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Narratives : Warfare in the 17th and 18th Centuries http://www.zum.de/whkmla/sat/texts/narrwar1718.html |
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For earlier history of warfare, see Wars of Religion The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) had still been fought with armies which were hired when needed and disbanded as soon as the war was over. These armies were commanded by professional soldiers, for whom war was a business, and who often themselves had hired entire companies whom they leased to the belligerent who hired them. Armies in the Thirty Years' War had an ethnically mixed composition. They tended to be large, were poorly paid and often had to live of the land they occupied. The Thirty Years' War was one of the most destructive wars in German history; the country's population declined by one third. The military commanders were at times more interested in maintaining their force (and investment) then in achieving victory; and, on occasion their loyalty to the belligerent they served was questionable. At the time Habsburg General Wallenstein was assassinated, he is said to have negotiated with his Swedish counterparts. French King Louis XIV. introduced a standing army, i.e. a permanent army. This innovation was to change the structure of warfare significantly. First, the French army was to consist mainly of Frenchmen, it was more disciplined, better trained (drilled) than earlier armies; the officers' corps was better trained, too. Military academies were training officers (hitherto, officer had been a free profession); ballestics, strategy, the history of warfare became part of their curriculum. The Thirty Years' War had been a war in which armies lived of the lands they occupied. Sweden, economically a nonentity, became a great power during the Thirty Years War, because the combination of subsidies and of lands to be occupied (and population to be extorted). The commanders were reluctant to commit to battle, because they could loose their source of revenue - the lands occupied. The soldiers were often poorly trained, poorly equipped and ill-disciplined. During the Dutch War of Independence, Prince Maurice was regarded the best strategist of his time; he avoided battles, tried to avoid time-consuming sieges; he liked to use the elements of surprise, of camouflage, of having a fifth column on the other side of the city wall help aid in a coup. Prince Maurits, for inspiration, read the Greek and Roman classics. And here the military academies of the later 17th century would continue. The first war Louis XIV. faught was the War of Devolution 1667-1668, a single-sided affair because Spain was virtually bankrupt and unable to effectively defend the Spanish Netherlands, the object of the French attack. From 1672 onward it was evient tht France's military power threatened the balance of power in Europe; from 1689 to 1714 most of Europe provided a united front against France, and was barely able to stop French expansion. The Wars of the Grand Alliance 1689-1697 and of Spanish Succession 1701-1714 were lengthy affairs, very detrimental to the finances of the belligerent powers. Decades of war seemede to bring little results. France, England/the United Kingdom (since 1707) and the Dutch Republic could afford to fight their own wars (and, even, to subsidize those of their allies who could not). Sweden depended on (usually French) subsidies to fight her wars. Switzerland traditionally supplied mercenary regiments to France and the Italian States. In the 17th century, a number of German principalities, as well as Savoy-Piemont, raised armies (mainly infantery regiments), which could be rented to belligerent powers in case of war (the Hessians in the American War of Indepenmdence, in British service), or which could make the respective principality a desirable potential ally. The reputation of their armies resulted in Brandenburg-Prussia and Savoy-Piemont gaining numerous concessions, in form of territorial gains and in the elevation to kingdom. France innovated warfare in the late 17th century; yet it was Swedish King Charles XII. who provided a role model for strategists. Voltaire gave Charles XII the bynames "the last Viking" and "the lion of the north". Realizing that an anti-Swedish coalition (Russia, Poland, Denmark) was forming, age 17, he took an army into Denmark before the Danes were ready to strike, forced Denmark to sign a dictated peace, took his army to Estonia where he dispersed a Russian army 4 times the size of his, took his army into Poland, forced the Saxons out of the war. Charles XII. remained undefeated for 9 years, until he moved his army deep into Ukraine and suffered defeat at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, outnumbered and starved, because of the Russian scorched earth policy. Charles XII. was the new Alexander, a role model to military commanders after him such as Frederick the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte. Well-trained, equipped and disciplined armies could undertake daring manoeuvres. Commanders of the type of Charles XII., Frederick II. and Napoleon Bonaparte pushed for a quick decision rather than trying to protect their forces and only strike if they felt sure of victory. The wars of the 18th century, although many of them were long (War of the Great Alliance 1689-1697 - 8 years, Great Northern War 1700-1721 - 21 years, War of Spanish Succession 1701-1714 - 13 years, War of Austrian Succession 1741-1748 - 7 years, Seven Years War 1756-1763 - 7 years), were much less destructive than the Thirty Years War. The military code permitted commanders to prevent their soldiers from plundering; cities were asked to pay contributions to the military; they reluctantly complied, as this was the price to be paid to avoid plundering. Soldiers were recognizable by uniforms. While the countries maintaining a standing army figured out that this was an expensive institution to maintain, those countries which saved the expense, in the long turn, had to pay the price. Countries without standing armies included the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (erased from the political map of Europe in the Polish Partitions 1772-1795), the Holy Roman Empire (abolished 1806), the Venetian Republic (terminated 1797). Lands which were politically fragmented and/or lacked the organization and ability to defend themselves, such as the German Rhineland, the Spanish, later Austrian Netherlands and Northern Italy, provided the battlefields where most of Europe's battles were fought. |
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