Military Experience in the Age of Reason

Christopher Duffy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781135794583
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

First published in 1987. War in the 18th century was a bloody business. A line of infantry would slowly march, to the beat of a drum, into a hail of enemy fire. Whole ranks would be wiped out by cannon fire and musketry. Christopher Duffy's investigates the brutalities of the battlefield and also traces the lives of the officer to the soldier from the formative conditions of their earliest years to their violent deaths or retirement, and shows that, below their well-ordered exteriors, the armies of the Age of Reason underwent a revolutionary change from medieval to modern structures and ways of thinking.

Part I
The armies of the Enlightenment

1
Military Europe

The character and importance of the eighteenth century

The time has long passed since it was fashionable to dismiss the eighteenth century as a decorative interval, suspended between the glooms and dooms of the Wars of Religion and the grinding industrialisation of the nineteenth century. Just as the works of Haydn and Mozart now make up part of ‘our’ music, so their contemporaries among the statesmen and soldiers addressed themselves to questions of major historical import. It still matters today that Russia secured the domination of eastern Europe, that Prussia became the most vital power in Germany, and that the Americans wrested control of their future from British hands.

Perhaps we should not attempt to define too closely what is meant by the eighteenth century, other than the span of years extending from 1701 to 1800. Three, four or five generations were alive during this time. Few of the people who made them up were conscious of living through a particular period of history, and many of them never escaped from a physical and mental environment which had changed little since the Middle Ages.

If, however, we define a period in terms of public affairs, fashion and the other concerns of the literate minority, then the eighteenth century has a number of recognisable characteristics, and most of them have to do with the age’s feeling for style and restraint. The eighteenth century seemed to be incapable of creating anything which looked or sounded ugly—to the extent that the graffiti of the tourists were carved with the utmost elegance. No less impressively, men of the eighteenth century, although much given to fighting wars, conducted them with much less of the inhumanity which has stained the records of the ages.

The middle of the century, and more specifically the years between 1748 and 1763, was a peculiarly vital and innovatory time, and may be seen as the epitome of the so called ‘Age of Reason’, which is generally taken to be the period between the death of Louis XIV in 1715 and the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789.

The year 1748 saw both the beginning of the transformation of the Austrian state by Maria Theresa, and the publication of David Hume’s Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding. The first volume of Denis Diderot’s Encydopédie appeared in 1751; the Species Plantarum of Carl Linnaeus was published in 1752, and three years later Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary represented a further significant step in categorising knowledge and making it more accessible. Burke, Bishop Butler, Benjamin Franklin, Kant, Adam Smith and Voltaire were all scribbling significant texts at the same time. In the sphere of the arts Frederick of Prussia continued to champion the decorative and elegant rococo style in architecture and painting, while the Elector Palatine’s orchestra at Mannheim set standards in expression and ensemble which hastened the coming of the Classical age of music. Gluck’s Orfeo, the first of the ‘reform’ operas, received its première in 1762.

The period from 1748 to 1763 also corresponds very closely with the ‘Diplomatic Revolution’ in European politics, and the ensuing Seven Years War, which was a genuine global conflict: ‘This wide geographical spread; this involvement of the major Powers; this loss of life and outpouring of treasure; marked the greatest upheaval the world had yet seen’ (Savory, 1966, vii).

The transforming impetus was sustained beyond 1789 and into the new century. Something of the old unities and the old lightness of heart was admittedly lost in the process. The rococo age and its artefacts came to seem ridiculous and doll-like to those scholars and gentlemen who embraced the neo-classical style in the visual arts, which was a self-conscious product of study and principle. The cult of Sensibility was the expression of a different impulse—a turning to what seemed direct and natural. There was a detectable Sturm und Drang period in German literature, whose energy and emotion spilled over into some of the symphonies of Haydn and Mozart. Landscapes of ‘useless woods and forests’, which to members of the older generation owned ‘a barbaric and savage appearance’ (Burney, 1775, 69) now entranced the eye and improved the soul of the younger folk. Among leaders of society in the rococo period it had not been considered ‘fashionable to be a good father or a good husband’ (Ligne, 1928, I, 7), but now family life and conjugal love became matters of celebration.

In things material, the last decades of the century witnessed some changes that reached down to the lower orders of society. The Industrial Revolution gathered force in Britain in the 1780s, and in Europe generally a decline in mortality from infectious diseases contributed to the beginning of a significant rise in population. From about 118 million in 1700 the total reached 187 million by the end of the century, and it continued to rise without check for more than 150 years. It is difficult to determine whether standards of living improved correspondingly. From about 1740 there was a deterioration in diet in Leipzig and other cities of Central Europe, and in the second half of the century a decline was observed in the height of groups as various as Swedish recruits, London pauper boys, American negro slaves, and the peoples of Bohemia and Lower Austria (Komlos, 1985, 1, 155–9).

General ideas on statecraft and war

ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM

The most common generalisations about the eighteenth century have been enshrined in the school textbooks for many years, and, as long as they are regarded as no more than average truths, they have stood up pretty well to the test of time. The ‘Enlightenment’, properly speaking, refers more particularly to some of the ideas promoted by some German writers from the middle of the eighteenth century, but the idea of rational enquiry, and how it could be used for the physical and moral betterment of humankind, was one which had a wider application. A Dutch colonel summed it up as a ‘philosophical spirit’, which he defined as ‘the engrained habit of reducing our ideas to order, and of examining, observing, judging and relating everything to its true principles before we are prepared to believe, accept, decide and act’ (Nockhern de Schorn, 1783, xi). On the continent of Europe it helped to inspire a kind of controlled revolution from above, for the central bureaucracy grew in size and power, and the sovereigns mounted an assault on local or private interests which obstructed the public good. In several countries a genuine attempt was made to improve the condition of the serfs, and Austria witnessed the beginnings of general primary education.

Order and harmony were preserved as far as possible in this process, and most of the princely courts remained or became magnificent establishments which defmed standards of taste and etiquette. This was something which Europe inherited from the later seventeenth century and which strongly influenced the conduct of public and private affairs: ‘Ceremonial has reached a peak of development in our period; warfare itself has a very large share therein’. Etiquette determined what you ought to do when you received recruits, presented new officers to their regiment, mounted the guard, exchanged prisoners, or arranged the surrender of a fortress. The study of military ceremonial was not only a pleasing diversion for a young officer, ‘but also, when you talk to others, it helps to create the impression that you have served in a large number of foreign armies’ (Fleming, 1726, I, 94, 188).

While they discover so much to admire in the public life of the eighteenth century, commentators have long been aware that the reforming drive lacked continuity and depth. There was little motivation to carry on the good work, once the enlightened prince had died or his trusted minister had fallen from grace. Damaging compromises were all too often made with established centres of power, and in many states the underlings were able to offer a muted but effective opposition to the process of change. A civil servant from Baden wrote in 1786, ‘What use are the finest directives, when they are not carried out?’ (Hartung, 1955, 34). Frederick of Prussia regarded superstition as the daughter of timidity, weakness and ignorance, and he rejoiced with Voltaire that this ‘vast empire of fanaticism’ had retreated to the peripheries of Europe (8 January 1766, Frederick, 1846– 57, XXIII, 96). The fact remains that religion and custom continued to offer the guiding principles for most of the peoples of Europe.

The gap between what was ordained and what was actually carried out inevitably places the historian of military affairs in some embarrassment. Unless he is on his guard, he will assume that central direction was effective as it is in the much more tightly controlled world of the twentieth century. It is easy enough to write about such and such a regulation or practice being ordained by Frederick the Great, Maria Theresa or the Duc de Choiseul: it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to find how far their armies responded to the messages which came from above.

PATRIOTISM

When we look back at the eighteenth century from the present day, we recognise patriotism in its most readily identifiable form in two countries which stood on the fringes of Europe, namely Britain and Russia. Here it was encouraged by physical isolation and the racial and religious differences which separated their peoples from their nearest neighbours. More admirable in its way was the patriotism associated with republics like the Netherlands and Switzerland, where it was linked with a form of government which also promoted toleration and equality. Frederick of Prussia had much private sympathy with republican ideals, though he doubted whether the republics could long survive in co-existence with the great monarchies.

Elsewhere patriotism wore some curious guises. Germany, for example, was a notorious paradox, forming at once a cultural nation in the linguistic sense, but divided into a multitude of sovereign states. The political and military fragmentation was intensified by the experience of the Seven Years War (1756–63), which brought French and Russian armies onto German soil. On the one side there can be no doubt that many of the Hanoverians, Brunswickers, Hessians and native Prussians believed that the welfare of their homes and families, and the survival of the Protestant religion, were now at stake. The Protestant Germans had long resented the pretensions of France, and many of them responded with enthusiasm in the spiritual leadership which they thought they had found in Frederick the Great. In such an interest the poet Gleim took issue with his cosmopolitan friend Lessing, and Thomas Abbt came from Ulm to sing the praises of Prussia’s hero-king, all covered in sweat and dust (Vom Tode fürs Vaterland, 1761).

On the other side the soldiers of Saxony, equally German, and for the most part equally Protestant, rejected Frederick and everything Prussian out of loyalty to their own sovereign prince. The Saxon army of 18,000 men was captured intact by Old Fritz at Pirna in 1756, and the wretched troops were dragooned into the Prussian service. Frederick was ready to cope with individual deserters from among these unwilling recruits, but he was powerless to stop the mass breakouts which actually took place. A French officer saw the Saxons who came over to the French army, and he could find nothing but admiration for heroic figures like Sergeant Kinabe of the battalion of Prinz Xaver and

many others of the same stamp who have given such convincing proofs of their fidelity. Out of all the Saxon officers, and even all the Saxon soldiers we have with us here, there is not a single one who has not spurned tempting offers from the enemy, or braved manifold dangers in order to expend his blood in the service of his fatherland and his sovereign. (Mopinot de la Chapotte, 1905, 226–7).

The hostilities were sometimes powered by grudges and blood feuds, like the one which the Prussian army harboured against the Russians after Frederick’s soldiers had seen the devastation at Cüstrin and in the Neumark in 1758. The peculiar bitterness between the Prussian and Saxon forces went back to the battle of Hohenfriedeberg (1745), when Frederick’s cavalry had massacred the Saxon infantry, and the quarrel flared up again whenever one party had the other at its mercy during the Seven Years War.

The spirit of faction had its counterpart in civilian society, where close relations sometimes found themselves bitterly divided, like Goethe’s father and grandfather at Frankfurt. Life was no less uncomfortable in the princely household at Dessau, as a result of the bad blood which existed between the princes Dietrich and Eugen: ‘Dietrich is an out-and-out Prussian, while Eugene is a dyed-in-the-wool Saxon. These two brothers therefore live on a constant war footing’ (Lehndorff, 1910–13, I, 231). Among the ordinary people, the enthusiasms had much in common with the emotional support which twentieth-century crowds show for sporting teams. There can be no other explanation for the violent confrontations between the Teresiani and Prussiani among the Venetian monks and gondoliers in the Seven Years War.

The manifestations of faction, as here described, stood at an important remove from political commitment. Zeal for the cause of Frederick outside Prussia had nothing to do with a desire to become his subjects (God forbid!). Goethe and his young friends were first and foremost ‘Fritzians’, and not proto-Prussians. In wartime only a minority of Europeans were motivated by anything which at all approached modern definitions of patriotism, and in time of peace such individuals were still more difficult to find. What were the reasons?

In the first place, life for many of the countryfolk was bounded by narrow horizons, arising from the spirit of campanilismo and the social divisions as outlined by the Spanish general Santa Cruz:

It is rare to find a country where the people are not at daggers drawn with the aristocracy, or the nobles are not divided among themselves… The inhabitants of two neighbouring localities will usually be on bad terms. Their hostility derives from the endless disputes over rights to water, woodland or pasture along their borders; each village wishes to extend its borders at the expense of the other. (Santa Cruz, 1735–40, IV, 224)

On occasion foreign invaders were faced with total passive opposition from the people, such as the Prussians encountered in the ‘Austrian’ provinces of Bohemia and Moravia. In other theatres the arrival of the newcomers was frequently welcomed by the local underdogs, who now had the opportunity to declare themselves against their masters. Thus, when the Austrians invaded the republic of Genoa in 1746, they were well received by the peasants just outside Genoa city, who tried to warn them against the dangers of camping on the dried bed of the Polceverra river. Again, in North America in the War of Independence, the passage of the rival armies left a smouldering trail of civil strife and miniature revolutions.

The concept of honour, which was a very complicated idea in its own right (see page. ), corresponded only indirectly, if at all, with a patriotic cause. Count Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst von Schaumburg-Lippe wrote sarcastically about

the custom which exists by common consent among almost all the peoples of Europe, but especially those of Germany, namely that of earning your daily bread by pursuing the military profession as you would embrace any other trade. You sell yourself to the highest bidder, and you kill and destroy while remaining totally indifferent to the motives and objectives behind the war. (Schaumburg-Lippe, 1977–83, III, 158–9).

Cosmpolitanism was an actively hostile agent. It scorned the vmonoglot stay-at-homes, and in the same degree it promoted personal mobility and universal values. A knowledge of French was a prerequisite for a man who wished to be at home in European society, and Prince Henry of Prussia advised a young officer to master this language ‘lest one should be considered some kind of Germanic beast’ (Berenhorst, 1845–7, I, xiv).

The very supporters of patriotism defmed it in cool and distant terms. Carl Abraham Zedlitz explained it to the Berlin Académie Royale in 1776: ‘What we call “patriotism” is a lively attachment to the laws, customs, institutions, advantages and glory of the society in which we live. The sentiment is a subdivision of love in general—in other words it is a passion.’ This not particularly passionate declaration was delivered in French (Zedlitz, 1776, 5. See also Sonnenfels, 1783–7; Ligne, 1795–1811, X, 10–11). Even the celebrated Jacques de Guibert, who looked forward to a truly national army, elevated a kind of patriotism that would be ennobled by reason, and rise above un-worthy sentiments of fanaticism and hate (Guibert [1772], 1804, I, 2).

The word ‘advantages’, as mentioned by Zedlitz, came from a sense of mutual obligation and benefit which probably derived from feudal society. This idea is a very important one for our understanding of the mentality of the military aristocracy in the eighteenth century, and it was developed at greater length by Carl Gottfried Wolff in the same year as the Zedlitz address. Wolf’s definition of patriotism was almost identical with that of Zedlitz, and he deduced that the Fatherland had a call on one’s loyalty only as long as the subject was allowed freedom of conscience and a share in the common prosperity. When these benefits ceased, the individual was at liberty to seek ‘another Fatherland’ (Wolff, 1776, 60).

Other authorities were willing to maintain that patriotism scarcely existed at all. Voltaire found that ‘the concept of fatherland is variable and contradictory. Most of the inhabitants of a country like France do not know what it means’ (entry ‘Patrie’ in his Dictionnaire philosophique). Many military men would have found themselves in agreement with the Austrian officer Cogniazzo, who claimed that for contemporary armies ‘patriotism’ was the equivalent of a spare wheel on a vehicle, to be put into use when the others had worn out (Cogniazzo, 1779, 103).

THE LIMITATION OF WAR

The Seven Years War, as the culminating military effort of old Europe, was fought for important objectives, and on the whole with a great deal of energy: soldiers carried out the same mindless vandalisms they have worked in all times and places; public opinion took a lively interest in the progress of the campaigns, and bellicose religious enthusiasm underwent something of a revival, at least in Central Europe, which gave the war an emotional charge roughly comparable with that provided by the issue of slavery in the American Civil War. However the observers and historians were surely in the right when they looked on the eighteenth century as a period of remarkable restraint in the conduct of warfare.

Physical constraints

The involuntary limitations were of two kinds, resulting from the excruciating difficulty of moving and supplying armies, and the heavy investment that was made in training the professional soldiers, who therefore became a valuable commodity.

As a general rule the regular formations remained totally inactive in winter quarters from about October until the month of May, which was when the grass began to grow and the armies’ huge complement of horses (required for cavalry, and drawing guns and carts) could graze in the open fields. The campaigning season was therefore confined to about five months of the year, and even then the armies moved so ponderously that it was difficult to bring an unwilling enemy to fight. When, at last, the forces did meet in battle, it was common to lose up to one-third of your men in a few hours of combat. Two or three battles left your precious store of veterans heavily depleted, and you had to make up the number with recruits, who were unskilled in the close-order drills required for the tactics of the time.

It was a matter of common observation that wars had a way of fizzling out after a few such campaigning cycles. Indeed, a state of gentle near-efficiency was probably the one best suited to sustain an eighteenth-century army over a long haul before the inevitable breakdown. If some institution or department of state happened to work too well, its effect was to shake the machine to pieces—like installing a racing car engine in a rickshaw. The indelingsverk system of recruiting sucked the Swedish state dry of manpower early in the eighteenth century, in a way that Frederick swore that he would never allow in Prussia. Few armies were ever supplied so well as the Austrian forces facing the Prussians in northern Bohemia in 1778, but the Austrian treasury was hit so badly in the process that (even if political considerations had not supervened) the Austrians would have been quite unable to keep up the effort.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Part I The Armies of the Enlightenment
• Part II War
• Part III The Military Experience in Context and Perspective
• Appendix: Principal Wars and Campaigns
• Bibliography