Before the Military Revolution: European Warfare and the Rise of the Early Modern State 1300–1490

241 Pages·2021·4.418 MB·English

by  Alexander Querengässer

B
E
F
O
Before the Military Revolution examines European R
Warfare in the Late Middle Ages from 1300 to 1490. E
It is not restricted only to well-covered confl icts, like
T
the Anglo-Scottish Wars or the Hundred Years War, but
H
gives due weight to all regions of Europe, including the
Empire, the Baltic, the Balkans and the Mediterranean, E
and considers developments in naval warfare. Th e
M
Hussite Wars and the wars of the Teutonic Order and
the Hanseatic League are covered, as is the expansion I
L
of Moscow, the Ottomans and Venice, and battles like
I
Aussig (1426), Copenhagen (1428), Chojnice (1454) T
are discussed alongside Bannockburn and Agincourt. A
Th is age witnesses fundamental change. Th e feudal system of the High Middle Ages R
crumbled everywhere in Europe due to climatic change, economic crisis and population Y BEFORE
decline. Th is triggered a fi scalisation of the military organisation, the establishment of THE
R
taxes and representation of the estates. Th is book argues that these changes are the most
E
fundamental ones in the military and political organisation in Europe until the rise of
V MILITARY
the constitutional state around 1800 and so comes closer to the original concept of a
O
Military Revolution. It also takes a critical look at other often discussed developments of
this age, like the Infantry and Artillery Revolution or the decline of cavalry. Combining a L
REVOLUTION
chronological and regional narrative with deeper analysis of themes like chivalry, strategy, U
economic warfare or military publications makes this book an indispensable read for
T
everyone interested in late medieval history.
I
O
European Warfare and the Rise of the
Alexander Querengässer studied medieval and early modern history at the University of
N
Leipzig and later did his PhD on the Saxon Army in the Great Northern War at Potsdam Early Modern State 1300–1490
University. He now works as a freelancer and collaborator at Martin Luther University
in Halle. He has published books covering the history of Saxony, late medieval and early
Alexander Querengässer
modern military history. A
l
e
x
a
n
d
e
r

Q
u
e
r
e
n
g
ä
ISBN 978-1-78925-669-7 s
s
e
r
www.oxbowbooks.com
Before the Military
Revolution
European Warfare and the Rise of the
Early Modern State 1300–1490
by
Alexander Querengässer
Oxford & Philadelphia
Published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by
OXBOW BOOKS
The Old Music Hall, 106–108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JE
and in the United States by
OXBOW BOOKS
1950 Lawrence Road, Havertown, PA 19083
© Oxbow Books and the author 2021
Hardback edition: ISBN 978-1-78925-669-7
Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78925-670-3
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021939533
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher in writing.
Printed in Malta by Melita Press
For a complete list of Oxbow titles, please contact:
UNITED KINGDOM UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Oxbow Books Oxbow Books
Telephone [phone] Telephone [phone], Fax [phone]
Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]
www.oxbowbooks.com www.casemateacademic.com/oxbow
Oxbow Books is part of the Casemate Group
Front cover: Illustration from Sammelhandschrift zur Kriegskunst (Vienna c. 1430) Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek Cod. 3062, fol 315
Back cover: Diebold Schilling the Younger, “Battle of Grandson”, from Luzerner Chronik. Wikimedia
Commons.
Contents
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................iv
Introduction .............................................................................................................................v
1. Medieval Warfare 1000–1300 ...........................................................................................1
2. War in Europe 1300–1400 .................................................................................................5
3. War in Europe 1400–1450 ...............................................................................................55
4. War in Europe 1450–1490 ...............................................................................................97
5. Naval Warfare .................................................................................................................135
6. Guns and Pike Squares: Revolutions of Medieval Warfare? ...................................151
7. A Revolution of Knowledge ..........................................................................................175
8. From the Feudal Levy System to Mercenary Armies:
a Social-Military Revolution ........................................................................................187
9. Military Change and the Development of the Early Modern State ......................205
Conclusions ..........................................................................................................................221
Selected Further Reading ..................................................................................................227
Acknowledgements
First of all, I would like to thank Prof. Jeremy Black and two unknown reviewers for
their comments on an early draft. I have been reading Jeremy’s work for a long time
now and studying his work has made me a better historian – or at least so I hope – as
it has forced me to think differently and to take a broader view on historical processes.
It is a pleasure to be able to dedicate this book to him now.
I also feel indebted to Oxbow Books for taking my book into their programme.
Felicity Goldsack and Jessica Scott have been two very kind editors. I enjoyed working
with them and appreciated their professionalism. Lucy Doncaster did a great job in
revising the manuscript. I know, I gave her a hard job to do, but she did great.
Halle an der Saale, May 2021
Introduction
The concept of a “Military Revolution” in the early modern period is frequently
criticised,1 but nevertheless historians still adopt the phrase to describe many
periods – in most cases, the periods in which they are most interested. We can thus
say, albeit in a somewhat contentious manner, that nearly everything that happened
in military history from the Early Middle Ages to the present day was sooner or
later considered to be a military revolution. Moreover, since Michael Roberts2 and
Geoffrey Parker3 created their concept, it has been applied to many processes and
developments, not only in the early modern period, but also in the Middle Ages.4
I am therefore critical of the term “Military Revolution”, which is often seen as
a development initiated by new weapons systems. I will instead argue that the most
fundamental change, which defined early modern warfare in Europe and influenced
state building and state development, was the shift from the feudal levy to a mercenary
system. While the feudal levy interlinked military service in a complex way with the
handover of sovereign rights, the latter was basically a system of service in return
for money. This made money a much more important resource for war making, thus
increasing the need to raise more of it in the form of permanent taxes, which became
perhaps the most important task of the modern state.
Since this shift was a long-term development, I want to be careful about my use
of the term “Military Revolution”, with its connotations of immediacy. Also, it is
doubtful that the development of the mercenary system was that simple, simply
interlinking military developments with the state building process. Developments
in state administration could have been the cause of a change in the military
system, not the other way around, while money as a resource also became central
because of economic developments that had nothing to do with either state building
or warfare. In this regard, it is no wonder that the “modern” mercenary system
developed in Italy, where a money-based economy was more advanced than in
the rest of Europe.
1 Notably within the many works of Black, J., A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society
1550-1800 (Basingstoke: Red Globe Press 1991); Beyond the Military Revolution. War in the Seventeenth Century
World (Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan 2011).
2 Roberts, M., “The Military Revolution, 1560-1660”, in: Roberts: Essays in Swedish History (Minneapolis:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1967), pp. 195–225.
3 Parker, G., The Military Revolution. Military Innovation and the rise of the West 1500-1800 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press 1988).
4 Ayton, A. and Price, J. L. (eds), The Medieval Military Revolution. State, Society and military change in Medieval
and Early Modern Europe (London: Bloomsbury 1995).
vi Introduction
Last but not least, this development does not imply the replacement of an outdated
military system with a completely new one. Mercenaries had existed before that and
the feudal levy system still provided the basis for modern militia systems – indeed,
it was often the backbone for the transport systems of many early modern armies.
So, instead of speaking of a revolutionary change, it is better to speak of a fundamental
shift within the existing systems.
All this will be discussed in this book. In order to understand the developments
and shifts of the late medieval period, though, one must discuss medieval warfare
in general. So, in the first chapter, we examine the role of the feudal levy system
and cavalry, and the fact that mercenaries and infantry also played a vital role (for
example for sieges) in the High Middle Ages.
The next three chapters give an overview of warfare in Europe in the period
from 1300 until 1490, looking at the Hundred Years’ War, wars with the Ottomans,
and warfare in Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Britain and within the Holy
Roman Empire. This is important in order to show the diversity of warfare and also
different external influences, especially the Ottoman Empire. I decided to split the
time covered into three periods: 1300–1400, 1400–1450 and 1450–1490. Defining
timeframes is always a difficult task for a historian and the ones I’ve chosen might
be deemed haphazard, but there is a logic. Compared to the 14th century, the 15th
saw much more extensive and rapid developments, so it made sense to split this
century in half. Furthermore, the resumption and the end of the Hundred Years’
War in the West, the developments in the State of the Teutonic Order in the Baltic
region, the Hussite rebellion in Central Europe and the conquest of Constantinople
made dividing the periods around 1400 and 1450 quite sensible. The same is true for
1490, because many developments ended in the last decade of that century, such as
the Reconquista of Spain. New developments also began in this decade, for example
the Italian wars and Maximilian’s campaigns in Frisia, both of which were conducted
with new kinds of mercenary armies, which fit into the period of the Landsknechte
(German mercenaries).
“Regionalisation” is also quite an artificial method for grouping information. In
some cases, special regions of conflict can be localised easily, for example the British
Isles, the Iberian and Italian peninsulas and the Baltic regions, which – for most of the
time – were quite closed theatres of war. By contrast, there is little cause to refer to
the region of “the Balkans” from the 14th century until the Fall of Constantinople in
1453 and afterwards, because for the conquest of the Byzantine Empire it seems more
reasonable to focus on the Ottoman Empire as a whole, which was expanding into
both the Balkans and the Aegean. Such an approach cannot avoid a certain amount
of overlapping, but this alone underlines an important point, which will be discussed
later in the book, namely that especially the Late Middle Ages saw a “Europeanisation”
of politics in that political and military affairs between two territories did not happen
in a vacuum, but had an increasing effect of the geopolitics of the respective region,
if not Europe as a whole.
Introduction vii
Within these three chapters it seemed sensible to describe the nature of warfare
in the European regions. This should demonstrate the diversity of warfare, but also
the importance of geography – a seemingly obvious fact that is often neglected
by historians, who sometimes reduce medieval warfare to knights and castles and
consider everything else unimportant or irrelevant. And yet Europe offers a huge
range of regions that are very different from one another in terms of geography. For
instance, during the Hundred Years’ War, English armies only had to cross the English
Channel and the majority of the fighting was done on land, whereas warfare in the
Baltic area was dominated by the sea, which formed the centre of this area, with all
territories situated around it. What’s more, whereas there are relatively few islands
in the Baltic, and they are of low economic or strategic value, the situation was very
different in the Mediterranean, where there are hundreds of islands and even smaller
ones of no economic value at all could be situated in significant locations, such as
Malta. Finally, the Balkans and Eastern Europe offered wide and comparably thinly
populated areas, which in the case of the Balkans were dominated by huge mountain
ridges and so differed significantly from the flatter and smaller landscapes fought
over in France and modern Belgium during the Hundred Years’ War.
Geography and topography are therefore evidently central factors, and influenced
the creation of military systems. There was no general pattern for creating successful
armies, only models that could more or less successfully be adapted to suit different
terrains and conditions. The ability of armed forces to adopt these strategies and
adapt them for different circumstances, which was often dependent on cultural
factors, can be regarded as a sign of “modernity” and an inability to do so as
“backwardness”.
Naval warfare is given its own chapter, and then comes a sixth chapter about the
so-called “revolutions” in late medieval warfare, especially the Infantry Revolution
and Artillery Revolution. This chapter will recontextualise both by showing that
the importance of infantry before, and that of cavalry during, the late medieval
period was underrated and that artillery, while being more and more important,
had not yet had a truly revolutionary effect on war making or state building (except
perhaps for the Hussites). This chapter also demonstrates that medieval warfare
cannot merely be reduced to epic battles, but was much more complex and included
aspects of small warfare, especially feuds, which were much more common than
large-scale battles.
The seventh chapter discusses the importance of knowledge. While it is still
the Renaissance that is presented as the age when Roman and Greek military
culture and treatises were rediscovered, many of the so-called Mirrors for Princes
of the medieval period also refer to authors of antiquity. However, they play a
secondary role, because their focus is on infantry, whereas in the Middle Ages it
was cavalry that was more dominant on the battlefields. Even so, classical authors
were not “rediscovered” in the Renaissance, they just became more relevant, as
infantry became dominant once more.
viii Introduction
At the same time, whereas the Mirrors for Princes were complex encyclopaedic
handbooks for rulers that covered everything, new, specialised treatises on war
making were published from the 15th century onwards in increasing numbers.
Because of the printing revolution, these works could be distributed far abroad
and were no longer written just for princes but for professional military personnel.
This reveals that an independent profession of “soldier” had emerged, which was
different from that of the earlier knight, who was – however well trained – a part-
time soldier, part-time landlord.
Chapter eight is about what I – with the greatest care and reference to the existing
concepts – would call the “late medieval social-military revolution”. In other words,
the shift from feudal levy to mercenary armies, as I have described above.
The final chapter discusses the influence of this process on the development of the
early modern state with all its pros, cons and as-yet-unknown variables. This a key
chapter because the original Roberts/Parker thesis revolved around the influence of
military change on state building – a fact that is often neglected by others, who used
this term just to describe changes in the way war was waged. Of course, it should not
be argued that at the end of the Late Middle Ages the early modern state just appeared
as a complete, fully formed entity. State building was an ongoing process, not a linear,
progressive or teleological one. However, state building, like further changes in the
military system from the 16th to the late 18th centuries, continued the tradition of
primarily using paid volunteers or mercenaries as core forces. This was made possible
by the fact that most European states were monarchies with deep pockets and large
estates, which had a right to grant budgets (especially for the military), or else were
ruled by other countries (like the Netherlands).
This dual approach inevitably will lead to some repetition, but I consider it
essential, to give due weight to a chronological and regional approach and afterwards
analyse central aspects of war making and state building. Also, a significant focus
is given to operational history and the description of battles – an approach that is
regarded by some as outdated. However, many historians of the “new military history”
base their conclusions solely on the outcomes of battles and a short analysis of the
structures of the armies involved. This has led to theories based on simplifications
and erroneous assessments of relative military capability, founded only on the
knowledge of the outcome of a battle and not its conduct. An example of this is the
conclusion that the Swiss victories over the Burgundians in 1474–1476 were based
on the superiority of their massed pikemen over the Burgundian knights. However, a
proper analysis of the battles shows the importance of coincidence and bad leadership
on the Burgundian side on the outcomes of these encounters. Structural analyses of
armies are therefore important, but they cannot replace operational history. Good
organisational structures are no guarantee for success. Huge and well-supplied armies
have been defeated throughout history and small, ragged bodies of troops have been
able to win astonishing victories. The frictions of war, the unforeseeable and maybe
the surprising influence of individuals have to be considered and this can only be
Introduction ix
done by describing and analysing a campaign. “The acid test of an army is war”, wrote
Alfred Vagts. “War is the criterion and war only.”5
This book is based on a rich foundation, especially of recent English-language
scholarship. Clifford J. Rogers, Kelly DeVries – who among many other things wrote
a valuable work on military technology6 – Anne Curry and Christopher Allmand all
made valuable contributions to my general understanding. However, their focus, like
that of French historians Philippe Contamine and Bertrand Schnerb or their Dutch
colleague Jan Verbruggen, is on Western Europe. While German scholars have also
contributed special case studies, which are valuable (notably, works by Uwe Tresp and
Jürgen Sarnowski), general histories of late medieval warfare are overly simplistic,
if not to say flawed. They follow a loose acceptance of English scholarship with too
much emphasis on the cultural aspects of warfare and less on the political, operational
or tactical dimensions.7 While Eastern European scholars of course also contribute
to our understanding of late medieval warfare, language barriers made it difficult
for me to cope with works that cover the whole of Europe, which is necessary for
the approach of this book. However, I did refer to Brian Davis who, among others,
published a well-researched collection of essays about warfare in Eastern Europe.8
The process of state building is closely linked to the topic of the “fiscal state”.
Valuable essays on the English, French, Castilian and German state-building process
in the Late Middle Ages are included in Richard Bonney’s volume about the rise of
the fiscal state9 and I draw upon these.
The intention of this book is both to summarise recent scholarship, presenting
it to the students of late medieval (military) history, and to forward a new thesis:
namely, that the two centuries between 1300 and 1490 transformed the social and
military organisation of the High Middle Ages into the political, fiscal and military
organisations that characterised most of Europe in the early modern period until the
upheavals of the Napoleonic age.
5 Q.v. Vagts, A., A History of Militarism. Civilian and Military (London: Hollies 1959), p. 16.
6 DeVries, K., Medieval Military Technology (Peterborough: Broadview Press 1992).
7 Kortüm, H-H. (ed.), Krieg im Mittelalter (Berlin: Akademie Verlag 2001); Kortüm, Kriege und Krieger 500–1500
(Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 2010); Prietzel, M., Krieg im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Primus 2006).
8 Davis, B. (ed.), Warfare in Eastern Europe 1500 – 1800 (Leiden – New York: Brill 2012).
9 Bonney, R. (ed.), The rise of the fiscal state in Europe, c. 1200-1815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999).