War and the state

Widely different accounts have been given of state formation in medieval Europe and early modern Europe, on the one hand, the gradual growth of orderly gov­ernment from the twelfth and particularly thirteenth century onwards, as depicted by earlier scholars like Southern or Strayer, on the other, a chaos of fighting lords under the king’s formal superiority in Elias, Tilly and most recently Morris.³¹

We have seen that the division of Europe into independent kingdoms was not primarily the result of war.

This also applies to external wars, whether or not they achieved their aims. The Hundred Years War was a common project of the king, the aristocracy and even to some extent the people of England and led to more regular taxation and an administration connected with this as well as increasing the importance of Parlia­ment. It had a similar effect in France, mobilizing the nobility and the people against the invaders and increasing the power and prestige of the monarchy.

During the first three phases of the military development, covering the period until the mid-fifteenth century, warfare was costly but did not necessitate a large administration. Armies consisted of the king’s vassals, mercenaries or people who either voluntarily joined the armies or were forced to do so, such as criminals who might escape punishment by volunteering as soldiers. The forces were relatively small and the soldiers or their commanders got hold of the necessary arms and equipment. To the extent that soldiers had to be recruited locally, this was the duty of the normal local administrator. By contrast, the fourth phase led to a drastic increase in the size of armies, as expressed in the fol­lowing numbers.

• Spain: 20,000 in 1500, 200,000 in 1600 and 50,000 in 1700.

• France: 18,000 in 1500, 80,000 in 1600 and 400,000 in 1700.

• In the Netherlands, the number increased five-fold between 1600 and 1700, from 20,000 to 100,000.

• The increase in Sweden in the same period was even greater, from 15,000 to 100,000.³²

It must be admitted, however, that the numbers are approximate and above all that there are great changes over time. In addition, the new fortifications were many times more expensive than the old ones. War was also by far the greatest burden on the budget of the state, 50 per cent or more in most countries.³³ With the development of standing armies from the late seventeenth century onwards, the difference between periods of war and peace in this respect was reduced; military expenditure was high even in peacetime. In addition, the increase in armies and military expenses necessitated an extensive civilian bureaucracy.

This increase is largely the explanation for the increased size and complexity of the bureaucracies during this period. Here there is a quantitative as well as qualitative change from the Middle Ages to the early modern period.

The ranks in the navy differ considerably from those of the army, originally with fewer distinctions between the commissioned officers, basically only lieutenant, captain and admiral, combined with non-commissioned but high-ranking specia­lists employed in the navigation and administration of the ship, such as master and purser. This simplicity, combined with the greater prestige and responsibility involved in commanding a ship compared to a company, explains why a captain in the navy outranks one in the army, being equal to a lieutenant colonel.

The different ranks were expressed in uniforms and distinctions and clear rules about command. In addition, the increasing size of armies necessitated an increas­ingly complex organization, partly military, partly civilian, as did also standardized uniforms³⁴ and arms, larger and more complex fortifications and the transition from armies living off the land to armies provisioned by the government. More­over, leading large armies, composed of various kinds of forces, various categories of infantry and cavalry in addition to field artillery, scouts and irregular troops, increased the problem of command. Moving an army was relatively simple as long as it consisted of a few divisions, but became extremely complicated when it increased manifold. In the following period, warfare became increasingly scien- tific.³⁵ The main force behind this development was France. Admittedly, the French officers, who were all nobles, mostly believed that their birth gave them the necessary skills and resisted formal education.³⁶ However, the defeats in the Seven Years War were a stimulus to renewal.

The military reforms during the ancien regime, including the improvement of the artillery, were essential factors behind the later victories of the French army during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Institutionally, the reforms resulted in the development of military academies and in the formation of a General Staff, a permanent high command responsible for all the military forces and for planning and directing the campaigns. The former grew up in most countries during the eighteenth century; the latter was introduced for the first time in Prussia between 1803 and 1809. It played a central part in Prussian and later German military organization, and was an important factor in the triumphs during the unification of Germany, 1863—70. Karl von Clausewitz, who wrote a famous book about war, was an officer in the Prussian General Staff. In contrast to Prussia, however, there was a strong anti-intellectualism in the British, Austrian and Russian armies,³⁷ and the French during the Revolution and under Napoleon found the demand for higher education from officers to be against the egalitarian ideas of the Revolution.

Parallel to this was a significant increase in and specialization of the civilian bureaucracy. Whereas the main reason for the formation and growth of bureau­cracy in the Middle Ages had been internal administration, notably of justice, its greater growth in the early modern period was largely determined by military needs, equipping and provisioning armies and navies and collecting taxes and other levies to finance them. The increasing complexity of the bureaucracy is expressed both in an increasing number of ranks and in division into branches. Whereas the typical division between the king’s local representatives in the Middle Ages was geographical, a royal representative who ruled a particular part of the country on the king’s behalf: the sheriff in England, the bailli in France, the Vogt in Germany, now parallel officers with different duties were introduced. In particular, there was a division between military and civilian officers and separate courts of law manned by legal specialists, in some cases also, a separate police force. When the bureau­cracy increased, however, the reason was not only the need for more personnel but also, in some countries, the sale of offices which also largely served to finance wars and military expenses.

Regarding war as the driving force of European state formation, Tilly observes that it worked in different ways. In mainly agrarian countries, taxation of a large population led to absolutism (‘coercion’), whereas in urbanized and commercial ones, easy credit and contributions from wealthy merchants led to constitutional government (‘capital’). The general importance of coercion is developed in Samuel Finer’s theory of extraction and coercion. The ruler had to persuade his estates that it was necessary to vote for taxes to finance a per­manent army. Once he had succeeded in this, he could use the army in an ‘extraction-coercion cycle’: the army could force the population to pay more taxes, which in turn resulted in an even larger army.³⁸ However, as several scholars have pointed out, Finer’s ‘extraction-coercion cycle’ rarely worked in practice.

Thus, the importance of war was neither that the state system was created in this way nor that the king gained a power monopoly by defeating his internal rivals. Warfare contributed to state formation primarily by mobilizing the aristocracy in the king’s service and by necessitating drastically increased taxation and bureau­cratization. This development can be traced back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries but reached a climax during the fourth phase of the military transforma­tion from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century.