COUNTERSTROKE AT SOLTSY - Strategy & Tactics Press

War and Society
The Treaty of Westphalia brought to an end the
Thirty Years War (1618-48). That war had originally
started as another round in what was becoming a seemingly
endless series of religious conflicts in Europe,
triggered by the rise of Protestantism in the early 16 th
century. The issues Protestantism raised went beyond
religion and included fundamental political disputes.
Since the rise of the Carolingian Empire in the 8 th century
AD, the European ideal was to form a united state
ruling over the entire continent. The Holy Roman Empire
was an attempt to bring about this universal state.
The Holy Roman Empire, as wits frequently described
it, was neither “holy,” nor “Roman,” nor much of an
“empire.” Not since the Dark Ages had even the city
of Rome been included within the empire’s boundaries
and, in fact, the papacy frequently fought against various
emperors, the latter coming from various German
houses.
By the 17 th century, the Holy Roman Empire was
little more than a collection of states in central Europe,
loosely organized around a fragmented Germany with
the capital in Vienna and the throne in the hands of
the Habsburg family. Challenging the empire, not
merely militarily but ideologically, were the rising
national states of Europe The protestant churches of
Sweden and England, since they did not acknowledge
the supremacy of the papacy in Rome, provided an
ideological counterbalance to the centralizing and universal
appeal of “empire.” And even Catholic France
frequently put its national aspirations higher than any
pan-Catholic or even Christian interests, frequently allying
itself with the Moslem Ottoman Empire.
All that came to a head with the Thirty Years War,
which initially pitted Catholic Austria and Spain (representing
the empire) against Protestant German states
and then Denmark and Sweden. But the nature of
the conflict changed with the intervention of France
against the empire. French national interests demanded
Europe not be consolidated under a single great
empire. The war came to an end with the aforementioned
Treaty of Westphalia. While the treaty did not
end warfare in Europe, it did fundamentally change its
nature.
The Thirty Years War was fought with unprecedented
disregard for the civilian populace, with pillaging
and devastation a normal part of operations.
Aside from the moral issues, the destruction of crops
and cities undermined the civilian economies. That, in
turn, undermined the power of the governments to collect
taxes and maintain order. The European governments
decided it was time to restrain their armies and
minimize the destruction. It wasn’t simply a matter of
altruism, but also of self-preservation. Out of control
armies were as much a threat to the kings and princes
as they were to the citizenry. For example, Albrecht
Wallenstein, the imperial warlord of the Thirty Years
War, had amassed more power than the Hapsburgs and
might have set himself up as emperor were it not for
his assassination in 1634
There was also the growing professionalization of
the armies. Up until the mid-17 th century, recruiting
was a haphazard affair. Soldiers were drawn from mercenaries,
quasi-professional regulars, and remnants of
feudal levies. Countries such as Sweden showed that
a regular military with a professional officer corps
was the way of the future. A regular army had the advantages
of superior discipline and training. Recruits
needed to be exercised in the drills required to employ
the complex tactics of the day. Officers were drawn
from the nobility, and that had the added benefit of
putting them to some good use.
Politically, the states of Europe were becoming
more centralized. Feudal relationships were disintegrating
and being replaced by central government administrations
with taxation and nation-wide laws. That
meant governments could mobilize far more strength
than they could in the past, and did not waste time and
resources in civil war. All that was backed by new ideologies
that justified centralized rule: the divine rights
of kings as well as Hobbes’s Leviathan.
With well disciplined armies and centralized states,
the European governments had instruments with
which they could conduct warfare as if it were a game
of chess. And, not incidentally the army could be used
to maintain the monarch’s power by suppressing any
rebels.
In a sense, what the Treaty of Westphalia recognized
was that among European monarchs there was
no issue worth mutual self-destruction. By limiting
conflict to disputes over the balance of power all states
could be assured of their continual existence. Yet the
Age of Enlightenment was also an age of war—even
if limited. But the wars were fought not to conquer
entire countries or to establish a European-wide polity.
For the most part, they were “civilized” affairs that
resulted in the acquisition or loss of a border province
or two.
Balance of Power
The central feature of both war and international
politics in this era was the balance of power. Simply
put, the balance ensured no one European state became
strong enough to dominate the entire continent. Effectively,
that meant the old ideal of empire was dead.
Each state would keep its integrity and, while borders
might fluctuate, only minor gains and losses of territory
would be allowed. Even a monarch as powerful as
Louis XIV of France (1643-1715) proved incapable of
defeating the balance. In the War of the Spanish Succession
(1701-14), his attempts to set a relative on the
throne of Spain led to a European coalition marching
against him. Ironically, what saved him in the end was
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