15. The Innovations of This General Changed the World Beyond the Battlefield
Maurice of Nassau trained his men constantly and introduced drills to reduce tasks such as loading and discharging canons or firearms to rote. The routine motions became operations that were, literally, done by the numbers. That allowed soldiers to function in the heat and chaos of battle, and perform their jobs by falling back on muscle memory from repetitive drills. That system of discipline and drill became the model for European armies for centuries to come. Maurice’s Military Revolution had knock-on effects that went beyond the military. The new way of war relied on high levels of training, expertise, discipline, and organization. That could only be provided by professional, full-time soldiers, who had to be maintained even in peacetime.
That made soldiers far more expensive than they had been in earlier armies. Before, soldiers were cobbled together from hastily recruited and hastily trained conscripts, who were discharged soon as the war was over. The pay of the new permanent armies required higher taxes, and that in turn required an expansion in the authority and administrative machinery of governments. Gone were the days when fractious aristocrats could successfully challenge the crown and raise armies from their retainers and peasants. Such ad hoc forces stood no chance against the central government’s professional, drilled, and trained armies. Only other governments could afford to raise, equip, and pay standing armies of similar quality.
