Armed Forces as Institutions

The three centuries after about 1500 saw the establishment of permanent ‘standing' armies and navies as the institutionalised means to project state power, chiefly externally, but also against internal opponents.

In particular, land warfare came to be dominated by infantry formed into relatively large, standardised units trained to combine shock and firepower. The balance between shock and firepower shifted in favour of the latter around 1630 as improved, lighter handguns were introduced. Armies sought to maximise firepower by thinning while extending infantry formations, producing a form of linear tactics which persisted into the 1840s when renewed improvements in firearms prompted the introduction of looser, deeper formations. Siege warfare was transformed by new fortification techniques known as the trace italienne, developed in the later fifteenth century but making their full impact from about 1560, which shifted to defence in depth to protect towns and fortresses against the new, far more powerful artillery. That artillery was also deployed at sea, especially from the 1570s, eventually shifting naval warfare from ships as floating platforms for soldiers to attack the enemy by boarding, to ships capable of sinking or disabling opponents through long-distance artillery fire.

It is not the form but the alleged causes and impact of these changes which are problematic. Most versions of the Military Revolution preference western European warfare, and neglect ideas and practices which came from the east where warfare was characterised by more fluid operations relying more on light cavalry and other ‘irregular' forces.^[295] More fundamentally, this approach is technologically determinist and underestimates political, cultural and social factors shaping warfare. Firearms were used in Europe from the 1320s, but it was not until the mid to late fifteenth century that developments in gunpowder manufacture and metallurgy made such weapons both effective and less dangerous to use. Further developments across the next century produced stronger yet lighter gun barrels, while improved gunpowder increased propel­lant power and at the same time reduced the size of the charge. As a result, field and siege artillery became lighter and more manoeuvrable. Such cannon rendered medieval fortifications obsolete, since these relied on height rather than depth, which was more resistant to artillery fire. However, there is no causal link between the new trace italienne and the growth in army size.

The new fortifications certainly changed European cityscapes, because they required huge, elaborate defensive rings to be built around towns.

Fortifying a city was a major undertaking involving shifting thousands of tonnes of earth and stone. However, the overall impact remained limited. Major states only spent around 5 to 10 per cent of their expenditure on fortifications, and even in late seventeenth-century France, which con­structed the most extensive outer defensive ring along its frontiers, this proportion was only 17 per cent. Artillery consumed only 4 to 8 per cent of all military expenditure. Such fortifications did require large garrisons and even larger forces to besiege them, but armies were already growing before they were built.^{[296] [297]} Meanwhile, the adoption of handguns alongside more traditional bladed weapons like swords, or pikes, did not require armies to grow in size. However, it was now easier to recruit larger forces quickly, because firearms required less lengthy training than bows, which had been the primary missile weapon of the Middle Ages. Politics, not technology, provides the more convincing explanation for the growth and permanence of armed forces. The changing configuration of political power in Europe, especially the consolidation of France after 1450 and then the growth of the Habsburgs under Charles V around 1520, both provided the institutional and material means to raise larger forces, as well as widening the geographical scope of interstate rivalry.^[298]

The creation of permanent forces was slow and uneven across Europe, while their implications varied depending on whether they were navies or armies.

Europe's maritime powers already maintained permanent fleets from the early sixteenth century, but this did not necessarily mean they were always combat-ready. Fleets, like armies, needed to be mobilised, invol­ving fitting out those ships which had been laid up in peacetime, as well as recruiting new crews and hiring or building more vessels. Navies were not always fully operational even during a conflict. England's greatest defeat during this period occurred in June 1667 when the Dutch caught its main fleet in the Medway, where it had been laid up for lack of funds. By that point, changes in warship design requiring a purpose-built line of battleships did encourage the expansion of per­manent fleets. England and the Dutch engaged in a naval race after 1652 which foreshadowed Anglo-German naval rivalry over two centuries later.

Compared to navies, armies required relatively little in terms of costly equipment and installations beyond the artillery and fortresses already dis­cussed. Size was determined by the ability to recruit, train, maintain and retain the forces deemed necessary by political ambition. Overall army size grew 1,000 per cent across 1500-1800, compared to only a threefold increase in Europe's population from around 60-70 million to 190 million. The strength of individual armies fluctuated considerably across the first half of the period in line with the conflicts they were fighting. Soldiers were still generally raised for each campaign, generally from April to October, with the majority being disbanded or sent home in the early winter, regardless of whether peace had been made. Some states continued this practice into the mid seventeenth century, but most by then maintained permanent cadres even in peacetime, which could be expanded when needed. These fluctuations within years as well as between them make any calculation of strengths difficult, even before other problems are considered, such as the often significant differences between official and actual numbers of men present.

Major states like France or Spain could put 50,000 or more into the field during the first half of the sixteenth century. Spain had at least double that number by the early seventeenth century when it was locked in a protracted struggle against the rebellious Dutch who mustered about 40,000.

Large monarchies like France already maintained small permanent forces by the late fifteenth century. These were supplemented in wartime by a variety of troops provided by aristocrats and communes on the basis of long-standing obligations to the Crown, as well as others raised by profes­sional military contractors either at home or abroad. Institutional perma­nence was underpinned by maintaining distinct units during peace as well as war, as was the case in Spain from the 1530s, France around the 1560s, and the Dutch Republic after about 1585. These units were professional in the sense of being composed of men serving under standardised contracts for fixed periods, trained and equipped in a uniform manner, and organised into units which outlived their individual service. Such ‘regular' formations could generally be deployed wherever required, though the service agree­ments (‘capitulations') sometimes specified areas of deployment, for example excluding the obligation to fight in the colonies.

Most of the literature on warfare and the state in this period emphasises the link between political centralisation and the creation of permanent, regular armies. In its classic formulation, the recruitment of ‘mercenaries', especially ‘foreigners', supposedly freed monarchs from dependency on their aristocracy while simultaneously providing a reliable force which would not sympathise with indigenous rebels.1^[302] However, in practice most regular soldiers were subjects of the crown they served. Indeed, the term ‘mercenary' has been one of the greatest hindrances to understanding European warfare in this period, because its modern definition is overburdened by the political legacy of the American and French Revolutions of the later eighteenth century and their idealised celebration of citizens-in-arms.^[303] Virtually all soldiers were ‘mercenaries' in that they were paid to fight; indeed, that is the origin of the word ‘soldier'. Recruitment systems were complex, especially those developed from the later sixteenth century which rewrote subjects' traditional obligations to create new forms of militia. Again, such organisations are often misunderstood because of the anglophone association of voluntary militia service with citizenship. This kind of civic militia did exist on the continent, notably in the Dutch towns where it was an important part of burghers' social and political identity, as commemorated in Rembrandt's famous painting, The Night Watch. Civic militias had little practical fighting value in contrast to the select militias established in many countries which used them to train able-bodied men who were either mobilised as separate units in wartime to supplement professionals, or inducted directly into regular formations as a form of limited conscription. The latter method was famously adopted in Prussia in 1733 and was a way in which poor states could maintain disproportionately large armies. Rather than militarising society, such systems partly civilianised the military, because recruits were discharged back into the civilian economy for most of each year once they had completed their basic training. Even those nominally permanently with the colours were given long off-duty hours during which they could supple­ment their meagre wages by working as day labourers.^[304]

Additional forms of recruitment and organisation existed in east central Europe, which developed ‘military frontiers' along the borders with the Ottoman Empire. Neither the Ottomans nor their Christian neighbours were prepared to accept the possibility of permanent peace before 1699, meaning that each conflict was only terminated by a time-limited truce. Cross-border raiding was often excluded from the terms of these truces, and indeed became a structural feature of life for the communities on both sides of the frontier. Borrowing on earlier Hungarian models, the Austrian Habsburgs developed an extensive network of fortified posts after 1522 to protect their territory from the Ottomans.^[305] Land grants, tax exemptions and religious and political freedoms were granted to settler communities along the frontier in return for garrisoning these posts and patrolling the land between them. The system became increasingly sophisticated from the mid sixteenth century as the Habsburgs drew subsidies from their other provinces and from the Holy Roman Empire to maintain and develop the defences and to add small regular garrisons as well. Russia developed military colonies along some of its frontiers which were broadly similar, while Poland- Lithuania maintained registers of Cossacks who could be summoned in emergencies. In all cases, it proved possible to redeploy some of these border troops to fight wars elsewhere, effectively supplementing more conventional forces and providing specialised ‘light troops' skilled in raiding and scouting which these states' western opponents frequently lacked.

The key advantage of regular troops was that their tighter discipline allowed them to fight in close-order formations designed to maximise the potential of the available weaponry. Discipline had several roots and its development was a key feature of European warfare in this period. The prevailing idea of a ‘just war' required ‘proper conduct' for it to be considered legitimate. Discipline was seen as a way to achieve it, since it enabled the authorities to determine how soldiers fought. Cohesion also protected sol­diers' lives, since most battle casualties occurred once units broke and were attacked or pursued by their enemies. Soldiers also welcomed the legitimacy conveyed by ideas of proper conduct, since they wished to avoid the social stigma associated with murder. Finally, discipline reflected broader ideas of an orderly society.^[306]

Military units, like ships' companies which were subject to similar disciplinary trends, formed distinct communities in a society characterised by a multitude of corporate groups. Like their civil counterparts, these military and naval communities were contested spaces shaped by competing views of idealised order. The horizontal element was gradually eroded by a clearer hierarchy of command emerging between about 1520 and 1580. Soldiers lost the right to choose their immediate superiors and to dictate or negotiate the norms by which they were bound. The right to draft normative statements, known as ‘articles of war', passed exclusively to the senior officers as agents of the political authority, becoming a specialised military form of wider legislation. This development was much broader than much of the older literature on the Military Revolution suggests. The so-called Orange reforms initiated by Maurice of Nassau in the Dutch army during the 1590s were certainly influential.^[307] Prince Maurice drew inspiration from his reading of ancient Roman military history to advocate new forms of drill intended to maximise firepower at a time when handguns were only effective when used en masse under the direction of officers. In practice, however, his ideas were part of a longer critique of mercenaries on moral as well as practical grounds. Many officers were as concerned as the men under their command to defend themselves against theologians and social commentators who condemned them for pursuing ‘war as a trade'. Already in the 1560s, books had appeared advocating practical measures to make war less destruc­tive by making it more efficient to achieve victory in a controlled manner.^[308]

The articles of war specified norms to guide soldiers' behaviour. All recruits had to swear an oath to obey them. This signalled their passage from civil to martial law, and provided the legal basis for the authorities to punish them for any infraction. The character of the articles changed to reflect the more extended and formalised hierarchy of ranks, with some states issuing separate ones for officers and other ranks by 1700. Ordinary soldiers retained some influence, especially through the legal practice of trial by peers which ensured that the composition of courts martial roughly corresponded to the rank of those on trial.^[309] Like members of civil communities, soldiers could exert extralegal pressure to change or shape how rules were enforced, notably by mutinying. Also mirroring civil society, martial law was corpo­rate, distinguishing soldiers from other legally defined groups in society. This reflected the broader character of early modern Europe as defined by liber­ties - which were local and specific to groups or communities - rather than the general, uniform and abstract Liberty - an idea only fully articulated towards the end of the eighteenth century. Thus, martial law was part of the wider web of privileges defining social groups. The Spanish government deliberately expanded its martial law, the fuero militar, after 1763 as an incentive to attract more volunteers.

Military justice was often regarded as brutal, especially by later commen­tators, but in fact armies and navies generally condemned fewer men to death than civilian courts, largely because of the cost involved in replacing trained personnel. Armies and navies also offered a refuge for those escaping civil justice, though civilian criminals were sometimes condemned to military or naval service. The creation of permanent armies created new problems of regulating jurisdiction with civil justice. This was handled differently across Europe, with Spain privileging its military personnel while France allowed soldiers to be judged by civil courts after 1665.^[310]

The development of martial law reflected the broader spread of written culture across Europe. The articles of war were supplemented by numerous regulations, ordinances and other normative documents from the later sixteenth century. These were revised following the experience of the wars of the first half of the seventeenth century and reached their definitive form around 1670-1720. This corresponded with the solidifying of military institu­tions generally, which assumed a form lasting into the early nineteenth century and in some cases beyond. Armies were now subdivided into regi­ments and companies which were permanent administrative units, some of which could trace a lineage of a century or more. Administration remained largely in the hands of military personnel, though subject to growing super­vision from the still understaffed central state institutions. Despite the spread of formal law, regulations and paper-based administration, considerable scope remained for what contemporaries termed ‘military custom', which provided a supplementary set of largely unwritten practices and precedents guiding behaviour.