monsoon cycle Montaperti, battle of () Montefeltro, count of Montefeltro, Federico da ‒ Montefeltro dynasty , Montereau Montguyon, fortress of Montmorency, Henri de Montreuil, Jean de Morat, battle of Morgarten, battle of mountainous areas fortresses in ‒ recruitment in ‒ Mousket, Philippe
mudejars (Moors) Mühlberg, battle of Nancy, battle of Nantes, Edict of Naples , , Napoleon I, Emperor of the French , nationalism , French ‒ Spanish ‒ and warfare natural law , , and international law ‒ naval bases: Dutch English , ‒ fortification of French ‒ Spanish ‒ naval engineering school of naval officers , , Dutch ‒, , English French – Spanish Navarre: recruitment in war of Navarre, king of , navies: administration of ‒, ‒, ‒, ‒ Anglo-Dutch naval operation () ‒ booty changes in fighting methods expenditure ‒ guns , manpower ‒, and nautical charts ‒ officers, see naval officers and privateers ‒, ‒ recruitment , , ‒, ‒ strength of ‒ victualling ‒, ‒ welfare provision see also individual navies; merchant vessels; shipbuilding; warships Navy Board (England) ‒ ‘necessary war’ , ‒ Negroponte Neptune oriental Nesle, Jean de
· Index Netherlands: canals in ‒ fortresses in maps navy ‒, ‒, ‒, ‒ public expenditure on warfare ‒ size of army Neumann, Balthasar neutrality ‒, , New Model Army , , Nicholas I, Pope Nicopolis Nicosia Nijmegen, treaty of () Nine Years War , nobility: and cavalry and military service ‒, ‒, ‒ as prisoners of war , Scandinavian noblesse militaire non-commissioned officers ‒ Norway , ‒, , , Norwich, bishop of Nuremberg officers: and battle deaths economics and ‒ loyalty ‒ and military society ‒, ‒ military training ‒ and non-commissioned officers ‒ recruitment of ‒ Spanish commissioned ‒ see also cadets; naval officers Oise, River Olivares, Count-Duke of ‒, , Orange, princes of ‒ Orderic Vitalis ordinances on distribution of booty ‒ and expectation of divine intervention on soldiers marrying Spanish ‒ Orléans ‒ Orthus, Francisco Otranto Otto of Freising Otto Santi, War of the ‒ Ottoman Empire ,
expansionist policy of Oxenstierna, Axel pacifism Padua , Pallavicini, lordship of the Palma, Mallorca Palma-Nova Pannonia Papacy Avignonese , ‒ Curia and diplomacy ‒ and foreign policy and free companies ‒ and Italian city-states ‒ and peace Paris ‒, ‒, , Observatory Parlement , , peace of () protection for ‒ treaty of () Paris-Dunkirk meridian Parma, city of Parma, duke of ‒ Pasajes Patiño, José ‒ patria ‒ patriotism, sanctified ‒ and Hussite Bohemia ‒, ‒ in Spain ‒, ‒ and Valois dynasty ‒, ‒ Pavia, battle of () , , , pax europea peace ‒ and Avignonese Papacy ‒ duty of state to establish and the monarchy ‒ and sovereignty ‒ Peace of God movement Peasants’ War Penn, William Pepys, Samuel Pergola, Angelo della Perugia , ‒ Peschiera, castle of Peter I, Tsar of Russia Peter IV, king of Aragon Philip Augustus, see Philip II, king of France Philip II, king of France , ,
Index · Philip II, king of Spain ‒, , , , ‒, ‒, , ‒ Philip III, king of Spain Philip IV, king of Spain Philip IV (the Fair), king of France , , , , , Philip of Burgundy Philip of Cleves, lord of Ravenstein Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy , Phoebus of Foix-Béarn, Gaston Picard, Abbé Piccinino, Jacopo Pico, lordship of the Piedmont ‒, Pieri, Piero Pikarts pikes, see weapons pilgrimages pillage , , , ‒ Pisa , , Pisan, Christine de ‒, , Platter family Plymouth ‒, Po valley , Podiebrad, George poison, use of , Poitiers, battle of () , , , Poitiers, Diane de Poland , , , politics: and military revolution ‒ and science , ‒ Polytechnique Pomerania ‒ Ponts et Chaussées (civil engineering department) , port fortifications , Port Mahon, Minorca Portsmouth ‒, Portugal , Potsdam Prague , – press-gangs , in Prussia Prˇíbram, John prisoners of war – and battle-plan , death sentences ‒ exchange of ‒, ‒, ‒ Gentili on ‒ Grotius on in modern period ‒
and peace treaties ‒ royal ‒ see also ransom privateer ports privateers: French ‒ Spanish ‒ professionalism ‒ Provence Prussia , , ‒, , ‒ army: non-commissioned officers ‒; officer corps ‒, ‒; recruitment and the Enlightenment ‒ military secondary occupations military training in ‒ social stratification ‒ Ptolemy of Lucca Public Weal, War of the Pufendorf, Samuel von Pushkin, Alexander Pyrenees , , Rabastens, Constance de Rachel, Samuel Racine, Jean , Ralph of Orkney, Bishop Ralph of Stafford ransom ‒ cartels ‒ in modern period ‒ as part of booty ‒ payment by monarchs private ‒ treaties rape reading societies Real Compañía de Caballeros Guardias Marinas recruitment ‒, ‒ on basis of wealth cantonal system , ‒ and free companies ‒ intermediary ‒ lower military classes ‒ naval , , ‒, ‒ non-commissioned officers in pastoral areas ‒, ‒ personal of poor , and population size state militias ‒
· Index recruitment (cont.): of town-dwellers by voluntary enlistment ‒, ‒ in war zones see also conscription; levée en masse Regulus, Marcus Atilius relief-maps , , religion: denominational wars ‒, ‒ and patriotism ‒ reconciling war and ‒ and Scholasticism ‒ see also Catholic Church; Papacy Remigio dei Girolami repartimientos forzosos Rhodes Rhône, River Ribadeneyra, Pedro de Richard II, king of England Richard of Arundel Richelieu, Cardinal , , , , Richelieu, marshal Richemont, Arthur de Riemer, Valentin Riquet de Bonrepos, Pierre Paul, Baron river basins: canal-systems connecting ‒ maps of roads ‒ maps of and rapid-response of armies Robert, duke of Bar Robert, patriarch of Jerusalem Robert of Anjou Robert of Suffolk Roberts, Michael , Rochefort ‒, , Rocroy, battle of Roemer, Olaf Roger of March Romagna ‒, , Rome, sack of , Romero, Julián Rossi, lordship of the , Rotterdam , , Rousseau, Jean-Jacques route royale ‒ Royal Charles (English warship) royal dockyards: English Spanish ‒ Roye, Barthélemy de
Rüchel, General von Russia , impressed recruitment navy ‒ size of army use of limes Ruyter, Michiel Adriaanszoon de Rymer, Thomas ‒ sacking cities , ‒, St Denis, abbey of Saint-Leu d’Esserent Saint-Malo St Petersburg Saint-Pierre, Abbé de , Saint-Victor, Jean de sainte ampoule Saintes, battle of Salisbury, earl of Salses, citadel of , San Sebastian Sanseverino, Roberto Sanson, Nicolas Sanudo, Marin Sardinia Sarrelouis Saulx, Gaspard de Sauqueville, Guillaume de Savoy , Saxony-Hildburghausen, principality of Scandinavia ‒ Schleswig and Holstein, duchy of Scholasticism ‒, science: of distance and politics , ‒ scorched-earth policy Scotland and compulsory service recruitment of Highlanders , sea routes seapower ‒, French ‒ and world domination Seignet, Guillaume Seine, River Sète Seven Years War (‒) , changes in military society after ‒ and redemption of prisoners Sforza, Francisco, duke of Milan ‒
Index · Sheerness ship-money shipbuilding: Dutch Republic in England ‒, ‒ in France ‒ in Spain ‒, shoreline surveys ‒ siege cannons Siena, state of Sigismund, king of Hungary , ‒, , signori ‒, , and Italian Wars ‒ Silesia, invasion of Silesian Wars slavery , ‒ Slavs societal surplus ‒ distribution of ‒ soldiers: losses of ‒, ‒ marriage ‒ and oaths of allegiance rank-and-file retired ‒ as state employees ‒ welfare provision for see also army; officers; mercenaries; military society; non-commissioned officers; prisoners of war; recruitment soldiers of fortune Somme–Nord junction Sovereign of the Seas (English warship) sovereignty and international law and peace ‒ space control of , ‒ intellectual mastery of ‒ and school of diplomacy Spain ‒ army: compulsory service ‒; permanent army ‒; recruitment , ‒, ‒, ‒; size of booty defence system ‒ ‘good war’ concept , , ‒ international law ‒ Italian campaigns and military entrepreneurs ‒ military organization in navy ‒, ‒, , ‒
offensive/defensive warfare prisoners of war ‒ state militia ‒, war losses ‒ Spanish Armada () Spanish Netherlands ‒, Spanish Succession, War of , , , , , , , ‒ and France’s ‘iron ring’ Spinoza, Benedict de Spoleto, city-state of Standard, battle of the ‒ standing armies ‒ in fifteenth century state(s): and fine arts fortifications and military control military society and ‒, ‒ militia ‒, , modern States General, The Hague ‒, , ‒ Stephen, king of England Stevin, Simon , Stralsund, Sweden Strasbourg , ‒ Suarez, Francisco de , Sully, Maximilien de Béthune, duc de supply lines Swabian party Sweden army ‒ conscription ‒ economy ‒ navy ‒, , ‒ population , ‒ relief maps and Thirty Years War ‒ warfare economics Switzerland: and communitarianism mercenaries from ‒ pikemen Taborites ‒ taxation: Danish for English navy lance tax to maintain mercenary armies and military exemption ‒ and warfare , ‒
· Index technology: competitiveness in transference of tercios ‒ Terzi, Otto Texel, battle of () textile industry Thames, River theatre of operations ‒ Thérouanne Thirty Years War (‒) , , , changes in armies after devastation of ‒, and Grotius military entrepreneurs during ‒ problems of recruitment ‒ Sweden and , , Thomas of Warwick Thomism ‒, , , , Torcy, Colbert de Torelli, Guido Toulon ‒, , Toulongeon, Antoine de Tourville, Admiral , towns, fortified: booty from captured ‒ Tre Kroner (Danish warship) treaties ‒, Tremblay, Père Joseph du Trémoille, Georges de la, count of Ligny Trésor des Chartes ‒ Treviso , Tripoli Trivulzio, Marshal Gian-Jacopo Trois-Evêchés , Tromp, Admiral M. H. ‒, Troyes, treaty of Trudaine, Daniel Tunis crusade Tunisia Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques Turkey , Ubaldini dynasty Uberti, Farinata degli Uccello, Paolo Umbria , Urals Urban V, Pope ‒ Urbino , ‒
Utraquists ‒, , Utrecht, Peace of () , , Valdés, Alfonso de Valencia , Valéry, Jean de Valois dynasty dynastic allegiance to ‒, , ‒ Italian campaigns Vasa (Swedish warship) Vattel, Elmer de ‒, ‒, Vauban, Sébastien le Prestre de , ‒ Vaucelles, treaty of Vaudemont, Antoine de Venette, Jean de Venice ‒, , , , division of booty foreign policy and Hungary Ventadour, count of Verdugo, Francisco Verdun Verneuil, battle of Verona , , Versailles Vervins, treaty of Vicenza Vico, Prefetti of Vico, sack of ‒ Vienna , , Vienna Cadet Training School Vigne, André de la Villars, marshal Viry, Amédée de Visconti, Bernabo Visconti, Giangaleazzo, count of Vertus (later duke of Milan) Visconti, Giovanni Visconti dynasty (Milan) , ‒ Vítkov Hill, battle of Vitoria, Francesco de , ‒, Voltaire Vysˇehrad, battle of , Wachtmeister, Count Hans Waldensians Wallenstein, Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Walter of Espec warfare: and Christian doctrine ‒, ‒ between city-states, see city-states economics of ‒
Index · Gentili’s law of ‒ glorification of increased mathematicization of and international law ‒ losses during ‒, ‒ public expenditure on , ‒, , ‒, , ‒ and sovereign’s monopoly on warlords , , Wars of Religion Wars of the Roses ‒, , warships , , comparisons between ‒ costs of ‒ water transport ‒, see also canals weapons: firearms , ‒, moral sanctions on pikes ‒
Wenceslas, king of Bohemia Westphalia peace of William III, king of England , William of Northampton William of Orange Wissembourg-Lauterbourg line , Witt, John de Wolff, Christian ‒ Woolwich Wycliffe, John Young, Arthur , Zˇatec Zbyneˇk of Prague, Archbishop of 236 Zdice agreements Zeeland ‒ Zˇizˇka, John ‒,