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The Thirty Years' War, the “General Crisis,” and the Origins of a Standing Professional Army in the Habsburg Monarchy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

John A. Mears
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Extract

One of the most striking features of seventeenth-century state building was the formation of standing armies. Kings and princes throughout Europe, responding to conditions of almost constant strife, were compelled to transform ineffective feudal levies and unruly bands of mercenaries into regularized bodies of professional troops, making ever larger and more costly military establishments instruments of rational foreign policy rather than the preserves of the old nobility or freebooting condottieri. In building armies of the new type, European monarchs had to surmount determined opposition from two sources: the local representative bodies (estates) which were reluctant to grant rulers the powers of taxation necessary for the maintenance of permanent troops, and the mercenary colonels who were expected to relinquish their rights as independent recruiting masters and subordinate themselves to the state. By the middle decades of the seventeenth century, various territorial sovereigns were successfully mastering this opposition to their political authority and were able to take an essential step in the direction of true standing armies by routinely keeping strong military forces under their command at the conclusion of a campaign, thereby diminishing their reliance on contingents approved by the provincial estates or soldiers hastily raised by private entrepreneurs to meet specific emergencies.

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Central European History , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , June 1988 , pp. 122 - 141
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Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1988

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References

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28. Rabb, 35–37. Here Rabb's assessments dovetail with those of William H. McNeill, who, in his relentless search for broad patterns, stressed the importance of the decades on either side of 1500 as a fundamental dividing point in European history. See The Shape of European History (New York, 1974), 122–27.Google Scholar

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31. Here Rabb has relied heavily upon ideas summarized in Roberts, Michael, “The Military Revolution, 1560–1660,” in Essays in Swedish History (Minneapolis, 1967), 195–225.Google Scholar

32. Rabb, 35, 60–61, 71. The essential element in this process of interaction was the incorporation of the army into the state as a lasting institution which, if it was composed for the most part of foreign mercenaries, nonetheless should be linked firmly to the prince whom it served. The connection between political and military forms was especially close in Brandenburg-Prussia where the needs of the army determined in large part “the institutional framework, economic activity and even social organization,” and where, as has often been said, the army made the state. See Craig, Gordon, The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640–1945 (New York, 1964), xiv, 14Google Scholar. But the relationship between the two existed throughout western and Central Europe in the seventeenth century.

33. Rabb, 75–77, 119–21, 124, 145. This hypothesis, when considered by itself, does not seem entirely persuasive, at least as Rabb has presented it in his disappointingly brief concluding observations.

34. For a more extended consideration of this theme, consult Howard, Michael, War in European History (New York, 1976), 49–55Google Scholar. Also see McNeill, The Shape of European History, 145–49.

35. Rabb, 121–24, 148–49.

36. Wiesflecker, Hermann, Kaiser Maximilian I, 5 vols. (Munich, 1971–1986), 2: 175–201Google Scholar; 3: 228–54.

37. Instructive questions about this problem are raised by Hans Sturmberger, especially in his penetrating synthesis entitled Kaiser Ferdinand II und das Problem des Absolutismus in Österreich (Vienna, 1957).Google Scholar

38. Professor Bireley presented this view in an unpublished paper entitled “Ideology and Politics in the Thirty Years' War: The Importance of the Peace of Prague (1635),” which he read at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Dallas, Texas (December 1977).

39. Redlich, 228–29.

40. Fellner and Kretschmayr, pt. 1, vol. 1: 250; Zimmermann, 50.

41. Schwarz, Harry, The Imperial Privy Council in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1943), 28.Google Scholar

42. For an extensive treatment of the strife in Upper Austria, consult Sturmberger, Hans, Adam Graff Herberstorff: Herrschaft und Freiheit im konfessionallen Zeitalter (Vienna, 1976), chaps. 3 and 4.Google Scholar

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45. Hellbling, 245.

46. Meynert, 3: 42.

47. Quoted in both Zimmermann, 50, and Fellner and Kretschmayr, pt. 1, vol. 1: 250.

48. Hellbling, 245; Fellner and Kretschmayr, pt. 1, vol. 1: 250–51.

49. Redlich, 226–27. Discussion of the problem of mercenaries and the growth of the modern state can be found in Kiernan, V. G., “Foreign Mercenaries and Absolute Monarchy,” in Aston, 140–49.Google Scholar

50. Pirchegger, Hans, Geschichte und Kulturleben Deutschösterreichs, 3 vols. (Vienna, 1931), 2: 141Google Scholar; and Grindley, Anton, “Waldsteins Vertrag mit dem Kaiser bei der Übernahme des Zweiten Generalats,” Abhandlung der Böhmische Geschichtsverein der Wissenschaft 7 (1889): 9–10Google Scholar. See also Ritter, Moriz, “Das Kontributionssystem Wallensteins,” Hisstorische Zeitschrift 90 (1903): 193–249Google Scholar; and Loewe, V., Die Organisation und Verwaltung der Wallensteinischen Heere (Freiburg i. Br., 1895).Google Scholar

51. For a detailed description of colonels as the proprietors of regiments, see Redlich, 211–21.

52. Meynert, 3: 76–77.

53. Grindley, 264; and Barker, Army, Aristocracy, Monarchy, 82.

54. Hellbling, 245; and Barker, Double Eagle and Crescent, 167.

55. Broucek, Peter, “Erzherzog Leopold Wilhelm und der Oberbefehl über das kaiserliche Heer im Jahre 1645,” in Aus Drei Jahrhunderten: Beiträge zur österreichischen Heeres- und Kriegsgeschichte, in Schriften des Heeresgeschichtlichen Museums in Wien (MilitärwissenschafiHches Institut), no. 4 (Vienna, 1969), 9.Google Scholar

56. Wrede, 1: 30.

57. Zimmermann, 50.

58. Wrede, 1: 60; and Redlich, 289–90. Motivated by the intensity of the Thirty Years' War in its final stages to place their soldiers on a permanent war footing and subordinate field commanders to centralized direction, princely governments throughout Europe implemented similar regulations after 1634.

59. Wrede, 3: 107.

60. Hummelberger, 37; Meynert, 3: 70, 75–77; and Mann, Golo, Wallenstein: His Life, trans. Kessler, Charles (New York, 1976), 586, 592.Google Scholar

61. The best description of the equipoise that emerged within the Habsburg power cluster following the Thirty Years' War can be found in Evans, vii, 109, 169, 447, For brief overviews, see McNeill, William H., Europe's Steppe Frontier, 1500–1800 (Chicago, 1964), 72–75, 126–27, 159–61Google Scholar; and Barker, Thomas, “Military Entrepreneurship and Absolutism: Habsburg Models,” Journal of European Studies 4 (1974): 29–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This perspective is generally reinforced by Bérenger, Jean, Finances et absolutisme autrichien dans le second moitié du XVIIe siècle (Pans, 1975).Google Scholar

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63. Most authorities underscore the impact of outside pressure, especially the threat of Turkish invasion, rather than internal forces of cohesion, in determining the political pattern of the monarchy and the distinctive character of its army. For an insightful treatment of the seminal connections between military defense and state building in the Inner Austrian duchies, where the threat of Ottoman attack was almost constant, read Winfried Schulze, Landesdejension und Staatsbildung: Studien zum Kriegswesen des innerösterreichischen Territorialstaates (1564–1619), in Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Neure Geschichte Österreichs, vol. 60 (Vienna, 1973).Google Scholar

64. Barker, Double Eagle and Crescent, 207–8.

65. My understanding of these particular questions has been substantially enhanced by Reynold S. Koppel's unpublished essay entitled “Centralization and Reform Efforts in the Austrian Lands under Leopold I.”

66. Professor Barker has demonstrated that of the identifiable colonels who owned regiments in 1683, twenty-six percent stemmed from foreign mercenaries and favorites of the pre-1648 period, twenty-five percent represented large landowning families that had remained loyal to the dynasty during the Thirty Years' War, fourteen percent came from European princely houses, and thirty-five percent were individuals who had entered the Habsburg service following the Westphalian settlement. See “Military Entrepreneurship and Absolutism,” 36–37. The presence of so many foreigners undercut the capacity of the army to function as a centripetal force within the monarchy, despite its long-term importance in this regard. See the judgements of Jászi, Oscar, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago, 1960), 491–92Google Scholar; and Zeman, Z.A.B., The Break-up of the Habsburg Empire (London, 1961), 39.Google Scholar

67. The riches to be derived from the traffic in military positions is illustrated by Franz Josef Graf Sereni, who paid 50,000 Rhinish Gulden to Philipp Jacob de la Porte for his dragoon regiment in 1693. One Venetian diplomat suggested that a generalship in the Austrian army had the equivalent value of an Italian duchy. Fiedler, Joseph, ed., “Die Relationen der Botschafter Venedigs über Deutschland und Österreich im Siebzehnten Jahrhundert,” Fontes rerum austriacarum (Zweite Abtheilung) 27 (1867): 188.Google Scholar

68. Barker, Double Eagle and Crescent, 175; and Zimmermann, 50–51. Given the opportunities for promotion offered by the Inhaber system, Leopold's army facilitated economic and social advancement during the decades that coincide with Professor Rabb's period of quieting down and settlement, but military service seldom brought with it political influence at the Vienna court. Barker, Thomas M., “Václav Eusebius z Lobkovic (1609–1677): Military Entrepreneurship, Patronage and Grace,” Austrian History Yearbook 14 (1978): 45–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

69. Zimmermann, 50–51, 131–32. As a “subject that would repay further investigation,” Professor Rabb has pointed to “the mechanism whereby the aristocracy throughout Europe was transformed from an autonomous pressure group, demonstrating its power through its ability to withstand a prince or a sovereign, into a force for general control, closely linked with the central authority.” Military entrepreneurship, as it has been examined by Thomas Barker, was obviously an integral though by no means dominant part of this process in the Habsburg monarchy; and while “the realignment is usually seen from the center,” it involved much more than simply “a series of policies promulgated … by Leopold I.…” Rabb, 148–49.

70. Hoyos, Phillip, “Die Kaiserliche Armee 1648–1650,” in Der Dreissigjährige Krieg: Beiträge zu seiner Geschichte, in Schrifien des Heeresgeschichtlichen Museums in Wien (Militärwissenschaftiliches Institut), no. 7 (Vienna, 1976), 171.Google Scholar

71. Quoted in Hoyos, 214.

72. These figures have been accepted by most authorities, including Meynert, 3: 165; Frauenholz, 114; and Hummelberger, , “Die Turkenkriege und Prinz Eugen,” in Unser Heer, 70Google Scholar. For somewhat lower estimates, see Hoyos, 210–11.

73. Hoyos, 170–83, 190–209, 214. Dr. Hoyos makes a case for the imperial Generalkriegskommissär, Ernst von Traun, as the key figure in all questions of army organization at the Vienna court in the immediate aftermath of the Thirty Years' War.

74. Effective state control over the new standing armies evoked administrative reform throughout western Europe. This problem is discussed by Roberts, 204–8.

75. Regele, 19; Zimmermann, 51.

76. Hellbling, 246.

77. In Professor Barker's view, Montecuccoli provides a “slightly variant” example of “the peculating, foreign-born professional soldier [who] was an indispensable person in the early absolutist state, which could scarcely have developed without the help of the standing army.” Consult “Military Entrepreneurship and Absolutism,” 41.

78. Convenient assessments of Montecuccoli's career, less familiar than those of Wallenstein and Prince Eugene, can be found in Barker, Thomas, The Military Intellectual and Battle: Raimondo Montecuccoli and the Thirty Years' War (Albany, 1975)Google Scholar, Parts One and Two; and Mears, John A., “Count Raimondo Montecuccoli: Servant of a Dynasty,” The Historian 32 (1970): 392–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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80. Kann, 85. In the War of the Spanish Succession, and again in the first Turkish war of Charles VI's reign, distinguished imperial commanders won spectacular victories of continental import—battlefield triumphs that remained unsurpassed in the annals of Austrian history. Besides the conquests of distinguished generals like Margrave Louis of Baden and Count Guido Starhemberg, these include Eugene's own successes at Luzzara (1702) and Turin (1706) as well as his joint victories with Marlborough at Blenheim (1704), Oudenarde (1708), and Malplaquet (1709).

81. Craig, Gordon A., “Command and Staff Problems in the Austrian Army, 1740–1866,” in Howard, Michael, ed., The Theory and Practice of War (New York, 1965), 47, 53.Google Scholar

82. Fellner and Kretschmayr, pt. 1, vol. 2: 25. Similar claims have been made on behalf of Montecuccoli and Prince Eugene. For expressions of such claims from a variety of perspectives, see Barker, The Military Intellectual and Battle, 1; Jászi, 141; Zimmermann, 65; McNeill, Europe's Steppe Frontier, 160; and Hummelberger, , “Die Türkenkriege und Prinz Eugen,” in Unser Heer, 68Google Scholar. These disparities in the judgements of leading scholars can be explained by the seventy-five year gap between the decades of the Thirty Years' War, when permanent military establishments began to coalesce throughout western and Central Europe, and the opening decades of the eighteenth century, when the new discipline and uniformity finally gave European armies something approaching a modern character. See Wolf, John B., The Emergence of the Great Powers, 1685–1715 (New York, 1951), 8.Google Scholar

83. Broucek, Peter, “Feldmarschall Bucquoy als Armeekommandant 1618–1620,” Der Dreissigjährige Krieg, 25.Google Scholar

84. Rabb, 34, 71–72. See also Barker, Army, Aristocracy, Monarchy, 82.