European Warfare, 1494-1660

Jeremy Black

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781134477081
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

The onset of the Italian Wars in 1494, subsequently seen as the onset of 'modern warfare', provides the starting point for this impressive survey of European Warfare in early modern Europe. Huge developments in the logistics of war combined with exploration and expansion meant interaction with extra-European forms of military might. Jeremy Black looks at technological aspects of war as well social and political developments and effects during this key period of military history. This sharp and compact analysis contextualises European developments and as establishes the global significance of events in Europe.

1
INTRODUCTION

War, its conduct, cost, consequences and preparations for conflict, were all central to history in the early modern period. As European exploration and trade linked hitherto separated regions, so force played a crucial role in these new relationships and in their consequences. Conflict was also crucial to the history of relations between European states, as well as to their internal histories.

Warfare throughout the period was affected by social and physical conditions very different to those of today.The relatively low level of technology in even the most developed societies subjected all warfare to serious constraints. The limited nature of industrial activity, combined with low agricultural productivity and the absence of any real understanding of infectious diseases, ensured that population figures were low everywhere and that the potential pool of warriors was restricted. Most labour was exerted by generally malnourished human or animal muscle, and other power sources were natural and fixed: water and wind power and the burning of wood. There were no rapid communications on land or sea.This affected the movement of soldiers, supplies and messages.

These constraints affected the scope and conduct of warfare at every turn, but, nevertheless, in the period of this book, Europe’s position in the world dramatically changed. This was not simply because, as states based on settled agrarian societies, those of Europe were able to call on what were, by the standards of the age, relatively large populations and the resources to support armed forces and developed governmental structures. This was as, or even more, true of some non-European societies, especially Ming China. Instead, it is necessary to consider the growing global reach capability of the states of Atlantic Europe.

This capability is a reminder of the military diversity of the period. Rather than thinking in terms of one pattern of military development that spread more or less effectively across Europe, for example the Military Revolution discussed in Chapter 3, it is more helpful to think of multi-centred developments. In addition to the changes in land warfare in Western Europe that are the subject of the Military Revolution theory, it is also possible to discuss an Atlantic naval revolution, as well as changes in land warfare in Eastern Europe that owed much to the stimulus provided by conflict with the Ottomans and their Tatar allies, and a separate, albeit not independent, process of change in Gaelic warfare in parts of the British Isles.¹

As well as the example provided by inter-European conflict, adaptation to an external threat was important. In place of the Hungarian cavalry destroyed by the Ottomans at Mohács on 29 August 1526, and in response to Ottoman infantry and cannon, the Austrian Habsburgs, later in the century, deployed infantry and cannon in positional warfare that entailed support from field fortifications. The Russians also developed the infantry–cannon–fortification combination, in part in response to the challenge from Islamic powers. The widespread borrowing of military methods from the Ottomans included the Venetian use in Italy of Albanian and Greek stradiots (light cavalry) who had initially been employed to fight the Ottomans in Greece and Friuli.² The Ottomans influenced the force structure and tactics the Russian army developed in the mid-sixteenth century, with the new streltsy infantry drawing on the example of the janissaries. The Ottomans also benefited from renegades and adventurers who brought expertise in land and naval warfare from Christian Europe. Mutinies of mercenaries and their defection to the Ottomans were an important source of expertise.³

Alongside the reminder of military variety within Christian Europe and of influences from outside Western Europe, it is also appropriate to note the spread of tactics, techniques and technology within Christian Europe. For example, sixteenth-century Russia was influenced by developments including those in Italian military engineering and gun-casting. More generally, the development of artillery encouraged the recruitment of foreign specialists, for example from Germany, the Low Countries and France by the kings of Scotland in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.⁴ In the early 1600s, Dutch shipbuilders were hired to help modernise the Swedish fleets, with Scottish shipbuilders coming to Denmark for the same reason, and in 1617 Venice recruited 4,000 Dutch troops to help in operations against Austria.⁵

Warfare mediated and encouraged the processes through which major changes occurred; and, in turn, was affected by developments within Europe’s dynamic civilisation, including demographic expansion, transoceanic discovery, intellectual enquiry and the spread of printing. In the sixteenth century, a series of transformations had major impacts on political relations. These included the Protestant Reformation, the advance of the Ottomans, the creation of European empires in the New World, which led to a flow of bullion into Europe, and a profound socio-economic shift characterised both by a major rise in population, after nearly two centuries of decline or stagnation, and by inflation. The resulting strains affected social and political relations within states, helping to make them more volatile, and also interacted with developments in international relations.The distinction between the two is less than clear-cut, particularly in the Holy Roman Empire (essentially modern Germany and Austria), but also in states that won independence through rebellion (the United Provinces) and in those that failed to do so (Ireland, Wallachia). The interaction of ‘international’ and ‘domestic’ politics and warfare ensured the overthrow in the 1550s of the quasi-hegemonic position of the Habsburgs in Western and Central Europe created by the Emperor Charles V in the 1520s–1540s, and, in the 1590s, of the dominant position in Western Europe created in the 1560s–mid-1580s by his son, Philip II of Spain.

This stress on policy serves as a reminder that there is a ‘problem of agency’ in the discussion of military change:

an impression is sometimes communicated that there was something automatic about the technology per se that changed wars, states, and societies…but a respectable proportion of military technological change has to do with problem solving…it is repetitive warfare fought over regional hegemony that has been most responsible for escalating army sizes, military costs, and military technology in Europe.⁶

This approach ensures that it is necessary to see technological change as an enabler of attitudes and policies, rather than as the driving force of modernity. Technology may have changed and developed because policy-makers were interested in this development and were willing to reward those who developed technology in their interests. Gunpowder had several uses, particularly in mining, but, for centuries, the main effort of using it was in the development of more reliable, more mobile and more efficient tubes made of metal, suitable for firing lethal missiles driven by gunpowder.

In so far as the impact of technology is concerned, it is necessary to be cautious about determinist assumptions⁷ and to avoid using misleading modern criteria about effectiveness.⁸ Instead, it is possible to point to other factors that encouraged the spread of new weaponry:

the proliferation of portable firearms…was due to the lack of fundamental technological change. The continuously poor technical quality of portable firearms had to be compensated for by their deployment in large numbers, in well-ordered armies, under an ethics of self-constraint and a mechanistic aesthetics.⁹

It is more generally important to be cautious in discussing the nature of change. The twentieth century had a fascination not only with machines but also with the concept of revolution.When, in 1924, Charles Oman referred to ‘the military revolution of the sixteenth century’,¹⁰ he was employing a term that had a particular resonance in the context of the thought of the period. It is unclear that that term is still pertinent.

2
CULTURAL, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXTS

A bellicose society

The military reflected the nature of society, and its actions exemplified current attitudes towards human life. Killing was generally accepted as necessary, both for civil society – against crime, heresy and disorder – and in international relations. War itself seemed necessary. In modern terms, it was the inevitable product of an international system that lacked a hegemonic power. To contemporaries, it was natural as the best means by which to defend interests and achieve goals. The idea that such objectives might be better achieved through diplomacy enjoyed limited purchase in a society that took conflict for granted; although there was a long-standing Christian critique of unjust wars and a related call to fight the non-believer.

Warfulness encouraged war, and the frequency of conflict ensured that a fresh turn to force seemed natural. By modern standards, European society was bellicose. Furthermore, a habit of viewing international relations in terms of concepts such as glory and honour was a natural consequence of the dynastic commitments and personal direction that a monarchical society produced. This habit reflected traditional notions of kingship, and was the most plausible and acceptable way to discuss foreign policy in a courtly context. Such notions also matched the heroic conceptions of royal, princely and aristocratic conduct in wartime.

Past warrior-leaders were held up as models for their successors. The example of Henry V of England was powerful at the court of Henry VIII (r. 1509–46), and Edward III’s victories over France were also a touchstone. Henry IV of France (r. 1589–1610) looked back to Hercules and to the French kings who had invaded Italy, not to the weak monarchs who had ruled in the meantime.¹ The Ottoman ruler Suleiman I,‘the Magnificent’, (r. 1520–66) was presented as the second Alexander the Great. Glory could be won through war. Thus the future Emperor Maximilian II (r. 1564–76) served in his uncle CharlesV’s German campaign in 1546–7. He led a cavalry division at the siege of Ingolstadt in 1546 and enjoyed taking part in the battle of Mühlberg.

Similarly, aristocrats looked back to heroic members of their families who had won and defended nobility, and thus social position and role, through glorious and honourable acts of valour.These traditions were sustained, both by service in war and by a personal culture of violence in the form of duels, feuds and displays of courage, the same socio-cultural imperative affecting both the international and the domestic sphere.This imperative was far more powerful than the cultural resonances of the quest for peace: the peace-giver was generally seen as a successful warrior, not as a royal, aristocratic or clerical diplomat.

The pursuit of land and heiresses linked the monarch to his peasants. As wealth was primarily held in land and transmitted through blood inheritance, it was natural at all levels of society for conflict to centre on succession disputes. Peasants resorted to litigation, a method that was lengthy and expensive, but to which the alternative was largely closed by state disapproval of private violence. Monarchs resorted to negotiation, but the absence of an adjudicating body, and the need, in particular, for a speedy solution once a succession fell vacant, encouraged a decision to fight.

Rulers

Most of the royal and aristocratic dynasties ruling and wielding power in 1660 owed their position to the willingness of past members of the family to fight to secure their succession claims. The Tudors defeated the Yorkists to win England in 1485, the Bourbons had had to fight to gain France in the 1590s, the Austrian Habsburgs ‘Royal’ Hungary in the 1520s and Bohemia in 1620, the Braganzas Portugal in 1640, and the Romanovs to force the Polish Vasas to renounce their claim to Russia in the 1630s. Battles such as the Tudor victory at Bosworth (1485) and the Habsburg triumph at White Mountain (1620) were crucial in this process. The Vasas fought to gain Sweden in the 1520s and, in the 1590s, to remove a Catholic Vasa. The Princes of Orange owed their position in the United Provinces (modern Netherlands) to the success of the Dutch Revolt, and their subsequent power and influence derived in large part from their subsequent role as commanders of the Dutch army. George II Rákóczy, Prince of Transylvania, invaded Poland in 1657 in an unsuccessful attempt to become the king of all or part of it. This was not only a matter of engaging in war. Many rulers also took a prominent role in command, and even combat. In 1487, Charles VIII of France led a royal army against a noble rebellion, and his presence helped lead rebel garrisons to surrender. He also fought on the battlefield at Fornovo (1495). His successor, Louis XII, took part in the successful cavalry attack on the Venetians at Agnadello (1509). His opponent Pope Julius II commanded his forces in person (wearing armour) at the siege of Mirandola in 1511. Henry IV of France led a crucial cavalry charge at Ivry (1590), although other royal figures on the battlefield did not take any comparable role. Ferdinand of Aragon led the force in 1500 that suppressed the Islamic rising in the Sierra Nevada that had began the previous year. In 1642, his descendant Philip IV of Spain joined the forces that unsuccessfully sought to suppress the Catalan rising.

Similarly, republics had to fight to assert their independence and defend their interests. Thus,Venice and Genoa fought off foreign assailants and took precautions against domestic insurrection, while the United Provinces abjured their obedience to Philip II, and Geneva its to the Dukes of Savoy. Other bodies tried but failed to do likewise – the Estates of Bohemia in 1619–20, and the Estates of Catalonia in 1640–52.

Although peaceful successions of new dynasties did take place, as in England when James VI of Scotland became James I in 1603, war and inheritance were often two sides of the same coin. This was a problem exacerbated by varying and disputed succession laws, and by the need, in marital diplomacy, to avoid morganatic marriages.The bellicist nature of court society and the fusion of gloire and dynasticism encouraged a resort to violence in the pursuit of such interests and claims. In his advance south towards Naples in 1494–5, Charles VIII of France entered Florence and Rome on horseback carrying his lance, an image of glorious power. Louis XII of France entered Genoa in 1507 in full armour carrying a naked sword. The Emperor Charles V challenged Francis I of France to personal combat in 1528 and Francis took up the challenge. Although nothing came of it, Charles’s move, and the response, expressed the ideal values of the period.² In 1597, Henry IV of France made his entry into Amiens, on horseback, sceptre in hand, to watch the defeated Spanish garrison surrender. The revival of the Classical triumph and procession was not restricted to Christian Europe, but was also used by the Ottomans, for example in Suleiman’s campaign of 1532. Gloire and dynasticism appear today to be irrational factors, but it is not a helpful approach to treat the values of the period as anachronistic. Instead, it is necessary to treat the rulers, ideologies and motives of the period on their own terms in order to understand the goals pursued through war.

In recent years, there has been a reaction against the earlier scholarly tendency to treat rulers and ministers (who were also of course courtiers) as if they were figures to be understood in modern terms with an emphasis on a supposed desire on their part to further state-building. Instead, there has been an emphasis on the persistence of chivalric and religious notions in the assumptions underlying policy and in the political culture of the period. Thus, Prince Henry ‘The Navigator’ (1394–1460), a crucial figure in the development of the Portuguese empire, has been repositioned in terms of Portuguese crusader and follower of both chivalry and astrology, rather than as a Renaissance Prince.³ This is important, as Portuguese maritime expansion has been seen as the cutting edge of the modern world. Philip II of Spain (r. 1556–98) has been presented as thinking in terms of a ‘messianic imperialism’ that stemmed from his strong religious convictions and his beliefs that God would support his policies. This has led to an understanding of his imperial overreach, as well as specific policy failures, as played out in Philip’s mind in terms of a cosmic struggle. There was no ‘viable alternative strategic vision’.⁴

This interpretation is important as Spain, under Philip, was the leading power in the Christian world, and his policies helped frame the agenda of international politics throughout much of it. It can be argued, that, irrespective of such attitudes on the part of leaders, militaries operated as professional bodies and developed in a competitive process; in other words that the nature of military change was systemic and that the ‘agency’ of individual rulers was of limited importance. Such an interpretation, however, underrates the extent to which the policy choices (compulsions is a more appropriate term) of rulers determined military goals.

The aristocracy

The overlapping groups variously described as aristocracy, nobility and traditional local elites had an advantage as military commanders because they had political leverage and patronage which might create the obedience and loyalty necessary to recruit junior officers and soldiers. The rise of a ‘modern’ officer corps in theory ensured that the state had to create an alternative structure through which the ruler could distribute patronage (rewards for loyalty and efficiency). In practice, this was to a large extent done by integrating the aristocracy and nobility with the ‘state’ and giving them access to royal patronage and combining it with the patronage and influence they had locally. Rulers could use the traditional influence of local elites, while the latter benefited from stronger rulers. The extent of this integration, however, varied greatly across Europe. For example, in Poland and Ireland major nobles remained semi-feudal warlords whose allegiance to central governments was limited.

War was seen as a source of glory for rulers and the officer class, much of which was made up from the nobility and, at sea, from both nobility and mercantile oligarchy. Social expectations and an absence of sustained social mobility at the level of military command affected the ability of rulers to select commanders. Louis XIII of France (r. 1610–43) and his leading minister from 1624 until his death in 1642, Cardinal Richelieu, were not alone in having to be very careful about the allocation of command among ‘les grands’. Far from appointment to comma...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Cultural, Social and Political Contexts
• 3 A Military Revolution?
• 4 European Expansion and the Global Context 1490-1578
• 5 European Warfare 1494-1559
• 6 European Warfare 1560-1617
• 7 European Warfare 1618-60
• 8 Naval Developments
• 9 European Expansion and the Global Context 1578-1660
• 10 Conclusions
• Notes