Mind-Munitions

92
Propaganda in the Age of Gunpowder and Printing
heart, boldness and courage to attack the enemy on sight; and to
defend themselves manfully and vigorously. For soldiers can march in
confusion and disorder, so that they would be in danger of being
overthrown and defeated.
Military musicians thus became an integral part of combat morale,
much as they had been in some ancient armies. As Professor Hale
has argued, this military music – criticized at the time as being ‘too
effective in arousing bloodlust’ – formed part of the conditioning
and environment that was as important as uniforms, pageantry, or
training in inducing the recruit to fight. Another morale-boosting
feature adopted from antiquity was the pre-battle exhortation to
the troops. Machiavelli, like many of his contemporaries, looked
back to Greece and Rome for examples. He wrote:
Many things may prove the ruin of an army if the general does not
frequently harangue his men: for by that he may dispel their fear,
inflame their courage, confirm their resolutions, point out the snares
that are laid for them, promise them rewards, inform them of danger and
the way to escape it, rebuke, entreat, threaten, reproach and encourage.
How this was to be done with larger multi-national armies of
troops is not explained, but the lessons of Caesar were clearly not
lost on one commander who shouted in 1544:
Fellow soldiers, let us now fight bravely, and if we win the battle we gain
a greater renown than any of our men ever did before. History records
that up to now, every time the French fought the Germans hand to hand,
the Germans got the victory. To prove that we are better men than our
own ancestors we must fight with double courage to overcome them,
or to die – and to make them recognise the kind of men we are!
And just in case the enemy did not recognize them in their uniforms,
he gave them a quick lesson in how to hold the Swiss pike
before rushing them ‘and you will see how staggered they will be’.
That such speeches worked is rarely doubted by contemporary
sources. Claude de Seysell testified to their effectiveness, writing
that they put ‘great heart into a whole army, to the point of
making them courageous as lions where hitherto they had been
frightened as sheep’.
Such exhortations, however effective, had become an essential
medium of propaganda if men were to risk their lives for the
dynastic aspirations of kings. The old concept of the ‘just war’ no