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When Michael Roberts (1955) referred to the array of technological, stra-tegic and tactical changes introduced in the late sixteenth century as a mili-tary revolution he unwittingly initiated an ongoing debate on when exactly European military development went through an unprecedented transform-ation that set it apart from the rest of the world. Although there is still a pro-nounced disagreement among historians about whether this striking social change was revolutionary or evolutionary, whether it happened earlier (Ayton and Price 1995; Eltis 1995) or later (Parker 1976; Black 1991), most would con-cur with the view that ‘advances in technology during the later Middle Ages resulted in new weapons which gradually modified all aspects of war between 1450 and 1700’ (Childs 2005: 20). The adoption of gunpowder (discovered in China in the seventh or eighth century), the invention and mass use of the cannon in siege and naval artillery, the gradual spread of early handguns such as the harquebus and matchlock musket, the development of the multi-decked galleons, the creation of virtually impregnable fortifications and so many other technological innovations have all dramatically transformed the nature of warfare. Most importantly, the relatively low production costs

10 And even this common proto-ideological doctrine could never overcome either the insurmountable institutional division between the eastern Orthodox and western Catholic Churches nor its essen-tially stratifying character (i.e. the aristocratic elite vs. peasantry).

of easy-to-operate handguns had a profound effect on the social structure of the military, and the social orders as a whole, since nearly anyone could now learn how to load and fire the handgun.¹¹ As Childs (2005: 24) puts it succinctly: ‘This was the essence of military change: a numerous infantry armed with cheap, crude, gunpowder weapons replaced exclusive and expan-sive cavalry: cantonal recruitment, conscription, and the age of mass armies beckoned. Between 1550 and 1700, battles were largely decided by missile fire seeking to disorder the enemy prior to the decisive advance.’

Although focused on technological advancements in weaponry, forti-fications and other material spheres, the concept of a military revolution also encompassed the creation of new military doctrines, the development of linear tactics, improvements in control and logistics and perhaps most importantly, a substantial increase in the size of European armies. Parker (1996: 24) points out: ‘Charles VIII of France had invaded Italy in 1494 with 18,000 men, but Francis I attacked in 1525 with 32,000 and Henry II cap-tured Metz in 1552 with 36,000. By the 1630s, the armed forces maintained by the leading European states totalled perhaps 150,000 each and, by the end of the century, there were almost 400,000 French soldiers (and almost as many again ranged against them).’ The size of armies in the sixteenth century went up more by than 50 per cent (Sorokin 1957: 340) and between 1500 and 1700 in most instances the increase was tenfold (Wright 1965: 655;

Parker 1996: 1).

While Roberts’s model of military revolution was beneficial in highlighting the extraordinary character of the technological changes that underpinned European warfare it clearly and unduly overemphasised the role of technol-ogy over those of social organisation and proto-ideoltechnol-ogy. What is crucial to stress here is that, in many respects, technological innovations went hand in hand with organisational and doctrinal changes. It is no coincidence that the principal initiators of these military changes were the deeply religious prot-estant generals Maurice of Nassau, Gustavus Adolphus and Oliver Cromwell.

The unparalleled successes of their armies were rooted in their novel use of technological and strategic advancements as much as in their religiously inspired military doctrines and their novel social organisation. Although the early form of the warrior-monk can be traced all the way back to the military orders of the Templar, Teutonic and Hospitaller Knights of the First

11 However it is important to note that the introduction of handguns in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen-turies was a rather gradual process. Handguns were often in competition with crossbows and soldiers armed with handguns only gradually augmented the battalions of pikemen which had dominated most European armies since the early fourteenth century (Mann 1986: 453; Keegan 1994: 328–9).

Crusades, Reformation Protestantism was a watershed in creating a model religious warrior. As Aho (1979) convincingly argues, by rigidly separating the sacred from the profane and upholding the view that the natural world is utterly profane, the Calvinist, Baptist and Lutheran military command-ers successfully legitimised the scientific and rationalist pursuit of warfare.

By understanding religion and political institutions as having mutually opposed purposes (i.e. an individual experience of faith vs. the inherently sinful material world), early Protestantism helped to free political life, and hence also military action, from any moral and spiritual obligations. With the expansion of the Protestant Reformation, politics – being by definition the realm of sin and immorality – acquires all the Machiavellian features, as the rigid separation of the two realms allows for the use of all means avail-able at the disposal of the state to pursue its political goals. In this respect, the utilisation of violence becomes the most rational tool of state politics.

In addition, since Protestantism interprets political institutions as God’s creation it sees a pious believer as one that fully submits to the authority of the state, even when the state takes a tyrannical form. As Luther (1974: 103) puts it: ‘war and killing along with all the things that accompany wartime and martial law have been instituted by God … The hand that wields the sword and kills with it is not man’s hand but God’s’. With its radical asceti-cism and the doctrine of predestination, Calvinism goes a step further – per-ceiving politics and war as nothing more than a mere tool which can be used when implementing God’s will. If personal wealth can be interpreted as a sign of being chosen, as in the Weberian (1930) interpretation of the elective affinity between Protestantism and capitalism, than victories in wars are no different: ‘since the divine will is inscrutable and can only be deciphered de facto, this means that policy is right, morality and practically, which works.

Might makes it right’ (Walzer 1965: 38; Aho 1979: 108). Bearing in mind that Luther’s published sermons sold over 300,000 copies between 1517 and 1520 and that Calvinist works were equally popular, it seems that these ideas had strong resonance among Protestant soldiers (Taylor 2003: 97).

Adopting this novel military ethics while simultaneously pursuing prac-tical poliprac-tical and military aims, the Protestant generals proved exceptionally successful on the battlefield. Sharing Protestant proto-ideology with their soldiers, the military commanders built powerful armies driven in large part by religious zeal. Cromwell’s New Model Army was composed of full-time professional soldiers devoted to Puritan ideals, who often sang psalms before battle and saw their enemies as representing the devil’s warriors on earth.

The armies of Maurice of Nassau, Gustavus Adolphus and Cromwell were

highly motivated by a righteous sense of executing God’s will and by ‘div-ine hatred’ of their ungodly enemies. As the soldiers understood themselves only as a means through which God’s wrath was manifested on the wicked, their martial enthusiasm, as well as their cruelty towards the enemy, had no limits.

Nevertheless, regardless of how forceful the Protestant proto-ideology was, it was not enough in itself to secure military victories. What proved even more important was an attempt to revive Roman military organisational practices (McNeill 1991). With the partial exception of early Byzantium, the end of the Roman Empire largely meant the end of disciplined armies for the next thousand years of European history. Protestant military commanders planted the institutional seeds of military social organisation that eventually gave birth to the modern bureaucratic nation-state.

After reading Vegetius’s Roman military manual Epitoma rei militaris, Maurice of Nassau reorganised his armies into smaller, better coordinated and more flexible units. Battle lines on the Roman model were reintroduced but as this involved intensive drilling there was a need for disciplined profes-sionals who would be able both to fight and labour. Relying on mercenaries, who were able to perform both of these tasks, secured also the further cen-tralisation of military organisations (Mann 1986: 454). Maurice introduced intensive drilling and the systematic training of soldiers, as well as strict rules of military behaviour (including rules on the treatment of civilians).

The focus was on military discipline, flexibility on the battlefield, centralisa-tion of authority, practical and adept leadership and unquescentralisa-tioned obedience to the military commander. Order and discipline were achieved by a var-iety of means but most of all by the codified regulation of military practice.

Gustavus Adolphus instituted Articles of War (‘The Swedish Discipline’ of 1625) that strictly defined the rules of behaviour for soldiers: plundering and outrage were punishable by death; morning and evening prayer were com-pulsory for every regiment and deriding ‘divine service’ entailed a death sen-tence; no duelling was allowed; no ‘loose’ women were allowed in the camp;

there was a separate court-martial for each regiment and, most importantly, any cowardly behaviour of a unit on the battlefield entailed collective pun-ishment. Drawing on the Roman example, Article V of the code ordered the following: ‘The punishment of death (loss of head and hand, or hanging) is decreed to every tenth man by lot if a regiment runs away during a battle.

The other nine are to serve without their banner, lie outside the quarters, and have to clean out the camp, until they have wiped out their disgrace by a bold deed’ (Fletcher 1890: 299–300). Here again, just as in the Greek and Roman

cases, one can see how social organisation, an external mechanism of social control, is a backbone of military might. Once the institutional and ideo-logical devices that prevent soldiers from running away are found, success on the battlefield is much closer.

The extensive development of social organisation was also visible in the ever increasing professionalisation and bureaucratisation of the military sphere. The first military academies were established in this period – start-ing with Sedan (1606), Siegen (1617) and Kassel (1618) – where warfare was studied through the prism of the latest discoveries in science, technology and mathematics. The spotlight was on the practical use of science: the ability to calculate the accuracy of artillery fire, to successfully construct fortifications, bridges, canals, to work out optimal regiment and camp sizes, to estimate the range of battlefield supplies and so on. The first military manuals and drill books were produced and widely circulated among the new officer corps and soldiers, some of which relied on illustrations rather than texts, such as the first modern drill book – Arms Drill with Arquebus, Musket and Pike (1607) (McNeill 1991; Childs 2005: 20). These musketry drill manuals proved important in inculcating modernist, rationalist and disciplinary techniques of thinking and acting on the wider scale as they taught soldiers inductive thought, causality and logic, and how to prioritise and allocate tasks. As Keegan (1994: 342) stresses, these booklets were the equivalents of industrial safety manuals of later eras as they ‘divide the sequence into numerous pre-cise actions – forty-seven in Maurice of Orange’s drill book of 1607 – from the moment when the musketeer takes up his weapon to that when he pulls the trigger’.

These practices stand in stark opposition to the medieval times in which the prevailing ethics were firmly resistant to most forms of military innov-ation. For example, for decades the early forms of gun (harquebus, mus-ket, etc.) were rejected on religious grounds: ‘The gun was … regarded as an instrument of the devil, imported from eastern infidels like the Turks and Chinese, and developed by magicians, a ‘cowardly’ weapon which killed from afar’ (Taylor 2003: 83).

Following another Roman example, Gustavus Adolphus was the first mili-tary commander to introduce uniforms, thus on the one hand preventing sol-diers from switching sides in times of danger and on the other hand making military activity a much more standardised and bureaucratic service – a sol-dier as a state employee with defined rights and responsibilities. The centrality of bureaucratic organisation was also evident in the gradual adoption of the practice of having written orders with clearly and logically defined roles for

commanders, regiment leaders, and administrative personnel and in the set-ting up of a regular system of army salaries which were paid directly from the state treasury. Adolphus was also instrumental in developing sophisticated training techniques (including the first modern use of closed areas for train-ing and drilltrain-ing durtrain-ing peacetime) and a reliable system of supply and logis-tics: his armies were ‘clothed, sheltered, and fed from magazines, all of which were run by specially trained commissary staffs’ (Aho 1979: 114). Furthermore, he invented military conscription. Although most armies of this era consisted of mercenaries and volunteers, Sweden also relied on a complex system of par-tial conscription (indelningsverket;) from 1620 to 1682 (Childs 2005: 32). This was a first and significant institutional step towards transforming officers and soldiers from contracted professionals into full-time state employees.

As a consequence of major technological changes, the expansion of bur-eaucratic organisation and proto-ideological commitments, wars became more protracted and destructive with a substantial increase in human cas-ualties. The more intensive and accurate use of artillery and the introduc-tion of new battle tactics, together with the religious flux of populaintroduc-tions and novel social organisation, had a profound impact on the number of war casualties. The most destructive event of this era, the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), was characterised by a very high proportion of deaths in battle. For example, the Swedish lost 50 per cent of their troops at the battle of Nordlingen (1634) while 60 per cent of Saxon and Holy Roman Empire troops were killed at the Battle of Wittstock (1636) (Lee 1991: 53).¹² As a result of the pillage, destruction, famine and disease brought by the armies, there was a significant population decline in the territories dir-ectly affected by war: the Holy Roman Empire went from 21 million in 1618 to 13.5 million in 1648; the population of Bohemia declined from 3 million to 800,000 (Lee 1991: 55). However the excesses of the Thirty Years War were more an exception than the rule as warfare in this period of time was still governed by ritualistic practices that prevented the deliberate slaughter of enemy soldiers, let alone civilians. While the new technology such as heavy artillery and firearms provided a means of mass extermin-ation of enemy combatants the ideological conditions were still not ripe

12 While deaths in battle have dramatically increased when compared to the medieval era, the absolute figures still remain relatively small when contrasted with modern warfare. For example the actual number of soldiers killed (hidden behind these percentages) in these two large-scale battles was around 5,000. Until the modern era most war casualties were caused by disease rather than battle-field action. As Jones (1987: 36) illustrates: ‘A typhus epidemic killed 17,000 of the 20,000 men lost by the Spanish army besieging Granada in 1490 … Eleven Frenchmen died of deprivation and exposure between Moscow and the Beresina for every one who died in combat’.

for justification of such actions, which did not come until the arrival of the modern age. In the words of Childs (2005: 37): ‘Killing was not the main purpose. European warfare was concerned with capturing territory not people; enemy soldiers were simply pawns in the greater game, not ends in themselves.’

Continuous warfare required large standing armies, now consisting almost exclusively of less expensive infantry than costly cavalry, which were a heavy burden on state finances. To facilitate effective co-ordination of troops, and their transport, accommodation, training, supply and sus-tenance, military administration had to become more integrated, central-ised and geographically unified, reflecting similar trends occurring at the level of the state itself. As Childs (2005: 34) observes: ‘Whilst on campaign, the armies of the sixteenth century and the Thirty Years War had tended to pillage or gather contributions: the better-organised and … disciplined national forces of the later seventeenth century usually paid for some of their supplies’. The increasing state centralisation was paralleled by the state’s ability to collect higher taxes, which were nearly all used for mili-tary purposes. A large proportion of the state’s revenues was spent on war chests. For example, France allocated 74 per cent of its total revenues to the military (army and navy) during the Nine Years War while England spent 75 per cent of its revenue on this conflict and on the War of the Spanish Succession; Russia’s military spending between 1679 and 1725 amounted to between 60 and 95 per cent of the total state revenue (Childs 2005: 33). As military organisation was expanding, so was the state and its bureaucratic apparatus as well. What started off as a handful of court officials responsi-ble for tax collection and communication with the army commanders, was to end up as the massive state and military organisational machine of the modern era. As Tilly (1975) and Giddens (1985) demonstrate convincingly, warfare and preparation for war were the most important reason for the development of the state. However, this had little to do with the calculated acts of individual monarchs and military leaders and more with the contin-gencies of European history: ‘The growth of the state was less the result of conscious power aggrandisement than of desperate searches for temporary expedients to stave off financial disaster. The sources of that threat were less the deliberate actions of a rival power than the unintended consequences of European economic and military activity as a whole’ (Mann 1986: 434). In their constant efforts to finance the costly wars (and the conquest of newly discovered overseas lands), the rulers were forced to centralise authority, and this would ultimately break the power dualism that characterised late

feudalism and the polity of estates epoch (Ständestaat), thus moving towards absolutist rule. The absolutist model of rule was crucial in the process of state formation as on the one hand, it, was responsible for articulating the state as a ‘pre-eminent bordered power container’ (Giddens 1985: 291) able to monopolise and legitimise the use of violence within its territory, and, on the other hand, it unwittingly created a public sphere in its pursuit of legitimacy. As Poggi (1978: 83) argues: ‘The very existence of a public realm was largely the consequence of the absolutist state’s policy of bypassing the Stände and addressing directly the generality of its subjects through its laws, its taxation, its uniform and pervasive administration, its increasing appeal to patriotism.’ It was the context of warfare that created absolutism and it was the absolutist state that opened up the door to modernity.

Hence, what is distinct about this period of European history is the ever-increasing institutional and organisational rationalisation of military and, consequently, all social conduct. As Weber (1968: 1155) rightly argues, mili-tary discipline was the cornerstone of all other practices of social regulation.

The expansion of rationalisation that was to gradually and eventually domi-nate most organisations of the modern age was rooted in the ideas and prac-tices of individual, collective and institutional self-restraint linked in part to ideals of ascetic Protestant proto-ideology and in part to military compul-sion. To succeed in the protracted wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth

The expansion of rationalisation that was to gradually and eventually domi-nate most organisations of the modern age was rooted in the ideas and prac-tices of individual, collective and institutional self-restraint linked in part to ideals of ascetic Protestant proto-ideology and in part to military compul-sion. To succeed in the protracted wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth