War and the State in Early Modern Europe

Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States

Jan Glete

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134736850
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw many ambitious European rulers develop permanent armies and navies. War and the State in Early Modern Europe examines this military change as a central part of the political, social and economic transformation of early modern Europe.
This important study exposes the economic structures necessary for supporting permanent military organisations across Europe. Large armed forces could not develop successfully without various interest groups who needed protection and were willing to pay for it. Arguing that early fiscal-military states were in fact protection-selling enterprises, the author focuses on:
* Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden
* the role of local elites
* the political and organisational aspects of this new military development

CHAPTER ONE
The rise of the fiscal-military state, 1500-1700

Two simultaneous transformations

In the fifteenth century, European wars were fought by sovereign states as well as by various autonomous political entities. The social structures of warfare were to only a very limited extent permanent organisations controlled by states. The organisations that existed were simple and required few professional administrators. Some states owned a few warships, a few had small permanent units of cavalry or infantry, and most had begun to acquire artillery. Rulers had forces of armed guards as part of their household and as garrisons on their castles, but similarly most powerful feudal lords and many bishops had groups of armed retainers. Those who were wealthy enough to afford it—sovereigns, land-owning magnates, bishops and cities—had built castles and city walls to protect themselves against foreign and domestic enemies and local disturbances.¹

Military power was diffuse and existed as part of various social institutions of a predominantly local character. In times of war, the actual fighting was dominated by these locally controlled groups, which were connected only conditionally to the rulers and whose loyalty to the state depended on their degree of interest in the success of the war. If they did not co-operate with the ruler, his authority might crumble into insignificance; if they were hostile they might overthrow him; and if they disagreed with each other they might start a civil war. Local power-holders in medieval Europe usually believed that they had the right to use violence in feuds about power and economic resources without being regarded as rebels, traitors or criminal outlaws. Coercion with violence and protection against such coercion were central parts oftheir power in local society.

When mobilised for war, late medieval European armies consisted of cavalry, infantry and artillery, which superficially made them similar to armies up to modern times, but organisationally they were heterogeneous and uncoordinated. Normally, European societies did not transfer control of the resources they provided for warfare to the states; they mobilised their resources for war under the co-ordination of the state. The heavy cavalry was a prestigious arm mainly provided by the feudal levy raised by the landowning nobility. Infantry might be provided by the land-owners from their retainers and peasants but also by cities, guilds and peasant communities, which organised militias, usually under leadership of the local elites. Professional cavalry and infantry forces might also be hired in times of war, often from other countries. Such mercenaries were often highly skilled, but their loyalty did not last longer than they were paid. Artillery, especially the heavy siege guns, were usually provided by the state, but primitive gunpowder weapons were widely dispersed in late medieval society. Navies were normally only temporary, being formed by hired or requisitioned sailing merchantmen fitted out as warships, or galleys hastily built during a mobilisation. In the Mediterranean, galleys with crews were often hired from mercenary entrepreneurs. Much of the actual fighting at sea was carried out by more or less legally authorised privateering, often a thin disguise for piracy or armed coercion against competitors in trade. Merchants who could defend their ships and cargoes with armed force of their own dominated long-distance trade.²

The command structure in these improvised armed forces was complicated as the feudal lords often provided unevenly sized groups of armed retainers where the members preferred to fight under the men they knew as the local elite. Regiments and companies of homogeneous size and commanded by officers were unusual and were never permanent.³ Socioeconomic status and patronage (the ability to reward and punish) were often more important than efficiency in military leadership when leaders were appointed. This was rational in a society where men preferred to follow their social superiors in combat and fight at the side of neighbours rather than being put into the rank and file of an anonymous army unit under officers with whom they had had no earlier contact. Strategically, centuries of investment in stone fortification dominated much of the actual warfare on land. A multitude of privately or locally controlled castles and city walls were maintained all over Europe, usually not according to any strategic plan of national defence. Together with cavalry and infantry subordinated to local hierarchies of social control, they gave local power-holders a strong position in questions where armed force might be the ultimate arbiter. Little central military authority was vested in the states, and there was considerable scope for violence, coercion and armed protection by autonomous political bodies and powerful magnates.

The state was not powerless or marginal in warfare—war was indeed one of its main occupations in medieval Europe. A country could not fight a major war with another country without a state as the co-ordinator of social forces. Rulers of medieval states could exercise political leadership and strategic command; they might gain undisputed tactical control of a major army gathered by socio-economic forces; and they might also for a time organise their own armed forces paid from domain incomes, taxes, custom duties, loans and plunder. Medieval rulers and aristocrats who were good military leaders sometimes achieved excellent tactical and strategic results with feudal armies, and medieval city-states were often proficient in the use of sea power. But every new war had to be started with a considerable degree of improvisation as the states did not provide the organisational structure through which the bulk of the armed forces was recruited, armed, trained and mobilised.

That structure was embedded in social institutions, the same as those that provided coherence and stability in the local societies. The ability to use armed force operationally was vested with local power: land-owners, cities, local militias, even various parts of the Church. Without the active co-operation of the elites that controlled the power structure in local societies, states lacked operational military capability. The situation of medieval states varied between that of the United Nations and NATO in the late twentieth century. The UN has no operational forces of its own but has to rely on voluntary efforts from its members to enforce decisions, while NATO as an organisation controls part of the armed forces of its members but has to rely on a broad political agreement if they are to be used operationally under NATO control. A medieval army or fleet provided by various social forces was heterogeneous in motivation, training and equipment and seldom useful for complicated strategies or advanced tactics. Major war efforts often had to be limited to short campaign seasons, as the mobilisation of a significant part of civil society might seriously interrupt production and trade. The strategic mobility of nominally large forces was usually very limited due to restrictions in logistics.

The mobilisation of the armed forces of a medieval state was to a large extent an open manifestation of the political interest aggregated in the society behind the state. Feudal lords, bishops, cities, guilds and other local communities sent the cavalry, infantry or armed ships that formed the bulk of the mobilised army and fleet. The great men of the society often appeared personally as commanders. If the interests behind the state came into conflict with each other, these decentralised social institutions of war were well suited to a settlement by force, i.e. through civil war or coercion. In this respect, the connections between state, society and the institutions of war had been almost unchanged through several centuries. The increased importance of infantry and mercenaries in late medieval Europe had begun to reduce the importance of the feudal heavy cavalry, but it had not necessarily raised the central power of the state. Militia infantry raised by peasant communities or cities, and mercenaries hired by city-states, could be used against centralising rulers as well as against feudal lords. Long periods of violent domestic political conflicts were common in most medieval European countries.

In pre-industrial societies, only efficient systems for resource extraction from agricultural production and trade could provide the state with the means for hiring large numbers of soldiers or keeping several warships of its own. Such systems only existed in embryonic form. The most notable exception in fifteenth-century Europe was the northern half of Italy, where several territorial entities with city-states at their core had emerged during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. These states, which in terms of economy, administration and culture were the most sophisticated in Europe at this time, often had contracts with mercenary entrepreneurs, which provided them with at least a nucleus of a professional army. Venice also had a large permanent and state-administered navy and may in terms of permanent armed force have ranked number one in Europe in 1500.⁴

Two centuries later, in the late seventeenth century, the social institutions for war in Western and Central Europe had changed drastically. Wars were now fought by organisations effectively controlled by the states, and the strength of these organisations determined much of European power politics. These organisations, armies and navies, had become permanent in peace and war, their personnel were employed by the state, and the investments in fortifications, weapons and warships were made by the states. The manpower of these military organisations represented a significant part of the total population, and the cost of maintaining them, even in peace, consumed a significant part of the production of the society. The armed forces were organised according to centrally determined ideas about standardisation of weapons, training and subdivisions into administrative and operational units: regiments, battalions, companies, etc. Most significantly, in the latter half of the seventeenth century states had introduced uniforms for officers and soldiers, which marked their role as servants of their state, the coherence within the army and (with various insignias) the hierarchical chain of command. Social resources mobilised for war were converted into articulated, standardised, coherent and usually permanent combatant units before they were sent out to fight.⁵

Coherence created by permanent and articulated organisations made the armed forces into useful operational instruments of centrally determined policies. The armies and navies had become bureaucracies in uniform. They were led by professional officers organised in a formalised hierarchy where rank was determined by appointments made by the state, not by the social origin of the officer. Officers were thus servants of their state, and their loyalty to the ruler was (although only recently) beyond doubt. Soldiers and seamen had become accustomed to obeying these officers rather than men with socioeconomic power. The chain of command not only provided strategic and tactical leadership but also ensured that the armed forces acted according to the policy of the state. Modern fortifications had been concentrated in strategic border areas; artillery and other military equipment were stored in arsenals; and fleets of large and specialised warships were built and maintained in state-controlled dockyards.

Land-owning magnates, cities and other local interest groups no longer controlled significant armed forces or fortifications of their own. Local society might still organise defensive militias, and merchantmen sailing with valuable cargo were still often armed for defence against pirates and minor warships, but such forces no longer constituted any threat to the state. Privateering still existed, but it was now under efficient legal control and strictly separated from piracy. Piracy, which earlier had been a semi-legal activity in many parts of Europe, had been practically extinguished by the new type of territorial state with its efficient monopoly on violence. If local interests wished to exercise any influence over the armed forces, they had tojoin them as officers or administrators, or influence the rulers, political institutions and courts that exercised control over them. Local elites were often successful in this, but they had to adjust to new rules of professionalism and loyalty if they wished to succeed in the fiscal-military states.

From 1500 to 1700 military and naval technology, tactics and strategy also underwent major changes. Weapons based on gunpowder technology became dominant on land and at sea, infantry became more important than cavalry on the battlefield, and siege warfare was transformed due to the general introduction of heavy guns and new types of fortification. Sailing warships armed with guns became the dominant weapon system at sea. The ability to sail and fight at long range also enabled Europeans to wage wars for trade and colonies in the Atlantic hemisphere and in the Indian Ocean, and to penetrate the Asian network of maritime trade. Control of advanced military and naval technology had become an integral part of the power base of the state. One of the most obvious changes in European societies was that the number of men permanently employed in specialised armed forces increased dramatically, from a peacetime strength of a few tens of thousands in 1500 to many hundreds of thousands in 1700. During the great wars in the early eighteenth century, more than a million soldiers and seamen were employed continuously in European armed forces.

To pay for these huge organisations, states had considerably broadened their financial bases through increased taxes and customs duties.⁶ This had been made possible by the states’ increasing administrative and political ability to concentrate resources from society and to channel them into the new organisational structures for violence control. Taxes and customs duties were raised by both local officials employed by the state and local elite groups that co-operated with the state. These elite groups could often obtain support from the state for their power position in local societies in exchange for their willingness to provide the state with an extractive apparatus in the local society. Both the administrative and the political penetration of societies and the increased capability of states to concentrate resources and transform them into permanent armed force were based on a new form of interest aggregation where a large part of the society looked upon the state as the only viable supplier of armed protection and coercive power against external and internal threats. The states had asserted and achieved a monopoly of violence in relation both to foreign powers and to their societies. Local magnates and communities no longer believed that they could organise their own protection; nor did they believe in their ability to coerce the state or other members of the elite with violence. The traditional direct connection between armed force, coercion and local hierarchies of authority had disappeared or lost most of its importance. By forming permanent and specialised armed forces, states had created social actors where the component parts were no longer individuals, families or members of socio-economic power structures. They were roles or positions in an organisational structure to which individuals might be recruited and promoted if they showed loyalt...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Prologue
• 1 The rise of the fiscal-military state, 1500-1700
• 2 Explaining thefiscal-military state
• 3 The Spanish monarchy: The first fiscal-military state
• 4 The Dutch Republic: A bourgeois fiscal-military state
• 5 Sweden: A dynastic fiscal-military state
• 6 The fiscal-military state and the transformation of Europe
• Notes
• Select bibliography