Furies
War in Europe, 1450–1700
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During the European Renaissance, an age marked equally by revolutionary thought and constant warfare, it was armies, rather than philosophers, who shaped the modern European nation state. "Mobile cities" of mercenaries and other paid soldiers-made up of astonishingly diverse aggregations of ethnicities and nationalities-marched across the land, looting and savaging enemy territories.
In the 15th century, Poland hired German, Spanish, Bohemian, Hungarian, and Scottish soldiers. Later, Sweden fought in Muscovy with Irish, English, Scottish, French and German troops. Units of Croats, Germans, Walloons, Albanians, and especially Swiss served in French armies. In the Netherlands, Italians and Spaniards fought beside Irishmen, Germans, Dalmatians, and Walloons. Regiments of Swiss pikemen fought for Spain, France, and Venice, as well as for German and Italian princes. Companies of Poles, Hungarians, and Croatians fought in German regiments.
Growing national economies, unable to pay or feed massed armies for any length of time, thus became war states, an early nationalism which would later consume modern Europe. Furies: War in Europe 1450-1700 by acclaimed historian of the Renaissance Lauro Martines compellingly and simply delivers the story of modern Europe's martial roots, capturing the brutality of early modern war and how it shaped the history of a continent
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Martines (Fire in the City), best known for his work on the Italian Renaissance, makes a major contribution in this survey of war in "early modern Europe." Challenging the conventional emphasis on diplomacy, bureaucracy, and technology in most military histories addressing the period, Martines describes medieval Europe's wars as having been shaped by a Christianity that saw battle "as punishment for sin"; a Protestant Reformation that justified "killing for God"; and a quest for private gain that drove poorly paid and insufficiently supplied armies to wreak havoc on civilian populations. The sacking of cities was not uncommon even if negotiations had been formally arranged, and mutually miserable groups of soldiers and peasants destroyed settlements as they fought over the scarce resources of subsistence economies. As civil societies dissolved in the face of random and organized violence, "fragile, unruly" armies developed into a parasitic form of community whose numbers often dwarfed those of proper towns. The direct consequences of plunder and plague, Martines concludes, far outweighed any abstract economic stimulus generated by war. The burgeoning fiscal-military state, moreover, sustained war making by replicating armies' behavior in drawing resources from their subjects by compulsion. The difference between monarchs and mercenaries, Martines shows, was merely a matter of degree.
