The Military Revolution
One innovation promoting state centralization and the transformation of the landed nobility was the new dominance of
firearms and artillery on the battlefield. The introduction of these new technologies, along with changes in tactics and
strategy, amounted to a military revolution that reduced the role of mounted knights and castles, raised the cost of
maintaining military power beyond the means of individual lords, and led to professionalization of the military on land and
sea under the authority of the sovereign. This military revolution favored rulers who could command the resources
required for building increasingly complex fortifications and fielding disciplined infantry and artillery units. Monarchs
who could increase taxes and create bureaucracies to collect and spend them on their military outmaneuvered those who
could not.
Advances in military technology (i.e., the military revolution) led to new forms of warfare, including
greater reliance on infantry, firearms, mobile cannon, and more elaborate fortifications, all financed by
heavier taxation and requiring a larger bureaucracy. Technology, tactics, and strategies tipped the
balance of power toward states able to marshal sufficient resources for the new military environment.
“The military revolution which fills the century between 1560 and 1660 was in essence the result of just one more attempt
to solve the perennial problem of tactics – the problem of how to combine missile weapons with close action; how to unite
hitting power, mobility and defensive strength. And the solution offered by the reforms of…Gustav Adolf was a …return
to linear formation. In place of the massive, deep, unwieldy squares of the Spanish tercio…they relied upon a multiplicity
of small units ranged in two or three lines.”
“The development of volley fire had a critical impact upon battle tactics. To begin with, armies now had to spread out
during battle, both to maximize the effect of outgoing fire and to minimize the target for incoming missiles. This achieved
a significant “economy of scale” because the linear deployment of troops placed far more soldiers in a position to kill
enemy troops.”
“These were fundamental changes; and they were essentially tactical in nature. But they entailed others of much larger
implication. They entailed for instance, a new standard in the training and discipline of the ordinary soldier. The soldier of
the middle ages had been, on the whole, an individualist…The mercenary in the middle of a pike-square needed little
training and less skill….The reforms [necessitated] small units that had to be highly trained, they needed many more
officers and NCO’s to lead them.”
“troops had to be trained to fire, countermarch, load and maneuver all together. [The leaders] divided their army into
smaller formations – companies shrank from 250 men with eleven officers to 120 men with twelve officers; regiments of
2,000 and more gave way to battalions of 580.”
“The social consequences of the military revolution were scarcely less important than the constitutional. In the Middle
Ages war had been almost the privileged of a class; by the seventeenth century it had become almost the livelihood of the
masses... the new armies, in fact, served as the social escalators of the age.”
1. Describe how warfare changed in the century from around 1550 to 1660 (use specific evidence to
support your analysis)?
2. Why did the change in tactics describe above lead to an increase in state power?
3. How did the adoption of these new tactics shift the balance of power toward states like France and
England?
4. Why do historians think these changes were “revolutionary”?
Dueling historians
“The transformation in the scale of war led invariably to an increase in the authority of the state…Only
the state, now, could supply the administrative, technical and financial resources required for large
scale hostilities. And the state was concerned to make its military monopoly absolute…Effective
control of the armed forces by a centralized authority becomes a sign of modernity.”
Michael Roberts, historian – “The Military Revolution, 1550-1660”
“Political leaders, as well as writers, artists, and ordinary people, began to feel revulsion towards the
excesses of the preceding period and harbored a fervent hope that it should not happen again…the
slaughter had been so great, the spectre of chaos so terrifying, that “no more war” attitudes became
current. Some have detected in these sentiments a climate favorable to the development of absolute
states, for certainly political elites throughout Western Europe recognized that armies needed to be
better controlled, and that this control should be exercised by the state. They also acknowledged that
paying heavy taxes to a monarch who lay subject to certain restraints was preferable to providing
endless contributions to a mercenary army subject to none.”
Geoffrey Parker, historian – The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare
5. Identify one development both Roberts and Parker would agree upon that was a result of the military
revolution.
6. To what cause does Roberts attribute this development?
7. To what different cause does Parker attribute this development?
8. Whose argument do you find more persuasive and why?