1. A Military Revolution That Went Beyond the Military
Maurice’s Military Revolution had knock-on effects beyond the military. The new way of fighting relied on high levels of training, expertise, discipline, and organization. That could only be provided by professional, fulltime soldiers, who had to be maintained even in peacetime. It made them far more expensive than earlier armies, cobbled together from hastily recruited and hastily trained conscripts, who were discharged soon as the war was over. Paying for the new standing armies required higher taxes, which in turn required an expansion in the authority and administrative machinery of governments. Gone were the days when fractious aristocrats could challenge the crown by raising armies from their retainers and peasants. Such ad hoc private forces stood little chance against the central government’s professional armies. From then on through the present, only other governments could afford to raise, equip, and pay standing armies of similar quality.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
Encyclopedia Britannica – Gonzalo de Cordoba, Spanish Military Commander
Encyclopedia Britannica – Maurice, Stadholder of the Netherlands
History Collection – Geriatric Glory: Historic Figures Who Did Amazing Things in Their Old Age
History of Macedonia – Philip II of Macedonia
History Today, Volume 44, Issue 11, November 1994 – An Army of Lovers: The Sacred Band of Thebes
Lamb, Harold – Hannibal: One Man Against Rome (1958)
Nimwegen, Olaf van – The Dutch Army and the Military Revolutions, 1588 – 1688 (2010)
Purcell, Mary – The Great Captain: Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba (1962)
