Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- List of figures and tables
- 1 Thinking about revolutions in warfare
- 2 “As if a new sun had arisen”: England's fourteenth-century RMA
- 3 Forging the Western army in seventeenth-century France
- 4 Mass politics and nationalism as military revolution: The French Revolution and after
- 5 Surviving military revolution: The U.S. Civil War
- 6 The Prusso-German RMA, 1840–1871
- 7 The battlefleet revolution, 1885–1914
- 8 The First World War and the birth of modern warfare
- 9 May 1940: Contingency and fragility of the German RMA
- 10 Conclusion: The future behind us
- Index
3 - Forging the Western army in seventeenth-century France
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
- Frontmatter
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- List of figures and tables
- 1 Thinking about revolutions in warfare
- 2 “As if a new sun had arisen”: England's fourteenth-century RMA
- 3 Forging the Western army in seventeenth-century France
- 4 Mass politics and nationalism as military revolution: The French Revolution and after
- 5 Surviving military revolution: The U.S. Civil War
- 6 The Prusso-German RMA, 1840–1871
- 7 The battlefleet revolution, 1885–1914
- 8 The First World War and the birth of modern warfare
- 9 May 1940: Contingency and fragility of the German RMA
- 10 Conclusion: The future behind us
- Index
Summary
The art of war in seventeenth-century Europe passed through a transformation so fundamental that scholars have proclaimed it a “military revolution.” Changes in everything from tactics to institutional hierarchies gave armies many of the characteristics now recognized as modern. After initial advances credited to the Dutch and the Swedes, the French led the wave of change during the second half of the century. This essay focuses on French military refinements and innovations in the grand siècle in which Louis XIV, renowned as the Sun King, set the style in armies as much in architecture.
Historical debate on seventeenth-century military development centers on two related issues. The first concerns the pace and character of change, and involves a semantic – but also substantive – dispute between advocates of “revolution” or “evolution”; the simplicity of the dichotomy belies the variety of innovations and changes in existing patterns. The language of revolution satisfies the inherent human desire for drama, but a more evolutionary interpretation fits the evidence better. The second point of contention involves the role of technology in driving the process of change, whatever its pace. Technology seduces all who examine the military past; hardware promises to explain so much and pretends to be the stuff of revolutionary change. But the transformation this chapter describes nevertheless owed relatively little to technology.
Understanding the timing, causation, and importance of seventeenth-century military change requires analysis of the paths not taken as well as those that contemporaries chose to follow. The first section of the essay considers advances in weaponry that promised but failed to deliver rapid tactical transformation. Then the analysis shifts to the conceptual and institutional innovations that exerted immediate, enduring, and defining influence upon the military traditions of the West.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050 , pp. 35 - 56Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001
- 4
- Cited by