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1. From Dynastic to National Warfare, 1775-1815
- Indiana University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
From Dynastic to National Warfare, 1775-1815 In the forty years between 1775and 1815there occurred a revolution in Western warfare that coincided with the coming of the American and French revolutions and the Age of Napoleon. This revolution swept away the traditional forms of dynastic warfare that had evolved in the European world during the previous three hundred years, and began an era of national warfare that persists in the late twentieth century. This study of the patterns of war since the late eighteenth century begins, therefore, with an examination of the process of change in armies between 1775and 1815,a starting point that allows the setting of a benchmark from which all further changes in warfare may be measured. Although navies were less affected than armies by change in this period, they too will be examined in order to establish the background for understanding the tremendous impact of technological changes on navies over the course of the nineteenth century. Still, the central theme of this chapter is how warfare on land was transformed from conflicts between monarchs to great struggles between peoples-the essence of national warfare. I. Dynastic Warfare A. Armies. Between the close of the Middle Ages and the last quarter of the eighteenth century, royal dynastic identification predominated over national identity in European armies. These armies had developed coeval with the rise of centralized monarchies in the Western world; originally, they were temporary combinations of feudal and mercenary forces assembled on the eve of war and were often composed of a variety 1 From Dynastic to National Warfare, 1775-1815 In the forty years between 1775 and 1815 there occurred a revolution in Western warfare that coincided with the coming of the American and French revolutions and the Age of Napoleon. This revolution swept away the traditional forms of dynastic warfare that had evolved in the European world during the previous three hundred years, and began an era of national warfare that persists in the late twentieth century. This study of the patterns of war since the late eighteenth century begins, therefore, with an examination of the process of change in armies between 1775 and 1815, a starting point that allows the setting of a benchmark from which all further changes in warfare may be measured. Although navies were less affected than armies by change in this period, they too will be examined in order to establish the background for understanding the tremendous impact of technological changes on navies over the course of the nineteenth century. Still, the central theme of this chapter is how warfare on land was transformed from conflicts between monarchs to great struggles between peoples-the essence of national warfare. I. Dynastic Warfare A. Armies. Between the close of the Middle Ages and the last quarter of the eighteenth century, royal dynastic identification predominated over national identity in European armies. These armies had developed coeval with the rise of centralized monarchies in the Western world; originally, they were temporary combinations of feudal and mercenary forces assembled on the eve of war and were often composed of a variety 2 The Patterns of War since the Eighteenth Centuy of nationalities. As royal finances improved, the permanently assembled or standing army became the rule, but even then the early modern army was still multinational in composition. Dynastic armies reached the peak of their development in the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century, by the end of which time the great military states of the age were Bourbon France, Habsburg Austria, Hohenzollern Prussia, and Romanov Russia. Prussia and ,Russia were the most lately arrived: Prussia in the reign of Frederick I1 (the Great), with the outcomes of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48) and the Seven Years’ War (1756-63), and Russia in the reign of Peter I (the Great) at the close of the Great Northern War (1700-21). Except for Prussia, which never had more than about six million people in this period, the great military powers of Europe had populations varying from twenty to thirty million each. Prussia was something of a marvel. This relatively small German state counted so much in the European balance of power because it maintained a standing army equal to as much as 3 percent of its population, or, in proportion, three times as many as the other great military powers. In absolute numbers, the largest royal army in Europe before the Wars of the French Revolution was that of France under Louis XIV...