The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers Read Online Free PDF Page B

invention of printing, and the oceanic discoveries made man more aware not only of other peoples but also of differences in language, taste, cultural habits, and religion. In such circumstances, it was no wonder that many philosophers and other writers of the time held the nation-state to be the natural and best form of civic society, that its powers should be enhanced and its interests defended, and that its rulers and ruled needed—whatever the specific constitutional form they enjoyed—to work harmoniously for the common, national good. 89
    But it was war, and the consequences of war, that provided a much more urgent and continuous pressure toward “nation-building” than these philosophical considerations and slowly evolving social tendencies. Military power permitted many of Europe’s dynasties to keep above the great magnates of their land, and to secure political uniformity and authority (albeit often by concessions to the nobility). Military factors—or better, geostrategical factors—helped to shape the territorial boundaries of these new nation-states, while the frequent wars induced national consciousness, in a negative fashion at least, in that Englishmen learned to hate Spaniards, Swedes to hate Danes, Dutch rebels to hate their former Habsburg overlords. Above all, it was war—and especially the new techniques which favored the growth of infantry armies and expensive fortifications and fleets—which impelled belligerent states to spend more money than ever before, and to seek out a corresponding amount in revenues. All remarks about the general rise in government spending, or about new organizations for revenue-collecting, or about the changing relationship between kings and estates in early-modern Europe, remain
abstract
until the central importance of military conflict is recalled. 90 In the last few years of Elizabeth’s England, or in Philip IPs Spain, as much as three-quarters of all government expenditures was devoted to war or to debt repayments for previous wars. Military and naval endeavors may not always have been the
raison d’être
of the new nation-states, but it certainly was their most expensive and pressing activity.
    Yet it would be wrong to assume that the functions of raising revenues, supporting armies, equipping fleets, sending instructions, and directing military campaigns in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were carried out in the manner which characterized, say, the Normandy invasion of 1944. As the preceding analysis should have demonstrated, the military machines of early-modern Europe were cumbersome and inefficient. Raising and controlling an army in this period was a frighteningly difficult enterprise: ragtag troops, potentially disloyal mercenaries, inadequate supplies, transport problems, unstandardized weapons, were the despair of most commanders. Even when sufficient monies were allocated to military purposes, corruption and waste took their toll.
    Armed forces were not, therefore, predictable and reliable instruments of state. Time and again, large bands of men drifted out of control because of supply shortages or, more serious, lack of pay. The Army of Flanders mutinied no less than forty-six times between 1572 and 1607; but so also, if less frequently, did equally formidable forces, like the Swedes in Germany or Cromwell’s New Model Army. It was Richelieu who sourly observed, in his
Testament Politique:
    History knows many more armies ruined by want and disorder than by the efforts of their enemies; and I have witnessed how all the enterprises which were embarked on in my day were lacking for that reason alone. 91
     
    This problem of pay and supply affected military performance in all sorts of ways: one historian has demonstrated that Gustavus Adolphus’s stunningly mobile campaigns in Germany, rather than being dictated by military-strategic planning in the Clausewitzian sense, reflected a simple but compelling search for food and fodder for his enormous