- Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army 1610–1715
This book is a comprehensive study of the French army during the seventeenth century and its place in the history of state-building. Lynn aims not only to examine every aspect of this “giant” from Henry IV through Louis XIV, but also to explore in great detail the mutual interaction of army and state. This is an ambitious project. On one level, the book reads like an encyclopedia of military lore, with admirably clear sections on administration, supply, ranks, officer corps, recruitment, morale and mentality, militias, discipline, weapons, battle formations, artillery, drill, logistics, tactics, strategy in the field, siege warfare, fortress construction, and much more. On a more conceptual level, Lynn offers carefully nuanced revisions of many standard views concerning the military origins of absolutism, the nature of the military revolution, and the alleged modernity of Louis XIV’s army.
The author delineates seven stages in the historical evolution of state control over armies, highlighting for the seventeenth-century certain societal limitations on bureaucratic development. His chapter about the evolution of the numerical size of royal armies is definitive, and his discussion of the difficulties of army provisioning in the field, which was still improvised despite Louvois’ use of magazines, is revealing. Louis XIV’s armies drew a startling 25 percent of their revenues from [End Page 122] contributions forced on subject territories. Lynn argues that the need to control these areas motivated the shift to a strategy of frontier fortresses. He also notes that the cost of warfare, far from being rationally managed by central fiscal institutions, continued to be assessed and spent in local communities. A considerable share was borne by noble officers who had to use their personal resources of money and credit to keep their regiments going. This was a significant tax on the nobility that is often overlooked in discussions of the social orders.
This book makes a major contribution, but it is also wordy and repetitive. Lynn is at his best when analyzing the military aspects of Louis XIV’s regime. His account of the standard administrative topics and his treatment of the period before 1660 are less original, and his treatment of the culture of the common soldier is unconvincing. He neglects to cite relevant studies like Collins’ work on taxation and Mettam’s minimalist view of Louis XIV’s authority, which is not unlike his own. 1
Although this book may not be the definitive study of seventeenth-century absolutism, it admirably achieves its goal of forcing us to confront directly the massive significance of the army. Contrary to standard explanations, Lynn argues, the growth of the army did not see a corresponding growth of state institutions to support it. Straining to maintain this colossus, king and society were crippled by aristocratic values and archaic procedures. In fact, the real absolutism was in the mobilized army, wherein the king actually controlled the lives of many thousands of subjects, and not in the larger society, in which governmental functions were still hobbled by privileges and by transactions with local elites.
Footnotes
1. James Collins, The Fiscal Limits of Absolutism (Berkeley, 1988); Roger Mettam, Power and Faction in Louis XIV’s France (Oxford, 1988).