The Conduct and Impact of War
It has become customary to regard conflicts from about 1517 to 1648 as ‘wars of religion', which were followed by the ‘limited wars' of the age of absolutism,i648-i789. The first phase was supposedly characterised by brutal, barely controlled violence in which religious hatred allegedly explains both the causes of wars and the character of their conduct.
The second phase is interpreted as a reaction to the first, when stronger states sought to ‘tame bellona' and subordinate war as a controlled instrument to achieve limited goals, largely defined in terms of dynastic objectives. This narrative has its roots in the time, as governments justified the heavy taxation required by the permanent forces established around i670 as necessary to avoid a repeat of the early cycles of violent war. New ideas associated with the Enlightenment and especially the French Revolution added to this picture by presenting the conflicts of the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the ‘sport of kings' contrary to the interests of the ‘people'. A new language of ‘national interest' was developed after i792 to legitimate a massive extension of the ability of central governments to mobilise human and material resources. This contributed to the belief that warfare had changed fundamentally and now had a more direct impact on ordinary peoples' lives.This standard view is hard to shift, because it has become deeply embedded in the general literature, especially in disciplines outside history. Moreover, there is plenty of evidence pointing in this direction. Some conflicts of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were accompanied by obvious sectarian violence, notably the French Wars of Religion (1562-98) and the fighting in Ireland during the 1640s and 1650s. This was also an age of confessionalisation when identities formed around distinct versions of Christianity forged new alliances and solidarity across geographical space so that, for example, Londoners could be vexed by stories of the hardships of their German co-religionists.[311] The evidence of such external observers features prominently in discussions of conflicts as religious wars.
Many, especially clergy, indeed felt the fate of their faith was at stake, and urged the pursuit of more directly religious objectives, such as the expulsion of dissenters and the seizure of their churches.However, the actual experience of violence was often very different. The idea of the Thirty Years War as a struggle between two clearly defined confessional parties rapidly receded when the rival armies arrived in any area. Most inhabitants experienced the war as a bewildering succession of violent disruptions of their community and daily life.[312] Even the war's most notorious atrocity, the infamous sack of Magdeburg in May 1631, hardly fits the standard rubric of sectarian violence.[313] Wars were indeed bloody, but the majority of casualties were incurred in conventional military operations, such as the siege of Ostend in 1601-4, in which Spain lost 80,000 men taking the town from the Dutch, who lost 60,000.[314]
Wars were waged by states, not churches. Though defence of the ‘true religion' was invoked as a justification in some conflicts, no government proclaimed holy war and none tried to use religion to mobilise their inhabitants. Soldiers were admonished to be pious as part of the wider programme of encouraging obedience, discipline and cohesion. Some armies displayed more distinct confessional characters than others, notably the Parliamentarian New Model Army of the British Civil Wars. However, religion always remained one of several markers of identity alongside ethnicity, language and communal and political loyalties, which all affected the character and culture of military units. It remained important well beyond 1648, both as part of military culture but also more generally as a factor in interstate relations and conflict. Far from secularising European politics, the Peace of Westphalia was a Christian peace based on demarcating confessional rights, not establishing modern toleration.[315]
The idea of warfare after 1648 as peculiarly ‘limited' is equally misleading.
Wars were not waged by civilised monarchs exercising self-restraint who supposedly knew when they were beaten and offered acceptable terms to their opponents.[316] Prussia's Frederick II, who has been cited as an example for this interpretation, clearly did not know when he had lost, continuing to fight the Seven Years War against impossible odds after his crushing defeat at Kunnersdorf in 1759. Indeed, Frederick was an inspiration to the Nazi elite, who hoped that Roosevelt's death in 1944 would lead to a US withdrawal from World War II, just as Russia had spared Prussia by pulling out of the Seven Years War after the death of Empress Elizabeth I in 1761.Sweden's Charles XII also pursued war to the point of reckless destruction, insisting on continuing the Great Northern War (1700-21) despite his crushing defeat at Poltava in 1709. Moreover, this conflict made a lasting impact, with Russia displacing Sweden as the dominant Baltic power. Likewise, Prussia's sheer survival during the Seven Years War confirmed its position as one of the five European major powers.
Wars were certainly not limited in terms of their human and material pressures. The level of French mobilisation during the wars of 1688-97 and 1701-14 was not far short of that during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras when measured as a proportion of the population.[317] The demands of warfare forced European states to introduce new forms of permanent taxes, especially from the 1630s, as well as to develop new credit arrangements starting with the Dutch Republic after the 1580s and then the English ‘financial revolution' after 1688, which saw the foundation of the Bank of England and the development of the world's first modern national debt.[318] The ability of states to manage the long-term indebtedness deriving from prolonged warfare became a major factor in their viability as European and, indeed, world powers.
Whereas France failed to solve the debts from its (militarily) successful intervention in the American Revolutionary War (1775-83) and plunged into revolution, Britain, which had been defeated, recovered swiftly.Nonetheless, there is a validity to some aspects of the characterisation of warfare in this period as limited which can also be extended to the era before 1648. War remained within the Christian conception of fighting as the extension of legal arguments to right perceived injustices. It was only to be embarked on once all other means of settlement had been exhausted. However reprehensible we may find their justifications for war, states generally adhered to this principle. Objectives thus remained limited, even if they might be expanded in the light of initial victories, as in Sweden's case after 1630 during the Thirty Years War or Russia's involvement in the Great Northern War. Goals could be extensive. The anti-Prussian coalition during the Seven Years War intended to remove that state almost completely from the map. France and Austria fought for possession of the entire Spanish Empire during 1701-14, even though in practice they were willing to settle for more limited shares. Nonetheless, there was no desire to exterminate the enemy or destroy their way of life. It was recognised that peace might require mutual concessions if it was to last. Sometimes diplomats misjudged this. French ministers were widely criticised at home for giving too much away to secure peace at the end of the War of Austrian Succession (1740-48).[319] Military operations were usually linked to diplomacy, with the seasonal lull during winter used to sound out the possibility of peace as well as rebuild forces for an eventual renewed effort the following spring.
The risks inherent in warfare were another constraining factor. Battles were considered an honourable way to decide conflict, but they were also extremely bloody with armies losing up to a quarter or even more of their strength in casualties and prisoners.
Conventional military history has tended to favour those commanders who allegedly pursued strategies of decision by seeking to win quickly and efficiently by defeating their opponents in battle.[320] However, this was often both riskier and more costly than a strategy of attrition involving besieging enemy fortresses. These discussions also neglect the influence of human and physical geography on conflict. This was war in an age of grass, where armies remained dependent on food for their transport and cavalry horses for movement and operational effectiveness. The regions with the highest agricultural surpluses also tended to be those that were most densely populated, like northern Italy or the Low Countries. These more urbanised areas might sustain larger armies, but the presence of well-fortified towns often blunted the impact of battle victories since the defeated side might still retain possession of the contested territory.Throughout this period, combat involved close-quarters fighting in which participants could see their opponents. Despite gradual improvements, all firearms remained limited in range compared to those used from the mid nineteenth century onwards. Handguns were only effective when used en masse by tightly packed formations under the close supervision of officers, requiring soldiers to embrace what has aptly been described as a ‘culture of forbearance'[321] as they endured enemy fire, often without being allowed or able to retaliate. Other weapons, such as pikes, could only be employed for ‘close order' since they required soldiers to be in close contact with the enemy. Armament and other equipment were bulky, heavy items adding to the physical endurance required by combat. Contemporary accounts frequently stress the noise of the artillery, comparing it to thunder, which in an age without loud machinery would have been unusual and added to the sense of disorientation.