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I Advanced Placement European Historv ILesson 18, Handout l8 (paBe l) Name

Date

The Aristocracy plays At War

Part A' For homework, complete the following chart on major wars from 16gg to 1763.WARS DATE CAUSES MAJOR BATTLDS

AND GENERALSTREATIES AND

RESULTS

War of tJreLeague ofAugsburg

War of theSpanishSuccession

War of theAustrianSuccession

Seven Years'War

French andIndian War

Part B' Your teacher will divide your class into eight groups, each having the task of re-searchingin some detail one of the following topics:I Medieval wars

j-Wars of the early seventeenth centuryI Warof the League of Augsburg

'j Warof the Spanish SuccessionI Warof the Austrian Successiont , Seven Years'War'i

French and Indian War;] Twentieth-century war

In order to make a brief class presentation, be prepared to answer each of the followingquestions about your topic:1. Who were the combatants?

117

Advanced Placement European History IIesson 18Handout l8 (page 2)

Name

Date

2. What were the casualties of war?

3. What was the size of the armies?

4. What was the situation of civilians?

Part c' Read the following selection on the nature of eighteenth-century warfare in preparation for aclass discussion on the topic.

In- the ftrst place, the,productive part of the population had to be leftunmolested so that it could pay taxes. ofiicets .u.r" diart prima.ifv from thenobility' while seamen and privates were usually vagabond!, a*rri."ras, andunemployed persons who were seized in taverns and-elsewher" *J"o*pelledto senre. Prussia artd Russia_conscripted some peasants, but on the whole,economically productive people were not directly aifected by *"i. o*"pt for theofficers, troops were not e>cpected to show any'loyatty to tle "u""." for whichthey fought.Indeed, they were often recruitedLbroad to reduce still further thedisrupting effects of war onlhe economy. The British hired German troops tofiglrt in the American Revolution, and"Frederick trte creairoicinry enlistedprisoners of war in his own army. To camp near a large woods, i" ""ra""t a nightmarch,

!o sgnd out a fol=aging party, or to grant sailors shore leave was to invitewholesale desertion. sailorJhad io re tEpt aboard ship and soldiers had tomarch in close order by day qnd carry their supplies with them. As a result,armies could not travel more than {ive days' *".ch from their b"""ti

"rrppii"",military objectives had tobe limited, andwars tended to *.g.".o;irrto "i.g.".

In the second place, armies were so expensive that generals hesitated to riskpitched battles' The current military doctrine was not to destroy the enemyforces but to secure every possible advantage by maneuver. Even Frederick theGreat cguld not escape this ffie of warfare] u.ra n. owed his military victoriesprimarily to his skilful maneuvers and his well-trained "ffi";;;;".

cMlian suffering-was curtailed by the limited objectives of eiglrteenth-century warfarg' by the careful disctpline required frLm officers to preventdesertion, and !Y the absence of the fanaticism that had r"""*j"tied thereligious wars of the previous period. The rules of warfare that wer'e acceptedby the various p-articipants were also a factor, and unless one was sounfortunate as to be caught in a besieged city, he coura rr"p. t" J"""p" -o"tof thehorrors ofwar-excepttaxes. ltwa"s largely to collect moie taxes that manykings attempted to curtaif the privileg.s or?t6 aristocracy, provinces, towns,and other special groups.

J' Russell Major, The westemWorld (New York: Harper & Row publishers,r966),4i7.

' ' ' the use of foreign mercenaries was common. Between a quarter and hvo-thirds of the t19opi in western Europe;s rimil. were foreigners, sometimeskidnapped and foiced into service. Many Irish, for example, hampered at homeby religious and other restrictions, "r;gita

th;irlortunes in the military servicesabroad as far east as Russia. An estirriated 450 thousand Irish served, at onetime or another' in the Frengh army tosi- tl+s.l"addition, the use of swissmercenaries was widespread. In general the troops were degraded and miser-able. Savage punishments were usual in all armies . . . .

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,sanced Placement European History Irsson 18Handout t8 (page 3)

Name

I^argely to cut the heavy expenses involved it was customar5r to campaignonly in the summer. In Prussia the recruits were on leave for ninemonths of theyear. Much of the campaigning itself was on a small scale with small obj ectives,such as taking a fortified place. In effect, warbecame a stylized and somewhatridiculous game of maneuver and counter-maneuver, as if the generals wereplayingregimental chess, It even became usual to invite ladies to watch the ltnalassault of a fortress, with the troops attacking to the music of violins. The sameformality prevailed on the open battlefields. Opposing troops, dressed in garlycolored uniforms, advanced in precise formation, paustng to flre from time totime upon command, as if they were doing a martial minuet. One of the primefunctions of the officers was to prevent desertion of their mistreated men.

Gerritt P. Judd, A History oJCiuiltzation (New York: Macmillan, f 967), 468-469.

"Now it is frequent to have armies of 50,000 men of a side stand at bay withinview of one another and spend the whole campaign in dodging, or, as it isgenteelly called, obserwing one another and then march off into winterquarters."

John Childs, Armtes andWarJare inEurope: 1648-1789 (New York: Holmesand Meier Publishers, 1982), IO3-I04.

' I always choose my officers from the nobility, for nobility nearly always hasa sense of honor . . . if a noble loses his honor he is ostracized by his f;amily;whereas a commoner who has committed some fraud can continue to run hisfather's business."

Frederick the GreatIbid.. 87.

"Captalns accepted bribes from men who wanted to go onleave or marry andsold discharges at exorbitant rates . . . and many officers amassed a consider-able fortune from their quasi-legal activities."

tbid.,89.

"On the march every man thrust into his pack-it goes without saying onenemy territory-whatever he could lay his hands on- . . . It was every man forhimsilf and if you didn't somebody else will. No use protesting as long as theofficers let it go on."

-Ulrich Braeker, Prussian PrivateIbid., 164-165.

"It would undoubtedly be desirable if we could create an army of dependableand specially selected men of the best type; but, in order to make an arrny, we

must not destroy the nation; it would be destruction to the nation if it weredeprived of its best elements. As things are, the army must inevitably consistof lhe scum of the people and of all those for whom society has no use. We musttherefore rely on military discipline to puriff and mold the mass of cornrptionand turn it into something useful."

St. Germainrbid.. L74.

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Advanced Placement European History ILesson 18Handout 18 (page 4)

Name

Date

"One in four Frenchmen deserted from the army in the War of the SpanishSuccession, and from 1717 to I 728 there were 8,500 deserters for every 2O,OO0

men in the Saxon infantry. In ttre S even Years' War 80, OO0 men absc onded fromthe Russian arrny, 70,000 from tl:e French, and 62,000 from the Austrian."

Hew Strachan, EuropeanArmies andthe conductoJWar (l,ondon: GeorgeAllen and Unwin, 1983), 9.

"I do not favor pitched battles, especially at the beginning of war, and I amconvinced that a skillful general couldmakewar all his lifewithoutbeingforcedinto one.

Maurice de Saxebid., 14.

-The great and important parts of war, as well in the formation as in theexecution, depend on the knowledge of the country; and wise generals willalways choose to make them the foundation of their conduct rather than trustto the uncertain issue of battle."

Henry Lloyd, a Welsh general in the Russian armyrbid.

"War cannot be conducted without encountering decisive battles that deter-mine the fate of the kingdom."

Frederick the Greatrbid.

"In 1708, Malborough's train of 1,8O0 heavy guns and 20 siege mortarsrequired 16,000 horses and 3,000 wagons to move it and covered thirty milesof higlrway. Thus although Malborough was preeminently a seeker of battles,in ten campaigns he conducted 30 sieges and fought four major actions in theopen field."

Ibid., I l.

'"The consequent gro',rrth in central authority had allowed an increase in thesize of armies, from the average of 40,000 in the mid-seventeenth century tor00,0oo by 1710. But there had been no proportionate population growth, noconcomitant increase in the food supply to feed these armies and no consequentimprovement in communications to hasten their march."

rbid., 10.

"Bythe I970's, a Prussian infantryregiment of 2,2OOmenwas accompaniedby 2,400 noncombatants and 1,200 draft horses."

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'dvanced Placement European History I

Lesson 18Handout l8 (page 5)

Name

I)af e

"War is a frightful thing, what with the destruction of the lields and viilages,the lamentation of the poor peasants, theruin of so many innocent people and,for myself, the disturbances I o<perience for days and nights on end."

Emperor Joseph IIrbid., 15.

We open our campaigns with armies that are neither adequately recruited norproperly paid. Whether they win or lose, both sides are equally exhausted. TheNational Debt increases, credit sinks, money runs out. Navies can find no moresailors, armies no more soldiers. Ministers on each side feel it time to negotiate.Peace is made. A few c olonies or provinc es change hands. Often the cause of theconfl ict remains unresolved and each party remains sitting among its ruins andbusies itself with paylng off its debts and sharpening its weapons.

Michael Howard, War in European History (London: Oxford University Press,19761,74.

In a memorandum drawn up in 1765, the French Foreign Minister, Choiseul,explained how he souglrt to extricate France from the war against Britain withas little loss as possible. He secured the signing of the Family Compact withSpain in I 761 and the entry of Spain into the war on the side of France the nextyear.

Source: J.S. Corbett. Englandintt:r SeuenYearsWor(2 vols, l97O)' II' 185'

I then proposed to your MaJesty two games to play together: one to keep upthe negotiation with En$and in such a way that if it did not succeed this timeit would serve from its simplicity as a base for the general negotiation whichmust take place if Pitt fell before the influence of Bute. At the same time-lentered into an exchange of views with Spain, so devised that if we were to makepeace that Crown would find it to its interest to support us in the negotiation,and guarantee the stability of the treaty. If, on the contrary, we failed in this,my plan was that Spain should be drawn into the war, and that France wouldbe able to profit by the errents which this new complication might produce, andrepair her losses. Finally, if the event proved unfortunate, I had inview that thelosses of Spain would lighten those which France miglrt suffer.

I-eonard W. Cowie, Documents andDescrtptions in EuropeanHBtory {Oxford:Oford University Press, 1967), 69.

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Advanced Placement European History ILesson 18Handout 18 (page 6)

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Joseph Strayer, Mainstreqm oJ Ctuiltzc"tion, Vol. I, 2nd ed. (New York Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,1974),506.

l. How were eighteenth-century wars different from previous and later wars?

2. To what extent were eighteenth-century wars a game?

3. Wtro benefitted from eighteenth-century wars?

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