Warfare and state formation: from the age of invasions to the eighteenth century

Arguing that war was the driving force in the formation of the European state, Charles Tilly points to the existence of around 1,000 states in medieval Europe which were eventually reduced to 25.

We can distinguish between four phases in the military development of medieval and early modern Europe.¹³ During the first phase, warfare was highly mobile and fortifications mostly simple, although the large empires of the Carolingians and the Ottonians were based on great and well-organized military forces, in particular, heavily armed and armoured infantry. Fortifications were also important, partly remains from the Roman period, partly new constructions.¹⁴ People in East Cen­tral Europe used light cavalry, whereas the Scandinavians fought on foot and above all at sea.

During this period, the political map of Europe was created in its main outlines. The permanent division of the Carolingian Empire into the kingdoms of Germany and France is usually dated to around 900. The division was originally the result of the fact that Louis the Pious left three sons, who all claimed a part of his heritage. In the following period, the territorial divisions would seem to have been a direct consequence of the number of sons the previous ruler left at his death but eventually, it became the norm that one son inherited the whole of his father’s realm. This led to the permanent division between the kingdoms in the west and east which became France and Germany. The development was gradual, but an important factor was the change of dynasties in both realms; in France in 987 and in Germany in 911. Three kingdoms in Scandinavia, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and three in East Central Europe, Poland, Bohemia and Hungary, emerged between the late ninth and early eleventh century. They all developed dynasties which lasted until the fourteenth century. Anglo-Saxon England, which had for a long time been divided into separate kingdoms, was united by King Alfred of Wessex (870—99).

Scotland developed as a kingdom from the mid-ninth century, having been converted to Christianity in the previous period. The later dynasty traced its ancestry back, directly or indirectly, to Kenneth MacAlpin, of whom very little is known. Linguistically, the country was divided between the Gaelic-speaking north and the English-speaking south; in the latter area, there was no sharp distinction between England and Scotland. By contrast, Ireland never became really united under one ruler.¹⁶ There were many kings, respectively of superior, intermediate and lower rank. The superior king, ruling the whole country had little actual power and the office was often vacant. Nor was there any proper dynasty and the rules of succession were vague. This made Ireland vulnerable to external inter­ference. The first Scandinavian Vikings arrived in Ireland in 795 and from 841, they had a permanent stronghold in Dublin and the area around it. Later, this area was conquered by the English and formed a starting-point for the conquest of the whole island in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The fact that defenders had little advantage over attackers may partly explain the importance of this period for the formation of the European state system. How­ever, the new kingdoms were not solely the result of warfare. The division of the Carolingian Empire was not peaceful, but its basic principle was dynastic rights. The formation of new kingdoms on the European periphery may at least partly have been the results of struggles between various local chieftains about which we know little but also of friendship and alliances with European rulers, particularly the German king.

The transition from the first to the second phase in the military development was least partly a response to the various invasions of Europe from the seventh century onwards, the Arabs in the south and the Scandinavians and Slavs in the north and east. The introduction of the stirrup was important for the development of cavalry with heavy armour, fighting with lances to charge at the enemy, instead of as earlier with bows and arrows or light spears that were thrown. Castles were built for defensive purposes during the invasions in the post-Carolingian period and eventually developed into very elaborate constructions, partly through the adapta­tion of the superior fortification technology of the Byzantines and the Arabs which became known to the Europeans during the Crusades. From the eleventh century onwards, stone castles gradually became the norm, which gave the defenders a significant advantage over the attackers.

There are many examples of the superiority of heavy cavalry and castles over the previous military technology, including the German victories over Hungarians and Slavs in the tenth century and the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. How­ever, the main examples of conquests or spectacular victories during this phase are to be found on the outskirts of Western Christendom, in the Baltic area, Spain, Southern Italy and the Eastern Mediterranean, including Byzantium and Palestine.

By contrast, they were more successful in Southern Italy, Sicily and Spain. Knights from Normandy in northern France, descendants of Scandinavians settled there in the early ninth century, conquered Southern Italy and Sicily from the Arabs and the Byzantines in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. The success of the Normans can be explained both by the division of their enemies and the decline of the Byzantine Empire, which at the time had controlled parts of Sicily and Southern Italy, as well as with their alliance with the pope, but an important factor is also their qualities as warriors, notably their ferocity. The Christian conquest of Spain began when the Caliphate of Cordoba dissolved in 1031 and was divided into separate units.¹⁷ In the following period, a number of smaller Christian kingdoms became united through marriage alliances and dynastic succession and eventually conquered most of Muslim Spain.

Armies now became smaller and more professionalized, which had important social consequences. An aristocratic elite formed the core of the military forces, while the rest of the population consisted of peasants in various ways sub­ordinated to the aristocracy. Castles could be used as defence against external enemies but also to control the peasants. Infantry did not disappear from the armies but became less important. Castles could thus be an instrument for kings or conquerors to secure control of territories. Eventually, however, they largely worked in the opposite direction. The castellan might make himself indepen­dent, and a country might in this way be divided into smaller principalities governed from castles. This happened to a greater or lesser extent in France, parts of Germany, the Low Countries and Italy. Kings and other lords gave land with or without castles to their subordinates as fiefs, i.e. not as permanent property, but as temporary possessions to hold on behalf of the lord, in return for service, normally of a military kind.

The development of heavy cavalry thus had obvious consequences for state formation, strengthening the power of the aristocracy and weakening that of the king. However, the differences between the various European countries show that there is no automatic correlation between military technology and political orga­nization. English military technology was largely similar at the time, which did not prevent this country from developing a strong state and a government with extensive judicial powers. In Scandinavia and East Central Europe, where the new technology was introduced in the twelfth and particularly the thirteenth century, the aristocracy increased its power at the cost of the king, but this did not lead to a division of these countries into petty principalities. Of the older kingdoms, France and Germany used basically the same military technology but were politically very different. Both countries were dominated by strong princes and nobles who con­trolled larger or smaller territories from their castles, but while these rulers became largely independent in Germany, they became increasingly subordinated to the king in France.

Despite the superiority of defence over attack, however, some major changes between the main powers of Europe took place in the thirteenth century. In the previous period, France had mainly been ruled by a number of territorial lords under the formal supremacy of the king. One of these lords, Duke William of Normandy, had conquered England in 1066 and one of his successors, King Henry II (1154—89), had through marriage got hold of a number of fiefs that amounted to more than half the territory of the kingdom. In 1202—06, King Philip II Augustus of France managed to conquer Normandy and in the fol­lowing period, his successors conquered large parts of southern France, partly from the English but mainly through participation in the Crusades against the Albigensian heretics in southern France. At about the same time, a marriage alli­ance united the Norman Kingdom of Southern Italy and Sicily with Germany. The Emperor Frederick II ruled both territories but had his main focus on the south. His and his successors’ struggles against the papacy and a long interregnum after his death (1250—72) led to a substantial reduction of the imperial power in Germany which now became divided into around 400 smaller units, ruled by secular or clerical princes or independent cities. Thus, for most of the time until the unification of Germany in 1870, France was the strongest power on the Eur­opean Continent. Admittedly, the difference between the two countries should not be exaggerated. France was far from the centralization that characterized the country from the Revolution onwards and Germany still retained some common institutions, including the Emperor and the Diet (Reichstag).

There is no clear military explanation of the changes that took place during the second period; the technology and organization were the same on both sides, although greater or lesser skill of the commanders cannot be excluded. The most decisive factor was probably the ability to gain adherents. There were normally no firm loyalties and there were legitimate claims on both sides. Philip Augustus could intervene against King John of England with the argument that he was his feudal overlord and in this way make John’s vassals join his own cause. German vassals felt little loyalty to a ruler who was abroad all the time and were in addition under pressure from the pope who had excommunicated Frederick and his successors.

The third phase shows the revival of the infantry, which is expressed in the spectacular English victories over numerically superior French armies during the Hundred Years War (1337—1453), such as Crecy (1346), Poitiers (1356) and Agincourt (1415). The war itself had its background in the remaining English fiefs in southern France, which both kings regarded as an anomaly; they both wanted direct control of them.¹⁸ The development of stronger bows, first, crossbows, then longbows, increased the importance of the infantry. In the fourteenth century, an arrow had a range of nearly 300 yards when shot by a skilled archer and could pierce mail but not plate from around 100 yards. A skilled archer could fire ten to twelve shots in the minute with a longbow but only one or two with a cross- bow.¹⁹ However, the victories mentioned above are not evidence of a general superiority of infantry over cavalry. Infantry cannot force cavalry to fight, nor can it win by attacking first.²⁰ In order to succeed, the English commanders had to find an advantageous position and entice the enemy to attack, while at the same time avoiding the danger of being surrounded and besieged, which would force them to surrender because of lack of provisions. In this respect, the Swiss, who had the strongest infantry in the later Middle Ages, had some advantages over the English, as a force of pikemen was more mobile than one of archers, if sufficiently trained and disciplined. Despite a number of victories of infantry over heavy cavalry, however, there is no evidence of the superiority of larger political units over smaller, nor of the decline of the military aristocracy. Still, castles were the key to military success and the mobility of the cavalry an important factor. When France established a new army towards the end of the war, in the fifteenth century, it was still dominated by cavalry. The war ended with the French conquest of all English possessions in the country with the exception of Calais.

Once more, the outcome of the war is not exclusively determined by military factors. The English successes in the fifteenth century were not only the result of Henry V’s military genius but also of chaos and internal division in France. From the Peace of Troyes (1420) onwards, the war also became a French civil war, as Henry married the daughter of the King of France and his son from this marriage, Henry VI, born in 1422, was presented as the legitimate heir to the throne, whereas Charles VII, son of the previous French king Charles VI, was said to have been the result of his mother’s affair with her husband’s brother. Despite some setbacks in the beginning, however, Charles eventually gained the support of the majority of the people. An important factor in this was Joan of Arc (Jeanne d’Arc),²¹ a young peasant girl who arrived at the court of Charles VII in Chinon in 1429, claiming to have received a message from God to save France from the English and establish Charles as the lawful king. Having convinced the king and his supporters, she was given the command of a troop of soldiers and won some spectacular victories. Most importantly, she was able to relieve Orleans from the English siege and to have Charles crowned in Reims, which at the time was in the zone controlled by the English and their French allies. The coronation actually became a turning-point; royal coronation had great prestige in France and thus gave Charles an advantage over his English rival. Although Joan was soon after­wards (1430—31) captured and burnt as a heretic, her brief career shows the importance of popular reactions against the English invaders and the use of religion and divine revelation for patriotic purposes,²² although the decisive change in King Charles’ fortune was that the majority of the aristocracy began to support him, partly because they saw their interests best served in this way and partly because of the long tradition of lawful, dynastic kingship.²³

The fourth phase introduced the most revolutionary changes and is rightly referred to as the military revolution. This included the introduction of firearms, first, the arquebus, then the musket and, above all, the cannon. Such arms were used already in the fourteenth century but only became really effective in the fif­teenth. As demonstrated by the French victory at the end of the Hundred Years War in 1450—53, and the fall of Constantinople in 1453, cannons had now become strong enough to make medieval castles obsolete. Whereas earlier, their walls could easily be defended against largely superior forces and the means to conquer them were complicated and often unsuccessful, they could now be destroyed by a suffi­cient amount of artillery.²⁴ This introduced a short period of superiority for offensive forces and some spectacular conquests of formerly strong castles. How­ever, it did not take long before the balance was restored. A new fortification technology, developed by Italian engineers in the early sixteenth century, resulted in walls able to withstand artillery. The tall and relatively thin medieval walls were replaced by lower and more massive bastions covered with sand, which reduced the power of the cannon balls. The shape of the bastions was also highly irregular, in order to make it more difficult to aim the cannons correctly.

Drill and strict discipline were introduced around 1600 — the great pioneer was Prince Maurice of Orange, the Dutch leader in the war of independence against Spain. This corresponded to the need for coordinated action and for firing as quickly as possible. The muskets took considerable time to load, but the soldiers were trained to do this as quickly as possible and at the same time. When the first line had fired, they moved to the back, so that the next line could do the same, and so forth. The strength of an army with muskets depended on how quickly it could fire; consequently, greater speed in firing would compensate for numerical inferiority. In addition, men were needed for fighting at short range, where guns could not be used. Therefore, soldiers with firearms were supplemented by pike­men, according to the Swiss model. The introduction of the bayonet from the late seventeenth century abolished this distinction, allowing the musketeers to fight at close range as well. In addition to these changes, the size of armies changed sig­nificantly. Whereas late medieval armies rarely counted more than 10,000 men, they might number more than 100,000 in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This was partly a matter of increased competition; size was of course crucial to military success, but also has to do with the increasing size and sophistication of fortifications, which necessitated large armies to conduct a siege.

Steady improvement in this field continued in the following period. The most spectacular example is the ‘iron ring’ around the exposed frontiers of France under Louis XIV, constructed under the leadership of the great military architect, Vauban (1633—1707). Vauban was educated in mathematics, which he applied to his engi­neering. His fortifications are still to be seen in many parts of France, for instance, Briuicon in the south-east, which protected the border towards Savoy. The cost of the project was enormous, nearly 10 per cent of the total expenditure in the period 1665—96.²⁵ It may, however, have been worth the price; despite repeated French defeats in the Low Countries during the War of the Spanish Succession, allied forces never crossed the French border in this area. Moreover, the systematic con­struction of stronger and fewer fortifications reduced the number of men necessary to man them and thus made possible a substantial increase in the field army.²⁶

The Spanish were the pioneers in the military revolution.²⁷ The tactical unit in the Spanish army was the tercio, an infantry formation consisting of pikemen, swordsmen and arquebusiers or musketeers in a mutually supportive formation, in theory, up to 3,000 soldiers, although it was usually less than half this size. The Spanish infantry army was developed during the war against Granada, 1481—92, and later during the wars in Italy. It was subject to strong discipline and was regarded as the best army in Europe in the sixteenth and well into the seven­teenth century, when it was eventually surpassed by the French. The proud Spanish nobles who served as officers accepted leaving their horses and leading their men on foot.

The use of cannons contributed to the French reconquest of the English pos­sessions in 1450—53 and some smaller political entities succumbed, notably some Italian city states, but otherwise, the number of political units remained as before and there were no great changes in the borders between them. Thus, in the period 1500—1789, the European powers had larger armies and better military equipment than at any time before and fought one another with greater costs and intensity. Nevertheless, the results were minor. Not only did most powers continue to exist — Poland and some Italian city states are the main exceptions — but most them had approximately the same borders by the end of the period as in the beginning. This not only applies to the major kingdoms but also to the around 400 German petty states. Thus, the obvious advantages the new military technology gave to larger and wealthier units had few practical consequences.